E15: The Power of Choice: You Have More Influence Over Your Life Than You Believe

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer Cudmore (00:01)
Hey there, hi everybody. Welcome back Today, the discussion I want to focus on is about the power of choice and how sometimes there are things that are out of our control, but there are some things that we actually do have influence over that we don’t necessarily notice or recognize. And so I wanna bring awareness around that. Specifically around the concept of these questions, ⁓ how often

do we tell ourselves that this is just how life is gonna be? There’s nothing that I can do to change the situation. This is just what’s going to happen. And then we end up kind of settling. So the content for today is that we actually have more control over our lives and certain circumstances than we give ourselves credit for. And specifically, I’m gonna focus on the areas of our reactions and our responses or how we show up, not just on the other side, but… where we can also be proactive.

that’s gonna be our thoughts, our words, our emotions, our actions, our habits. So those are the areas that we have agency over where we do have control and we can make our lives better by how we choose to show up.

And keep in mind that control is a balance. Obviously there are certain things that we absolutely cannot control and we try way too hard to make them go our way and we have to get better about letting go. So it’s a balance of not just trying to get our way, but trying to set ourselves up for success and happiness by making the right choices. So what I mean by that is there are many times where people assume

they can’t change certain things or they can’t influence certain aspects of their life. And I want to dive into that concept today because I believe that we, there are some things that we can do.

There are so many times where we tell ourselves, I can’t change my circumstances. I can’t change my situation. It’s so many different areas, but it becomes a habit and it feels normal to us. So it could be all sorts of normal life situations, our job, our marriage, our family. You we want our kids to be more cooperative. We want a more supportive friends. We want a bigger, you know, more money in the bank, things like that. And we often feel

stuck and we’re just like, this is the hand I’ve been dealt. I just have to suck it up and deal with it and make it work. But the problem is if we’re not careful, we’re going to end up settling for a life that we don’t want. So the truth is that by becoming the best version of ourselves, we are going to enhance the quality of our life. We’re no, it’s no longer going to matter how other people behave or what negative circumstances might be happening to us when we choose to grow, when we choose to heal.

we actually have a lot of influence over our environment. So we have to learn how to look at it from that perspective. And also what that can do is when people see us change and see our lives getting better, it influences them to want to make their own positive changes in their own life. And people are going to see the goodness and the change in what’s happening around us. And that can inspire them to begin to make their own better choices.

You have control over how you show up. You get to decide. That’s what this whole episode is going to be about. God gave us free will. So what are you choosing? Okay. All right. So I have focused on four areas and the first one is going to be the power of choice and our emotions or our feelings. So we don’t have to let our emotions rule over us. And unfortunately, a lot of us live this way where we react and we respond.

based on how we’re feeling in the moment. And most of us just tend to, or maybe I shouldn’t say most, but a lot of us tend to let our emotions ⁓ dictate what our responses are gonna be. We have to learn how to manage our emotions properly and not let them rule over us and dictate our moods, dictate our actions, dictate.

how we show up in a certain situation. So emotions are actually not necessarily good or bad. There can be positive or negative emotions, but ultimately emotions are simply a source of information. They point to some things that are going on inside our heart that need our attention. And so what we have to do in order to properly manage our emotions is to dig into those feelings and say, hey, why am I feeling this way? What is the root cause of what’s going on here?

and how can I begin to work through this in a proper way. We get to choose how we feel. so emotions are gonna come at us based on different life situations, but we get to choose whether or not we’re gonna stay there. We get to choose whether or not we’re going to let that become a huge ⁓ power in our lives. So.

tips that I have learned that I use when I wake up in a bad mood or something happens that makes me upset and I’m trying to not stay in that dark place. You can get around some upbeat encouraging people. You can read scripture. You can quote truth and affirmation to yourself. You can listen to praise music. This is huge. You can quote ⁓ scriptures from the Psalms. That’s something I’m learning how to do recently. Go for a walk.

because physical exercise ⁓ changes the physiology and can spark your creativity in your brain. we surround ourselves with nature and beauty, that’s also has a very calming effect on us. So finding ways that work for you, especially when you’re dealing with negative emotions, things that will help you sort of override that and get into a better head space. When I’ve had a hard day, one of the things I like to do is either

