S.O.F.T. and Strong: Midlife Women On A Mission

Episode 30: The Most Beautiful Thing About You

April 04, 2021 Bernice McDonald
S.O.F.T. and Strong: Midlife Women On A Mission
Episode 30: The Most Beautiful Thing About You
Show Notes Transcript

What do YOU believe is the most beautiful thing about you? I know. If you're a woman, especially one who is inching her way beyond that 50 mark, you won't be able to say it out loud.

It's not your hair - though that style is nice on you.

It's not your weight - no matter how much you think you'd feel more beautiful if you lost 10 (or20) pounds.

It's not your intelligence or that you can lead a meeting better than anyone else.

In this podcast we're talking about what IS the most beautiful thing about you - and it's yours alone. No comparison to anyone else needed. No tweaking. It's already there and has always been. You just need to tap into it.

Honestly, it's what my Knight says attracted him to me. And what hundreds of other men agree is what they are seeking in someone.

This simple insight will be the key that lets you open the door of the cage and set yourself free. You will stop "looking in" on your life and start LIVING your life when you know this.

This is the core of Sparkle Power. Our 3 Power Pillars for this week are:

Power Pillar #1: What's your "Why" your Purpose? I want to prove I'm lovable or I AM lovable.

Power Pillar #2: The Truth Is... This is what I've been seeing but THIS is what I'm going to see from now on.

Power Pillar #3: Hope-Filled Action - What are you going to do next?

Follow me on Instagram: @opentoloveagain  PM me with comments or questions. I'd love to hear from you.

Let your Sparkle out!

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Are you in the struggle of navigating midlife with grace and power? I hear ya!

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0 (0s):
You cannot open up to love again, when you're coming from a place of desperation. You know, that feeling of desperation, where you're just anxious and you're always watching to see what somebody thinks and you're weighing every word they say or looking at their actions. And you're telling yourself Stories about everything they do. And you're, you're trying to figure out, you know, am I on the plus side? Am I on the minus side? That's that whole feeling of desperation you don't want that you want to be in that place of strength.

1 (41s):
So you're a woman beyond 50. What is standing between you and the dreams that you have in your heart? I'll tell you, it's the Story that you're telling yourself. This podcast is about keeping our hearts awake and open to love because those Stories are what closes your heart and keeps it locked up tight. It takes courage every day to face those Stories about 15 minutes a day, only, In fact. I'm Bernice McDonald, Courageous Happiness Coach. And that's the journey that I'm on in this life. I want you to find your heart again, define the real use.

1 (1m 26s):
The amazing courageous, loving, crazy, sexy woman that you were meant to be. Yup. Even after 50. Are you ready? Okay. Come on in. Let's take those 15 minutes right now.

0 (1m 42s):
There is something so incredibly beautiful about you that you don't even realize we lose it. We let it get lost in the middle of growing up in our lives. In fact, when we've gone through huge rejections and losses, it's the thing that gets hidden away the most. That thing, that beautiful thing about you, the most beautiful thing about you is your heart. If you want to open up to love again, you need to grab onto your heart.

0 (2m 26s):
You need to go into your heart and to live from that heart. I know I've been preaching about this for so long. If you know me, I've been talking about this for years and years, way before I started this podcast. The heart matters. Your heart matters. If you want to understand this, think about the children in your life. If you have grandkids, don't you love it when they come to you and say, "Grandma, look at me!" and then they do a cartwheel or dosomething silly or whatever. They just want you to see them, to acknowledge them.

0 (3m 7s):
I think back to when I had kids, it was the same. "Mommy, look what I drew for you. Mommy, look what I did for you." Or even as an aunt, "Auntie, are you going to come and watch my game? Are you going to come and see me in the play?" Children are not shy about asking for what they need. They want to be seen to be heard, to be known. To know that this is what, who they are they are and what they need and that they're special. They want to be told that they're special, that they're loved and everything is okay.

0 (3m 47s):
You know, that heart does not change as we grow up. Remember, you are a heart walking on a Path. That heart is the part of you that enters the world when you're born and leaves when you die. In between, you are your own person walking on that Path. Nobody else can walk it for you. And you have your own questions about you - about who you are, about how special you are. We go all through our lives, asking those questions.

