The Peaceful Mind Podcast
Episode 88- Trusting Bigger with Maggie Eckburg


FULL TRANSCRIPT (with timecode)
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You are listening to episode 88 of the Peaceful Mind podcast.
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Welcome to the Peaceful Mind podcast, a place for creating the peace of mind, you need to be the best mom you were created by God to be. If you want to bring more balance, more joy in more peace to your motherhood. This is the place for you. I'm your host, certified life coach at Catholic mom Danielle, Thienel. In the name of the father of the son and of the Holy Spirit.
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Let's get started.
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Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. It's been a little while since I've had an interview format, so I'm excited for you to hear from not just me today, but from one of my clients, Maggie, who is such a testimony to what committing to coaching can do for you as a mom, a woman and a human, especially on the subject of trust. During one of our sessions, Maggie made the statement that she now trusts bigger, and I recall that as soon as I heard her utter those words that I had to bring her on the podcast to share with others.
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Because who of us does not want to learn to trust bigger when we are doubting and feeling uncertain and worrying a lot that feels awful and we find ourselves wanting to trust more. But we think to ourselves, how do we do it? How can we be more trusting? How do we trust God more? How do we trust ourselves more? And how do we trust others more? And that's if we just if we want to. Well, I hope after today's episode, you'll have a better idea on how to step more fully into trusting bigger in your life.
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So I am thrilled to welcome a fellow Catholic mom, Maggie Eckford. Hi, Maggie. Thanks so much for being here.
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Hi, Danielle, that it's so good to see you so good. So happy to be here.
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Hey. So tell everyone just a little bit about yourself, please.
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I live in the Chicago area. I am a wife, a mom, a wife of 10 years, a mom to three children, five years old, three and two. And I teach in on the west side of Chicago. I teach juniors in high school. I teach a Catholic morality class. And that's a lot of fun and challenging and good and fills my heart to the brim. And I also I just opened a few months ago. I just opened a photography business called Everything is Grace, and it's just a place for me to pour love into love into people and help them see how awesome they truly are.
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I just love it. Thanks so much for sharing that. OK. To begin, I want to tell our listeners how I define trust. And then I want to hear you tell us how you may have been thinking about it, about trust for you as a mom and a wife before coaching. And then now kind of after you've had many months of having a life coach and applying life coaching to your life. So trust to me, like one of the definitions, is that it's a series of beliefs.
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Beliefs are really just the thoughts and sentences that we have that run through our head. And then this series of belief, more trusting is either about God, about another person and also about ourselves. And when we choose to think this way in a trusting way, the patterns that of of how we trust others, then will then create a very peaceful, reassuring, calming feeling. And then I also think of trusting as like just being in that feeling like I am right now trusting you, trusting me, trusting God.
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And we don't always have sensory proof of things, so we need to build this trust muscle per se. Like, it's necessary to focus on and build. And a lot of times we're not focusing on how we believe in order to trust more. So that's how I define it is that when you hear me say that, is that kind of a picture of how you now see it and maybe didn't before.
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Danielle, I definitely that resonates with me so much right now where you have helped me. Coaching has helped me get to that point where I see it that way now as these beliefs and something that I can foster and and care for and and bring into my life. But oh my goodness, before coaching? No.
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Yeah. Tell us more about that. What was it like before
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I on the outside? Everything was good. Lots to be grateful for. But on the inside I was Iraq. My my headspace was not a healthy place. I was desperate to trust trust that God has good trust, that my he wants me to prosper, trust that I am going about my life well and trusting in myself that I'm a good mom. But in doing that, I in my approach to do that, I was just grasping for control. Let me fix this.
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I mean, do this. I need evidence, evidence, evidence outside things, things outside of myself to prove to me that I'm good. I want my husband to compliment me. I want my kids to behave well in church. If they don't, oh my goodness, everyone's going to know I'm a bad mom and like
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lots of like so much of that going on. And I remember and I just I want to share quick that you first had me start to think, OK, what are you thinking like? What thoughts are you having that are leading to these feelings? Danielle, I'm not thinking anything. I just need control. I need to know I'm good. I need to know that I trust the pat them on. And I remember the first day when I finally caught a thought. I do work really hard at it because I wasn't living and I wasn't aware I had control of that and I was trying to get the kids out the door and they're in the car.
