living with passion

What it means to love your neighbor

July 8, 2020 by Edie Wadsworth Leave a Comment

Love your neighbor as yourself. ~Mark 12:31

It’s been a really heavy couple of weeks for my family and for the world, and I am just feeling every bit of it.

I’ve been meditating on what it really means to love your neighbor.

C. S. Lewis said,“Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.”I was listening to some teaching this weekend and the pastor talked about how Jesus is waiting. He is inside your neighbor waiting to be loved by you.

Mostly Jesus is loving us, but I love the thought that Christ is in the other person, and what you do other people is what you do to Him. That image would probably save me from a lot of heartache and tears. Honestly that’s probably all we need to say about it.

I want you to think about the person that you’ve been fighting with this week on social media, or who you’ve been thinking to yourself, that person is doing it wrong, that person is not showing up right. You might even give them a name, that person is this or that, but I want you to really imagine that person is where Jesus resides.

How I treat them, and think about them, and love them, or don’t love them is how I treat Him.

I want to tell you a little story from my own childhood, because I feel like stories are where we connect. Stories are where we have so much in common. There’s obviously so much that divides us as people, but people can argue with your politics, and they can argue with your theology, and they can argue with your dogma, but people can’t really argue with your story.

My mama had been in beauty school, and when she finally got her license, I started going to nursery school. My life at that point, honestly, was crazy.

The first day that I ever got dropped off to nursery school, the first person I met on the playground was Leticia. And she and I became fast friends. We went to school together, all through elementary school, all through middle school, and all through high school. We became best friends.

We cheered together in high school. We were on all the same committees together. She was so smart. She was so good at cheerleading, she could do a toe touch like nobody’s business! All through those years she was one of my dearest friends. I never thought of her as my black friend, I just thought of her as my dear friend who was amazing.

I had so much of my own turmoil in my own life that I was just thankful she wasn’t judging me because I was poor, or because my daddy wasn’t around, or because he was an alcoholic, or because he showed up at the ballpark drunk. I was SO thankful.

She just seemed to love me for me. I loved her for her.

After we both went to college, we went our separate ways. She’s a very successful attorney in Knoxville now. When I think about her, I still have so much love, so I messaged her last week and just said I was sorry for everything that was going on,“I love you so much. I’m so grateful for you in my life.” I thanked her for loving me all those years, for just being such a dear, dear friend to me. And she wrote back and she said, “Thank you for leading me to Christ, and for being a good friend to me.”

She told me about what she experienced after high school, and what she experienced even sometimes that I didn’t know about during that time. It made me just love her even more. The way she responded, with so much compassion, was just like I remembered her. Full of love, even though in a lot of ways, she had been mistreated by people who were ignorant or didn’t appreciate how amazing she is.

That whole exchange sent me into a tailspin as I think about what I’ve been taught in the scriptures about loving our neighbor. Literally that person bears the image of God, whoever it is we come across.

Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It’s the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too. ~Frederick Buechner

First of all we need to repent. In our church every Sunday we confess,“Lord, I have not loved you with my whole heart, and I have not loved my neighbor as myself.”I think the first step to being a good neighbor is admitting that we’re not good neighbors. Just being honest with God, and honest with ourselves and vulnerable, and saying,“I have not been a good neighbor.”

To confess that we have not been the neighbor that we could be to the people in our lives, who are hurting and who need us, is so freeing because we don’t have to pretend like we’re always doing it right. We can just confess and choose to have a tender heart that is teachable. I want to have a spirit of humility so I can continue to learn.

We also need to receive the love and forgiveness of God. We can’t give out something we don’t have. We have to fully receive the love of Christ, and know we are adored, and we are taken care of, and know that everything we’ve ever needed, he’s already done and finished.

When we live from that place we get to live with reckless abandon, because we know we’re being held. We can say, “There’s the example and I will never do it perfectly,” and then we can rest, receive his perfect love, and acknowledge and honor the image of God in every person we meet.

We need to commit to love as a practice.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things ~1 Corinthians 13:7

BEAR ALL THINGS

Since Tom came to live with us this year we’ve been in play therapy helping him to heal. When we first started going, he was always playing with emergency vehicles. He was pretending like the the house was on fire and somebody got hurt. He was pretending like we were taking the ambulance to the hospital, things like that.

At one point he started bringing me all of these big scary stuffed snakes and crocodiles, and then he brings me a dragon. After he loaded me up and I’m sitting there with my arms full, he goes back to play with normal kid stuff, like Legos.

