Episode 86: Lessons from This Year

Welcome to the 100% Awesome Podcast with April Price, you might not know it, but every result in your life is 100% because of the thought you think. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome!

Hello, podcast universe! Welcome to Episode 86 of the 100% Awesome Podcast and Merry Christmas! I'm April Price and it is Christmas Eve. I want to wish each of you the happiest of Christmases, and I send you my love and the holiday cheer. And I hope that tonight, as you set your tables, and light your candles, and set out presents under the tree, that for a moment at least the negative 50% of life, and the struggles and the sorrows of this year will disappear. And you can just feel a whole bunch of joy and peace and love.

Okay, so today is going to be a little bit different here on the podcast. I have just had a few thoughts floating around in my head, things that I wanted to share with you that I hope will be meaningful here at the end of what has arguably been a difficult year. And just give you a few things to think about, to see things in a little bit different way. And maybe they will all come together here in a way that will be helpful to you, that is my hope. So, the first thing that I wanted to share is this past week my daughter graduated from college. And of course, because of the way things are right now with the coronavirus, there was no pomp and circumstance or any kind of ceremony, really. They did an online one, but it was different than we expected it to be. But she finished all of her classes, and she completed all the requirements for her degree. And then David flew up to help her pack up, and move out of her apartment.

And they sent me a little text waving goodbye as they were leaving town, and they had what I call one of those Tevye moments, right? So, I don't know if you've seen "Fiddler on the Roof", but Tevye is a father, right? And in this musical, he sings a song called Sunrise Sunset, where he talks about how quickly time passes, right? How did it all happen? And there is a metaphor in there that almost as quickly as our sun rises, it sets, right? And life happens so quickly, sunrise, and sunset and all of those daily sunrises, and sunsets in our life add up, right? They add up almost imperceptibly. And we don't even notice a lot of times that time is passing, right? That our children are growing, and suddenly we just look around, and we're like, oh, my gosh! And I had this moment as I got that text from them, when I remembered driving her up to college, and moving her into her first dorm, and saying a little prayer with her, and kissing her goodbye, and driving out of town, amazed that somehow, she had grown up and that her days as my little girl in my house were over, sunrise, sunset.

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And now, here was another one. Four years had gone by in the blink of an eye, sunrise, sunset. And now she was done right? And it just made me think about how precious your life is, how each day is a sunrise, and a sunset, and they add up almost imperceptibly, but they do accumulate. And the things you do between each sunrise, and sunset add all up to be a reflection of the way your days are spent. I think so often we think that someday we will do that big thing, and that someday we will change in this significant way, or another. That someday we are going to change the way we're living, and we're going to accomplish that big goal, but it never happens like that, right? It happens a day at a time, it happens in the space between sunrise, and sunset every day of your life.

There is no big thing. There are just lots, and lots of those little days that add up into your life. And we have to stop thinking about it as a moment, or as a someday, or as an arrival point out in the future. And we have to start thinking about our lives as an accumulation of small, tiny choices, as a stacking of sunrises and sunsets. The choices that you make on a daily basis are what count the tiniest decisions, the ones that your brain says don't matter, the ones that your brain says don't count or they won't make a difference. Your life is lived in those moments. Your life is lived a day at a time, and it all counts. And so, if you want a different result in any area of your life, I think it can be really helpful to stop thinking of it as then, right? As an event out in the future, as a someday, and start thinking of it as now, that it is created right now, a day at a time. All of your results are just a magnification of every individual, sunrise, and sunset in your life. You're just seeing the magnification of all those tiny decisions. So, focus on this one day, and do it over, and over, and over again. This is your life this day. And what you do today adds up. Creation happens a day at a time, and the tiny decisions you make to overcome your brain a moment at a time are the most important things.

Okay, and so to kind of bring this home for you in a really positive way, I have a little end of the year exercise for you this week that I hope will make a big difference in your life. And I already sent this out to everybody on my email list last Friday. So, if you get my emails, maybe you've already heard about this. And if you don't get my emails, you totally should go to my website and get on my email list. But the basic idea is that our brains are really good at noticing where we failed, and where we're doing it wrong. Like I said, it doesn't pay attention to daily progress, it doesn't notice anything between a sunrise and a sunset. Like for the most part, it doesn't even notice what we are doing. And it tells us all the time that those little things don't matter. And so, this exercise that I want you to do is to show yourself, and your brain that it does matter, that the things you do really do add up and they matter.

