Episode 114: Your Everlasting Impact

Episode Summary

In order to help others and do the work that we are uniquely capable of doing in this world, we each have to overcome the fears of our brain. Our brain cares about our survival, not our impact.

In this episode, I encourage you not to give up and not to give in to your fears. I’m sharing what’s really going on when you’re scared to show up in the world and how to overcome your brain’s fear and anxiety, so that you can do hard things and make a difference in your own life and in the world at large.

You matter. Your life matters. And it is worth confronting your fears in order to create the everlasting impact only you can make.

Episode Tools and Questions

There is an everlasting impact when you do hard things, whether those things are in your personal life or whether those things are much more visible. And doing those hard things requires you to overcome the protests and the fears of your brain. 

Here’s the thing: the only tool your brain has to stop you is to think thoughts that create feelings. And no mistaking: it is a powerfully effective tool. The negative emotion our brain can produce is significant and real. It does work at holding us back - but I don’t think it has to. You don’t have to let your brain keep you from doing the work you are here on earth to do.

Today’s episode is about understanding why and when your brain is keeping you afraid, and how to choose new thoughts that allow you to keep making the impact in the world that only you can make.

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the 100% Awesome Podcast with April Price, you might not know it, but every result in your life is 100% because of the thought you think. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome!

Hello, podcast universe! Welcome to episode 114 of the 100% Awesome Podcast, I'm April Price, and I want to welcome you to the podcast. And I want to tell you that you are doing awesome. I definitely don't think that we say that enough. About a million times a day my brain is telling me the opposite. In fact, I just want to be a voice in your ear today telling you the opposite. Listen to me, you are amazing, you are awesome!

So, the other day I was listening to this podcast that was about Princess Diana, and one of the hosts said, "You know, all of us are just trying to feel like we're doing okay, right? We all just want to know that we are okay. Like, of course, we're all a mess. We're all a hot mess express, as she said." And we're all just trying to do what we can to feel okay about that, to feel okay about our mess, and it is so true. And I just want you to know that with all of your mess, you are more than okay. You are freaking awesome with all your mess, and with all your brilliance. You are a gorgeous, amazing human being, and you are 100% lovable as you are. And today, I just want to invite you to join me in loving you. Like, let's just go all in and just love you today.

I have been thinking a lot about you, and the more I think about you, the more I love you. And that's not always the case, right? When we think about ourselves, right? Like often the more that I think about myself, or at least the more my brain thinks about me, the less I love me. But I want to be your coach today, and give you all the thoughts that I have about you. I want you to kind of let these thoughts that I have today, for you, give you a different perspective about yourself. And for a few minutes today, or for the whole entire day, I want you to allow yourself to think about yourself the way that I think about you. And in today's episode, I just want to be your cheerleader, I want to be your champion, your supporter, your hype woman, your coach. And I wanted to create a podcast today that you could come back to again, and again, as you needed it, to remind you of who you really are, and what you're really capable of, and how much you, and your life matter. I want to give you a vision of yourself, but you can't always see from inside your brain.

3:04
And where I want to start is I want to tell you that you matter, and your life matters. You are a child of God with limitless potential. And because you were sent to Earth with other humans, the way that you live your life matters. And the things that you choose to do while you're here make a difference. And I want to give you as much encouragement as possible in making that difference. I want to give you as much encouragement as I can for you to do the things that you came to do to bless the world in only the way that you can do it. It is so easy to get discouraged. It is so easy to think that it doesn't matter. I think as we go to be the people we want to be and bless the world in the way that only we can, I think there are lots of thoughts that get in our way. But one of the most discouraging, and universal, and self sabotaging, is the thought that it doesn't matter, that it's not going to help any way, that we personally aren't big enough, or capable enough to make a difference anyway, and maybe none of it matters.