0 (4m 29s):
"Do you see me?" "Do you hear me?" "Do you know me?" In fact, many of us, I don't even have to say, in our marriages, the relationships we've been through that haven't worked out on, even maybe the one you're in right now that might seem a little mediocre, it's a fact that you're not getting that question answered. Or ,the fact that that question was answered in a way that that made you realize you were not being seen. You were not being heard. What you wanted or needed did not matter to that person.

0 (5m 13s):
Well, from my little girl heart, fast forward to a dark night, sitting in a car, outside my house I was sharing with several roommates to get by financially. It was about a year and a half after my separation. And I was saying to the man that was with me there - actually, what I was doing was not saying it - I was begging. "Can you give me another chance? Do you think there's a possibility that you, we could try again?" Now, this was a man who I had brought food to.

0 (5m 54s):
I'd taken care of his kids, I had slept him...yeah. I know. I had had long discussions with him and even drawn diagrams. I can't believe it. I know. I drew diagrams to try to show him why it was he could not let his past two marriages go and get out of his anger and just move on. I had done all of this for him, which was exactly all the wrong things but, anyways, that's for another podcast.

0 (6m 33s):
So humiliating life moment, probably #2,682, whatever ,was for me when he shook his head. After I asked him that question and he said, "No". And then, he reached over and he opened the door of the car so that I had to get out. I was so devastated. And I'm ashamed to say, I am embarrassed to say. That was one of the moments that he tried to reject me. And I wasn't getting the message.

0 (7m 16s):
That's who I was back there in that time, looking back. Oh my goodness. I am so grateful because he was not an emotionally available man. He actually was sleeping around a lot at the same time, as he was kind of with me, he played the field a lot, huge flirt. Even after he married a woman, half my age, half his age, he was still living in those same patterns. Can you imagine the pain of being with someone like that? And maybe you already know the pain of being with somebody like that.

0 (7m 60s):
My goal at that time... now, we talk about the 3 Power Pillars and about power Sparkle. I was seeking my power, but it wasn't making me Sparkle. I thought I knew what would make me Sparkle. And that was setting my sights on proving that I was "lovable". And at that moment I was trying to prove that to him, "Hey, I'm lovable. You're going to want me". The problem was that my purpose, when your purpose is something like that, to prove to somebody that you have value, to prove to somebody that you are worthy, that you are lovable, you are coming from a place of desperation rather than strength.

0 (8m 51s):
What I had done - this was this was my purpose... That was my why. When I look at it underneath, I needed to prove I was lovable because I had come out of a 24 year marriage and it had failed. It had been a dismal failure almost the entire time. And I needed to prove that I was better than that, that, somehow that marriage was wrong, that there were things in there that weren't right. And I needed to show the world and show myself that there was something of value in me and I could do it right.

0 (9m 32s):
On one hand, that was not a bad thing because I knew love existed. I wanted a good love. It was just at this point, what I started off doing was going about it all wrong. You cannot open up to love again, when you're coming from a place of desperation. You know that feeling of desperation where you're just anxious and you're always watching to see what somebody thinks and you're weighing every word they say or looking at their actions. And you're telling yourself Stories about everything they do. And you're, you're trying to figure out, you know, am I on the plus side?

0 (10m 13s):
Am I on the minus side? That's that whole feeling of "desperation" you don't want, that you want to be in that place of strength. You want to be in that place of hope. That place, where you are certain that you are lovable, certain that you have a lot to give, certain that you are a beautiful heart. And that what really matters is who you are inside. What really matters is you seeing yourself. What really matters is you hearing yourself. What really matters is you knowing yourself.

0 (10m 54s):
And then you can decide if the person that you want to be in a relationship with is also on the same page. And they are respecting and acknowledging you as a complete package. What your needs are, what your wants are, what makes you feel safe. What makes you feel significant. What makes you feel connected. But first you have to know that about yourself. And what I was doing here was I was actually skipping over Power Pillar #2 which is "The Truth Is... I was not telling myself the truth.

0 (11m 35s):
I needed to step back and to do that. And in the end, that's what I ended up doing, because, thank God. And, literally, thank God, because I believe that I was protected from the men in my life whose attention I was trying to get. I was protected from them because they weren't the right men for me. But what I ended up doing was realizing - okay, one, I need to know that I'm worthy. I need to know that I'm lovable. So I had, when I looked at that, and that was my purpose, I had to start telling myself the truth.