It’s like a watch a funny show like AFV and just laugh at funny antics that people do or even like throw on my favorite comedian, which happens to be Tim Hawkins at the moment. My family used to watch his videos all the time. He’s so funny. Another tip would be gratitude. If you’re focusing on gratitude every day, if you’ve developed that practice, you’re less likely to get sucked into letting those negative emotions rule over you.

you’re going to manage them better. So if you’re writing down good things that happen to you, things that you’re thankful for, listing out your wins on a regular basis, you’re going to be more easily able to tap into positive emotions and not get bogged down by negative emotions. Our physical posture also matters, and this is something that I’ve been ⁓ learning more about recently and trying to put more into practice. One of my favorite things about scripture is that God

tells us that he is the lifter of our head. And I remember reading that one day and going, what in the world does that mean? And kind of just walking through it with him and just the idea that when we’re feeling down or discouraged, you know, we can go to God and let him raise our chin. almost like it. I love that visual of God just kind of, you know, putting his hand or his finger under our chin and just kind of giving it a little, a little push or pull or however you want to word it.

and just lifting up our chin, raising our head up because just that physical action of going from this to this, it actually ⁓ signals to your brain a more positive feeling, a more positive emotion. There’s science behind it and I didn’t go look that all up, but there are physical postures that can literally change our mood if we will let them. ⁓ Not just lifting our head, which I’ve learned is huge.

learning to stand tall, put our shoulders back, ⁓ smiling is a huge thing. learned that even when you don’t feel like it, if you smile often, it tricks your brain into a more positive, putting you into a more positive mood. And so those are some tips on ways that you can sort of ⁓ deal with those negative emotions when they’re really coming at you. And another step being it’s super important that we learn to

process our emotions properly. The thing is that science, depending on which study you look at, it shows that there are, when our emotions hit us, their intensity lasts from approximately one to three minutes. And so we kind of have to ride the wave, but that’s not very long. And so it’s normal for us to have this like big surge of whatever the feeling is, whether it’s positive or negative. ⁓

And then it kind of dissipates a little bit. so recognizing that that’s how it works also gives us agency over the fact of, OK, I just need to give myself a minute or two or three, kind of let this happen, kind of soak it in. And then I can move forward. I can make an action or a response based on ⁓ wisdom instead of emotion. So the warning here being that you can’t

When we ignore our emotions, when we stuff them, that creates a huge problem for us. So we have to learn how to take it when it comes, deal with it properly, ⁓ understand that feelings are just signals that there may be some things going on inside our heart that we need to look into, recognizing that emotions are a normal part of how God made us. ⁓ so managing them well is important to us having a better quality of life.

just a wrap up this section with just pointing out that the book of Psalms in the Bible is all about processing emotion, just all sorts of different kinds of emotions, whether you’re up, you’re down. And so I just love reading that and just seeing how human people are, you know, they’re going through a good time or a bad time. And then these are the things that are going inside, going on inside their hearts and minds. It can be really encouraging to read through the Psalms. So

Just throwing that out there as another way to help you manage your emotions All right. So number two the power of choice. We don’t just have ⁓ Control over our emotions and feelings, but we also have control over the way we think and I know that I’ve spent several episodes on You know mindsets and different things. So I’m not going to delve too deeply into this right now But essentially what I’ve been talking about over the past, you know a couple of months is that we don’t have to entertain everything that comes into our mind

We have control over what we think about. In fact, the Bible tells us that we need to be intentional about what we’re thinking about. ⁓ But let me throw in just a little bit of science here. We have thousands of thoughts every day. And I didn’t look it up. know there’s a certain number of average thoughts that we have, but it is a lot, a lot. It’s very surprising. ⁓ At least when I heard the numbers, I thought, ⁓

The point here is that it’s not that we have a thought, it’s that we focus on certain thoughts. So we’re gonna have tons of thoughts flowing through our brain because that’s how God made us. The choice comes in, are we gonna let it pass? Are we gonna intentionally choose something different? Or are we going to focus on it and entertain it? Or a third option being we can resist it, which is actually entertaining it and engaging in it and it just gets

us into a cycle of ⁓ frustration. this, I used to be so, so bad about this. And I’ve been really working on it the last couple of years. I learned this concept from my friends over at the Noble Marriage. And they were talking about how when we recognize a thought, it’s not a big deal. We just need to either choose to stay with it or choose to let it go. What I would do is if I didn’t like it, ⁓