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Okay, so I want you to make a thorough list of every single result you created in 2020 that you're proud of. Okay, I don't care how small it is. I want you to think about what you're proud of that you created in 2020. Like, what value have you added to the world. For example, whose life is better because you were in the world this year, because you were alive. And I want you to really think about it, and list all the ways you've contributed, all the ways you've made a difference, all the results you've created for yourself, right? What is the effect of all of your decisions that you've made this year? Who did you help, and what did you create? I want you to think about even like thoughts that you've adopted, or skills that you've mastered. What used to be hard that now is so much easier, right? What are the things that you have overcome? And I want you to list the small stuff, and the big stuff, the tangibles, and the intangibles, and really put your brain to work thinking of things. Don't stop writing down things that you're proud of until you have at least 50 things that you created. Fifty results that you're proud of. You're kind of making a success catalogue of the year, right? I call it a catalog of awesomeness!

Okay, and we're going to use this to carry us into next year. When you look at this list, I want you to think like, I am so proud of myself, I am so amazing. And if you don't feel massively proud of yourself after doing this exercise, you are doing it wrong, right? I just want you to be a little bit in awe of what you have created, and I don't think you should do any planning or goal setting for 2021 until you do this activity, because when you do this activity, you will start to see your power to create the results, and that will change the way you plan your goals next year. Okay, so don't skip it, I want you to do it before the end of the year, and don't just think like, yeah, I should do that, I should get to that, right? Self-celebration is not optional. It should not come last on your list. Your brain is going to tell you that this is not important, right? But your brain is wrong. It actually might be the most important thing you do all year. It might have the biggest impact on your success next year than anything else you do, okay? Because it will show you the importance of daily progress, and that you can create the results you want. And that's just going to give you so much fuel, and empowerment going into next year. It'll show you that things do add up. And then, from there you can decide what are the ways that I want to change in my daily life next year, to create some amazing results in my life.

Okay, the next thought I want to offer you is that when it comes to creating an amazing life, I think we are wrong about ease, and comfort. So, remember our brains were programmed to seek pleasure, and avoid pain. And because of that, we naturally think that difficulty is less desirable than ease. We think that ease is better, and that challenge is worse, right? Or less ideal than like smooth sailing through our lives. And so, I just want to, like, question and challenge your brain on that idea for a minute, okay? The truth is, when circumstances are difficult, then we have to be way more purposeful about the way we think about things like happiness, and joy, and love are harder when things are difficult. When people are difficult, when life is difficult, we have to really choose it intentionally. And as I said last week, we have to then discipline our thinking. And in the grand scheme of things, I think that is the whole point of us coming to Earth, to learn to choose to not just take what our brain was giving us on default, but to choose our experience for ourselves.

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And in no place is that more apparent, or more important than when we face difficulty. We are not beings that are acted upon, we are beings that act. And when things are hard, our right to choose our experience is sometimes the only thing we have left, right? Like I don't get to choose if the coronavirus is going away next year. I don't get to choose life without social distancing, or masks, but I get to choose how I think about it. And when things are hard that is challenging for me. I want to give up, I want to give in, I wanted to succumb to my brain's discouragement, and hopelessness. But if we came to master our brains, then the challenging moments give us the most opportunity to be able to practice doing that. Okay, so I was talking to a client who wants to have an amazing marriage, and she and her husband have different brains. Amazing, right? They see things differently, they do things differently, they have different political views, they vote differently, they have different childrearing ideas, and spiritual philosophies.

And my client thought this meant that something had gone wrong, and that she couldn't have the marriage that she wants. I asked her, "Why do we get married?" Right? Like what if the difficulty actually means that we have an amazing marriage? What if, despite all your challenges, you keep choosing each other you love on purpose, even when it isn't easy? What if that is the real indicator of an amazing marriage? What if an amazing marriage is the one that requires you to really become someone who can love, right? It's one thing to love people who think exactly like you, and do it exactly like you do it, but if we came to learn to love, what if it's better that you don't have a partner that sees things the same way? And I think this applies to us in any area of our life. We think it would be better without difficulty, we think it would be better, for example, if our kids thought the same way we did, and obeyed like we want them to. But what if the presence of their disagreement indicates that you are an amazing parent, that you care enough, and love deeply enough to keep teaching, and keep engaging even when it's hard? If you came to learn to love, what if it's better that you live with people who are sometimes hard to love, according at least to your brain? What if difficulty is better?

If we came to learn faith, what if it's better to have moments of fear, or doubt? If we came to learn hope, what if it's better to have moments of discouragement? And if we came to learn love, what if it's better to have a fence, and rudeness. Like I spent a lot of time this year admittedly waiting for things to get better, but what if the challenge, and the disappointments of 2020 were better? What if that was better? And there is a lesson here for all of us, if the most important thing about this Earth-life experience is learning to choose, then those moments where choosing is the hardest, are going to end up being so much better for us in the end.