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Someone has a poopy diaper. OK, get them back in now. In five minutes late, I was trying so hard not to be late. And as I'm walking back in the car, I say to myself, Unbelievable late again, idiot. And I stop and I go, Whoa! And is the first time it's make me a little bit emotional right now, just thinking about it. I talked to myself like that all the time. All the time. Just like just verbally abusing myself, thinking that that will push me to get better and push me to act in a way that will make me believe I could trust myself in the way I'm choosing to live, like it's just that it was it was debilitating at times.
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Well, you know, you're not alone in that, right? At least now you know that don't because you are not alone. There are so many moms out there who are unconscious of of of what is happening, as you just explained that it really is what's happening inside their mind and that self-criticism is what is holding them back.
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Yeah, yeah. And which leads to a lack of trust because I was being run by my emotions, because my emotions and my feelings were facts to me. They were truth. So and I didn't know I could be freed from that and yet not fully free. And we all have to, you know, life is pretty well.
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Well, you brought up what you just said brought up something that I want to to explain to our listeners is that like in the example that you just shared, notice how your mind went to, Oh my gosh, what do I? What should I do in this situation right now? Look, what's happening? What do I need to do to change this? But through coaching and where we will have most of our power and our power to trust more would come from you how you stopped and had this awareness of what you were saying to yourself in that moment.
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Right. Like, that's the key of what you weren't doing before. Like really seeing how you were speaking yourself because we always are looking at what we can do to change things right? Instead of what could I think or how do I want to feel about this situation, which then will propel you to take a more positive action? Right? Yeah. OK, awesome. So I I just want to point out that and you and I talked about this before I started recording.
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So I know that we can go down this road for a little bit. You know, I think we all, you know, cannot conceive that life brings us heavy burden and suffering sometimes. Right. It's part of this life, that human life that we're living, that the Lord has told us it won't be trouble free. And I I know that it's in our lack of faith and trust, which again, is we don't get to see everything like we.
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If our if our eyes don't see it and our ears don't hear it, it doesn't mean that it isn't something that we want to believe and trust in. So the times that are more difficult is when we are in suffering, when we are burdened with something. This is when we want to call on those trust muscles even more of being like, even though I can't see it, even though I can't hear you or hear it. You know, I this is where I want to tap into trust, right? Because if we don't, this is what causes us to lose our peace.
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Because will be. Looking to our outside circumstances to dictate how we're feeling, and we want to be able to tap into this trusting, which is our pattern of thought that will bring us a sense and feeling of peace and reassurance and calm despite what's happening around us. So you have mentioned to me in the past that you experienced some trauma. And I.
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When it comes to trauma, I want our listeners to know that there is definitely a time when therapy, counseling and other medical modalities are necessary to bring a person to a place of a healthy baseline of mental and emotional functioning in life, which is what was true for you when you came to me. Can you speak to that place and let us know how coaching was what you use to help keep you out of limited beliefs, but helped propel you forward despite having experienced trauma?
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Yeah, and thank you for bringing this up, Danielle. It is very, very close to my heart. I in this journey of trusting and wanting to trust God. I did have this area struggle where I lacked trust in him and in this journey to try to live my life more fully. And I had to face with God like, I actually have a spot where I don't trust you, God. And it happened when I was four years old and experienced sexual abuse repeatedly at that time. And I carried it with me thinking, I'm fine.
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My life is fine and it was fine, but I didn't. I didn't realize until I became a mother myself that this is something that that I need to address because it's a lack of trust in God and and it's down. A lot of other things in my life stemmed from that. And so in the in in knowing I needed to heal there, I pursued therapy and it's been instrumental in my in my growth journey, my healing, in my healing, journey focused therapy and healing go hand in hand, especially EMDR therapy.
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I highly recommend it for those who have experienced deep trauma. And in that, though, in that same time is when I sought out, OK, I want to heal, but I'm I want to get after it with life too. I want to grow, so I didn't want to live in my past and healing from it requires you to revisit it. And that's OK, and that's good. But I wanted to be propelled forward. And so that led to my searching of, OK, God, I'm not going to do this without you. I've tried life without you before, and it didn't bear fruit. And so that's when it led to me Googling and coming across because he was a god centered, face centered woman who can help me propel forward.
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And and I believe you brought it, brought us together, brought me to you. And and then once I met you, I was like, And you brought all these things to my attention about how I'm living right now. We didn't have to talk about the past. We just got to say, Where are you right now, Maggie? And how can we? What can we layer back what's really going on? Get to the root belief that you're carrying with you. And is that belief about yourself really true, Maggie? Can you really not do that thing that you want to do? And you, Danielle, are the first person who ever looked at me and didn't flinch when I told you the crazy dreams.
