Episode 36: Your Invincible Power to Choose

Episode Transcript

Hello, podcast universe! Welcome to Episode 36 of the 100% Awesome Podcast. I'm April Price and I'm so excited to be back behind my microphone today after our holiday. I hope your new year is already 100% awesome.

[00:53]
Let me offer just a little disclaimer here today. It has been a struggle. You might be able to hear some congestion my voice and for that I apologize. And in addition to that I had problems with my tech. My mic wasn't working so I'm using a different mic today. Anyway I am here because I have made a commitment to show up on this podcast every Thursday. Even if the circumstances aren't perfect. And I just appreciate you being here, and I just appreciate that you spend the time in your life and in your brain to listen to this podcast and to share these ideas with other people.

So if you've been following along here the two people who won the free mini coaching packages have been randomly picked by my computer and they have been notified and they're going to be starting their coaching in the next week or two. And so my question is: What about you? Even if you didn't win a coaching package and even if you didn't sign up for my email, each of you has an opportunity to sign up for a free coaching session any time to talk about whatever you want to talk about—to work on what's painful, or irritating, or scary, or hard in your life.

And I know that I make this offer a lot, but I want you to know that I'm totally sincere in my offer. And maybe you haven't signed up because you think that you should be able to figure this out on your own, and maybe you think that I'm just trying to sell you something. Or maybe you think that you don't want to be that vulnerable with somebody you don't know or somebody you do know, or maybe you think that you don't know enough about life coaching to feel really comfortable.

And I want you to know that all of this, all of these excuses, is just brain drama, and none of these are reasons not to sign up. So, in fact, before the holiday, I talked to a couple of clients who had signed up for a free session and they both said that they had gone to sign up multiple times before they actually did, only to have their brains talk them out of it when they went to push the button to schedule it. Right?

[02:53]
And maybe that has happened to you. So for just a moment I just want to answer a couple of these excuses in turn in case your brain is offering one of them to you. So first, maybe the thought is that you should be able to figure this all out on your own, that you can listen to the podcast, and then coach yourself. And I believe in self coaching. I do self-coaching all the time. But it also can be so helpful when we get stuck to have someone outside our brains show us the lies and the thought errors that our brain is offering us. And that doesn't mean that you're weak or dumb or broken in some way, right?

It just means you're human. I love having a coach show me my own brain. And I'll give you this little metaphor and it's terrible because coaching is not painful like going to the hygienist, but it's like we all have somebody clean our teeth, right? right? Like we need someone who has a different perspective, somebody who can see the things that we can't see— someone who can go through our thoughts and jiggle like the poisonous, painful ones loose, and clean things up for us. So it just can be so helpful to have a coach. You don't have to do it on your own.

Maybe another thought that's keeping you from signing up for coaching is that you'll feel obligated to sign up for more coaching afterwards. And because I know the benefits of coaching, of course I would love to work with you long-term, but I only want to do that if you want that too, and if you see value in it. A free session allows you to see for yourself if coaching is valuable. But I don't take it personally if you don't. I have zero expectation and you should feel zero obligation. Remember your feelings are created by your thoughts and you don't have to think you owe me anything. I give you permission not to think that. I'm just here to help you, and even one session could do that.

[04:48]
Maybe you're nervous to share what's going on in your life or your head or your brain, and you don't want anybody to know that, right? Maybe it feels too vulnerable. But this is really only because you have so many judgments of yourself and that's creating fear and shame. I want you to know that as a coach I have no judgment for my clients for their thoughts or their feelings or their actions. I have a human brain and I know that I'm not my thoughts or feelings or actions, and I know that my clients are either. So if you want to get power over your thoughts you need to stop hiding from them. Just get them out in the open look at them so that they can lose their power and you can stop judging yourself.

The last one that maybe is keeping you stuck is that coaching is completely new and unknown. You don't know what to expect and maybe you think it won't work for you. But I want you to know that you have to worry about that. I've got you. You're going to tell me about the problems that you see in your life. And I'm going to ask you some questions. And together we're going to go through and look at those thoughts together without judgment. You don't have to change your thoughts. You don't have to give up your beliefs. I'll just show you what those thoughts are creating and then you can decide if you want to keep thinking the way that you are. I give all of my clients concrete tools and different ways to think about their situations.

