(1s):
This is the podcast that walks you down the path from not enough to brave enough for love for life, for making a difference in this world. However, that looks for you. This is where the Secret Inner Hero Society is alive and well. And you are going to be inspired by the stories of women hoard, doing it. Be brave enough to love again, to live this life with courage. I'm Bernice, McDonald's love coach, and I am excited to have you here. So get on in here and let's do this.
(43s):
Welcome back to Soft and Strong. Brave Enough For Love. I am so excited to have you here because I want to tell you today something that I wish I had heard over and over again in my life. But unfortunately, this is something that people don't teach us. This is something until I'd say the last five years, we don't often hear. That is, yeah, you are brave enough. Yeah, you are brave enough. Now. I know how it feels to be scared inside.
(1m 25s):
I know how it feels to be so lonely and long for somebody to share your life with, to share your love with. I know what it feels like to be so hard on yourself to not even want to look in the mirror at yourself because you just, all you see is that you're not enough. You don't measure up. This podcast is to talk to women like you, who are struggling. And let me tell you, these are every day common stories that we tell ourselves on the inside that every woman in the world tells herself, no matter how confident she is or looks no matter how beautiful, no matter what age or stage she's at, she's telling herself these same things.
(2m 27s):
You are not alone. That's why we're here because we're not alone. And we need to remind each other about that. We need to remind each other that we are brave enough. We can be brave. And we have everything inside that it takes. We make to grow strong on the insights and so that we can be soft on the outside and embrace the life. And the love that comes to us. I know exactly What I'm talking about here, because I have come so far in this area. I have been a scared little woman for so much of my life.
(3m 11s):
I remember my 19th birthday and my sister just reminded me of this a few months ago. I had forgotten about it. On my 19th birthday. I cried all day, literally. And when my family would say happy birthday, I would say, don't say that to me. Don't tell me happy birthday, because I don't want to be 20 next year. I don't want to grow up. Well, they were baffled, of course, like, what did we do? And why is this person not celebrating her birthday but instead we being all day and hiding?
(3m 57s):
You know, they couldn't help me. It really was an inner question. Cause I've always been such a deep thinker and such a deep feeler. I literally did not want to grow up because, and I, I realized this that day. I was looking at the women in my life and I loved so many of them dearly. My, my dear aunts, my mom - a lot of the women that were older and in my church. They're dear souls, but they all seem to have one thing in common and looking through my 19 year old eyes, I could see that they were not happy.
(4m 41s):
In fact, many of them were bitter. Many of them were angry at the way. Life had turned out. They did not feel fulfilled. They did not feel beautiful. They just felt like life was hard. And these women weren't that old at that time to me, they looked old, but I thought that this was going to be my legacy, that I was going to have to grow up to be one of these women. And I thought I can't do that. I don't want to be one of those women. I don't want to be old. I don't want to be bitter. I don't want to be beaten down. I don't want to be like that.
(5m 22s):
And so I remember I turned my face up to God and said, you know, get rid of me now because I don't want to be, to have to become one of those women. I don't want to be them. And you know, in that moment, this is what I heard. It was almost like he spoke out of the blue in a loud, you know, one of those big microphone, voices, but he simply said, "T."hen Don't be." Now. I heard that.
(6m 3s):
"Then don't be". And it was like a light went on. I sat back on my haunches and I thought, yeah, it's that simple. I don't want to be that person. "So don't be. Don't be". And now - that was before my twenties. I made a lot of decisions that weren't right for me in my twenties, as most 20 something people do. Life is a journey. You're a heart walking on a path.
(6m 44s):
I was a heart. A totally individual person walking the path of life. When I was born, I entered that path. When I die, I will leave it. In between all this stuff happens, right? Bombs, go off, boulders drop on you. Out of the blue, flattening you for awhile. People on their paths beside you throw rocks at you. They put expectations on you. They do all kinds of things that set you back and, and trip you up. But I make the decisions about who I am going to be on this path.
(7m 27s):
And I knew it from my 19th birthday on. I knew that the decisions I made in my life were my own. I decided who I was going to be. Now, that was something that was in development all the way through my twenties, my thirties, my forties, I still was struggling with this whole concept in my fifties. I made poor choices but the really key thing is I needed to look those choices in the face and decide who I was going to be in the middle of every circumstance.
(8m 17s):
I needed to learn from each thing that happened to me from every phase, every decade, every year, every month, every day, to learn about myself, to learn what was valuable about myself, to learn who I wanted to be. So if I was to ask you today, If you were to be me back in that night, on my 19th birthday or right here today, right now, if I was to say to you, if we're we're coaching and I was to say to you, so what don't want to be in your life? Who don't you want to be?
(9m 1s):
What would you say? What would be on your list? What would you tell me? And then let me - and excuse me for saying this - but let me be the voice of God who says, then don't be, because it's really that simple. Decide that you are going to be the best to you. Decide that you are going to dig down deep and you are going to find that Brave Enough, you are going to stop beating yourself up. You are going to embrace that loneliness and learn to be the strongest kind of lonely person that you can be and lead yourself out of it.
(9m 43s):
Decide that you're going to stop being scared of every little thing that happens scared of new things, scared of trying anything that, that brings up these stories for you. And you're going to be Brave Enough. You're going to go from not enough to brave enough. You are going to decide who you are going to be. And nobody, nobody... Let me tell, you can take that part away from you because that is totally your own decision. You can't decide what happens, what those bombs are or the boulders are, or what the rocks look like.
(10m 29s):
That people you can't control other people or circumstances, but you can decide how you face those circumstances and who you are in the middle of it. You can be brave enough to do that. That doesn't mean you come out perfect. That doesn't mean you make every decision perfectly. That means that you decide you're going to be Brave Enough to live this life with all the courage that you have inside of you. You decide who you're going to be. I have a book that I am just finishing off, and I'm really excited about that book.
(11m 13s):
It's all in pictures. It's going to be very easy for you to read through, but we're talking exactly about this. I had to put my heart on paper. Literally I call it "Soft and Strong: how to live brave and love completely by releasing the four crazy, sexy, surprising, heroic sides of you." Even after 50, it's a book that leads you through this process. This process of saying, this is who I want to be. And I really, really hope that you're going to get this book once I, once it's finished, it's almost ready to, and then I'm attaching a free training to it.
(11m 56s):
It's a first training in that you would be taking in what I call the Secret Inner Hero Society where you actually walk this pathway from not enough to brave enough. That's what I do in my coaching. So watch for it. I'll be telling you lots more about it. And we are going to be talking. That's what we're talking about here in the podcast to this pathway to Brave Enough. So let's do this and let's keep each other company on this journey, okay? Cause it's so easy to pull away and be isolated.
(12m 41s):
You're not alone. We're walking this pathway together, so let's do this. Let's go from Not Enough to Brave Enough. All right, follow me on Instagram, lots more on there to support every one of these podcasts. And please get in touch with me. If you need to talk, if you want a coach, if you want, if you're tired of living in the land of Not Enough and you want to get to Brave Enough, just cross over that line,. I am so happy to support you. DM me, email me, go to my website. I look forward to hearing from you.
(13m 21s):
Alright, I will talk to you in the next podcast.