S1E1: What is Hiding Beneath the Surface of Your Life?

SHOW TRANSCRIPT

Hey everybody, welcome. Thanks for joining me here today on the podcast into the depths. If you haven’t met me, my name is Jennifer. If you haven’t watched the pilot episode, I encourage you to go listen to that. It’s just an audio file, no video for that one, but it gives a little bit of direction for where I wanted to take the podcast and the kinds of things that I want to talk about and just a little bit about my journey to freedom. So

Today we are going to move into a question and I have Just just to be transparent. I have tried to start this episode so many times I’ve been having some tech issues this week I had everything set up and it was working perfectly and then for some reason when I came in here to officially record I was just Having some challenges. So here I am again getting this going and

The reason I bring that up is just because one thing that’s really important to me is to be real and just say things how they are. No pretense, no just fakeness, but I really want to present myself as a normal human being, just an ordinary person who goes through normal, ordinary day-to-day challenges. So great start to episode one. So my question here today is,

Have you ever been in a situation or really it’s when have you been in a situation where you didn’t realize something was wrong? So I mean, these things happen to us all the time, things such as we spill lunch on our shirts or maybe splash some coffee. We don’t notice it, we’re going all day. Maybe we ate a salad for lunch and we’ve got kale in our teeth and we’ve been walking around for a couple hours that nobody told us. We didn’t realize that it was there.

there’s been a few times I’ve been driving down the road and I’ll see somebody with the gas tank flap hanging open on their vehicle because when they finished at the gas station they just somehow forgot to shut the flap and so I don’t think I’ve ever done that but maybe I have I don’t remember if I have but there’s just lots of harmless little things like that where we forget we don’t notice we don’t realize and I think the other day I heard this really funny story a pastor was telling

how he had preached a sermon once and the entire time his zipper was open. And I’m like, gosh, that’s like terribly embarrassing. Hopefully that kind of thing never happens to me. Although I’m sure every public speaker has had some crazy random moment. But for me, one huge frustration that I can’t seem to get past is I feel like every other time I am on a Zoom call, I forget to turn off my mic.

So I log into the meeting, I turn off my camera or leave it on depending on the type of meeting. But then I leave the mic on and forget that it doesn’t automatically mute when I come into the meeting. And so I’ll be making racket around my desk or maybe I’ll get a phone call or someone will walk up and start talking to me. I don’t realize that I’m totally disrupting this meeting and it’s terrible and it’s embarrassing and I’ve done it so many times you would think that I would learn by now but.

So hopefully I will get better about that. But these are just examples of normal day-to-day things that we do where we go about life and we don’t realize something’s wrong. And I have another really funny story before I move on. When my senior year of high school, I had been dating my husband at the time and we went out with a group of friends to the movies. And after it was over, we decided to go grab some snacks at a restaurant. And so Tim and I paused to use the restroom. We told everyone we’d meet them back at the…

the restaurant. And so we did that in the truck, drove over, got out. And as we’re heading into the restaurant, my husband is holding the door for me and he looks down at my feet and he goes, what is that? And I looked down and I had four or five squares of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of my shoe. So I had gone all the way from the restroom in the vehicle, out of the vehicle, up to the restaurant, the door. mean, we got the, that was just so funny. We got a really good laugh out of that, but

Just, you know, another example of how we can be going about life and not realizing that something is wrong, that something’s not working. And I bring up all those funny stories just because I want to talk about the concept that stuff hides from us. Like we, there are things that are going on that we don’t notice, that we don’t realize that, you know, maybe they’re harmless, but sometimes they’re harmful.

And I’ll just share another quick story. When we moved from Alaska to South Carolina, we brought a couple of cats down with us. And we also had a boxer that we brought. And so, you know, we’re pet people. We love pets. we had one of our cats was an outdoor cat, but the other one was totally indoor cat. And we’d had her for several years. And one morning I got up and I noticed it was cold and there was quite a draft.

in the house and I thought that’s weird. We must have left the window open and I went downstairs and realized that the door that led out to the garage was cracked about four inches and I thought my goodness somehow we didn’t get the door latched when we went to bed last night but it still you know shouldn’t be that cold and so then as I was looking I don’t know if I I must have just pulled the door open and I realized the garage was entirely open all night.

which we don’t like to do, it’s not necessarily safe, but the worst part was we realized my cat had gotten out and she is not an outdoor cat, she had never been outside and unfortunately we never saw her again. And that was devastating for me. I cried for a couple of weeks, it was terrible to lose a cat, but my point being, sometimes the things that we don’t notice, the things that we don’t realize are happening can actually be harmful to us. And that’s one of the things that I want to.