Maybe I was in a bad mood or I had a negative thought of my husband made me mad. So then I would like, well, I shouldn’t be mad about that. That’s a silly thing to get upset over. So then I was like, the more I would tell myself to stop thinking about it, obviously I was resisting. I was engaging. I was entertaining. And so that just stayed in my mind for a lot longer. If I were to have a thought of, this thing that my husband did irritated me and then just simply let it go and move on.

instead of resisting or berating myself for getting upset over a little thing, which I’ve already confessed I have had a tendency to do a lot in my life. ⁓ So it’s really simple. It comes down to, am I going to stay thinking about this or am I going to choose to think about something else? So ⁓ let me go a little bit deeper in with some scripture here because there’s so many places in the Bible where God tells us,

to ⁓ be careful how we think. So for example, we’ve got 2 Corinthians ⁓ chapter 10, he talks about capturing our thoughts, taking them captive and ⁓ assessing them and deciding is this a good thought, would this thought benefit me or would it not, should I just let it go? ⁓ The Bible tells us the types of things that we should think about. We’ve talked about this before, Philippians 4 verse 8.

There’s other scriptures. There’s a couple of places in the New Testament where he talks about setting your mind on things above. So there are so many different Bible verses ⁓ that tell us how God wants us to utilize our brains and teach our minds how to fall in line with a proper way or a healthy way of thinking. So we have control over what we think. We just have to choose wisely. We have to be intentional.

And one thing that helps is if we are feeding our minds the right things, the whole concept of garbage in, garbage out. So if you’re reading truth, if you’re praying often, if you are speaking affirmations, if you are focusing on all the goodness and the positive things in your life, you’re going to have a tendency to be ⁓ more inclined to think good thoughts, healthy thoughts, happy thoughts. But if you focus a lot on complaining and negativity,

like we’ve talked about in other episodes, you’re gonna have a tendency to constantly be going back to those kinds of things. So limit your exposure to things that influence you in a negative manner. Choose to focus on things that are positive, that are happy, that are healthy, that lead to success. So I’m gonna stop there when it comes to thoughts. I think that we’ve hit on that. ⁓

long enough. number three, we have the power of choice in our words. And we don’t have to speak everything that we think and feel. And I know that’s hard for some people because we tend to just kind of go with what’s on the tip of our tongue, which, ⁓ you know, comes from what we’re immediately thinking or immediately feeling. But

Again, there’s so many scriptures where God talks about the importance of speaking wisely, speaking with love and compassion. So, you you’ve got in the book of James where it talks about taming the tongue. ⁓ There’s a scripture in first Thessalonians 5 11 that talks about we’re supposed to be using our mouth to encourage other people. Hebrews chapter 10 talks about considering how we can speak life into each other, spurring one another on towards love and good deeds.

Ephesians 429 talks about not letting unwholesome talk come out of our mouth, but use our mouth to build each other up. There’s so many, I’m going to stop there, but God is very ⁓ concerned. Concerned isn’t the right word. God cares about what comes out of our mouth. And so it’s important that we learned how to train our mouth to speak in a right manner, in a healthy manner, in a positive manner.

We have the choice to pick words ⁓ based on wisdom, based on discernment, based on love. So when you speak, are you stirring up trouble or are you actually helping the situation? Is your speech more positive or is it more negative?

There is another scripture and I forgot to look this up, but it says out of the abundance of the heart is what the mouth speaks. So you may have some things going on inside you that you need to deal with in order to be able to speak in a more healthy manner that’s gonna enhance your quality of life. So you may have some wounds that you need to get healing from. You may have some sins that are hidden or that you are a.

