How to Love Everyone at Your Holiday Table

With the holidays approaching, we’re likely to have  lots of holiday get-togethers with our families and friends. That’s a lot of human brains (who all think differently!) sharing the same space and gathering around the same table. That also means there are also going to be plenty of opportunities to have all kinds of thoughts and feelings about these other humans. “How do I love everybody here?”

This episode is all about loving everyone around your holiday table, and really everyone in your life. And HOW you can love all these people think and say and do things that you don't always like or appreciate or approve of.  

Why family conflict happens

I’m sure you’ve had the experience of preparing for a family gathering and thinking through who all is going to be there and prejudging how the day will go. 

Your brain already has some ideas about which people are easier or harder to get along with. But these are just thoughts and judgements you have about them. People are just people. 

Most of the time, we think that if another person is making us feel bad, then they need to be different. They need to change. But this usually doesn’t happen, and it leaves us feeling powerless and frustrated.

We can’t solve the problem of how someone else acts or who they are. Instead, we can understand that our feelings are causing the relationship to seem easy or difficult. And when the problem is within us - our thoughts and feelings - it becomes one that we can solve.

When we struggle with loving someone, it usually comes down to one of two things: We feel inferior or we feel superior.

If you didn't feel in some way inferior or superior to the other person, you could love and accept them exactly as they are. 

Our brains are always trying to make sure that we are okay, so they are always looking around and ranking us in terms of the other humans that are around us. 

But people can't be better or worse. They are not easy or difficult. They are not superior or inferior. We are all just people making choices about what we think, feel, say and do.

It's your judgments, thoughts and feelings about those choices that are making it possible or not for you to love them. 

The good news about loving others

Your thoughts are in your control. This means that you can feel love for anyone at that table, no matter what. Love is made available to you whenever you want it by your choices and not theirs. We can feel as much love as we want.

It also means that if people don't love you, it's actually not your problem. It is a choice that is happening in their mind. 

You are always 100% lovable, and so are they. And anytime one of you might choose not to love the other, it is based only on the choices in our minds, and not on anyone’s inherent lovability. 

Thoughts to help you feel more love

People can't be ranked. When you find yourself feeling inferior or superior, that ranking is just made up by your brain. People can’t be better or worse than each other. Nobody here needs anybody else's approval, because we're all good as we are. 

Everybody gets to choose. If you don’t like how someone else is showing up, remind yourself they get to choose anything they want. And so do you. Your brain will want to focus on them, but the solution is to keep bringing it back to you. What do you want to choose? What do you want to think and feel? 

Everyone is doing it right. We are all acting in a way that follows our thoughts and feelings. No matter what choice someone is making, it's always the right one because it's coming downstream of whatever thought their brain has given them, whatever thought they've chosen to believe. And you can just stop arguing with it. 

Allow for your own humanness. What if you stopped trying to prove that you're good and worthy of love and approval? I think it can be so helpful to just admit: I am not all good. And also I am not all bad. I am both, and that is perfect. This can eliminate so much of the conflict inside you and allow you to love yourself and love others so much easier.

Let everyone else choose their experience. Stop trying to manage it for them. Often when we have a big family event, we want it to be all good and happy. We want everyone to enjoy themselves, feel included and loved. This can create a lot of pressure and expectations. When you put down your badge that says you're in charge of everybody's happiness and entertainment, you can accept them as they are in whatever experience or emotion they're having. You just get to love them.

Be aware of the reality and the wonder of the situation. Think about all the different human brains that are gathered together. They’re all programmed to look for threats, identify what’s wrong, rank themselves and everybody else at the table. It’s no wonder that conflict arises. We are all in this human experience together. 

Truly we are here on Earth, in these bodies, to learn to love. And not just when it's easy, but to learn to love when it's not. 

These people are exactly what you need to practice that love. The people at the table who are so hard for you to love are your best teachers, they are giving you exactly what you need. 

You’ll Learn:

• 2 common thought patterns that cause us to struggle with loving someone
• 6 thoughts to help you feel more love
• The step you must take before you shift your thoughts

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 thoughts you think. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome.

Hello Podcast Universe! Welcome to Episode 185 of the 100% Awesome Podcast. I'm April Price, I am so happy to be with you behind the mic today here in our own little universe amongst the greater podcast universe. And if you are new here, welcome! If you have been here since the beginning, welcome back. And just know how much I love and appreciate you. I am always thinking about you, about what would be helpful to you, about what you're going through, about what's happening for you. And today's podcast really was born out of out of the answers to that, I've been thinking about where you are in your life and hoping that this will help you as all of you are probably preparing to go through the holidays and seeing a lot more family around your tables and whether or not you are in the US and you and you celebrate Thanksgiving, you probably are going to see people over the holidays or really whenever your family is gathering next and you have a bunch of brains in the same room together. I think that this episode will be really helpful to you and just like to really think about how do I love everybody here? And so it's going to be a fun one before we get to that.

