Express Yourself with Confidence

Here we are in the year 2022. 

It is mid-January, and I have just taken my time through this first half of the year. 

I've known many people who are unmotivated in the new year. 

Recently, I said to someone that it's just a Saturday. It's not the rest of your life yet because they just couldn't see the year ahead. 

There was just too much grief and turmoil going on in their life. 

When I jump on here, I'm excited; it's actually taken me 13 days to get on board with a new year and what that means. 

Honestly, I wanted to talk today about setting our priorities. 

Clear back at the beginning of December, I was thinking to myself, what would my theme be for next year? I would much rather have a theme because it keeps me focused. 

It's super simple, one theme, and everything falls underneath it. 

I was sitting and doing some of my own coaching work, trying to discover what is holding me back in my life right now.

I've done a lot of work, let me tell you. 

I've uncovered a lot of things over the years, but this time, I uncovered that I still have an essence of not wanting to be ridiculed because that was my life growing up. 

Who wants to be ridiculed, right? But I didn't have thick skin.

I was a very sensitive child. I realized that my belief system was not serving me well. 

When I discovered that I did not want to be ridiculed, I had to check what was the opposite of that. 

The answer came: be expressive. I had the freedom to be expressive. 

That's what this episode is about: the freedom to be expressive.

I have also done something that I just never thought I would be able to do: sit down and be intentional about meditating. 

I am not the traditional om-meditator. I am somebody who has a very busy brain.

Quieting the brain is a challenge, but I found that I don't have to follow the protocols that everybody says you have to follow.

My flow of inspiration through my intuition comes when I'm actively thinking, not fixated on problems or reviewing all the hard things that have happened. 

Instead, I think about things and people I love and focus on what brings me peace, happiness, and joy. 

I'll hear myself think these thoughts, and I know I didn't come up with them because I wasn't explicitly thinking about the answer.

 I was just letting the answer come to me, and I think in my desire to be expressive this year, I've got to let the experiences come to me. 

That's one of the things that came up recently, like last week in meditation when I was sitting still. That's what still is my body. 

I was sitting still, and my mind was lost on some of my family members whom I love very much. 

The idea popped into my head. Let the experience come to you. 

It was for them because I was thinking about them, and I knew their struggles at this time. 

I thought they were trying to force an experience instead of allowing it to come to them. 

I think that is a very important idea because when we express ourselves, we express in the now. We don't ever express in the future, so to speak. 

We express what's in front of us right here, right now. 

What is happening around us? 

I was just now meditating and thinking on this very subject. 

The answer said, do it now. 

Yesterday, I had the idea to podcast again, but I still need to. I just sat in the idea, loving it, and I didn't actually do anything about it. 

I didn't express myself, which is so interesting. How can we get in our own way like that? 

Then I was like, if I wanted to express myself, I would just do it. I got up, turned on my computer, and here I am, sitting in my pajamas and right out of meditation, bedhead and all. 

I just thought this was the time to do it because that's when I feel inspired to do it, and here I am, expressing myself, which is, to me, using my voice. 

Whereas before, when I would think about using my voice, I felt this background noise of I don't want to be ridiculed for what I say or how I say it or if somebody doesn't understand where I'm coming from and that sort of thing because expressing yourself and being ridiculed as a child also has this need to, this desire to be understood. 

We'll just talk about it, talk about hoping to receive understanding when it's not actually being offered because it's nobody else's job to understand us. 

It's our job to understand ourselves. 

Here I am thinking, okay, I'm going to express myself. 

I'm going to say what's on my heart and not think too hard about it. I'm going to say that none of this is prepared. I'm just going, shooting from the hip, right? 

Apparently, my hip is where my intuition lies. It's where the inspiration shoots from. 

I'm considering the idea of expressing myself in 22. It's never too late to set an intention, a goal, or a theme for your life. 

This came up because I was actually removing some trapped beliefs that have not been serving me. 

After all, they always run in the background. 

Now, I feel more free to say what I want to say the way I want to say it. 

When I bring that up, and you're listening, you have a gift. You have a point of view. 

When you use it to lift others up, it is a huge gift to yourself. 

When you use it to tell other people they're wrong or that the way you believe is the way it ought to be with everybody and not accepting or allowing other people to express themselves with their truth, even if you can tell that. 

They might be struggling or whatever; it's not what you believe now that you are where you are, and you understand what you understand, and you're living your truth the way you're living your truth.

It's important to express yourself and leave the place better than you found it. 

When you do, the gifts will be given. 

Expressing yourself has much to do with how you live your life. 

Are you living with resistance? 

You should exercise, but you're not. 

