Episode 45: Look In Your Heart - That's Where the 'Brave' lives...

"I can't... He'll never fall for me."

"It's too late... I hate being naked!"

"I'm too old...can't teach an old dog new tricks."

SAY WHAT?  If these Stories are true for you, then WHAT is that hiding in your beautiful heart? And WHY are you hiding it when you have so much love to give?

You will NEVER attract a great love when you're hiding your heart! That's what we're here to do - GET YOUR HEART READY!

In this episode, you are going to find out why many older women resemble a balloon AND how your heart is like a mighty wave on the ocean.

You are enough. MORE than enough to be loved, to love in ways you don't even know exist and it all starts HERE.

So...come on in for a listen. Only 13 minutes! 

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Transcript

Episode 45: S.O.F.T. & Strong Transcript 

Look In Your Heart -
That’s Where the ‘Brave’ Lives

What does an aging woman have to do with a balloon? Okay. This is kind of a weird metaphor, but it's something that I see in my head. So I'm going to share it with you. 

Think of a woman as a balloon early in her life. And she's all bright and cheery and full of hope and all the things that make her inflate and bring joy to others. And then fast forward over the next 40 years and watch as she slowly deflates.

And then, she ends up as this while, you know what it's like when all the helium has gone out of the balloon and it's just this wrinkly mass that sort of all bent-over and just sitting there.  It's kind of like what happens to us as time goes by if we're not careful. 

The saddest thing for me is a woman losing her joy over the course of her life. And I told you last time about me on my 19th birthday.

And I guess that's why I associate aging with women losing their joy and ending up in a bitter place. Then, when I looked at women that had happened to over time, I did not want to go there. And I had to make a decision. 

I heard God's voice say to me, "Then don't be like them. If you don't want to be that, then don't be..." The thing is how many women do you know who are tired, lonely, lost by the time they get to their sixties?

And, especially if love has let them down. Life has let them down. That's what they feel - is that they've been let down. 

I remember when I was in high school again, I was volunteering in a nursing home. And this lady who had very severe Dementia accused me of taking her keys. And now, of course, she's sitting there in the corner by the window in her wheelchair. And I brought her a drink or talk to blanket around her knees. And she said, "You took my keys." 

I remember that was kind of the first introduction to what it's like to be around somebody that is in that state. Things do happen to us. Physically. 

Things happen that we have no control over but I sometimes wonder if we were more in touch with the deepest part of us, the most beautiful part in us over the course of our life, if maybe some of those sicknesses would be deflected and we would make different choices. 

We would end up in a different place. 

It's about the heart.
It really is always about the heart. If you want to be brave in this life, you need to think about your heart.

You go your whole life - it's so easy to go your whole life and slowly, slowly as that balloon of hope and joy deflates, you forget about your heart. 

You forget or you ignore your heart. And how it really feels. 

Remember that you are - this is what helped me so much to understand what life is about - you are a heart that comes into this world. As though you are entering a path. You walk that path your whole life, and when you die, you leave it. 

Now, in between, all kinds of things happen. Bombs go off. Boulders fall on you. Rocks get thrown at you by other people.

You often don't have a choice about which things are happening on your path. We start to ask the 'why' questions. 

Why does this always happen to me? 

Why me? Have you ever said that sometime when your car wouldn't start? When you're a mom ended up with a terrible sickness? When you end up with financial difficulties? 

Why me? Why always me? 

The brain is an amazing thing, and it's always asking questions. And when you ask a question, it will also answer you.

We end up answering with the wrong answers, the wrong stories. If you say, “Why me?”, we end up believing that somehow we're not golden enough for good things to happen to us, right? 

Isn't that the conclusion that so many of us have fallen into? "I'm just not good enough". 

"I'm a magnet for bad things". 

And we actually then start to search around to ask. "Well, why am I like this?" 

That’s when we start to blame other people. We blame life. If that thing hadn't happened to me, then I wouldn't be who I am.

We blame others. If my kids would just be like this, then I wouldn't be like this. 