And coaching is so different than just listening to the podcast because it's the application. It's how the work comes alive in your own personal life. So I'll take good care of you, and I'll show you that there is a way out of pain, that there's relief available to all of us, no matter what our circumstances are. So I offer five free sessions every single week. You don't have to win anything to get one. You just sign up. Stop listening to your brain and sign up. Last year I had over 350 sessions and I never had one person say, "Well, I wish I hadn't done that." Believe it or not, not one person said that. So I want you to believe that something else is possible for you. Sign up for a free session and just check it out.

[06:52]
Okay, onto the podcast. So today I have all these thoughts kind of running through my head and all these things that I've been thinking about over the break. And I hope this will kind of come together in the end and that you'll get some value out of this and that it will bless your life. So I want to talk to you today about how we only do what we want to do and then why that matters and how we can use this truth, that we only do what we want to do, to get more of what we want out of our lives and out of this year.

Okay, so first, I just want you to think about this idea: We only do what we want to do. We only do what we want to do. Is that true? Right away you're like, "April, that is totally untrue." Right? "I do lots of things that I don't want to do. In fact most of my life I do things that I don't want to do. That's what it means to be an adult, in fact. You have to do all these things that you don't want to do." Right?

Well, I want to show you today, and I hope that it will all come together, is that this is true. In fact everything we do, everything you do in your life, you want to do, or you wouldn't do it. So I'm going to give you a couple of like little, simple examples of this and then kind of talk about why this matters, right?

So let's take the example of getting up early, right? So the story that my brain tells me is that "I don't want to get up early and then I have to get up early. And that's not fair." So in my life I get up early so that I can wake Ethan for early morning seminary that he attends before school, and then I get dressed and I go to the gym. So the truth is I do want Ethan to go to early morning seminary. And the truth is I do want to go to the gym and if he and I don't get up early, then these things aren't going to happen in our day.

[08:55]
And so, in fact, I want to get up early, so that he can have the opportunity to attend seminary and I can have a chance to work out before I have all these other commitments in my day. Now why does thinking about it in this way matter? Because when I think "I don't want to get up early and I have to, it’s not fair," then I feel like a victim to my own life. I feel like a victim to the school system that decides to start school at 7:30, right, and all the commitments on my calendar that I have for the rest of the day. It feels sort of like my life is just being dictated to me and I have no choice in the matter. It feels like I get no say in when I get up and then this leads to resentment and frustration and self-pity.

So instead, when I tell myself the truth, that in fact I do want to get up early. Then I see that I am choosing a life that includes seminary for my son and working out for me. Right? This is the life I want on purpose. And if I didn't, I wouldn't get up. I only do what I want to do and when I'm honest with myself then I can see how much power I have to choose the life I'm living.

Okay, so let's try one more thing for a minute about the way I spend money. So right now because of the accident history of my children and the speeding ticket history of my husband, we spend a lot of money on car insurance at our house. Right? And this story that my brain tells me is that “I don't want to spend so much of my money on car insurance and I have to and (you guessed it) it's not fair.”

[10:53]
So now I spend money on car insurance in order to protect my family from financial liability and catastrophe. And I spend it because I like being a person who obeys the laws of my state and because I want to protect all the other people on the road from my mistakes or my family's mistakes. The truth is I want to live a life where I have car insurance.

So why does seeing the truth of this matter? It's because when I think “I don't want to spend all this money on car insurance and I have to and it's not fair,” then again I feel like a victim—to my budget, to the like a rotten insurance industry, to the driving ability of all the people that I love (or their inability as the case may be). It makes me feel like I'm getting ripped off and that other people are making my life hard. And again the result is resentment and frustration and self-pity.

But when I can tell myself the truth—that I want to drive cars that are insured, and I want my kids to drive cars that are insured—then I can see that I'm choosing a life that includes a measure of financial protection from accidents and mistakes. And it includes a measure of protection from going to jail or paying a fine or being criminally liable, which it turns out, is pretty important to me. Right?

[12:11]
So this is a choice I want to make. This is the life I want on purpose. And if I didn't, then I wouldn't pay for car insurance. Because I only do what I want to do. Do you see do you see how making this subtle shift in the way that you look at your life and the things that you think you “have to do” can allow you to see your power in your power to create the life that you want?

For many of us we are just living our lives on default. Right? According to this list of “have to’s” in our mind. We have to make dinner. We have to work out. We have to pay our taxes. We have to serve in the church. We have to mow the lawn. We have to earn a paycheck. We have to put the Christmas tree away.
(At some point, right?) And we live our lives this way. It starts to feel like our lives are just a happening to us. And we just have very little say in the outcome. Somehow our life just is, and we're just like plugging all the holes of all these have to’s, and it feels like we had so little to do with the creation of it. And then everywhere we look, all we can see is how victimized we are by the circumstances and the people in our lives.