I'm speaking from experience here. 

You should be meditating and getting quiet instead of being so busy, but you're not because you're afraid you can't speak again, as you know from experience.

Then, like eating well or creating, where's your resistance? 

Wherever there's resistance, there is no self-expression—none. 

You need to do what you are being called to do. 

The only reason you ever have a desire to express yourself is that you're being called to do that. 

You will find your own personal growth in your expression. 

It's so interesting because I usually don't teach anything that I haven't actually experienced myself.

In 2019, before the world shut down, I was being called to start painting. 

I didn't have a studio or the supplies. I was like, how am I going to find time to paint when I'm trying to build a business? 

All the why-not showed up. 

Then, it took me about a year to pull the supplies together, stop overthinking it, get the confidence to just start practicing, find the things that made me feel light and inspired by other artists' work, and copy what they were doing and their methods just to see what happened on my paper and what came out on the canvas. 

It's been a year of just practicing, but I love it. 

I wear black and white, but I paint in rainbows. I paint in bright colors, usually oranges, deep purples, and just eye-popping blues. 

It happens to be also the landscape that I live in, with the red rocks, the blue sky, and the purple mountains. 

It's incredible. 

I can't get enough of those colors, so I've been painting in them and experimenting with techniques. 

That is a form of expression to create. 

Back when I was raising kids, one of my expressions of creativity was to cut out pictures of rooms. 

If I hadn't become a coach or had been in fitness for 16 years, I would have been an interior decorator. I would have been a designer of interior homes. So, I would cut out or I would rip out pages out of the Better Homes, Gardens magazines, and any house magazines. 

I took everything I could get my hands on and put it in a binder so that I would have all my favorite inspirations at my fingertips. 

This was before the internet, clearly. 

This is what I did as a means of creativity when I was raising five kids until I could actually have a house that I could decorate or the budget to decorate. 

I did that as inspiration. I'd be ready to actually create, but I was pre-creating, if you will. 

We can do what we can to pre-create before the circumstances are right. That's why we're here on earth—to create. 

If we're not being creative, there's not a lot of fun in our lives. 

When the fun is out of balance, we struggle, and there's too much emotional chaos. 

There's just too much work going on. Not a lot of fun. 

We have to find a balance between expressing ourselves and managing life as we grow older. 

I have kids who are in the middle of parenting and working and just managing life as their kids are growing older, their families are getting bigger, and the demand is higher. 

I remember going through all that, and it's like, you can't hardly catch your breath or get a moment to yourself. 

Even a 15-minute journaling session is a way of expressing yourself, and it's a way of expressing your hopes, wishes, and desires as a pre-expression to doing the creating. 

We're always in the process of creating a new version of ourselves, and if we're doing what works for us, it feels amazing.

If we're doing it to work against ourselves, it is anti-creativity. 

By using resistance, it's like, well, I would, but I can't, or I only have 15 minutes. It's not enough time to do anything. 

That kind of thinking is holding us back. It's keeping us from doing what we can, even in a 15-minute window. 

Even if you need 15 minutes just to think to yourself, you can hide in the shower and stay in the steam a little longer, which is an awesome place to envision creativity. 

When you get in the shower, and it feels so good, and you're just standing there letting the water run over your body, your brain goes into creative mode. 

You think about solutions, and your creativity can even revolve around managing your family better in new circumstances. 

The kids are getting older and new requirements need to be put into place. 

The kids are being instilled with boundaries and healthy value systems while still letting them discover life and make their mistakes so they can learn from them. 

There are many ways to be creative in parenting, managing our new selves every day, and exercising. 

I've told this story before, but when I was five kids deep between the ages of three and 13, I wanted to exercise. 

Every day, I was like, kids are under my feet, I can't exercise during the day, I can't get it done, I don't want them watching me, I don't feel confident in myself, like I just didn't need the audience at the time. 

My creativity came by putting them in bed sooner, which meant I had to move dinner up and have it sooner and get the homework done earlier and all of that so I could get them in bed at nine. I could go to bed at nine. Then I could get up at five. 

I wasn't like dragging, trying to do more on less sleep. 

That was a form of creativity. 

I could get up at five and have a whole hour to myself, five to six, before everybody got out of bed and got going on homeschooling. 

Your creativity can come in a lot of different ways. 

It doesn't mean you have to have an entire art studio set up before you can do art. It doesn't mean that you have to have a popular blog to start blogging. It doesn't mean you have to have a role model for how to parent. 

You can be creative and come up with your own methods for parenting, or you can even ask your powers what book I should be reading. 

Lo and behold, the book will just jump out at you. 