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I have one of them being open in a photography business. You just feel like, OK. But I mean, let's do it. Yes, that's it. I'm not going to tell me, but blank, blank and blank. No buts. Let's go. And I loved that, and that is when my life truly started to light on fire because I used the gift of healing to therapy that God's given us. I sought out coaching to help propel me forward and get my mindset right. And then I started to with your help, actually, you reset my prayer life for me.
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Will you help me to do that? And I started to access prayer like I never have before going back to the sacraments, going back to confession. I had been away for so long and I'm Catholic, so this is just something that for the Catholic listeners that would understand. But even if you're not Catholic, just prayer life and revisiting it, revisiting that in a whole new way and listening to God more. And I was willing to listen to God more because I wasn't afraid of my thoughts as much as I was prior to meeting you. I could not hear God like I can now prior to life coaching because.
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Because I didn't know which voice was God's and which one was it. I didn't know what was truth. You help me see what was truth. What's true about me and what's not? What what are you and what are the lies I'm holding on to?
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And with that? How would you then decide what is truth and how does this play into trusting him bigger?
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OK, so I think there's two ways I can go with that. But truth in my personal life would just be I would make up stories and wives out there. I would really quit going for you Friday night. My husband's home from work can't wait to hang out with him. I'm thinking about all the things we'll do. Are we going to have a glass of wine? We're going to watch a show. Are we just going to talk? It's going to be great. Will we cuddle? I don't know. So and then I look, I'm thinking this. I look around and see him on his phone and then I go, Oh, I see on his phone. He's not thinking about what he wants to do tonight.
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Well, he must not care. Why doesn't he care? He doesn't care about me. And then I go into the pantry and I start to look at food I want to eat to make myself feel better. And this and that and I look, what I'm getting at is we make giant stories in our head, or at least I sure did. And I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that. And and it was you help me peel back to be like, OK, what is this? It's not the food you want, and it's not that Jake doesn't care because you say, Does he care about you? Of course he cares about me. So I would be able to pull back, undo this messy story that I tangled up and say, I just want to hang out with him.
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So how about I tell him, Hey, can we hang out later? What do you think about a glass of wine? And then every time he has a totally, completely loving response. But I before meeting you, I would go on that spiral and then I'd end up saying a little comment to him or snarky comment that would then set a weird tone to the evening. Not that we couldn't recover from it, but it was so unnecessary.
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Yeah, yeah. So what I think that you're beautifully explaining is in how in coaching you could see what what we try and differentiate. And four have you to have more consciousness and awareness about is the stories, which is your thinking and your beliefs. And you know, all of them put together to make up a story about what we think is going on, what we think is going on for other people and what we're telling ourselves and how coaching helps you like, kind of like just decide for yourself, do you want to keep holding on to that story? Do you want to believe that that story is true? Or what are the real facts here in life? And then what could you optionally choose? Other than that, that would help you feel better? OK, so see how this is.
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This is an inside job. This is internal work, and I just wanted to shed like you were. You were so you came so open and willing to look at your life and what was going on inside your head in a different way. That's why you've been so successful because of that open and willingness to be curious and to question and to decide what you want to actually keep and go forward with. Go ahead.
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I would love to speak to that. That question to all of you listening. Oh my goodness. That question that changed my life. Could there be more? Is this really? Is this the headspace I'm going to live in forever? Yes, that question changed my life. And that word curious Cassidy, that you drove home for me and you made me fall in love with that word. I want a banner in my house that me to make sure
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that things aren't always what they seem and that the thought your thinking might not be true. And how about we take a look at that?
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Yes. So let's just speak right now directly on how that has had you trusting bigger now that you have this awareness of how powerful and instrumental it is for you to know what's going on in your head so that you yourself can decide if you want to keep thinking that way. And then we know that trust is a series of these thoughts, a series of these beliefs, the thoughts that lead you to feeling to feel peaceful and reassuring and trusting.
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You know, if they're if they're there, you're going to increase and build and trust bigger. And if they're not there, then you won't be able to direct yourself to trust at all. So what are some of the thoughts you have right now that have that of that you say that you trust bigger now?
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And that's a great question. There's lots to say that, you know, that could be said there, but I'd say first, I want to speak to I didn't trust when it started, I didn't trust myself. And so it is a journey of learning doing this thought work that in learning to trust my own brain, my brain, I was mean my brain. I let myself say such horrible things to myself that I do work to break that down so that I was kinder to myself. And then when I saw that weight, I can be kinder to myself. I can choose different thoughts I can.