Sort of excusing that you need to deal with and then once you kind of get some things cleaned up in your heart It’s going to be a lot easier to speak in a healthy positive manner. it Along with that also, let me throw out. It’s not just the actual words that we say it’s also how we say it the tone of voice the ⁓ the type of language that we use is it accusatory or is it coming from a

like language that’s compassionate, all of that. So just some things to think about when you think about what am I choosing to speak? How am I choosing to use my mouth when ⁓ I say things? So the last one that I had on my list today is, so number four, the power of choice. We get to make decisions over our habits and our routines, and we can either set ourselves up for success,

or we can sabotage ourselves. So we have to pay attention to the routines and the habits that we have in place because I guarantee you that if you haven’t intentionally sort of set up your schedule or set up a routine, you’ve already developed one, you just don’t notice that it’s there. So ⁓ one thing that’s easy to relate to is how do you want to feel when you wake up in the mornings? And this has been a struggle for me over the years and I’ve really worked hard on being more intentional about it.

My habit used to be the first, the moment I woke up, the first thing I would say to myself is, man, I’m so tired or, man, I just don’t want to get out of bed. I don’t want to go to work. So when you immediately start your day with this negativity, it sets the tone for the rest of your day. So what I learned to do is that, ⁓ I had to be careful. What were the first thoughts and words that came out of my mouth when I would first wake up in the morning?

If you want to make life easier on yourself so that you can wake up in a better mood, there are some things that you can do to set yourself up for success. Understand what your body needs as far as how much sleep does your body require and then making sure that you get that amount of sleep on a regular basis. Are you going to bed on time? Are you limiting screen time before you go to bed?

Are you eating healthy foods? Because ⁓ a diet of a highly processed food is actually very taxing on the body and makes it very hard for it to rest and relax. So if you’re eating a lot of junk and a lot of sugar, your body is gonna have a really hard time resting during the night. ⁓ If you’re not getting regular exercise, ⁓ that also affects it. And then constantly saying, I’m tired, guess what? You’re gonna create that environment for yourself. If you keep saying, I’m tired,

you are going to become tired. So that is a phrase I have actually really tried to eliminate from my vocabulary. I know I talked on another show about ⁓ things to eliminate from your vocabulary and this would be a really good one. Stop saying I’m tired because when you say that you create that you make yourself tired. anyhow, that’s just something I learned from personal practice over the last several years of

trying to make life easier on myself when I first wake up in the morning, when I first get out of bed. ⁓ examining your habits, that’s an example of some habits. So where can you pay attention to your daily routine and the habits? What kinds of, I there’s so much to habits, like what time are you brushing your teeth? And ⁓ what time are you, how much time are you giving yourself to wind down at bedtime? How much TV are you watching? How much screen time do you?

⁓ utilize every day. just saw this thing from ⁓ a scientist on Facebook that was talking about how limiting your screen time to, I think it said two or three hours a day, can enhance your brain so much. That’s one of the things on my list. I want to learn how to get better about not consuming so much screen time, so much technology, because I know it’s not great for your brain to be constantly on electronics.

So anyhow, examining your habits, paying attention to your routines, are you being intentional about how you’re spending your time and your energy or are you just sort of letting life happen to you? So you can organize your schedule in a way where you are utilizing your time and your energy wisely. So how can you do that in a way that makes life easier on yourself instead of harder on yourself?

⁓ Let me throw out a couple stories. I recall ⁓ several years ago when the kids are probably elementary, junior high. We had a season where every Sunday morning on our way to church, we would try to leave about 10 minutes early so that we could stop at the coffee shop and grab a latte on our way in. And it was kind of a fun little ⁓ tradition or routine that we were doing. But what I noticed is that ⁓

It actually was becoming more of a hindrance and causing us more problems. We would end up just barely sliding into class on times or sliding in, yeah, Sunday school class. And, ⁓ or we would be late or, I mean, we couldn’t find a parking spot. And there’s just so many different things that I thought, man, this is getting more and more frustrating. I don’t know if it’s worth it. You know, a lot of times we would show up thinking that we could get in and out in 10 minutes and there would be a long line. And so it would take.

you know, close up to 20 minutes to get coffee. And so then I would be like, man, now we got to leave the house earlier so that we don’t have this happen. It created so much stress for me. And while we did really enjoy doing that, we decided it wasn’t serving us. It wasn’t the best habit or routine for us to do on our Sunday mornings. And so we really limited, ⁓ we would kind of, we did it less and less and less. I don’t think we officially quit, not while we were still living over there anyway.