You will find it, it will be handed to you, it will be gifted to you, it will show up in your newsfeed, it will show up on your Amazon account, and it will just show up, and it will be your favorite thing. 

You can create your own theme when you want to express yourself this year. 

I bet you anything. 

Your theme will involve expressing yourself freely, being the creator, and being—we're here for the creation, right?

We're not here for the creation because that would mean we would be done. 

We're here for the creation, and we'll always want to create something new—rearranging the furniture, making a new meal. It's all about creativity. 

This morning, as I was sitting in my meditation, I try and ask this question more often than not: what is the most important thing I can do today? 

I often don't have a to-do list, which is almost petrifyingly scary to some people who live and die by their list. 

I do have lists; it's the busy stuff. It's like checking on this person or calling up this company and sorting this out, or you know. 

Record this information somewhere where I'll find it. 

There's the to-do list, but what is the most important thing I can do today? 

Then, I gave myself a subcategory of my priorities and just sat there. 

I sat there and listened. 

I had somebody ask me recently. How do you? 

They couched it as a very personal question. I'm like, shoot, what they said? How do you pray? 

I said, well, I'm grateful every day, thanking God for all of my blessings, the basics, correct? Health, housing, relationships, that sort of thing. 

I said, but the new thing that I have done in the last couple of years is listening, just sitting after thinking. Then I ask, and then I listen.

 I'll do another podcast on that and go more in depth. But, listen. 

When I sat and listened, after asking the question, what was the most important thing I could do today? 

My priorities showed up as listening to the scriptures, listening to a lesson, and listening to somebody who's more learned than me. 

Then, exercise came up. Okay, so I have been on a three-year sabbatical. I've exercised here and there. 

I've found pockets of motivation and energy to do it. 

I haven't been consistent, and I haven't found joy in it since I closed my fitness studio. 

Honestly, and I told everybody, even when I was in fitness, I didn't love to work out. 

I love being with the people. I love the way working out makes me feel afterward. 

When I'm in the middle of it, my brain is like, are we done yet? How about now? 

I haven't been able to turn that one off because I get too impatient.

Let's just get it over with. I have more important things to be doing than this. 

That's not necessarily true, or it would make me feel better, right?

If you've listened to any of the other episodes, you know that if you're telling yourself a true story, it feels really good. But that one doesn't make me feel good. 

It's not true, but that's still my busy brain, not my inner guidance system, talking to me, right? 

As soon as I thought exercise, I needed to shift that energy to be the creator. 

I came up with the most important things I could be doing today so that they came up for me in meditation: scriptures, meditation, exercise, eating well, creating something, and writing. 

When I write, things get more precise. 

If I start writing about a problem, what I think, that's my brain, what I think is a problem, my inner guidance answers, and it becomes clear that it's really not a problem at all. 

I just need to let go and focus on staying in my lane, right? 

Writing helps me sort things out. 

I will say that if you've had a traumatic childhood, it is very common to still have a busy brain that wants to focus on what has been, what happened, and what something that wasn't fair was out of balance. 

Your brain still wants to go there if you're not in the habit of meditating and being still and putting your brain on something that makes you feel light and enlivened. 

This last December was one that I don't ever want to repeat. 

My husband and I were sick for the whole month. 

We spent Christmas, but we didn't put up a tree because we were going to go to family's houses. 

We sat there during Christmas in our recliners, in our pajamas, coughing, sniffing, and feeling like garbage. We were like, Merry Christmas. It was terrible. 

We missed being with our family. We missed all the joy of having kids around us, which is pretty much one of the most significant elements of making Christmas Merry. 

It was just miserable. 

We’re, like, I got out of the habit of doing deliberate prayer, sitting down, meditation, and writing. 

Those are the things that have really amplified my ability to hear my inner guidance system. 

I just felt dead, detached, and uninspired. 

It's taking me a minute to finish because we just got back from delivering Christmas to our kids on the other end of the state. 

January 10th, we finally could move on with our life. 

It just really stopped for about 30 days. 

I lost my inspiration to be expressive. 

I'm like, all right if I'm not in this every day, and maybe you've experienced this too.

If you're not dedicated to doing something that has consistently improved your life, you will lose it. 

That your brain goes back to all the problems of your childhood. 

My dreams shift, and they go back to trying to fight the bad guys in my childhood and who I thought were the bad guys. 

I have very restless sleep and all of that. 

Overcoming trauma is a; whatever you do on a daily basis, you get more of that. 

When I find ways to sit down, get peaceful, get quiet, be deliberate about my thoughts, and tune into my Heavenly Father, tuning into light and love, it changes everything and my ability to be more expressive. 