It was a major breakthrough. Our precious counselor said, “He just needs you to hold the scary things so he can play.” Those words have reverberated in my heart. That’s what it means to bear each other’s burdens.

Can we hold the scary things of other people?

Can we be part of the solution?

Can we bear the burdens of people who are having a hard time bearing their own burdens?

BELIEVES ALL THINGS

Believing all things means we give people the benefit of the doubt. It means believing the best of our neighbor.

Stevie said something at dinner the other night that really hurt and offended me. But I love this man. I know his heart. I know he loves me. To really be a good neighbor to him means to show him loving kindness and not be so easily offended. Being offended is how so much division starts, so believing the best of people brings us back together.

HOPES ALL THINGS

With what has been going on in our world the past three months, I think we’ve all lost hope a time or two. But can we really trust that God is going to take care of us and that His purposes are going to be fulfilled, that He’s going to use this for good? Can we be a source of hope for our neighbor?

ENDURES ALL THINGS

Endure is a military term that means stay strong until the death. This is where I have just had to dig deep the last few days. After I let myself just be broken by it, it does raise up in me this warrior mama spirit.

This is not going to take us out. All this division is not going to win. And letting that warrior rise up in us, so that we can be strong to the end, so that we can endure for the sake of our neighbor, is part of what it means to really love our neighbor.

These ways that we can physically and tangibly love our neighbor will cost us something.

Love always has sacrifice attached to it. So when we think about Christ’s love for us, it always has a sacrificial component. Love is ready to sacrifice its time, its resources, its name, whatever it is, love is always ready to sacrifice. And I just think about that so much when I think about what is happening in my own family and in the world right now.

Another pastor I was listening to talked about the fact that there’s going to be a gap between you and your neighbor. You don’t understand him. He’s not like you. His family is not like yours. He doesn’t believe like you.

You get to choose what goes in the gap.

You get to choose how you think and feel about this person. This is a lot of what I teach in Life Mentoring School. Your ability to love your neighbor has nothing to do with your neighbor. Your ability to love your spouse has nothing to do with your spouse. Your ability to love your children has nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with you.

This is a practice that we have to keep practicing. What do I want to think and feel about my neighbor, and how can I practice that on a daily basis? How can I be mindful of them? How can I think on them?

God give us grace to choose love, compassion, and understanding, even for people who aren’t reacting the way we think they should, or showing up the way we think they should. And when we don’t want to show up at all, which is the way I’ve been feeling, let us remember this scripture.

Do not growing weary in doing good. ~Galations 6:9

Christ is in your neighbor. Your neighbor is the image-bearer of God, and how you treat your neighbor is how you treat Christ. It’s the most tangible example that I can give for myself of how I want to show up to the people in my life. That person that is the image-bearer of God, that person that he loves so deeply, that he sacrificed everything for, how will I show up to that neighbor?

Are you feeling stuck? – 5 questions to get you back on track

June 24, 2020 by Edie Wadsworth 2 Comments

Are you feeling stuck in life? Are you feeling confused? Are you feeling frozen with fear? Are you overwhelmed? I have five questions that you can ask yourself and get you moving so you can get unstuck!

I have learned from being stuck, there are things we can do, small tweaks, and questions we can ask to train our minds to think differently, so we can get ourselves unstuck.

Question 1 – Are you holding on to the past?

I was stuck because of my past for about 43 years. For me, it was my childhood.

You might be stuck in some resentment from a year ago, or six months ago, or yesterday, or last month. There is hope! You do not have to feel that way. You do not have to cling to the past.

Who would you be if you weren’t holding on to your painful story?

Here’s what I realized with my own past. There were some things that had been done to me, some resentment I was holding on to, some wounds I was holding on to, what I perceived as people doing me wrong I was holding on to.

That thing that was done to you and me is in the past. What I did was hold on to it, and I kept punishing myself with it over and over and over again. I used it as a story and let it play in my head over, and over, and over, again.

When I first started learning about how to help myself get past the past, one of the beautiful things I learned is that I can choose to hang onto that story, or not. No matter how true it is, no matter how much the story has been embellished in my mind over the years, it’s my choice.

When you hang onto a painful story it’s like holding onto a porcupine. Guess who gets to feel the pinch, and the prod, and the poke of that story?