[13:27]
We made a choice at one point, and then we kept making that choice, and we made it so much that we forgot that it was a choice in the first place. And what I want to offer you is the truth that you are always choosing and that we only do what we want to do. Ever. And the more you can accept this and recognize this truth in your life—that I only do the things I want to do—then the more you will value and exercise your agency to create exactly what you want.

So this is where it gets a little dicey, right? At the risk of seeming like a very ungrateful brat to the entire podcast universe, I want to tell you a little story and I want to give you a little example of how understanding our agency and our power to choose what we want can change things for us.

Okay, so here we go.

[14:23]
For Christmas this year, we decided to take a trip as a family. I didn't want to buy presents. Remember I only do what I want to do and so I talked to David and we decided we would plan a trip instead. And David is the designated trip planner in our house, right? Because he does all the research, he does all the reading. When my kids were little we used to go to the bookstore, and everybody would buy a book and he always bought a travel book or a map. I was like, “That’s not a book,” and was like, “It’s a book.”

Anyway, okay, as he planned this trip for us, he asked us for input. He said, “Where do you want to go?” And I was like, “I don't care.” And he said, “Well what do you want to do?” And I said, “I don't care.” And he said to like everyone, when everyone was home for Thanksgiving, he's like, “Okay, I have some ideas and activities and I'd love to get some feedback from you all and ideas of things you want to do.” And everybody said, “We don't care. Just plan it. We don't care.”

And so David planned it all. He planned everything. He planned where we were going. He planned where we're staying and all the activities. He planned everything. All the tickets. Everything.

So we get on the trip and the first leg of the trip is a red-eye plane flight, right? Red eye flights, for me, are the red flag. This is going to be a problem, right? Anyway, so we fly all night. We arrive exhausted and then we have to drive three hours up and down the mountains of Costa Rica. These little roads just go up and down and up and down and you finally get to this place. And David's like, “Okay, first on the agenda, we're going on a hike, right, down to a waterfall.” There was no nap planed on the agenda.

[16:08]
So we go on this hike. When we finally get to our bed that night, we're exhausted, right? But the very next morning, David had planned an early morning whitewater rafting trip so there we are bouncing up and down this river and like trying to stay afloat, right? And we spent all day on the river. We’re exhausted the next day is Christmas morning. And David had planned an early morning zip lining trip and this adventure through the rainforest, where we rappelled down these waterfalls, we climbed across all these rope ladders, and we swung on this Tarzan swing, and climbed up and down the mountains, right?

And so the very next day we get up we pack up and we drive for six hours back up and down these roads so that we can get to the other side of the country, only to find out that we had to be up early again the very next morning to take a guided tour of the National Park.

And by now I'm like, “No.” By now I’m just resentful and frustrated and full of self-pity on my Christmas vacation. I was telling myself that all I wanted to do is relax and here I was adventure of a lifetime, right? Doing all these things I didn't want to do, and I kept telling myself like, “I don't want to do this, right?”

[17:29]
But this was just a lie my brain was selling me. It was telling me that “I don't want to do these things” and so that made me a victim of David's need to see and do all these things. I was a victim of Fodor’s travel books. I couldn't do what I wanted to do because David and Fodor were plotting against me, right? And not allowing me to live the life, or at least the vacation, that I wanted. And it turns out none of this was true. All of it was a lie my brain was telling me. As long as I believed what my brain was selling me (which was victimhood—Cheap! On sale today!), I couldn't see the truth. Which is we never do what we don't want to do. We always are doing what we want to do. The truth is I was there having this vacation because that was what I wanted. Now how is that true?

Let's go back. Remember I didn't want to give input. I didn't want to be bothered. I didn't want to take up a single ounce of brain juice thinking about the vacation, and so I didn't. I was the one that didn't want to buy Christmas presents in the first place. I got what I wanted. I was doing what I wanted and that gave me a vacation in the location with that schedule that I was on.

How else is it true that I got what I wanted? I wanted to be with my family on Christmas morning. And so I went zip lining. I did not want to get left behind in La Fortuna, so I got in the car and I drove six hours to the other side of the country. I wanted to be with my family on Christmas vacation. The truth is I didn't want to be anywhere else—no matter what my brain was saying.

