Episode 199 Transcript
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[00:00:00] You are listening to episode 199 of the Peaceful Mind Podcast.
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 and 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, let's get started. Welcome back to the Peaceful Mind Podcast, your weekly dose of peace of mind within the bustling demands of motherhood. I'm your host, Danielle, and today I'm unraveling a topic close to many hearts: how to stop worrying about tomorrow.
I've tackled this subject before. [00:01:00] But it definitely bears repeating because as I discuss in my coaching program with my clients, the feeling of worry has no upside. It has no benefit to our lives and it definitely doesn't have a showing up for ourselves and our families in the best way. And so maybe this is a little different take than some previous episodes I've done, which in my eyes is all good because I'm just trying to come at every angle I can, hoping that one way or another it lands with you and brings you to more peace, more peace of mind.
So I want to start by stating this profound thought. The divine division of time into days and nights. is to give us manageable portions of life to handle. Okay, I want to repeat this. This is a profound thought, okay? The divine division [00:02:00] of time into days and nights is to give us manageable portions of life to handle.
And the reason why I wanted to start there is because I want to focus on how It is what is going on in your life that day and, and see how God, he made it this way. He gave us one day and then we have night and we sleep. So that we can, you know, start over again and help us think about our lives in portions.
I know that we've all heard before to try and live more in the present moment. Or take it one day at a time. And I myself, I tell my clients all the time that your most powerful place is to be found in what you are choosing to think about right now today. And so I remind them and I remind [00:03:00] you to tap into what today is bringing you and to only go to the future to learn what you would then need to be thinking today and feeling and doing today.
To ensure that you then get that future outcome you want later. So that's why we want to go to the future so that we can bring it back and help ourselves today. However, but what I see happening is that we go to the future and we stay there and then we make up our own story and have our mind just You know, build, sometimes I like to say go on this like runaway train of how and create it in a way so that it's a negative experience.
We worry about the future, which is really just a whole stream of thinking and a focus and a [00:04:00] consciousness on what could go wrong, what wouldn't go well, what will be, quote, bad for us. And I know that it's a, I, just, I relate to you, I get it, that it is a struggle for all of us because planning and worrying comes so naturally to us.
It's such a temptation to worry because many of us continually face things that make us feel scared and anxious. But I want to reiterate to you today that we don't have to live this way. You can choose something else to think about your future that is beyond worry. There is a plethora of things that you can choose instead of worry.
And God's Word does tell us. that each day has enough trouble of its own, [00:05:00] which is telling us to stay out of the trouble that we make up in our minds for our future. And so if you are someone who knows that your mind does often wander to the future, and not in a way that benefits you, feels good, then this episode is perfect for you.
Because though I know and will tell you your brain will wander there, Sometimes for sure, it's going to happen again, even after you hear the goodness that I want to offer you today. But what I even want you to know more is that you can gain a sense of control over this tendency to worry about your future and to come back to the present moment.
And you can get better. It's at this skill. It is a skill of being a person who noticed and becomes really conscious when they're worrying about [00:06:00] tomorrow, when that's happening for you. And then refocus your mind and return to today, return to the present moment. Again, it's a skill you can build. It'll just take practice.
And today I'm going to offer you some steps to do this. to build this skill, because I know in the whirlpool of our life's responsibilities as a mom, it's easy to get caught in the trap of worrying about the future. And as we'll discover, there's an endless well of grace awaiting us each day that is sufficient for that day's troubles, that can keep us, can prevent us from worrying about tomorrow.
Okay, so this is, these are, here's some of the things I want you to see. I want you to kind of visualize that, that we put ourselves in a trap of [00:07:00] future worries. Okay? Let's, let's talk about some of like common worries that might plague busy moms. Because worrying about the future can feel overwhelming and it's for sure counterproductive.
Let's just talk about, is this you? Do you ever find yourself awake late at night? And you find yourself that you wake up and then your brain starts thinking about the future or even just even all that has to go on the next day and you find that you, this, this plagues you, that this has this trap of keeping you up.
Okay. Do you, are you someone who agonizes over your children's futures? Would they, are they doing well in school? Will they make the right friends? How can she possibly save enough for college tuition? So. So, are you someone [00:08:00] who has this line of thinking and see how it affects you because you're always having open ended questions about like, what if this happens?