I loved, in a sick way, playing the story over and over in my head, and it so defined me. I am here to tell you that it doesn’t have to define you. That really super painful story that you’re holding on to, is keeping you stuck.

My story was keeping me stuck in my relationships.

It was keeping me stuck in my work.

It was keeping me stuck in my parenting.

It was keeping me stuck in my spiritual life, because I sort of blamed God.

Your story is like a really heavy backpack. Mine is 292 pages long, it’s heavy! You’re lugging this story through life, and you wonder why you can’t go anywhere. Your body feels heavy because you’re carrying this emotional weight, this emotional backpack, this heavy, painful story.

Your brain thinks it’s really important for you to keep thinking it and believing it, but I’m here to tell you that freedom awaits you on the other side of letting the story go.

I know it feels important to hold on to it. Your brain is telling you, “You have to hold on to this story. It was true.” It seems to justify the pain you went through by holding on to it. Really it doesn’t, because you’re just keeping yourself in pain.

Little by little, I just started to let go of the story. I wrote it down, called it “All the Pretty Things,” and I let it go. You know what happened?

Unbelievable, amazing, life-changing freedom happened when I let go of that story. My life literally opened up and began to just blossom in every imaginable way.

So many amazing things happened when I dared let go of the painful story. The other thing that happened is my heart so opened up to the people in my life and to the people in my story, that I began to have so much more compassion for them, and for me.

Question 2 – Are you letting your brain run wild with all kinds of stories and negativity?

A few months ago, I came off a crazy, busy season, and I was exhausted. For several weeks after that, I just told myself, “I’m just spinning my wheels. I’m not getting stuff done.” I thought I was just stating the facts. “I really am stuck!”

What we don’t realize is that we’re creating the stuck-ness. We’re creating the non-productiveness by continuing to let that thought, and that message, and that story go unsupervised in our heads.

Have you ever considered that when you say, “I’m stuck,” that’s just a thought? It’s just a thing you’re telling yourself and it’s optional.

Your brain loves to tell itself that you’re stuck, and confused and you don’t know what to do, and let me tell you why. Because if you’re stuck, you don’t have to do anything! If you’re confused, you don’t have to move forward. If you’re stuck, then there’s nothing else to do, there’s no creativity to explore, there are no options.

You decide what you want to think about your day, and your week, and your month. What do you want to think about your life? What do you want to think about your marriage? Don’t get caught in a loop of perpetual stuck-ness!

Be on to yourself, but not mad at yourself. Be kind and tell yourself, “It’s okay, darlin’, you’re not stuck. We know what to do. We’ve got this. You know how to create this. You know how to start the book. You know how to lose the weight. You know how to get clarity in your relationship.”

As a man thinks in his heart so is he. ~ Proverbs 23:7

You decide. Your thoughts will become your life. Be on to yourself when you’re in this loop of stuck-ness because you’ll prove yourself right.

Question 3 – Are you willing to feel your feelings?

When you stifle your feelings and you refuse to feel them, you buffer instead. You seek false pleasure. You go scroll on Facebook, you go have some cookies, you eat your feelings, you shop your feelings, or you scroll your feelings.

When you refuse to feel your feelings, the fuel for your life is literally stifled. Your feelings fuel your life.

When you squash them all, you will create zero momentum in your life, because you need to be in charge of those feelings. You need to be willing to feel the bad ones and willing to generate the good ones.

Life is like this: there are a lot of good things and there are some bad things. We signed up for all of it. We say yes to all of it. I say yes when it’s hard, and when I feel grief or I feel loss. I also say yes to the moments when little Tom Tom reaches his hand up around my neck in the mornings, and feels to make sure I’m still there, to that overwhelming gratitude. I’m here for all of it!

We signed up for it all. If you aren’t willing to feel it, your life will feel like there’s no flow. It will feel stuck because you are stuck in your emotions, and you won’t let them flow.

We’re so afraid to feel the bad ones! You know what emotions feel like? They come and go. They come in waves. We have to be willing to say, “Oh, interesting. I feel down today. I feel a lot of loss today.” Feel it, welcome it, let it come on in, sit with it. “Oh, a little anxiety. Interesting. Come on in. Sit with me. Let’s feel it. What does it feel like? Oh, it’s tight in my chest, and in my throat. Okay.”

We welcome it because when you welcome it, it just goes on through. Then the next ones come on through. Then you can pick a few that you want. You know how I want to feel today? I want to feel so motivated about my life! I want to feel so energized to share whatever I have to share with other people.