0 (12m 18s):
I had to start understanding where I was really coming from. What I needed to do was actually to first grieve. You know how they say, "Heal your heart. Get your stuff together. Make sure you're over your past. Close the back door." All of that - what that is about is actually acknowledging that you've been hurt. Acknowledging what you've lost. I needed to bring my little girl heart forward. What I needed, you know, the little girl heart that says, "Mommy, see me."

0 (12m 59s):
"Daddy, do I matter?" That little girl, heart I needed to acknowledge. And I needed to see all the things in my life that I had lost. And you know, there's not a ton of them. We each only have certain moments, maybe three or four moments that, that we tell we use to tell ourselves a Story on our Path. A lot of times in a certain incident, we'll be asking, "Do I matter? Do you see me? Do you care about me?" And we'll have that answer, "No I don't. I'm too busy. I'm occupied with my own stuff.

0 (13m 39s):
Get over it. Stop bothering me." We have a few moments like that. Or somebody says to us, "You're stupid". You know, throw rocks at us. The bombs drop. The boulders fall. Only two or three moments like that - and then from those major moments, we just keep the Story and we keep reinforcing the Story so that we believe it more and more. I needed to take the time to acknowledge those moments. And that's really what it came down to was just saying, "Hey, that hurt.

0 (14m 22s):
That nearly killed me. I remember the pain. I remember that". And you need to let yourself grieve over those times. The Truth Is... my heart mattered. What I felt, what I needed, what I wanted right then was important. It's not the need for it that's wrong. It's the way we go about trying to get it that becomes something that is wrong in our lives and leads to our third Power Pillar being Action. It's what we do as a result of that, that matters. Now we can do, we can fill our lives with Hurt-filled Actions like I was doing with that poor guy I was chasing - that's Hurt-Filled Action.

0 (15m 15s):
Or we can find the Hope-Filled Action that, actually, the steps become hope in our lives. The steps become an acknowledgement that we matter. The steps become recognizing when we're hurt, when our needs aren't being met. When we are reaching a point where we're being, where we need to really set boundaries or, or decide that we need to walk away or find how to meet our needs in a different way - which is definitely Hope-Filled Action.

0 (15m 56s):
Do you see where I'm going here? The Hope-Filled Action that I ended up taking at this point in my life, during my single time, I needed the purpose that I set out to in my Power Pillar #1.

1 (16m 17s):
My "why" was to prove that I was lovable but I was going about it in the wrong way. The Truth Is... Power Pillar #2 - I was telling myself the wrong things. I was lying to myself. I needed to go back to grieving. A friend recommended after I talked to her - she was more like a counselor to me than a friend - and she said, "You need to take... How about taking a six month sabbatical from love, from looking for love and learn to love your own heart? You know, that was the best advice I had ever gotten.

0 (16m 55s):
And it was the scariest step I took because I had this desperation inside to find love again. I needed to prove that I could find love again but I needed to stop. And I needed to acknowledge that my needs had not been met. I needed to find... The Truth Is I have parts in me that where I have not been seen, I have not been heard. I have not been known. And I'm telling myself the Story that the reason is because I am not lovable.

0 (17m 35s):
I'm not enough. That wasn't the truth I needed to understand. The Truth Is... tthose needs are there. And sometimes we take those questions to people who just cannot answer them. I needed to find a place to take those questions to somebody who could answer them. I went up because the only unchangeable in my life is really my Creator. The one who made me and knows me the best. I had to go there. And I had to then decide "I am lovable". And it makes perfect sense for me to be hurt when I was asking those questions of people who gave me answers that were negative.

0 (18m 20s):
And I had been focusing on those answers rather than looking at all the times I have gotten so much wonderful feedback into my life where I have been able to help somebody. And they have thanked me for that. Where I have gone to somebody and I've given them something and they have appreciated it so much. And most of the time when I did that, I was doing it, not to look for somebody to tell me I was doing a good job, but I was doing it just because that's WHO I AM. that's who I needed to find - who I am.

0 (19m 2s):
Who I am in my heart. And that's the most beautiful thing about me. That's who I needed to love. That's who I needed to ask somebody else to love and not settle for anything else. Now, let me tell you this. In the book, "The Courage To Be Disliked" - which you can see why the title really caught my attention - the whole philosophy about Adler and what he said just caught me so much last year. It was such a good time in my life. And I realized this is so true for me.