And it kind of reminds me of that story that they told in the documentary about Fred Rogers. And if you remember, like they asked him to come after 9/11, they asked him to come, and do a couple of shows to help children, parents really, process what had happened, and come to terms with all the fear, and the grief, and the devastation, that so many of us were feeling then. And as they were recording those promos for the show, Mr. Rogers was like filled with so much self-doubt. And he told his producers, like, I just don't see what good these are going to do. Like the problems are so big, I just don't see what good the few words that I have to say, I don't see what good that is going to do. And, you know, like this is how most of us feel most of the time in so many ways, for so many of us, we think it doesn't matter and then we just don't have what we need to make a difference anyway. And I just want you to know for sure that that is not true. That is what this episode is all about. It's going to be a pep talk to let you know that it matters, that you matter, that your work matters, that your contribution, and who you are, and the way you're living your life, the way you're trying to help serve and make a difference in the world, all of that matters. And the reason that I want to emphasize this today is so that you can go do your work in the world, and make the difference that you have to make. And in order for you to do that, in order for any of us to do that, we have to overcome so much fear.

Our brain is producing enormous amounts of fear for us. We have to battle in our brain to overcome that fear. And if you think it doesn't matter anyway, or if you think like it's not going to really help or make a difference, then it becomes really, really hard to do the work to overcome those fears. If we think it doesn't matter, then there's no reason to do the work to face your fears, and we give up. And I don't want you to give up. Too many of us have given up, and I want to ask you not to. You matter. Your life matters. You have a way to help and bless that no one else does. And it is worth confronting your fears in order to do that.

6:36
So, I wanted to start today by telling you a story about what kind of prompted this podcast, and admittedly like parts of this story, like some of you are going to think like, well, this doesn't really apply to me, because I don't belong to the same church that April does. But I want you to think about the principles involved here, and how they do apply to all of us universally. Okay so, the other day I was talking to my daughter, who is serving a mission right now, and she's in Iowa. And she was telling me about an experience that she had taking a group of newly baptized members of our church to the temple in Nauvoo. And it was her job and her companion's job to watch the children throughout the day, and to play with them, and supervise them for an hour or two while their parents were in the temple. And for those of you that don't know, Nauvoo, Illinois, is a tiny, tiny town on the banks of the Mississippi River. It is a place in the world that appears to be of very little significance in the history of the world, or the impact of the world, right? Like, it's just it's like, it looks like it doesn't matter at all, but about 170, 180 years ago, this little town was the gathering place for the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which is the church that I belong to. And this is where they gathered before they were forced out and they moved out west, okay?

And the Latter-Day Saints that lived in Nauvoo here, they lived there for about six years. They built homes there. They built businesses, they built lives, and they built a temple while they were there. Now, eventually, they were driven out of Nauvoo, and the temple was destroyed and the town was abandoned. And it was like this tiny, like six-year blip in the history of the world, in the history of Illinois, right? And the work that those men and women did while they did there seemed really in the grand scheme of things, not only insignificant, but almost pointless because they put in all this work and then they had to leave. They had to abandon all of it. And it's like six-years in the history of mankind where if you blinked, it's almost as if they hadn't existed there at all, like from the outside, it sort of feels like it didn't matter at all.

And I give you that background because I want you to kind of like now fast-forward with me 175 years. That my daughter Savannah was back there in this town with a busload of people, right?And she sent me all these pictures of her that day in Nauvoo, in the same place, right?And all these pictures showed her on the steps of the temple with like 8 or 12 children from Africa and their families. And there were pictures of her like walking down the sidewalks, and sitting in the grass in this little town where 175 years ago, her ancestors had walked, and had sat, right? Those people had cleared these swamps, and built these houses, and raised the temple, and their lives had mattered, right? Their efforts had mattered, who they were while they were alive mattered, because here 175 years later, my daughter was standing in the same place, doing what she could to make sure that her life matters as well. Like, it took her such an enormous amount of bravery to go on a mission. She has a lot of anxiety, she has a lot of insecurity, and when she lived at home with us, she couldn't even go to the fast food counter and ask them for ketchup, like she used to make her sister do it for her. She wouldn't even fill up her car at the gas station that was near our house because she was afraid that she would see someone she knew and have to talk to them. Like going on a mission was pretty much the farthest possible thing for her outside of her comfort zone.

But she did it, because she wanted to do what she could to make Earth-life better for others. She wanted to make the most out of her life experience, and to do that, she was going to have to do things that her brain didn't want to do, but that she did. And as I saw those pictures this week, I was just stunned at the thought of what a truly ever-lasting impact our lives have when we do hard things, right? Her ancestors that helped build that little city did hard things. They left their families. They face the judgment, and persecution, and disdain, and derision from a lot of other humans, right? Other humans even that they loved and they cared about, and that work mattered.