I can generate emotions when I’m willing to just let them all come, let them all be there. What we do instead is we seek a lot of false pleasure. We just cover it up. We just pretend it’s not there. We just squish it down. That is no recipe for the life you want.

Feeling your feelings is the key to getting clarity and momentum in your life, because you’re here for it all.

Question 4 – Are you being a victim to the people or circumstances of your life?

Your circumstances have absolutely nothing to do with you, and the way you want to show up, and the way you want to create momentum in your life. Absolutely nothing, unless you let them. We make ourselves a victim to people, we make ourselves a victim to our circumstances, and when we do that, we lose all of our power.

I would get going with my life, but my husband holds me back.

I would get going with my life, but these children.

I would get going with my life, but my rascally boss.

I would do that thing, but I don’t have enough money.

I don’t have enough time.

I don’t have enough.

You are not a victim. You get to be in charge of what you think, and how you feel, and how you show up in your life. You don’t have to wait for a specific set of circumstances. As a matter of fact, even when those circumstances come, if you haven’t decided to be in charge of your thoughts and your feelings and your actions, it won’t matter.

You won’t do the thing then, if you won’t take responsibility now. You are not a victim to the people or the circumstances in your life. When you realize that, you will stand in your place of internal power, where you really have the ability to emotionally grow up, and take responsibility for every little thing in your life. It’s such an amazing, powerful place to create your life from.

Question 5 – Are you using your gift to serve other people?

A lot of times when we feel stuck, we are thinking about ourselves over and over. It’s a very selfish place to be because we’re overthinking about ourselves, and that makes us over worried about ourselves.

Stop worrying and just do. Stop worrying and just serve.

Who is God putting right in front of you every single day that you can love, and serve, and offer something to? What little action can you take that breaks you out of yourself, that breaks you out of this weird, negative, stuck loop, and makes you see the people right in front of you who need you?

This whole stuck thing is a way to keep us from serving the people in our lives who need what we have, so let’s just start giving it away.

What I have to give isn’t perfect, but I just show up and offer what I have. Offer a little piece of yourself, a piece of your heart, a little bit of service and love to somebody else. It’s the best way get you out your own way. I feel less stuck when I get out of my own way and serve others.

If you are feeling stuck in life, I hope that you will, number one, let go of the past. Number two, decide what you want to think and feel. Number three, feel your actual feelings and stop eating them, and shopping them, and Facebooking them. Number four, stop being a victim to your circumstances and to the people in your life. Number five, start loving and serving people with your whole heart and you won’t feel stuck anymore!

Life Mentoring School is open for enrollment now. If you need help with these steps, we go in depth. We really focus on how to get your life exactly where you want it, how to get yourself unstuck, how to move past your past, and how to really become a relationship Ninja!

If you want those tools, consider joining Life Mentoring School. You can go to this link to sign up while enrollment is still open. It has been life changing, and I’m so very honored by the people who trust us with their stories. We would love to have you join this program.

Thriving in times of crisis – 4 ways to stay calm & productive

June 17, 2020 by Edie Wadsworth Leave a Comment

It’s been a rough week and it’s only Wednesday. I spent yesterday morning in a puddle of tears for a variety of reason. Mostly because I’m human and life is half amazing and half terrifying.

This morning I’m committed to meditating on Psalm 107:9, “The Lord satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.”

It’s a good reminder that ALL IS WELL.

And with the current state of crazy chaos we find ourselves in, there’s never been a more important time to TRULY decide what you want to think, how you want to feel, and HOW YOU WANT TO SHOW UP IN THE WORLD.

It’s always a choice. We’re going to dive deep today into what it means to make hard choices NOW for benefit LATER.

You can choose thoughts that bring comfort and peace and calm. Or you can let that crazy brain run wild with whatever it chooses.

But remember that thoughts have consequences. And those consequences become your life.

one- Remember WHOSE YOU ARE.

Stevie and the kids and I went on an overnight tent camping trip. When you’re in the woods at night, it’s kind of an eerie thing. We had three tents. Tom and I were sleeping in one tent. Elea had her own tent and Stevie had his own tent.

Elea’s tent and my tent were right beside each other. There’s literally no light. You hear weird noises. We were whispering back and forth to each other the whole time, “Did you hear that? What was that?”