And it's something that is more of doom and gloom answers. Well, here's, here's just a little example. I know of a mom who recently told me. That she, one evening, she walked into, her youngest walked into the room and looked at her and said, Mommy, you look sad when you think. Can we play now? And, It was kind of jarring for her to realize because she realized she knew what she was thinking.
She was worrying, right, about the next day and she told me. She goes, it was such a huge [00:09:00] awareness for her because what she knew was that she was missing out on the joys of today. Like she had said, I think earlier in the day, that she wanted To play with her daughter and have some connection time with her and even her daughter noticed maybe by the look of her face that she looked sad and She told me that she was of what she was thinking Which was something that was worrying her at the moment and she knew that that that Could have kept her from the joys of today.
Thank goodness that she was aware of this and was decidedly, like, I'm going to play with her right now so that she could come back to the present moment. I want to just kind of lay this out to you. Do you understand that we are given daily grace? [00:10:00] So this idea that God's daily grace is only sufficient and given to us for each day.
Like, each 24 hour day. This aligns with our faith. And I want this to be a support to you. This idea. This truth. I like to think of grace as like, gentle sunlight that comes into my life every morning. Just like, the sun rising every dawn, here comes this gentle light of grace. And just know that the sun isn't there for 24 hours.
You just get that light for the day. It's kind of like grace is not given for like the days ahead. We're not given enough so like we stockpile it up, [00:11:00] but it's only given for that day at hand. We, do we know the story of manna in the Bible? It was, Daily bread. It was a symbol of God's provision given to us each day.
And like that manna, God's grace is our spiritual nourishment that is tailored for each of our day's unique challenges. And so, To help you stop worrying about tomorrow, I wanted to give you this understanding of daily grace. And that in itself could be super helpful to you to bring you back to the present moment or to that day.
So we want to know, we want to recognize that first kind of segment that I was telling you about is that we can get trapped in future worries. But one of the ways... to keep us [00:12:00] untrapped is to come back to understanding that we get daily grace. With, for this episode, I want you to see that daily is the line that is underscored.
Okay, so what are some strategies that we can do to kind of curtail any future worries we would have when we worry about tomorrow? Well, I've got about five, and I want to mention that the first one is mindfulness, which in general, that is a lot of what I talk about. But I want you to know that mindfulness can also mean different things to different people.
And I try and speak about it in different terms. I say I want when you're more conscious about your life, when you're more purposeful, more mindful. And really what that means is for you to practice being in the moment. And for us, women of faith, that is appreciating [00:13:00] today's blessings and tackling only today's challenges.
An example of this would be, let's say it's early morning and you have a cup of coffee. Can you silently, as you're drinking the coffee, list three things to yourself that you can see or feel? In that moment, it could be the warmth of the cup. It could be the chirping of the birds. You could hear your child's laughter from the next room.
This simple act will root you in the present moment. And for that time, it will make your future worries fade. And I know, even if it's just for a few moments, We can build that into a few minutes and then we can also have it be carried with us throughout the day. The second way to curtail your future [00:14:00] worries is to have a daily reflection, to spend a few moments each day in prayer or reflection seeking that day's grace and even in that time is where you can surrender tomorrow's worries.
You can have the weight on of tomorrow on your shoulders, but you could do an example of something you could do about that is you could have a nightly ritual where before bed, you thank God for the strength that you had that day. And again, you can surrender your worries for the next day. And we all know that science proves, right, that what we think about before we go to bed, we want to really take to heart because that is where It seeps into our unconscious mind.
And so having, being able to have a daily reflection, whether that's in the [00:15:00] morning or in the evening, right before you go to bed, that's going to help you be someone who doesn't worry about tomorrow when you hand them over. And then if you do that at nighttime, then at least you will have had that moment to fill your mind with something that is useful and helpful for you to sleep on.
Okay. The third little action step. One way that we can curtail future worries is to break down your tasks. Break down daunting tasks into manageable portions that you can tackle each day. So here's an example. Let's say that you are anxious about planning your daughter's upcoming birthday party and let's say you have a tight work schedule or you have some household responsibilities that you also need to take care of it.
We want to break it down. When it comes to the party, list out [00:16:00] everything you need, sort out the guest list, decide on the theme, and when you do this, what we call kind of thought download and get it out on paper, but the important part is breaking it down, then something that is like looming and heavy or a worry about like a future date, which in this case it's a party, it can actually become a fun activity.