Bring up is the fact that we have a lot of blind spots that we don’t notice and we need somebody to point them out most of us have no idea where we have self-sabotage where we’re believing lies and limitations and living a small life and so one of the things I want to do with this podcast is just talk about how do we learn to be aware of what’s going on inside us how our brain is working how our heart is working like

What are the things that are behind the scenes in the background that are propelling us to behave in these certain ways that are causing us problems and we don’t recognize it? We don’t realize it. So, you know, when Tim and I were about year 15 into our marriage, we kind of hit a crisis point and we ended up going to marriage counseling. And what was so great about that was that I did not realize how much I was contributing to making this marriage.

stay broken. And it was very humbling. And I’m so grateful for this counselor who really helped me dig into what was going on inside me and my insecurities and my expectations. And I had so many wrong expectations of me and my husband, like our roles as a husband and a wife, what marriage was supposed to look like, what family was supposed to look like. And because I had all these wrong expectations,

you know, I was trying to make something happen. I was trying to control things that were not controllable. And that was causing a lot of problems, a lot of friction. And plus, you know, my insecurities were having me behave in ways that were not healthy. So it was, it was extremely beneficial to have somebody help me notice those things that I wasn’t noticing before. Things like, you know, I was really trying to make my husband be

The only source of validation where I was getting my worth like it is his job to tell me I’m amazing or whatever I mean looking back it just sounds so skewed, but at the time I didn’t realize that that thinking was wrong sometimes we may need to get some counseling sometimes. It’s just a friend My point being that self-sabotage hides and we need someone to point it out We’re not gonna see the problems. We have blind spots. We’re not necessarily gonna recognize it

We need to look for them. We need to pay attention and be aware. It’s so easy to get stuck in a rut because life feels familiar. Broken feels familiar. We don’t know anything else. We’ve not experienced anything else. And we’re unaware that there’s a better way, that there’s a different way, unless we actually start looking for that. I think of all the times where I would look at another family or another couple or just in general, some successful person and think,

you know, they really have it all together. They must be more blessed. They must just have the right resources. Whereas me, I’m just, this is just who I am. This is just my lot in life. I think I might’ve mentioned this before, but that wasn’t the right perspective. If I wanted to have the success that they were having, then my attitude shouldn’t have been one of comparison and feeling sorry for myself. My attitude should have been one of,

How are they making it work and how can I emulate that? mean, a huge thing for me is when I got moved into management at the medical clinic, I was so lost. I did not know what I was doing. I knew how to do the job itself, but I didn’t know how to be a manager. And so I knew that I was gonna have to learn that. So I went out and learned how to develop those mindsets. I took webinars and…

whatnot, but I got around people who were good managers. I had some really good friends who had been in medical management for years. And so I would ask them questions. I would glean from them. I would meet them for coffee and say, Hey, how do I handle this situation? Because I knew that I had blind spots and there were things that I didn’t know how to do. so I needed to get around people who did know how to do it and who were already doing it well. So instead of sitting back and saying,

wow, they just happen to have all these wonderful skills and they just happen to be amazing. So that’s why they’re a good manager. Instead of doing that, I took the approach of, no, I have a lot to learn. There are some things that I don’t understand that I don’t know how to do. There are some things I’m doing that are wrong that I don’t realize and I need somebody to point those out to me.

our community matters and we need to make sure that we are getting involved in different types of community where, and of course it needs to be a safe space. So don’t just join any group or go to any sort of training, but you want to be in a place where you really can be vulnerable, where you can be open,