You know what gave me so much comfort? Stevie’s tent was right there. He’s the dad. He’s the boy scout. He’s got this. He’s got bear spray and a knife and a saw and he’s strong. So much comfort! I would never in a million years do that without him.

Same for our Heavenly Father. He’s here with us. This is not surprising to him. We can trust him with our jobs or our lack of jobs right now. We can trust him with our kids. We can trust him with our lives. It’s not helping anybody for us to live in fear and panic.

Have you noticed when you are spinning in fear and panic, it makes you feel alone?

I am here to remind you that YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

This is not God’s first rodeo. This is not a surprise. There’s no panic in heaven. Only comfort and grace and love and mercy and peace.

So how can we incorporate that into our daily lives? Less panic, more peace, less fear, more trust! One thought is not serving us in any way and one thought will keep us calm and productive!

So how can we remember whose we are? I have been keeping my bible open to Psalm 91 to remind me for a while. You might also find my Lenten study helpful and you can find it here.

We are loved by the most high God. He is in charge here. He will take care of us. Whatever your circumstances, they are not surprising to him.

two – Remember WHO YOU ARE.

You are resilient, so much more resilient than you think you are. You’ve been through hard things before. You are so much more resilient than you think. You will come through this.

Remember how God made us. He made us with these amazing, creative minds. He made us to be like children that could trust in Him so we can just go about our business because we’re not worried about all the other stuff. We know He is here, and He’s made this amazing playground called life for us!

We also are living through something that gives us this chance to have a broad range of emotion. I’m not saying, “Oh, you should just be Pollyanna and you should just be happy all the time.” The truth is that both negative and positive feelings are essential for surviving and thriving in times of crisis.

I have had many periods of frustration. I know many of you work from home and now everybody’s home! It’s kind of hard to work from home with a house full of people.

I had this moment where I was thinking, “Does everybody not realize I have a job to do? I have things I have to do.” I’m just one of the humans and I get to be frustrated sometimes and I get to have fear sometimes. I let myself feel that. I let it wash over me and then I come back to the things that ground me, scripture and my family and my purpose for being here, which is to serve and love.

Practice deep and abiding positive emotions such as hope, compassion and heartfelt gratitude that times of crisis bring. Those emotions have broadened and enriched my ways of being.

Many times you cannot change the circumstances, but you have so much control over how you respond to them. You will look back on this time and you’ll remember how you responded.

It’s ALWAYS up to you how you respond to what’s going on around you.

This crisis can be the greatest time of growth in your life or or it could spiral you into bad health and not sleeping and fear and panic. You get to make the choice.

three – Remember to stay open & curious & keep learning and growing.

I love to keep learning. I love to keep growing. There’s really no better way to fight the fear and panic and all the things that come during a crisis than you going on the offensive and being willing to just keep learning and growing, staying open.

A mind is like a parachute — it works best when it’s open.

When you get in a fight or flight kind of crisis mode, everything shuts down. Your heart rate goes up. It’s hard to breathe. Your brain shuts down. Everything gets small. Your mind gets small. You get very narrow, and you can’t see any answers.

I also find we become so narrow in the way we see things, that anybody who does it any differently, you’re instantly judgmental of them. “Those people should be doing whatever!” Our brain just gets negative and judgmental and we don’t even like ourself when we get like that.

If you open up, stay curious, get into more a parasympathetic state of being with your nervous system where you’re open, you’re breathing and your heart rate comes down. Your brain gets fluffy, it expands. It can think of a thousand things to do during a pandemic, or a quarantine. It can think of all kinds of creative things that you could be doing right now with your time other than scrolling through Facebook and watching news and getting depressed.

Open your heart up, open your mind up. Be willing to keep learning, to stay curious. How can you be part of the solution? Let’s teach our brains how to open up and see solutions and stay curious and get creative and productive? It’s such a better way to spend your time than spiraling in judgment and all the other negative things that it’s so easy to spiral into in times of crisis.

What can you create right now that didn’t exist in the world before? How can you contribute to the world in a way that maybe you haven’t before? There’s so many things that you can do!

Actions speak louder than words, so we must seek out mentors who exemplify what we aspire to become, because the most important lessons in life are not taught but caught. Passion, commitment and curiosity are highly contagious. Stop spinning in worry and negativity and judgement and START DOING things that are calming and productive and creative.

four – Remember to nurture habits that nourish your body and soul.