And as I saw those pictures, I just thought, like, I need to tell every one of my listeners that their lives have ever-lasting impact, just as the choices that Savannah's ancestors made are still impacting the world. Her life will also have an everlasting impact, as will mine, as will yours. Every life has an everlasting impact on the world and every other human that they share the planet with, and if that's true, I want you to think about the impact that you want to have while you're here. The way you live, your life matters, it matters to you, yes, but there is an unseen, powerful, everlasting impact that never stops mattering in the world as a whole. And what I want you to know is that when you do hard things and when you face your fears to be the person that you want to be and have the life that you want to have, that that matters. And it doesn't just matter for you. You cannot be on the Earth for six-years or six-minutes without having an impact. There is no insignificant contribution and it all matters, right? To go back and quote Mr. Rogers, he said, "If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet. How important you can be to the people you may never even dream of."

12:59
And I want all of you to know that I want this thought of how important you can be to those you meet, and to those you may never dream of, inspire you to be brave and to do all the hard things that your brain doesn't want to do, but which will change the world. I think that there is an ever-lasting impact to doing hard things, whether those things are in our own personal lives, our own personal challenges, or whether those things are much more visible. I think they all have an everlasting impact. And so I am here to cheer you on and encourage you to do those hard things. And what I mean when I say hard things, what do you mean by that? Is anything that requires you to overcome the protests and the fears of your brain. I think that every one of you is extraordinary, and has the capacity to contribute, and bless the world in a way that only you can. But to do that, we each have to overcome our individual brains, which are scared, and vulnerable and which I never want to leave the cave or do anything outside of our comfort zone.

And amazingly, the only thing between you and the everlasting impact that you can make is that brain. And even more amazing than that, the only tool your brain has to do that to keep you safe, and small and in your comfort zone is to think thoughts that create feelings like your brain can't ever stop you. It can't physically keep you from doing anything, it can only ever produce negative emotion, that is the only mechanism by which it has to stop you. And believe me, okay, that is not to say that that is not a very powerfully effective tool like it really does work. The negative emotion that our brain can produce is real, and it is a significant deterrent for all of us, okay, it does work. But I don't think it has to, and that's what I want to talk to you about today.

So, last Friday, I taught this class, this free class called How to Love Yourself in Your Life, and they offered it to all of you and to everybody on my email-list. I was trying in my own way to make an impact on the world, right? And share the way that I see our relationship with ourself, and how to change that, because I think changing that can change your life, right? And I think it's so important how we think about ourselves in our lives. And so, I decided, hey, I'm going to teach this class. And in the days leading up to it, I had so much fear and anxiety. Like my brain was like, no, no, why would we do this? Why would we leave the cave where people can criticize us, and have thoughts about us and have judgments about us? Like this is a very, very bad idea. My brain did not want me to do this thing and it produced a ton of negative emotion around it to keep you from doing it like it even made little escape plan options offered to me. Like you could get sick, right? We could see that our Internet is down. We could just go live in the woods, this is my brains solution to everything. We could just go live in the woods anyway.

So, I was having all this fear and anxiety. I talk to my coach about it, and my coach asked me, what are you scared of? And I was like, I'm scared that no one's going to come, and I'm also scared that people will come. I'm scared that they're going to come and they're going to expect things of me, and I'm going to disappoint them. I won't be good enough. I won't be entertaining. It won't be helpful, right? Maybe people are going to leave in the middle, right? And underneath all that, you can see that universal thought that Mr. Rogers also had, I just don't know how it's going to help. I don't know if it will be helpful, and I don't know if people will like it, right? And like me by extension, right? So, I told my coach all my fears, and then she said, okay if these things happened, like if people just leave in the middle, they don't find it helpful, how will you feel like if people log on, like about five minutes later, and you're standing there alone in a zoom room, how will you feel? And I was like, oh, terrible.