⁓ But anyhow, that was just something where I became conscious of, know, this is actually making my life harder, not easier, and it’s not worth it. So another example was while my husband was working federal security for a while at the courthouse, he worked the swing shift a lot in the beginning. And so ⁓ we had wonky schedules. And so one of the ways we would try to spend time together

would be on the weekends, I would try to stay up late and he would come home, I think he got off work around 10 or 11 or midnight, I should have asked him for sure. But what he would do is he would grab himself a snack because he would be hungry and then he would come home and we would eat a snack together, we would watch an episode of TV and then we would go to bed. But the problem with that is that we weren’t getting to bed till 12 31 o’clock.

which for most people may not be a big deal, but for me it was. When I’m trying to get out of bed the next morning at five or six, that is not enough sleep. And so even though we thought it was a good idea because we were able to spend time together, number one, when you’re watching TV, you’re not getting a lot of interaction and conversation. So it’s really not very bonding to do that. And they’re not regularly, I should say. And then the…

you know, the idea of just eating that late and then going right to sleep was really bad for your body. And so just different things. So essentially it came to the point where I was like, I cannot do this anymore. We got to, we got to do this differently. It’s just, this is not helping us. This is not serving us. This is actually causing us more problems. So we looked for other ways that we could spend time together where we weren’t eating all the time and not staying up so late. So I wanted to throw out a couple of those stories just to get you thinking about where are those places where you might have some bad habits.

that are causing you trouble and where can you choose to make a decision or make a habit that is more helpful in setting you up for success. And so another piece of this lifestyle habits is also going to be different seasons of life. So you’ll have to put some thought into it, but what I really want to caution you on

is being careful not to put limits and saying, this is the only way it can look like and I don’t have any other options. Because actually there are a lot of options, there are a lot of opportunities, you just haven’t thought of them yet. And so you’ve got to teach yourself how to be a little bit more creative, maybe process out the situation with another person. Say, how do you handle this and what is your routine? And hey, that person looks like they’re really successful in this area of life. How can I model the way they’re doing their habits, their routine, their schedule?

Be creative. Think outside the box. Don’t stay stuck. Don’t stay in your small life and say this is the only way it can be. Let me throw out one more story. I recall when I was trying to spend more time in prayer, and I just didn’t think I could get up any earlier in the morning. I realized that I have a 12-minute drive to work every morning where I am not doing anything.

necessarily productive. So why can’t I use that time to talk to God and ⁓ tackle my prayer list? And of course, for a while I had all sorts of excuses. Well, I can’t read my prayer list while I’m driving or whatever. I don’t even remember what they all were at back then. That was a while ago. But what I did was I began to just practice that habit and build that habit. And it ended up being a really sweet time of day.

where I just really enjoyed communing with the Lord on my drive to work every morning. And it was very uplifting. so switching that habit around and utilizing that time that I ⁓ didn’t realize was a valuable time period of my day, I was able to use that as a place to set myself up for success, get in this one habit that I wanted to build.

in a way that really fit well into my schedule. that’s an example. Another thing that I do now because I work from home and so I don’t have a commute is I spend ⁓ probably about 10 minutes that it takes me to take care of the dishes every day. I use that as prayer time. I will cover different people that I’ve committed to pray for or maybe lift up my family or current situation because your hands are busy, but your mind is not. So you can focus on

spending that time communicating with God. So that’s another example of a habit that switched ⁓ because I no longer have the drive time. When am gonna ⁓ make sure that I get into prayer time? ⁓ I can do it while I’m doing the dishes. So it’s throwing those out for some different ways you can think about it. So as I wrap up, essentially, my question to close us out is

How can you make better choices? How can you utilize the power of choice to develop a better quality of life? So specifically, where are you allowing your emotions to rule over you? Where are you allowing your thoughts to run wild or go dark? Where are you letting your mouth stir up trouble? And what habits do you need to revamp? So our final thoughts for the week, let’s explore the depths of these four areas. What can you do in these four areas to get free of self-sabotage?

develop a better quality of life. So take that with you. Bye everyone.