[19:24]
We only do what we want to do. And as soon as I dropped into that truth, I was able to see the truth, right, and remove all of my resentful victimhood and own my choices. I choose every day to be married to a man that has to see all the things and do all the things and not miss anything when he goes to visit. I want to be married to him. I want even to travel with him. And when I acknowledged the truth that I want all of it, and that I only do what I want to do, then it allows me to love the life I'm living and purposefully choose the parts that I want in my life.

When we can see the truth—that we only do what we want to do—it removes the victimhood from our lives. It gives us the opportunity to think about why we're choosing what we're choosing, and then decide if we want to continue to choose it. Like next time, I'm probably going to choose to give some input.

You know some of you might be saying, and I think it's totally legitimate, “I can't believe you, April. If I had a husband that would plan a trip and worry about all the details and take us to Costa Rica I would be over the moon. I would not be feeling resentful and mean and put out. I had to stay here, and I had to go to work, and I had to buy and wrap all the Christmas presents. And it ended up, I couldn't even buy all the things I wanted because we're saving so that we can replace the minivan.” Right? (I'm just making this up. But let's just say that your story.)

[20:51]
But I want to show you is that, no matter what our actual circumstances are, our brains are human brains are going to sell us on the idea that our life is not in our control. Right? Mine in Costa Rica was telling me I didn't have control over this. This isn't what I wanted in some way. Your brain is telling you the same thing—that you don't have control over your life. And this isn't what you wanted, right? That you “have to do all these things that you don't want to do” and it's not fair. The brain is always on the lookout for how we're getting ripped off.

So think about what are all the have to’s in your life. It might not be the red eye plane to Costa Rica, but there are have to’s that you feel like you didn't get a say in, that you think you don't want and that are just happening to you. What I want to show you is that in fact you want the life you're living. You don't do anything you don't want to do. You want to be married to that person or you wouldn't be. You want to go to work to get the income that it provides. You want your kids to wake up to wrapped presents on Christmas Day. You want a working car to get to and from all the places you need to be. If you're honest, everything you do you do because you want to.

[22:12]
Tell yourself the truth. Telling the truth allows you to drop all the blame and all the resentment. You always have the incredible power of choice and you only do the things that you want to do.

So I think that this perspective that we only do the things we want to do can be powerful for two reasons. One, I think it saves us from victimhood and resentment because it's always when we think that we don't have a choice that makes us resentful. And thinking we don't have a choice is always a lie.

So recently I restarted reading the Book of Mormon and it occurred to me that perhaps this is what was happening for Laman and Lemuel. So if you're unfamiliar with this story in the Book of Mormon, you just need to know that there is this father who is told in a vision that Jerusalem (the city where his family lives) is going to be destroyed. And when he goes around and tells people this they don't like it. They try to kill him. And so Lehi, the father, takes his family and they leave and they go and they travel in the wilderness. Right?

Well, he has two older boys, Laman and Lemuel and they are super unhappy about this. Because life in the wilderness is hard. There are no comforts, right? They only have raw meat. They have no fires. They have to walk and move and be wanderers in the desert. Their wives have to give birth out there. Like it's not an easy life. And to make it even worse they feel like they didn't have a choice, right?

[23:39]
Their brains sold them on the idea that they didn't have a choice, and instead of recognizing that we only ever do the things we want—meaning, they were out there in the wilderness because in some way they wanted to be, right? Maybe they wanted to be with their family. Maybe they were worried that they would be destroyed. Maybe they didn't want to get left behind, right? For some reason they chose to go. They wanted to or they wouldn't have. But instead of acknowledging this choice and owning the choice, and even maybe perhaps choosing something different, they instead blame their father and their older brother. And they said like, “I'm only out here because of them. It's their fault,” right?

And they start to feel resentful. They thought they didn't have a choice. And that wasn't fair. And this made them resentful. And I think this is what happens to each of us in any area of our life when we don't recognize our choice in it. That in fact we only do the things we want to do and it's nobody else's fault.

And the second reason that I think it's so important that we understand that we only do what we want to do is because then it puts you in the driver's seat of your own life. You see yourself as you really are—as the creator of it. You are not the hapless victim of your life. It didn't just happen to you. You do what you want, and you have the life you have because you do what you want. And the sooner you acknowledge and understand that the more power you will have to change the things that you want to change.

[25:21]
For example, let's just talk quickly about your goals for 2020. When you understand the power of your own agency, then you have more power to create what you want in your goals. For example, I once heard Steve Hardison when he was talking to this group about getting what they want out of their lives. And Steve has this really amazing wife, named Amy, who is an incredible scriptorian. And because of all her studying and the work that she's done to understand the scriptures so well, she been able to do this writing and all this teaching. And Steve said that people come up to him all the time they say, “Oh my gosh, I wish that I could be a scriptorian like your wife.” And he says I always tell them, “No you don't. Or you would.” Like he's like, “You don't. Or you would. My wife wanted to study and so she did, and we do what we want to do.”