Which also means avoiding things that bring more panic and worry, like watching too much news and scrolling social media. Let’s do things instead that expand our minds, that open us up, that help us keep growing, that help us keep learning, and that help us take care of our body and soul.

Here’s a list of things we’ve been doing—baking, art projects, planting an herb garden, hot baths, writing, cleaning, organizing, hiking, exercising, journaling, praying, staying in the scripture, puzzling, playing games, napping, and so much more.

Life Mentoring School is the perfect place to JUMP into the deep end and figure out what is possible for you. Click here and start your own killer summer school accelerated learning program! Enrollment is open now and will close July 3rd. I would love to have you join us!!

How to find peace in uncertain times

June 10, 2020 by Edie Wadsworth 1 Comment

After we lost our house to a house fire in 2010, the nine months that followed, was some of the hardest, and yet most precious times of my whole life. I can remember staying in a borrowed house. We didn’t have any of our own stuff.

People can tell you it’s going to be okay, but we didn’t know that.

It didn’t feel like anything was going to be okay, and our little family just huddled together. We would have little dance parties, and I remember one night, Stevie and the girls got to singing some crazy song, and I laughed so hard I cried. We just all huddled together and loved on each other and let it be hard together.

We were also willing to rise up together and realize that this kind of thing is what we’re made for.

It’s hard to believe how much has changed so quickly.

Let’s look for peace in uncertain times.

People are scared. People are scared for their health, they’re scared for their finances, they’re scared for their parents, they’re scared for lots of good reasons. We have a lot of fear right now and if we focus on it, it magnifies. Let’s shift our focus just ever so slightly to something better.

When we focus on the external, we lose sight of the eternal.

Fear is paralyzing and keeps us from acting in a way we want. Fear is when we focus on what’s external instead of on what’s ETERNAL.

You can’t change what is happening, but you can recognize who is here.

I’m here to give us a gentle reminder, a gentle shift back to the center of things. You can’t change what is happening, but you can recognize who is here.

God is with us. He is here. This is not a surprise to him. This is not his first rodeo.

We can’t change the circumstances, but we can open our eyes and recognize that this is not the first hard thing that people have gone through, and we are going to be okay. Here’s what happens in times of heartache and stress and national crisis, people come back to themselves.

They come back to their sanity, they give, they help, they pitch in.

Let’s borrow a little bit of the wisdom from people who have lived through way worse things. Even surviving used to be a lot harder than it is now. Let’s focus back onto the eternal.

No matter what is happening around us, God is with us.

He is here.

We are His.

He will take care of us.

We don’t have to be afraid. We don’t have to live in fear. We can still be a blessing to our neighbor. We can still spread light and joy and love.

All of those things are possible, and maybe now more than ever because people are really waking up. We get in this cycle of our crazy busy lives and we forget the things that are important, and now we can be reminded all the time, every day.

Take comfort that God is in charge and this is all going to be okay and he’s going to take care of us no matter what happens. He didn’t say hard things wouldn’t happen. He said, “I will be with you.”

No matter what is happening, don’t forget who’s here.

You can’t change the circumstances, but you can RENAME them.

You can say, “Oh my gosh, this is the worst thing that’s ever happened. This is terrible. The financial world is going to be in ruins and this is going to be terrible.”

You could look at it that way, but you could also RENAME it and you could also say, “Wow, this is a chance for us to really pull together. This is a chance for us to take care of people who are less fortunate. This is a chance for us to really look out for the people in our lives who aren’t as prepared. This is a chance for us to speak life. This is a chance for us to love our neighbor. This is a chance for us to really step up our game.”

We were made for difficult things. We are so much more resilient than we think we are, and we can become voices of that in our families.

Our kids are listening. Our kids are afraid. They’re watching, they’re seeing how we’re going to respond. What a beautiful time to reassure them that nations come and go, principalities come and go, economies come and go, but God NEVER changes and He loves us and He cares for us, and all of this will be for our good in the end.

We just rename it. You can look at it any way you choose to. My advice would be really consider how you’re looking at it. Really consider the things that you’re letting occupy your mind. What you think about magnifies and what you think about becomes how you feel.

If you’re feeling anxious and overwhelmed, full of anxiety, you’ve got to ask yourself, “What am I letting run rampant up here that’s not serving me, that’s not helpful?” You have a chance to interrupt that and get in the scriptures and read all the comfort that’s there.

As humanity, this is not our first really trying thing. And like He gets us through everything else, He will get us through this.