Where you really connect with people and you feel a bond and you can get some mentorship, but also not just gleaning from someone who knows more than you, but also being around the right people, building a tribe, having a group of friends or community or support system that you can lean on for accountability because…

If we don’t allow other people to challenge us, if we don’t allow other people to come to us and say, hey, I think this is off, I think maybe you could do that different, then how can we grow and how can we be a better person? How can we be the best version of ourselves? We need to get to the place where we accept that everybody has blind spots. And so why would we not want to go find out what those are and make those better? Because it’s not just, I mean, doing that will…

make so many things in our life work better if we are willing to dig into what am I missing? Where are my blind spots? And different seasons of life, you’re going to have different types of community. When I first moved into manager at the management at the medical clinic, like for a couple of years, like my whole focus was developing friendships and mentorships with people who had been there, who had done that. And so

you know, that was a season and now that I’ve been in management for several years, I feel so much more comfortable and confident in my skills that I don’t need to be around that type of community quite as much. You still need to be plugged in so that you’ve got that back and forth or you can have the discussion. So anyhow, I think you get what I’m trying to say, but you need a good community and sometimes you have to go looking for it. It’s not just gonna fall in your lap. You need to do some research.

need to intentionally go out looking for what is going to be beneficial to you in this season that you’re in or in the area that you want to get better at. my whole point of this episode is just to get you thinking about the fact that you have some things that are hiding. You have some things that are causing self-sabotage. You’re not doing that on purpose, obviously.

But this is why I’m so passionate about freedom and finding healing and dealing with our baggage, I really want to help people learn from my mistakes. want to help people not get stuck in these ruts that I’ve been in, the cycles that I couldn’t figure out how to get out of. If I can share the things that I’ve learned, if I can help people.

Or ordinary Jen, you know, these are the things I learned. Here’s how I overcame some certain things and was able to find success and healing and freedom in these areas. And now my relationships are so much richer and, whatever. That’s what I want for others, because I know so many of us have been lost or confused and didn’t know how to move forward. So I’m hoping that I can share some things that can help propel you forward as well. So.

And I’ve also noticed that sometimes people are resistant to freedom and partly just because they don’t recognize what’s wrong, as I said before. you know, looking into things that we’re not doing well or that we’re really doing wrong, sometimes that can be really uncomfortable because we don’t like to admit that we’ve made mistakes or we don’t want to confront those things that are uncomfortable. Change can be hard, right? And so sometimes people just…

rather than face the discomfort,

They would rather just live with it because it’s familiar. It also can be really painful to dig into some things because sometimes we behave badly due to some hurts from the past, some wounds that we haven’t healed from or that we didn’t realize were still affecting us. And nobody likes to dig into things that are painful. That’s normal. But if we want to move ahead and have the best life for ourselves, we’re going to have to deal with some of those things.

Sometimes it’s a lack of resources. Like we know we need help, but we don’t know where to get the kind of help that we need. We don’t know who is safe. We don’t know who has the right information. Lots of different people or organizations might tackle a problem different way. And that’s great. We’re all unique and different strategies and different tools are gonna work for different people. But sometimes there’s so much information that you don’t know where to start and you don’t know who’s the right.

trusted resource, right? Or even that just don’t even know how to go about looking for the right resources. Or sometimes people just don’t even believe that healing is possible. They just think, this is who I am. I’ve been this way for so long. I can’t change, which is unfortunate. And it’s not true. We can always change. And there’s some science behind that that I won’t go into. But another thing is that significant traumas

cannot be healed without help. mean, sometimes we, if we’ve had some really bad things happen to us, we need to go get some professional assistance in working through those. And in some circles, I mean, I have people even within my own family who don’t believe in the value of getting professional counseling, unfortunately. And it can be considered weak. know, people will say, you need to buck up, you need to handle it. This is what

strong people do. And to a point that is true, but unfortunately there are some times where we do need help. were made to be in community with each other, not to be isolated islands. So yeah, sometimes we need other people, not just as a community of friends and mentors, but also someone that has a professional background that can help us dig into certain things that are what I would call just bigger issues. So