0 (19m 44s):
P,eople he is a psychologist or was a psychologist... Adler said that people come to him and, when they ask, bring their life to him and are trying to resolve a certain issue in their life, like hurt or pain, you know, like what we're trying to do to open up to love again, he said, they go one of three ways. Think of it like a three-dimensional triangle. And when one side is facing you, that's all you see. And then you turn it around, you see another side. They either talk about the one side, "poor me", then you turn the side and they may be talking about "that bad person".

0 (20m 28s):
How often is that where we focus? "Poor me" or "that bad person". And I had to acknowledge that. That's what I was doing in trying desperately to get somebody to love me, I was focusing on those two areas. The third side of the triangle is where do I go from here? "What do I do next?" Okay. You're on your Path. At this point, you've had all of this devastation from the past. The hurts, the people who have thrown rocks at you, which are, can be the "no's" like the man in the car with me, who said, "No, I won't give you another chance.

0 (21m 8s):
It's over. We are done." He was throwing a rock at me. And, actually, it ended up being a Boulder because I was flattened for a time. But when that happens, at this point in time, we have to say, "Okay, I'm here - right now. What am I going to do with this? Where am I going from here?" That's where you decide what your Power Pillars are going to be. You decide that first Power Pillar, which is so important. What's my Why? Who do I want to be?

0 (21m 50s):
If you are going, what you decide at that point, determines where you go. You have this whole Path ahead of you where your hopes and your dreams lie, including love, but you have this wall you're facing right now. You can either sit down in a mud puddle right there beside your wall and do nothing. And just sit there for the rest of your life. Or you can break that wall down. You can find a way to get over it under it, around it, and you can take it apart, brick by brick If you have to. That's what I decided to do. It was like, "Okay, enough! Where do I go from here?

0 (22m 30s):
I am lovable. I am valuable. I'm worthy to be seen. I'm worthy to be heard. I'm worthy to be known. I'm a pretty incredible person. I have awesome gifts. I have the ability to give." That's where I started to focus. Not on what I wasn't, but instead on who I WAS. I started to learn and I started to grow into being that person, into behaving like that person. My Hope-Filled Action included knowing myself and focusing on my strengths, not my weaknesses.

0 (23m 12s):
Focusing on my victories, not my defeats. And then that's how I began to take apart the wall. And I started to open up to LIFE again. That's where my decision to not accept crumbs anymore. And it wasn't, it wasn't like, NO MORE CRUMBS! I WANT THE WHOLE CAKE!". It wasn't that. It was like, "I'm not accepting crumbs anymore. I'm not going to be the person standing under the table waiting for crumbs to drop, waiting for you to acknowledge me or hear me or see me, or let me think I'm important. No, I'm going to be at the table.

0 (23m 51s):
I'm going to be at the table and I'm going to eat the whole cake alongside you. I am going to be a partner in a relationship, a contributor. I have so much love to give. I have a light to shine. I have a song to sing in this life, and that's what I'm doing. If you want to walk beside me on your Path, living your life, shining your light, singing your song. Awesome. Let's do that together." And that's exactly how my marriage is now. The one I found, the one that came to me and saw my heart.

0 (24m 31s):
That's exactly what happened. So... what's your why? And what's the truth? Have you taken the time to really look at the Truth and acknowledge all the things that have happened in your life? And that you have a heart and that you are important? And three, what kind of Action have you been taking? Hurt-Filled Action or Hope-Filled Action? My heart for you - and I know I'm going to extra long today, I do apologize, but my heart for you, lovely lady, is that you will find your ability, your power to Sparkle.

0 (25m 11s):
That you will love your life, that you will Sparkle without being able to help it because it comes from the inside from your heart. Because you are filled with love for yourself, belief in your purpose and the ability to sort through the things in life and understand yourself in the middle of that, and then teach somebody else about you. Okay, we're done enough for now.

1 (25m 44s):
I want you to go out there and Sparkle, okay? Subscribe to my podcast. Let's start. The movement that says to women - Our hearts matter. That says we're going to fight for our hearts, the person that we are inside. Let's start that movement. Share this with your friends. Send me a private message. If you've got thoughts or questions or anything that I can help you with and you get out there and be the person you are. I will talk to you in the next podcast.