You can’t go back THERE, but you can learn to truly be HERE.

You can’t go back there, three months ago when our lives were normal. Some of you have had personal tragedies in the last few months and you wish you could go back there.

You wish things could be like they were. You wish you still had that job. You wish you were still married to that person. You wish your child hadn’t done whatever. You wish you could go back there. But here’s the challenge, can we learn to love and be present HERE?

We are a culture who doesn’t want to be here.

We have a million ways to escape being here. People are checking out left and right. We just numb ourselves and distract ourselves. It’s so easy to not be here. But this is where we are, and right here today, right now, is where we’re supposed to be.

How can we be more present here? How can we stop wanting what we used to have, the way it used to be, back there? How can we really learn to live in the present here? God is here. How can we learn to stay here and be here, even in the heartache, even in the trying times, even when all the kids are home and we have no idea what to do with them, even when we just lost our job and we’re not sure how we’re going to pay our mortgage?

Escaping here, in all the ways that we have to escape here, doesn’t make the problem go away. It just gives you another set of problems. What if we learn to stay here and present, and those feelings we have, we just let them wash over us for a little while. Then we can decide how we want to show up.

How do you want to show up right now? Do you want to look back on this time and think, “You know what? Those were some of the sweetest times most precious times.”

If we allow right here to shape us and if we allow it to really do its work in us, this kind of thing is our teacher. Are we going to allow it to teach us something? Are we open to the lessons? Do we have enough humility that we’re willing to learn something new about ourselves, about our family?

Let’s be willing to have this curriculum in our lives and let God teach us and make us see things in ourselves that aren’t what they could be.

I pray He would give us a better understanding, and more awareness of my neighbor, more awareness of how we’ve been living our lives, maybe in ways that we don’t want to keep continuing on.

Here is one of my favorite quotes from CS Lewis. We’re not living under this same threat, but it applies so much.

The first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes, find us doing sensible and human things. Praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting with our friends over a pint and a game of darts, not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs.
Cs Lewis

I hope that you can find some peace in these uncertain times. It’s always there for the taking.

If this mindset shift resonates with you, I’d love to go deeper with you in my monthly mentorship program called Life Mentoring School! We are studying money and abundance this month (June 2020) and next month is food and weight loss, & in August we’ll be tackling how to get things done!

3 Myths About Self-confidence That May be Holding You Back

February 4, 2020 by Edie Wadsworth Leave a Comment

I’ve spent the last couple days in Seaside Florida with an amazing group of women for a business retreat. Big groups of women can be difficult to navigate, especially if you struggle with self-doubt, comparison, and confidence.

It reminded me how important self-confidence is for how we show up in the world. And it’s something you get from outside yourself, it’s simply the thoughts you decide to think about yourself.

I want to share 3 myths about self-confidence that may be holding you back. As women, we compare ourselves to other people. We have this story in our head that if we were just like her, or if we were better at this, or if I just weighed this or looked like that or had this job. And none of that will give it to you. It’s a gift you give yourself.

And often, Ce often don’t take inventory of what the thoughts are that we have about ourselves, and those thoughts impact our life. Those thoughts you have about yourself become your life.

Myth one: self-confidence is the same as confidence

The first myth is we believe that self-confidence is the same thing as confidence, so we think that we have to have a lot of experience in something in order to be confident in it. Self confidence is just simply your thoughts about yourself, which creates your relationship with yourself.

Here’s what I’ve learned leading and coaching a bunch of amazing women in my Life Mentoring school—we don’t have good thoughts about ourselves. At least most of us don’t.

The scriptures say, “As a man thinks in his heart so is he.”

If you let the negative thoughts about yourself go unsupervised, “I’m no good, I’m not as good as her, I can’t do this,” those thoughts will wreak havoc in your life and you won’t be able to create the life that you want.

For example, I have a lot of confidence when I teach essential oils classes because I’ve taught a million of them.

Self-confidence is different. It’s not based on evidence in my life that I’m good at something. It’s simply knowing that no matter what happens, I can trust myself to feel the negative emotions that come up, even if I don’t do something well. And that is a concept that can change your life.

The reason the thoughts you think about yourself are important is because the way you show up in your life, for the people in your life, very much depends on the way you think about yourself.

If you’ve got a lot of negative self-talk and a lot of junk going on, and you’re not agreeing with God about who you are and whose you are, that is affecting the way you show up. It’s affecting you in a big way, and it’s holding you back. We’re going to talk about some solutions, but the myth is that confidence is the same as self confidence. And it isn’t. It’s very different.