Or we blame our parents. If they had made decisions and done different things, I wouldn't be like I am today. 

The worst is we start to blame ourselves. And we lose that faith and confidence and trust in who we are. 

We lose touch with the beautiful side of us, that deep, talented, gifted, generous, sweet, tender part inside of us. 

That is our heart. The real us. 

Stories Start to Define Us.
We tell ourselves stories about the 'why'. “I guess love just wasn't meant for me.”

Or we tell ourselves stories about why we just couldn't go for that career. 

Why we couldn't take the trip or build the house, or have any of our dreams come true. 

And we end up in a place where the stories are defining who we are. The sad thing is...go back to that deflated balloon. The very, very sad thing is none of the stories are true. 

What is really happening is that we're afraid that they're true.

The bottom line is you're afraid that you didn't get your dreams and can't go for your dreams right now - that you don't have time to go for them now - because you're not enough. 

The Message An Ocean Wave Can Teach Us
You know, lately - just to switch gears a little here - I've been into waves. Yeah. Ocean waves. Now I don't live near the ocean. I live near them in the mountains but I've been listening to waves. 

When I go to sleep, waves. When I meditate. I was using the CALM App one night when I couldn't sleep and that's where they took us. 

To the sound of the waves. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. Just like the waves going back and forth on the shore. 

Steady strong waves. I started to think about those waves. They just ‘are’. And they just keep going. No matter what happens. When storms hit, those waves keep going in and out. They just do their thing. 

They just are the way they are. They're steady and consistent. Kind of like you. Kinda like me.

What I want you to do here today is to pretend we're sitting there on the beach and the waves are going in and out, and we're just watching them and we're absorbing the sun and we're just watching the waves go in and out. 

And you're listening to them. While you listen to them, you go to your heart and you just let your heart be. 

And you just let the moment be. 

Know this right now. That's who you are. You are that heart on a path. What you do is you make decisions every day, not about what happens to you, but you make decisions about who you were going to be in the middle of whatever is happening to you. 

You don't have a choice. You don't have a say about the bombs or the boulders or the rocks that come at you right now. 

I want you to just think about the only decision that you have to make right here right now is who do you want to be in the middle of all that is happening to you on your path. 

You are not a magnet for those things. 

You are not somebody that made those things happen. 

You are somebody that those things happened around.

You happened to be there in that moment when certain things happened. 

Yes, you made decisions. You made choices that put you maybe into a ‘neighborhood’ where other things happened but you still decide who you are going to be. 

Remember God saying, “If you don't want to be that, don't be”. This is the time to decide. If I want to be this person, then that's who I am going to be. 

You can say things like, “I'm the kind of person who... you fill in the blank. 

You're kind. 

You're good. 

You're forgiving. 

You're generous. 

You're giving.

“I'm the kind of person who ________.

You're just walking your path, stuff happens and you respond. That's as simple as life is. 

You become.

Now, as you become and you see yourself as that, and you stop blaming life, blaming others, blaming yourself, what you're going to find is that you become stronger. 

You're just that steady wave that goes in and goes out. And you start to tap into your wisdom. 

When you stop worrying about what others are thinking about you, and even worrying about what you're thinking about you - when you just become calm and you just ‘are’, you will become stronger and you will become more brave.

Where the Brave Lives
That's where brave comes from.

 So just as we conclude today, I want to tell you that there we are sitting on the beach, right? You and I are watching the waves... in our hearts, just being quiet. 

But beside us, are four different personas. These personas are the Courage inside of you. 

These personas are where you can go when you need help to be Brave, when you need help to face the things that have happened around you. 

And I'm going to tell you about those next time in the next podcast, ok?

They are the strength that is found in your S.O.F.T., in your heart. And I'm going to reveal all in the next podcast. 

But in the meantime, all I want you to do is breathe like the waves and be in your heart and realize this is you breathing in, breathing out, deciding not what you're going to do, not how you're going to control what's happening, but just who you're going to be in the middle of the, all that. 

Okay. I am so looking forward to the next podcast and I will talk to you then.