Okay, finally today, as tradition has it, I wanted to share my Christmas letter with you. So, every year I send a letter to all of our family, and friends, and I talk about the things that I learned over the course of the year, and I try to talk about what it all means to me. And so, I write this letter every year and I talk about the things that were important and valuable in my Earth-life experience. And so, I wanted to share that again with you this year. So, I'm just going to read to you straight from my letter, and I hope that it will be useful to you as well. Okay, so here we go.

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Dear Loved Ones,

Last March when everything shut down and all the kids came home from college unexpectedly and Ethan’s spring break extended indefinitely, Savannah said, “I just hope the MTC is open when I go on my mission in July.” I said, “Don’t worry. If we’re still dealing with coronavirus in July, we’ll have a lot bigger problems to worry about than the MTC being open.” Little did I know.

I didn’t know that I would pack a dozen face masks in Savannah’s mission suitcase five months later. I didn’t know that David would open his new hospital and no one but the guy running the drone camera would be at the ribbon cutting. I didn’t know Olivia would graduate from college without any pomp or circumstance, sitting at our kitchen table in her sweats. I didn’t know that Ethan’s new volleyball shoes would go unworn, that he would spend most of the year at the desk we set up in his room. Or that Caleb would spend weeks in quarantine and all of the social activities he planned as the institute president would never happen.

Like you, we have been surprised by the disappointment. Not tragedy. Just disappointment. I told David I didn’t know disappointment could feel so bad. It seems like such a trivial, innocuous emotion. What’s a little disappointment? How bad could it be? Little did I know.

I have been thinking about how the real problem wasn’t what happened this year. The real problem was our expectation. We thought it was going to go one way. We even argued a bit that it was supposed to go that way. But we were wrong. About all of it.

And this time of year, it makes me think of Joseph’s expectations. And how differently he probably thought his life was going to go. How the ideas he had about his engagement and marriage probably did not line up at all with the way things went. I’m sure he never anticipated Mary’s pregnancy or the ill-timed trip to Bethlehem. He wasn’t expecting the flight into Egypt or the final destination in disappointing Nazareth. I wonder how many times he thought, “Wait, what?”  Little did he know.

And even for the Jews that expected deliverance from their enemies, what Christ offered looked nothing like their expected liberation. I understand their disappointment better than ever, I think.

But mostly, I have thought over and over about Christ and that moment in the Garden of Gethsemane when Mark records that he “began to be sore amazed and heavy.” And how even for him, there came a time that even he could not understand or anticipate, when the Lion of Judah was surprised by the difficulty of the task in front of him, stunned by what was required, and sore amazed by the pain and the depth of the heartache. Sore amazed and heavy. So, shocked by the enormity of the burden, in fact, that he petitioned his Father for another way. “Abba, please.” And my heart breaks at the thought. 

Little did he know.

There he was alone, responsible for carrying the immeasurable expectations of the whole human family on his solitary shoulders. In that dark, lonely garden, and then on the merciless cross, he bore the weight of salvation, and performed the act that all who came before him had anticipated and all who would come after him expected. The hopes and fears of all the years. 

Somehow, impossibly, incredibly, he didn’t disappoint us. Somehow, some way, he did what was required and met the terrible, insurmountable expectations to save us all. Despite a story so full of unmet expectation, it ended with the fulfilment of the only promise that ever mattered. Isaiah called him “the nail in a sure place.” And in a world of startling uncertainty, we have never been more grateful for the surety of his love and the certainty of his redemption. This Christmas season and always we worship Jesus Christ, the Hope of Israel and the High Priest of Good Things to Come, who stood in amazement at the awfulness of the way and answered the very ends of the law for each of us anyway. And we are surprised again by the depth of a love that never disappoints.  Little did we know.

OK, my friends, that's what I have for you today.

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Your life is a compilation of all the sunrises, and sunsets and they all count, they all add up. We came for the difficulty. Someday, we will see that the challenges, and the pain, and the difficulty was better. See your difficulties not as evidence that your life is less then, but as evidence that your life is amazing. And know that despite the disappointments of Earth-life, it will all be made right in the end, that because Jesus Christ did not disappoint, and did all that was required, everything is always okay. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome! Merry Christmas! I love you for listening, and I'll see you next week!

Applications for my group coaching program Made for More are now open in aprilpricecoaching.com Your brain was program for survival, but you were made for more than that. You were made for more love, and more accomplishment, and more joy right now. And I can show you the simple way to get all of that. Join me in Made for More where we will spend six-months coaching, and reprogramming your brain so that you can get the most out of this life. And the next go to aprilpricecoaching.com to apply. And I'll see you there!