Now it's totally okay if you don't want to be a scriptorian like Amy Hardison, right? But you have to be honest with yourself. Your life isn't just happening to you. You do what you want, right? How many times have we said to ourselves like, “I want to lose weight or I want to write a book or I want to save money,” but then we don't because we don't want to be deprived or we don't want to be vulnerable or we don't want to be open to rejection and we don't want to tell ourselves, “No.” We only do what we want to do. And so the power of this is that when we can tell the truth to ourselves, then we can create what we want.

[26:43]
So for example, let's say your goal is to lose weight. There is going to come a moment when your brain is going to tell you, “We don't want to eat one more egg white.” You know? “We don’t want to eat a salad.” And it will sell you on the idea that you are a victim, right? Maybe you're the victim of societal beauty standards, right? Or the victim of diet culture or the victim of this scale or like the victim of the ready availability of food in modern life, like, “If I had to hunt my food this wouldn't be a problem.” Whatever it is, you feel like a victim and you start to feel resentful and frustrated by the restrictions.

And I only know this because I just went through this last fall, right? My brain kept telling me, “I don't want to track my food. I don't want to plan my food. I don't want to eat the right portions of protein and fat and carbs,” right? But is all a lie. Because the truth is, I want to weigh a certain amount. I want to wear the clothes that are hanging in my closet right now. And if I want that, then that means I also want to think about when I'm eating.

We are choosing what we want. We are always choosing our life. As Greg McKeown puts it, he calls it “the invincible power of choice.” Meaning, I think, that the ability to choose always wins. It can't be destroyed or negated. It's always there no matter what the circumstances are. You can't ever remove your ability to choose. Even if you yourself try to abdicate responsibility for it. Our agency, or our ability to choose, cannot be taken away. It is invincible, right?

[28:27]
And I think that knowing this and thinking about our lives in this way can be really powerful and shift the way we see ourselves and the life we are living. So while we're on vacation one night we were talking to our kids and somehow we got to talking about feelings and how every feeling is created by our thoughts.

(Though I should say that like David was talking about this because I already know that my kids don't want to be coached by me and they are very resistant to the slightest hint of coaching. And so I would never have brought this up. But David was talking to the kids about it.)
And anyway the girls started talking about it and they said like, “This is the worst thing you've ever said.”
And the reason is that they were like “Dad, it's so unromantic. Like that's so stupid. Like love just happens to you. It's like magic, right? Like you just can't help it. You just fall in love. You just feel love. And if you're making your feelings by your thoughts that's just like boring and terrible.” And they're like, “You're ruining everything,” right? “You are a murderer of love.”

Anyway I want you to think about that for just a minute, right? Because which is more romantic? A choice that you make, that you continue to make, or like a whim you can't even control? Would you rather know that your husband chose to love you or that he just couldn't help it? That it just happened to him?

What we have to give each other is the choice. That's what makes love amazing. That is a choice and that we choose it for each other. Like despite how bratty I could be on a red eye flight. My husband continues to choose to love me. What could be more romantic than that?

[30:21]
When we acknowledge that I only do what I want to do, then we can see that the life we are living is the one that we created. That it didn't just happen to us. And I'm telling you that there's no better news than this because when you understand that everything you do—even the hard things is because you want to do them—then it gives you full control over your life.

Besides the opportunity for life on Earth, your power to choose is the greatest gift God gave you. And when you truly understand how you have used that gift and that power to create the exact life you are living right now, then you will suddenly see the power you have to create anything you want. When you accept that you only do what you want to do—and you never have to do anything—then you can look at those choices. You can own them. You could step out of blame and resentment and continue to make those same choices or choose anything else.

Your life is yours because your choices are yours. When you feel stuck or victimized or trapped by your life in any way ask yourself honestly, “In what way did I choose this? Why do I want this? I only do things I want, so in what way is this what I want?”

[31:54]
That honest moment with yourself can change everything for you. It can help you drop into love for exactly where you are the choices you're making. Or it can empower you to change things up and make a different choice. Remember that we only do what we want to do. Ever. And when we know this, we get to take back all of our power to create the life we want…and that my friends is 100 % awesome! I love you for listening and I'll see you next week!

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