You can enjoy it along the way because you are taking control and seeing and breaking it down in all the little things that you need to do. And so if you are going to just focus on one or two that day, it's going to help you worry about all that right now your mind is saying that you have to take care of or maybe what negatively is going to happen at this later, this said party that's happening later.
And [00:17:00] then notice how if you're doing that, you are going to be more present for the preparations and maybe it'll be involve you being more present with your daughter because you'll be talking through some things. Okay, the fourth thing I want to offer you to curtail future worries is to shift the focus.
So. When I say shift the focus, I sometimes have talked this with my clients, they've heard it over and over again, where I give the kind of metaphor about using a garden hose on a patch of grass, and if you, if you, you put the garden hose on this patch of grass over here, like on the left, and you hold it there for a really long time, that grass is going to get greener, and the one that you're not watering is going to get more brown or shrivel.
And, you know, fade away, but if you move the hose to the other side, you shift it over to the other [00:18:00] side, then that grass will grow. And so I want you to see that in order to stop worrying about tomorrow, you're going to have to focus. In other words, shift the, shift the hose from worrying about the future to what you can control today.
So focus on what can be controlled and let go of what you can't. And here is the God Honest Truth. You can't control the future as much as you want to, and you think you can, you can't. So when a client of mine lost her job, she was consumed with future worries. But instead of asking, what's going to happen next month?
She shifted to what can I do about it today? And this simple pivot changed her whole outlook. She ultimately began [00:19:00] freelancing. Which then led her to a more fulfilling career path. The next thing I want to talk to you about is trust. Trust is going to help curtail your future worries. If you can cultivate a mindset of trust, knowing that each day comes with its own provision of grace.
You can see that I'm reiterating this grace sufficient for a day theme through today's episode. So, every night, you can tell your troubles. That they're not allowed on tomorrow's calendar because tomorrow has its own. That's the truth, right? Tomorrow will have its own, but you can tell it. You can just like, you're not welcome here.
It is a powerful act. It's a powerful act of trust, [00:20:00] recognizing that while we make all the best laden plans, that it's really the highest power. It's really God that steers it all. I have a wonderful friend who is a beautiful example of embracing the practice of dealing with one day at a time. And I know when I watch her, I am so very inspired because the peace and empowerment that comes from like throwing off the oppressive burden of future worries is so.
It is so like, I don't know, holy is what came to my mind when I'm speaking about it now. It is, it is such an example. And so for you, I want to offer you to [00:21:00] embrace today and embrace today with trust. Because when we are worrying about our future, we're actually not trusting that everything is going to be okay.
And we're also, when we go to the future and we see troubles and worry, we also leaving God out of it. Right? Because if we were thinking about him there, we would be feeling more peace about it. And I want to encourage you to develop a simple daily ritual or habit to affirm trust that you have the power to control what is happening today and that's it.
And that you're going to leave the worries for tomorrow till then. And this will help you shed those shackles of worry. [00:22:00] So a practice could look like writing down one line of trust every morning. Today, I trust my choices. Today, I trust the love I've instilled in my children. And just by affirming your trust daily, you will build a reservoir of peace.
And begin to enjoy the beauty that is there for you in that present more deeply. And you will also be realizing that you are being given grace for that day, and it will contribute to a more peaceful mind for you and just an overall more joyful presence in your lives, whereas worrying about the future does not provide you that.
So in the heart of this chaos of our mom lives, lies an opportunity for us to break free from the chains of future worries and step into a light, a light of trust. [00:23:00] Because when we choose to dwell in today, embracing the grace that's sufficient for our current moment, we find a deeper connection to our faith, to our loved ones, and to ourselves.
in what's going on right now around us. And this is where you will find peace. There is nothing gained. Nothing gained by worrying about tomorrow. Nothing. Though it feels like there is, I invite you to become someone who comes back to the steps that I've laid out here and when the worries of tomorrow show up for you, you'll be equipped and you will build the skill of handling it.
So thank you so much for joining me today, your companionship on this path. I think of you all as I'm, as I'm here talking into the microphone. It is such a blessing and a joy and a privilege to be here. As always, I [00:24:00] thank you for listening. I will talk to you again here next week. Until then, peace be with you always.
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Until next time, peace be with you always.
