Podcast MDM Academy

EP 176 Everything Right and Wrong

Thirty-two years ago I got married. And when I got married, I made a contract.

It wasn't the marriage contract. (Of course I signed a marriage contract!) It was a contract with myself that I didn't realize I was making. It took me a long time to see that I had made a bargain with myself, a bargain with life, a bargain with God. And it went something like this: If I do X, then I'm going to get Y.

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AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Episode 176: Everything Right and Wrong

A Contract I Didn't Know I Made

Audrey: Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission Driven Life and founder of The Mission Driven Mom. Thank you for joining me today.

Now, I want to tell you something that I did 32 years ago. I got married. And when I got married, I made a contract. And it wasn't the marriage contract. Of course, I signed a marriage contract. But I made a contract with myself that I didn't realize I was making. It took me a long time to realize that I had kind of made a bargain with myself, made a bargain with life, made a bargain with God. And it went something like this:

"If I do X, then I'm going to get Y."

And I put all the rules in place. Now, I didn't just do it blindly. There were people around me that had promised me that if I did certain things, I'd get certain outcomes. There were books by professionals that said, "Yes, we see that when XYZ happens in a home, or when parents do these certain things, then all of these certain outcomes happen."

So for example: if I'm a loyal, dedicated wife, and faithful, and loving, then we will have a peaceful marriage. Things will go along blissfully and be great. That's one of the bargains I made with myself. One of the rules of life that I thought was real, or one of the outcomes I thought I could control.

I told myself, if I live my faith and I take my kids to church every single week, and we pray all the time, and we read scripture, and we do all the things, then none of my children will struggle with their faith.

[I made a deal with myself about our finances?] And if I stay home, if I work on my own education, if I homeschool them, then they'll all have perfectly beautiful relationships with each other, because they will have spent all this time together and they'll have all these shared memories, and then in their adulthood, they'll be super close. And if I teach them these certain things, then they won't have these certain problems, or we won't go through these certain pain points.

It's so funny to think back on it now and to realize that I was doing that, but I really didn't understand what I was doing. I really didn't know I was doing that to myself. I just didn't realize how much I was doing.

I guess looking back now, I can see that in my youthful exuberance, I was ready to make any sacrifice. I was ready to do whatever it took. I was ready to be the mom, be the wife, be the money manager, be the homeschool educator, be the friend, be the whatever. And I really thought that if I did my part, then things would go, not perfectly, but pretty great. They'd turn out pretty close to the picture that I developed in my own mind about who we were going to be 30 years from then.

When Life Happened

Audrey: Well, life happened and things got harder. The marriage was a struggle, and the finances were a struggle, and my children did go through hard things, because they're human and they're going to. [There was just all this pain?], and I didn't like it.

And I'm a conscientious person, and I'm willing to do the work, and I'm willing to make the sacrifice, and I'm willing to say I'm sorry or regroup or read the book or whatever. And so I just figured, "Well, I must be the problem. I must have done something wrong."

And I would go over my past, and I would beat myself up, and I would think about the things that I had done wrong. If we hadn't moved so much. You know, maybe if I hadn't homeschooled so much. Maybe, who knows? I don't know.

A Wrong Belief

Audrey: And what I didn't realize is that I was holding this really wrong belief. What was at the heart of all of this is the question that we're exploring today:

"What if I do all the right things and things don't turn out right?"

My belief was, if I'm a good person and I do all the right things, then we'll have this perfect outcome. Like, I will take on all of the mistakes and troubles that other people might have to have, if I need to, so that they can forgo that pain. But you know what? That's just not how life works.

And what I've had to learn is that there are things that I do control and there are things that I don't control. And I know that sounds very basic. But what's hard, I think for us as moms especially, is that we have these little beings that come into our world, most often as babies, and they are completely helpless. And we have to have the wisdom to help them grow and become, and go from being 100% dependent on us to 100% self-reliant. And that is a big gap to bridge. Now, we have a lot of years to get there, but it's not always easy to know the best way to go about it. It's tough.

But when I started to think about the fact that there are things I do control and things that I don't control, it really started to help me to parse out this wrong belief and make sense of it and start to acquaint myself better with the truth.