Myth 2: you either have it or you don’t

The second myth is this, you either have it or you don’t. You either have self-confidence or you don’t have self-confidence. And nothing could be further from the truth.

Self-confidence is a skill that you practice, because if you have a lot of negative talk going on in your head about yourself, you’ve got to retrain you brain. You’ve got to be willing to look at those thoughts and say, “Why do I have such negative messages in my head about myself?”

In the past, I had a story in my head about myself that I was scattered and never got anything done. “I have so many ideas but I don’t follow through on them.” And that felt true to me.

But, what happens when I live from that thought?

I show up overwhelmed, not finishing things, feeling overwhelmed and scattered. I make that story come true because my brain likes to be in agreement, so it’ll just make the stories in your head true. You’ll end up acting out what you actually believe about yourself.

Self confidence is not something you just have or don’t have. It’s a skill that you practice.

First of all, take inventory of how you think about yourself and ask yourself, “Does that agree with what God says about me? I’m loved and forgiven and adored. Is the way I’m thinking about myself helping me show up the way I want to?”

Do you think I want to show up scattered and not finishing anything with a million ideas but can’t follow through with any of them? I don’t want to show up like that, so I have to choose to think differently about myself, and when I choose those thoughts carefully, guess what? I show up the way I want to show up. If we are willing to examine our thoughts about ourselves and be aware of them, we can then generate the kind of internal power in our lives that helps us show up in the world exactly the way we want.

Myth 3: Self-confidence means I’m confident that I’m good at things

The third myth about self-confidence is, we think self confidence means, “I’m confident that I’m good at things.” Nope. You know what it means?

I’m confident that I can handle myself and trust myself in hard situations, even when I fail.

I’m confident that I can handle myself in failure. I’m confident that I can handle myself in rejection. I’m confident I can handle my emotions, even the negative ones. I can handle the inevitable disappointment that my life sometimes brings.

And when we decide that we can count on ourselves not to beat ourselves up when we fail or when we’re rejected, everything opens up and becomes possible, because we stop hiding and we stop living in fear.

What do you make disappointment and failure mean? When you fail, do you beat yourself up and think, “Well you dummy, you never were good at anything,” and talk awful to yourself? You wouldn’t talk that way to a friend of yours.

Can you trust yourself with yourself?

Can you trust yourself with your life?

Can you trust yourself with failure?

Can you trust yourself with disappointment?

Self-Confidence means that you become an emotional adult with yourself.

You stop beating yourself up when you fail. You stop beating yourself up when you put yourself out there and you get rejected. You stop making it mean all these awful things.

You learn to trust yourself with yourself.

I promise you, when you get to that point, you really can do anything in your life, because you know you’re NOT going to beat yourself up! You know you’re not going to be mean to yourself. You know that you can trust yourself when things don’t go well, when you don’t do what you thought you would do, and when it doesn’t turn out how you thought it would.

Self-confidence is so much more powerful even than confidence, because confidence depends on external things. Self-confidence depends on you. And you can control you.

Are you strong enough to be kind to yourself when you mess up, when you get rejected, when things don’t turn out, when it didn’t go as planned? Can you really trust yourself with failure? Can you trust yourself with the negative emotions that you sometimes feel instead of making it so dramatic and so awful? Yes, YOU CAN!

Self-confidence is such a beautiful gift that you give yourself and that in turn give everyone around you, because it allows you to show up knowing for everyone else because you’ve already taken care of yourself.

Our thoughts are so powerful.

We need to take every thought captive because remember, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” How are you thinking about yourself? What are your thoughts about yourself? You should examine them. You should make sure they agree and align with scripture.

The scriptures say you are loved and adored and forgiven. Yes, you’re a sinner. Yes, you’re going to screw up. Yes, that’s why you need Jesus. But agree with God about who you are and whose you are. Then have the courage to treat yourself well even when things don’t go the way you think they should, even when you fail, even when you get rejected.

If you haven’t yet, go get on the waiting list for my coaching program, Life Mentoring School, where we help women get unstuck, rewrite their stories, and create the life they want!

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!

p.s. The waiting list is now open for Life Mentoring School, my monthly teaching and coaching program! It’s like a gym membership for your mind and heart and will transform the life you have into the life you’ve always dreamed of.

Get on the waiting list now!