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I can let go of thoughts that aren't serving me. And then when I started to practice that, you can't help but see the fruit that that bears in your life and how, how, how much more alive you feel. And so in practicing that and doing that thought work, I felt I gained trust in myself and more, and I wasn't afraid to be alone in my thoughts anymore. And I stopped looking at other people to validate me or to make me feel like I was OK because coaching helped me see that there's nothing wrong with me.
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Oh, and that's that's just the thought.
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That's so good. In fact, we could do a whole nother podcast episode on what we are believing. Other people are thinking about us right now and how that robs us of the trust that we have in ourselves, right?
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Yes. And if I could just mention God really quick that tie in there, that that leads to also where I'm so human and have my limitations, of course. And you gave me that. It comes from scripture, of course. But I believe Lord help my unbelief and that you handed me that you reminded me you brought that verse back to life for me. But to this day, it is almost a weekly go to for me because that's also helped me trust God more where I understand that human human brain is limited and that's OK. But God, you are good and you have made promises to me that you know that you want nothing but prosperity for me.
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So I believe Lord. But could you help my unbelief and then acknowledges that it's OK that I have a piece of me that still questions and wonders and has fear here and there and all that. But there's nothing to be, ultimately nothing to be afraid of because I'm not alone in this. There's a God whose journey and beside me.
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That's exactly right, because we aren't fully divine yet. We are also human. So we want to have that belief, right? Because we are looking ahead towards eternity. But we also for now are living a human life, and that's where our unbelief is going to come in. So we're going to live with both. OK, Maggie, anything else you want to share about your experience with life coaching or messages to moms who have been wanting to learn to trust bigger?
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Do it
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start the journey now as we climb in?
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Oh, the fruit that it's just so good in. And if you're hurting, take it seriously. Seek out healing there and and know that and know that there's another side that is awaiting you. If you're willing to ask that tough question, could there be more for me? And get curious enough to seek that out. And I do feel like, is this an OK time for me to mention that, OK, so I went to I went to mass right before this call because a church very conveniently has an afternoon one.
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So I thought I'd check in with God before I talk to you out here. And before I left the Church of God, is there anything anything you want me to say to the listeners today? And he gave me a few little nuggets that I jot down before I got in the car and came here, so I would like to share them with you and from God to you to all of you listeners. He says. You. You are beautiful. You are good. You are exactly what I made you to be. I love you.
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I love you. And do you feel my hand the one reaching out to you right now?
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That's it. Take it.
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Take it and say yes to all the ways I desire to accompany you on your journey. You are more than your thoughts. You are more than your emotions. My love is more powerful than your current circumstances. Together, we can discover the truth of who you are. Together, we can shed light on the places you never thought possible. Allow me to bring you to the peace and joy you so deserve. Walk with me, will you? Will you trust me? Will you trust bigger? I'm ready when you are.
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Oh, my goodness, that
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is so beautiful. Thank you so much, Maggie, you are such a testimony to our faith in someone who didn't have it all figured out, but bet on herself with coaching to keep growing as a faith filled mom and just overall amazing human. It has been such an honor to be on this journey with you and watch your transformation, and I thank you so much for sharing yourself with us today. And I know that there's going to be some listeners who you know may want to stay in touch or follow you.
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So how can they do that?
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I feel free to head over to my Instagram account, that's where I'm the most active at. Everything is Grace underscore photography. I would love to see you there. Give me follow or some support. I'll support. In fact, you'll be great.
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So good. I adore you, Maggie. Thank you so much.
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Thank you, Danielle.
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All right, everyone. I hope you'll find ways to trust bigger in your life. And if you want someone who is committed to helping you go after living the life God meant for you to experience. Please don't wait. Get started now with a call with me, and you can find all the details in the show notes. Have a wonderful week, and I'll talk to you again soon.
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Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of the Peaceful Mind podcast. Are you ready to take everything I teach you here and put it to work for your own life to really learn how to have peace of mind, no matter what is happening around you? If so, I'd love to have you as a client, as your coach. This is where you'll get personal and focus time on your own mind using life coaching tools, concepts and proven life transforming wisdom all through a faith filled lens. To learn more about how we can work together.
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Come on over to DanielleThienel.com. There you'll see how to sign up for a free coaching consult and learn how to get started. Until next time. Peace be with you always.