And she's like, what kind of terrible? And I was like, well, I would feel embarrassed and humiliated, and ashamed, and disappointed. And she asked me, could you feel those things if you needed to? Could you feel bad if you needed to, right? Like if you chose the thoughts that created embarrassed, or humiliated, or ashamed, or disappointed, could you feel those things if you needed to? And that's when I remembered oh, yeah, that's the worst of it, the worst thing is always just a feeling. The worst thing that could ever happen if everything went wrong is a feeling a feeling that my own brain would create by thinking thoughts. And that is 100% true for all of us, no matter what we are asking ourselves to do, no matter how much fear or anxiety, or negative emotion our brain is producing, right? No matter how much of that your brain creates, it is only doing it to get out of possibly feeling bad in the future.

18:21
Like, think about this, it is producing all kinds of negative emotion to avoid another possible negative emotion in the future if things go badly, right? This is not exactly logical, is it, right? Like, we got to do something in our brain is like, no, no, don't do that. You might feel bad if it goes wrong here, just feel bad now, feel scared now, feel anxious now. Just in case you you have to feel embarrassed then, right? Listen, we are all scared but most of our fears are unexplored. We don't want to fail, but why? We don't want people to think badly of us, but why? Because we don't want to feel bad. But that's always the worst of it, a feeling. So, if you're going to do something, if you're going to do anything, the very worst outcome that can ever happen is feeling bad. And when you know that it really puts things in perspective, it means that we are only ever scared of our own feelings, or really we're only scared of our potential possible feelings, right? Our fear of feelings is keeping a small fear of our feelings is keeping us not going after our dreams, fear of our feelings is preventing us from doing the things we want to do. But I want you to know that you could feel bad if you needed to, and it's always a choice, you are never required to feel bad. But if you chose thoughts that created negative emotion, you could totally feel them and you would still be okay.

So, for a minute, I just kind of want to categorize these negative emotions in a way that I hope will help you see this a little bit differently. So first, there's what I call preemptive negative emotion. These are the negative emotions that our brain offers us to prevent us taking action or doing work in the world, right? These preemptive negative emotions like our trying to, like, deter us from taking some action, right? They look like fear, or anxiety, or dread, like they are any emotion our brain gives us to deter us or stop us from doing things. That's the preemptive negative emotion. And then, there is subsequent negative emotion. Subsequent negative emotions are the emotions we feel after we have done our work. And these subsequent negative emotions are created, by the way we think about what we've done, right? They often look like shame, or embarrassment, or humiliation, or vulnerability. These are emotions that our brain gives us after our brain has judged our work to not be good enough, okay?

Now, remember how you said that, like doing hard things in our life requires you to overcome your brain. This is what I mean, we are going to be required to overcome our brain in these two ways. First, as you go to do hard things, your brain is going to suggest thoughts that create preemptive negative emotion to keep you from doing the thing. But notice, the truth is that preemptive negative emotion is only there in case you feel subsequent negative emotion when you have done the thing. And your brain is the one creating the subsequent negative emotion, actually, your brain is creating all of it. But what that means is that your brain is giving you preemptive negative emotion so that you don't feel subsequent negative emotion, which means your brain is just scared of itself. Your brain is offering you this preemptive negative emotion of fear in case it creates subsequent negative emotion for you. We aren't ever afraid of anything except our own brain. Which is pretty astounding when you think about it. This is why I talk about overcoming our brain, it is only ever the problem.

The only problem is the pre-emptive emotion it creates in case of subsequent emotion that it creates and in this very sneaky way, we are letting our brain keep us from contributing in the way we want to by being scared of itself, and I don't think you should let it. You have an everlasting impact to making the world, and I don't think you should let your brain's fear of itself keep you from doing the work. Overcoming your brain doesn't mean like not feeling the preemptive negative emotion your brain creates, doesn't mean getting to a place where your brain no longer does that for you. It means seeing that preemptive negative emotion for what it is as only an attempt to avoid subsequent negative emotion. And when you see it this way, it can be so helpful, and not letting your brain use it to deter you.

23:27
So, I really want you to, like, wrap your brain around this. I know it's like, wait, what? So, just think about it like this. So, first we can allow those preemptive negative emotions to be part of the experience, right? When your brain produces fear, and anxiety, and dread, and all that, it's just an indicator that we're on the right track. We're doing things that are going to have everlasting impact, okay? So, it makes sense your brain is scared. But then I want you to remember that the worst that can happen by doing this thing in the world is having a subsequent feeling. We might have a subsequent negative emotion. And then I think the key to all of it is committing to how you are going to feel subsequently. Committing and deciding ahead of time how you are going to feel no matter what, okay? Not just letting your brain decide what your subsequent emotions are going to be, but remembering that I get a say in it.