You guys know avoidance just makes it worse. It makes it fester. We cannot ignore these things. Eventually it’s going to blow up in our face. We have to come to the place where we’re willing to dig into these things. We can’t be the best version of ourselves. We can’t thrive if we just continue to ignore self-sabotage and ignore our blind spots. we all have to come to the place where we…

are ready to make a decision. Do I want this better life? Well, if I do, then I’m going to have to do some work. I’m going to have to dig into some things. I’m going to have to be willing to be uncomfortable. but the definition of insanity, as I have been told, is

doing the same thing over and over and over again, but expecting a different outcome, a different result. And so we don’t want to be that person who just does things the same way because it’s familiar, because it’s comfortable. We want to be that person who can admit, okay, there’s some things hiding in here. There’s some things that I don’t understand about myself that I need to dig into.

Admit and accept that there’s some blind spots that we need to face these things that we need to deal with them in a healthy manner because we have agency. We have control over how we respond. We don’t necessarily have control over our circumstances. That’s just life, but we have the ability to respond well and to make some changes to be a better version of ourselves. So what do we want more? Do we want momentary discomfort digging into things that we don’t like?

Or do we want long-term health, success, happiness, enriched lives, right? So we can choose. Here’s some examples. And I would just challenge you to maybe think of how this could be you. We can let fear rule over us, which I shared some of that in the pilot episode of what I went through. We can let fear hold us back from some amazing experiences, like remember,

when I talked about Reggie the tiger right here. I keep him on my desk so that I can remember. I don’t live in fear. And so I traded fear for joy, right? I told you about how amazing it was to pet him and walk around with him and play with his tail. just was just so unbelievably joyful, delighted in that experience. And I could have missed out if I would have let fear roll over me.

We can choose to stay down and defeated and discouraged, or we can choose to do the things that will give us success, things that are fulfilling, that give our life meaning and purpose. We can do things that contribute to the world somehow. We can make a difference, or we can just sit back and say, you know, whatever, and not try to make things better. We can stay trapped in lies, labels, and limitations, or we can choose to be empowered to embrace our true identity. We can get free to be fully who we were supposed to be.

And I wanted to share with you this phrase or this wording that I learned from my counselor. And this concept was kind of mind blowing for me. And so it’s called functional.

Fixedness so some of you may have heard this I had never heard this when I was doing counseling ten years ago functional fixedness is basically it just means that people will not change unless the situation is so painful for them that The only way out is to change so our default This is normal human behavior our default is to stick with what’s familiar even when we know it’s broken so

We tend to, as humans, shy away from the unknown. We tend to shy away from things that are new because they’re scary. We don’t know. You know, they’re risky. We can’t control the outcome. I mean, I told you guys in the pilot, this was totally me in so many areas of my life. And it’s really the question for today of how painful does your life have to get before you’re willing to make a change? Are you just going to continue to sit in this place?

of not living your best life? Or can we start dealing with some of this self-sabotage? Can we start digging into these things? Can we start looking for those areas where we’re missing something? What are our blind spots? And I would even challenge you if you have a family, even if you’re not willing to do it for yourself, why not do it for them? If you are a better person, then you’re going to make their lives better and you’re going to help them become a better person. So just something to think about.

I heard this really interesting quote the other day at church and I tried to find it. I couldn’t quite find it when I was doing an internet search, but it’s something along the lines of, humans are masters at self-deception. And I thought, my gosh, that was totally me for so many years. And I was able to find a quote that really was powerful to me by A.W. Tozer. So something to think about.

of all the forms of deception, self-deception is the most deadly. And of all the deceived persons, the self-deceived are the least likely to discover the fraud. And that was from A.W. Tozer. And I thought, my goodness, that is so true. Where am I deceiving myself? Where am I living in, you know, with blinders on where I’m not even trying to understand the ways that

I could do it better for whatever reason. So as we wrap up, as we go about this week, I invite you to explore the depths of this final thought. Stuff hides, we have blind spots. Can we admit that our perspective might be skewed in some areas? Can we admit that we might be carrying some self deception? Are we willing to begin digging below the surface?

to find the lies, labels, and limitations that are getting in our way. Thanks for joining me today. Take those final thoughts, and I will see you next time on episode two.