I would not be doing this episode right now had I not done the work that keeps me in the zone. 

Being expressive is about consistency—consistently doing the things that bring me love and light, inspiration, and the ability to hear my inner guidance system, not my busy brain that shoots from fear. 

The other thing that I wrote down, which was funny, came up from my inner guidance system when I was contemplating why I have resistance against exercising and whatnot; it says, do it. 

Resistance is for beginners. 

I was like, oh, okay, well, thank you for not making me feel like I've never done this before. I do know what helps and what doesn't. 

That was a good reminder for me that I don't have to sit there resisting, resisting. 

Literally, to motivate us, we got a Peloton for Christmas. That was our Christmas gift to ourselves. 

We received it the day we both came down with the garbage. We both got sick, and so we covered it, and it's just been sitting in our garage.

Here we are on the 13th of January and my husband went out and uncovered it. 

Yesterday, I actually tried on my shoes. It was like, we're getting there. It's getting closer. Don't overthink it. 

I was like, because you can overthink it, or you can live it. You just get up. 

Don't even think about it. Just put your body where your inspiration says it ought to be.

Sometimes, when your kids resist going to the store or going home, they just don't want to go, and they flop down, kick, and scream.

I've actually seen parents; it's just funny to me that they pick the kid up by the back of the coat. 

They're all zipped into their coats, and they carry them like suitcases out to the car, and it just cracks me up because that's how we are.

Sometimes, we just flop on the floor, and we're like, I want to go ride my bike; I want to get fit. I want to get it. Well, I don't care. I have no use for a six-pack anymore. 

That was a great idea when I was ten years ago. 

I do want to stay active and be in my kids, my grandkids lives. I want to go do what they can do. 

That's my motivation these days. 

When I'm like, I want to stay active. I want to be independent forever. 

I don't ever want to be in a rest home kind of thing. 

I need to follow my inspiration and not ask, oh, how long is it going to take? Oh, but it's going to be hard because you're not fit now. 

My brain can get in the way, and you've probably also experienced this. 

But to live your life, just pick your body up, grab yourself by the scruff of the neck, and carry yourself like a suitcase to where the exercise is, where the nutritionally dense foods are, and to your writing spot or meditative spot. 

Just suitcase yourself to that place. Then you will find yourself. 

The next day, be more deliberate about your creative and expressive self. 

You'll find yourself just following your inspiration, following your intuition, and doing the things that lead you down the path of who you're becoming. 

That is why we're here; it's for expansion.

We don't expand if we resist. Those are opposites. 

Being expressive this year means using your voice and gifts, developing your talents, and expressing yourself in writing. 

I have journals and journals and journals, and I use this. I think I've said this before, but I use a spiral notebook because it doesn't have to be fancy. 

Just get it on paper, get it out of your head, and onto the paper, and you'll see the answers. 

They just flow out the end of your pen whether you're typing or old-school writing. 

It is the same because you literally have to get into that space of what am I writing, concentrating on the actual manual effort of it all, and all of a sudden, it turns into a meditation where your spirit is telling your head what to say. 

Your head translates it into words, and then it comes out the end of your pen, like a three-step process. 

Still, it's in such a meditative state that you just start flowing with it; you're not thinking about it anymore.

Then, your intentions come up from your inner guidance system, and it takes the work out of it. 

When you read it back, you're like, holy cow, I couldn't have thought that on my own. I'd never have that thought or found such peace in the solution. 

When you live your life and follow it, you are on the path to becoming who you're meant to be. 

We say this year, today's all is guaranteed. 

Tomorrow's not here yet. 

All the today's strung together make a year. 

Today, you have the power to do what is in you to follow. 

The big message at the end of my meditation today was to live your life and follow it. 

Following it means following your inner guidance system, your impulses to get up and do something because it feels good. 

That's how you know you're following your impulses. That's how you know you're going to; you're about to express yourself in a way that's going to feel really good to you. 

When we express ourselves, it's not for anybody else. It's for you. 

I might be putting this out there, and you might have been, but I had an impulse to listen to it. It was for me first, and that's why I'm doing this. 

If you receive benefit from it because you had an impulse, because you were led to this, or because you were searching for something, it's probably going to be a benefit to you because you are the active listener. 

It is for you if you're hearing it. That's the epitome of expression. 

It's for you first, and others very easily could benefit from it.

I challenge you, I suggest to you, to go out and express yourself. 

That today is the only day you have, and to make the most of it will be your favorite thing. 

Note: You can access the full blog content in audio versions on Spotify and YouTube. Happy listening! 🎧 

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