So, I do this all the time when I go to do things that my brain doesn't want to do, I can alleviate so much fear and anxiety, when I make a commitment to myself about how I am going to feel about it. When I'm done, and I actually write it down, I tell myself, like, no matter what happens, I am going to be proud about these things. Like I'm not going to allow myself to create thoughts of shame, or embarrassment about this. And I make a commitment to myself of how I'm going to choose to feel subsequently. And this commitment has helped me get into action when my brain is producing fear, because, again, it's only really scared of itself. But what it's going to say when I'm done with the things. And so if I can make a commitment not to say those things, I can alleviate a lot of the fear I have.

I want to offer you one more thought today as you go to make your everlasting impact in the world, and it comes from a story in the Book of Mormon that has always been one of my favorites. And I want to just offer it today as a metaphor for you, for why I think you should keep going when you're scared. The story occurs at the time of the Tower of Babel when the Lord is confounding all the languages of the people, right? And at the time, there was this guy named Jared and he had this really big family. And when all this was happening, Jared asked his brother to go ask the Lord not to change their language, not to change their family's language so that they could still communicate with each other and understand one another.

So, Jared's brother goes and he asks and the Lord says, okay, right? And he preserves their language. And then Jared asks his brother, hey, why don't you go ask the Lord to do the same thing for our friends so we can still communicate with our friends, right? And that their language won't be confounded. And so, again, the brother of Jared goes, and asks, and then are granted this blessing. And then Jared asks his brother to go ask the Lord if he will lead them from where they're living now into a land of promise, a land where they can be safe, and protected. And again, the brother of Jared goes, and asks, and the Lord agrees to do this. He leads them out of the land. They leave the land, they pack up, they move out, right?

And they are taken by the Lord to a place on the seashore, and they get to the seashore and they stay there for four years. And there's a scripture that says that like after four years have gone by, the brother of Jared was talking to the Lord, and the Lord chastises him for not calling on his name for four years, this whole time by while they were at the seashore. He's like, you haven't called on me, you haven't called on my name. And the Lord chastises him for this. And sometimes when we read the scripture, we interpret that to mean that the brother of Jared wasn't praying, or talking to the Lord for four years. But I recently heard this podcast where Dr. Charles Swift offered a different perspective, and he said that he thought what was really going on here was not that the brother of Jared had stopped praying, it was just that he had stopped asking for more. He and his family were comfortable there on the seashore, they weren't in any danger.

They were happy, and comfortable, and safe, and really to go to the Lord at that point and ask for more, that looked a lot more dangerous than not asking, right? To get more to get to the promised land, they were going to have to cross the ocean. They were going to have to cross the sea. They were going to have to take risks. They were going to have to do work. They were going to have to build boats. They were going to have to be vulnerable, and do scary things, and that was going to be hard and so, they stopped asking for more. For more directions, right? It's like it was really easy to stop asking, and just stay where they were. Like, I don't want to take the risk of building a boat, and getting on that water, and possibly drowning, or getting lost. Or like, even if the boats are seaworthy and we're okay like like we're safe on the boats, we're still going to have to be in them on the water in this crap little place, right? For three hundred forty four days, and that sounds pretty miserable. I don't think I really want more. Like we could just be okay here.

28:31
And as I heard Dr. Smith talking about this, I thought, oh, my gosh, like this reminds me so much of our own brains, right? Like, we're often willing to change our thoughts, and do hard things when it feels necessary, like when it feels dangerous to remain the same, right? Like, like when I first found life coaching, and I needed to do, like, hard work to change my thoughts, it felt really necessary because I was so unhappy. I was so miserable that I was willing to do the hard work to not stay there in that emotional place. But then we can get to a place in our lives where we're relatively comfortable, right? We're going forward actually is much scarier than just staying put in our brain wants to talk us out of more. It wants to talk us out of doing hard things. It's like, why, why we're fine here? Why do we need to do more? Why do we need to go farther? It doesn't really matter, we could just be happy here. We could possibly die going out there, we don't need more, right? I think in terms of personal growth, this is the story that our brain is always offering us. We don't need to do any of that, it doesn't really matter. We don't need more. We're fine. Like I know this story because my brain offers it to me all the time.