What We Don't Control

Audrey: Just think about all the things that we don't control. We don't control our spouse. We don't control our children. We don't control our friends. We don't control the people around us. We don't control anybody.

They have their agency. No matter how old they are, they still have agency. Even if that agency is within stricter bounds, they can still choose.

We don't control the circumstances that we're born into. We don't control the place, you know, the nation that we're born into, or many of the circumstances around us. We don't control the culture, the messaging, the government. There are so many things we don't control.

What We Do Control

Audrey: And when you think about that, and you start to really think about, "Well, okay, then what is it that I control?" the truth is really, I mostly just control me.

I control my beliefs, my habits, my attitudes, my behaviors, my responses, my decisions, the way I think, the way I live, the example I set. I mostly just control me.

Control Is Not the Same as Power

Audrey: And this is why it's so important for us to realize this when we start thinking, because it's so easy to go down that rabbit hole. How is it that I'm doing everything right? Aren't I hitting the checklist? Didn't I have the children? Aren't I a loyal spouse? Don't I show up every day for the kids? And then things aren't working out right. Why does it look like this? Why does it look so messy?

We have to remind ourselves that control is not the same as power. We don't control very much, but we have almost limitless power, because we have complete power over ourselves. And if we don't always have the power over ourselves and with ourselves that we want, we can grow into that. We can choose more of that.

Why Even Bother?

Audrey: And that's the answer to a question that we're tempted to ask ourselves sometimes. And that is:

"Why even bother if I can't control the outcome?"

And it goes back to the same point. It's because it matters immensely what you choose, because every single choice determines who you become. And who you are becoming matters immensely. It means whether or not your needs are met, the quality of life that you have every single day, the example that you're setting, the leader that you're being, the things that you're learning, the habits that you're establishing, the ways that you think and reason, the principles and truths that you live and exemplify. All of those things matter immensely.

They matter to you, because when you do those things, when you develop gifts and use them in the service of others, you are the one that gets to experience the joy of that. You are the one that gets up every day and lives with yourself every moment of every day, your entire life.

When you see that you have immense power and incredible potential, that is an incredible insight. And it answers that question: what do you do if you're doing all the things right and you're not getting the right outcomes? You can accept that there are things you don't control, and the outcomes are not often yours to make happen.

But all the way along, you're learning. You're growing. You're becoming. Every time you make a decision and it doesn't turn out the way you want it to, you get to evaluate, and you get to grow and learn from it. Anytime you're presented with an opportunity to develop your abilities in any way, in how you think and your understanding, in new skills, new truths, new principles, you can embrace those opportunities. And then there's more of you.

And then what happens is that you're taking loving actions towards yourself by deciding to discipline yourself in cooperation with God's laws, with those truths. And when you do that, you have tremendous power.

And it's okay if things don't always go the way you want them to, because you always have the assurance that you are becoming through it all. And as you take those loving actions towards yourself, you're gaining in liking yourself, because you're living with you, and you really do deserve to love and like yourself.

And you can remember that what you learn, and how you respond, and the quality of your relationships, and how you show up is yours: those beliefs, those actions, those responses. And what's not yours is [everybody else, and the culture, and the circumstances, and the past?].

This Week's Practice

Audrey: Okay, I want you to try this this week. I want you to sit with yourself and think about some area that you're struggling with. And then I want you to actually take a couple of minutes and journal about this situation, and ask yourself what you can control and what you can't control. And I want you to try to release some of the things that you can't control. I want you to ask yourself this question:

"Where in this situation do I still have power?"

And when you do that, you're releasing control and you're reclaiming power. And you're reminding yourself that the outcome doesn't matter. It's really all about the fact that you still have power, even when you don't control everything or everyone.

Coming Up Next

Audrey: This leads us to an additional question. Even when we claim that power and we know what we need to do, why is it still sometimes hard to do that? That's a question that we'll be exploring next week. So join me then.

Thank you for staying with me today. Please put in the comments what you're going to let go of and what power you're going to reclaim this week. And I will see you next time.