Every time I go to do hard, scary things in my business, every time I go to stretch myself in my relationships with other people or even with myself or with God, my brain is like, hey, listen, where we are is great, why do we want to go out there and risk negative emotion? Risk, rejection, risk, disappointment, risk, embarrassment or humiliation? But you guys, there is more out there. There is a metaphoric promised land, and the more you do hard things and overcome your fears, the more impact you can have out there. And I think the more willing you are to do hard things, by that I mean overcome your brain, the bigger that impact gets. And you don't need to strive for that more, for that promise land, for that impact from a feeling of insufficiency or dissatisfaction, like I want you to overcome your brain and pursue all the things you want from a place of sufficiency and possibility. Which means, look, I am amazing here and I am making a difference. But also there is more there is no limit to what I can create, and achieve. There is no end to the impact I can have if I'm willing to keep going. Not because where I am is an unsatisfactory, but because there is more available, there is more growth, and more impact available if I'm willing to keep doing hard things.

And the most loving, creative, powerful being in the universe, I think, is always beckoning us on to be that kind of creator, to come to that promised land where your impact becomes so big. And to get there, we have to overcome the fears of our brain and choose to be brave. I have this little motivation on my computer that says this is the part where we are brave. Because honestly, you guys, I haven't figured out a way for my brain not to offer me, like, those preemptive negative thoughts that create so much fear and anxiety for me, but I have figured out that I don't have to let those determine. I don't have to let those emotions stop me, and that if I'm brave, I can keep going. I can keep getting what I want and helping in as many ways as I want to. And every person who has made an impact on your life had to be brave and had to overcome their brain in some way. This is the way of it, to serve, to have an everlasting impact, we have to be willing to do hard things, we have to be brave, we have to be willing to be vulnerable.

32:31
We have to be willing to feel negative emotion, both the preemptive kind, and even a willingness to feel the subsequent kind if we decide to choose the thoughts that create it. I also want you to know that I have found that the single most effective way to be brave, and to overcome my brain, and increase my impact for good on my life is through coaching. It is what has allowed me to stop letting all that preemptive negative emotion keep me from living the life I want to live. And it is the tool that I am going to continue to use to build my life and grow my impact. Coaching helps me do hard things when my brain is always trying to talk me out of it. You matter, your life matters. And the more you overcome your brain and your fears to live the life the way you want to do it, the more everlasting impact your life can have. That is the price. Overcoming your brain is the price. And I think it is so much easier to pay that price and keep paying that price, and to know that it's worth it to pay that price when you have a coach showing you the truth about the fears in your brain.

If there are things that you want to do, and your feelings are getting in the way of that, coaching can help you if you know that you came to Earth to make an impact. But your brain says it's too hard to scare you. It doesn't matter anyway, coaching can help you. And even if your ambitions are far less than that, and you just want to love your life instead of wondering, like, what it would be like to disappear from it, coaching can help you. And I would love to be your coach. I would love to help you get the only thing that is in the way of your everlasting impact out of your way. My next coaching group starts the first week in August, and if you want to know what coaching is like and be a part of that, you can sign up for a free coaching call, learn all about it and see how the tiniest little shifts in your brain can create enormous amounts of impact in your life, and in the world. If you want to, like, sign up and try that, you can do that at my website. I think that your fullest, richest, most impactful life is out there on the other side of your fears, on the other side of your brains protests.

And it matters it matters so much that it is worth the uncomfortable work we all have to do to overcome our brain. Like that is what we came to do when we overcome the fears of our brain, we are doing the becoming, and the growing that we came to Earth to do and that becoming has ever lasting impact. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome! Go change the world. It matters! I love you for listening and I'll see you next week!

The next round of my group coaching program made four more starts soon, and I think you should be a part of it. Your brain was program for survival, but you were made for more than that. You were Made for More love and more accomplishment and more joy right now. And I can show you this simple way to get all of that. Join me in Made for More where we will spend the next six-months coaching and reprogramming your brain so that you can get the most out of this life. And the next go to aprilpricecoaching.com to sign up for a free coaching consultation and see how changing your thoughts can change everything else!