I just wanted to let you know of another free way that I can help you in your life. So, on December 1st and second, I am hosting a free workshop. It's a two day event from 9 to 10 a.m. Pacific on both Thursday and Friday, December 1st and second. And it is called From Dream to Done. And I am going to teach you everything you need to know to take all those dreams and goals and wishes and plans and thoughts and ideas like whatever stage they're in. If they're just like a baby dream or if you've had it for a long time to be able to take those things from that dream stage, that thought stage. Take it from out of your head and be able to get it done and bring it into reality in your life. And I'm going to show you how to overcome all the obstacles that get in our way and prevent us from doing that. And so, if you just think like I cannot go another year of my life thinking about things and not doing them, then I want you to come to this workshop so that you can have the amazing 2023 that you want, where you actually start doing all the things that you've always wanted to do.

So, this last year for me, last couple of years really have just been like. Ones where I've just seen, like all so many of my dreams actually come to pass in my life and become a reality. And it has, just like this year, has just been one of the favorite years of my life for that reason. And so I want you to be able to have that experience next year and really every year of your life while you are here on Earth, okay? So, registration is free to all of you, you can sign up at Aprilpricecoaching.com/dream.

You can also text the word dream to 66866, and that will automatically register you. And you can come and you can get everything you need to do to take it from dream to done. And if you can't make it alive, I know that time might be hard to make. If you sign up, you will get the replay and then you'll have all that information and access to that video, that event, and all the materials so that you can create the year that you want. Okay, so get signed up. You have nothing to lose except another year of just thinking about it. Okay, so I would love to be able to help you there. And just a quick note also for those of you that have been thinking about working with me, like in a coaching relationship, I wanted you to know that my next group is going to start the first part of January and it is already filling up and I limit the amount of people in each group so that I can give you lots of individual help and attention and coaching your brain on your thoughts in your circumstances.

And so, even though I haven't like started marketing that group yet, even, but it is already filling up. And so if you have thought about it, if you thought about like really wanting to work with me next year and you've been looking forward to it, now is the time to get on a call with me, see what it's like to be coached. What an incredible life changing impact it can have on your life. And then if you want one of those spots, we can get you into one of them. Okay. So you can sign up for that free call any time at my website or you can just join the group there as well anytime, okay, all right?

On to the episode today, which is all about loving everyone around your holiday table and really everyone in your life. Right. Doesn't matter if they're around the table or not. But I think it's really going to be about how do I love all these people in my life who think and say and do things that I don't always like. I don't always appreciate, I don't always approve of. Right. And I actually had so much fun thinking about this episode and creating it, and I'm really excited about it and I think will be like, so helpful to you.

Okay, so I think we've all had that experience where you're going to go to a family event and you kind of are like, okay, well who's coming? Right? And we're kind of like going through who we think is going to be there, who's going to show up, and we kind of want to know who's going to be there, right, so that we can know if this is going to be good or bad, if I'm going to feel happy or like angry. Right. And we kind of need to, like, prepare ourselves or protect ourselves or like put on some armor depending on who we think is going to show up. And like most of us automatically, like if I ask you who's that, who are the easy people at the event and who are the hard people? Like, I bet people come to your mind, right? Like our brain kind of has a thought about who's easy to get along with, who's easy to love and who is not, who is just difficult and who is hard around that, you know, kind of metaphorical table.

But what I want to start with today is to just remind you that even though our brains think that it's actually not true, like there aren't hard people and easy people that are just people, and whether or not they are hard or easy to get along with is really just a judgment call that we are making in our own heads. And that is not to tell you that, like, you know what you've been thinking about them is wrong. It's just to tell you that. If you want to change it and if you want it to be easier on that table, and if you want to feel more love around that table, then it is your problem to solve if you want to solve it. Like, if it's my judgment that's making them difficult, then it's my issue to solve right now. And please, just like know right from the beginning, like you do not have to change your thoughts or feelings about anyone in your life. This podcast is for those of you that want to that you, you know, maybe like we're the ones who are feeling love, right? And so if we want to feel love around that table, like that is an option that we get to choose. Okay? And so this podcast is to help you choose that if you want it, okay?

So most of the time we think that like if that other person is making us feel bad, then it's them that needs to be different. It's them that needs to change. And yet every year they show up and they're not any different, right? They haven't changed. They think the same, they act the same, they treat us the same. And this is like really frustrating, right? And it makes us powerless and it keeps us solving the wrong problem. It keeps us solving the problem of them being them. And that is a problem that we have no control over.

We can't solve them being them, right? Like there is no more powerless position to be in than to have to, like, solve the problem of them being who they are. So, when you know that that that's not going to be an effective way to solve this problem and you know that it's your own feelings that are causing their easiness or their difficulty. And when I know that that is created in my mind and it's created by my thoughts, that it's in fact my creation, then I know that I have a much better chance of solving it within myself than anywhere else.

Okay, so I want to kind of frame this in a way that maybe you haven't ever thought of and that I think will just in and of itself start to jiggle some things loose for you, okay? So, I think that for most of us, when we are having a hard time loving someone in our life, someone around that table, it's because of one of two main overarching thought patterns. Okay, so when we have a hard time loving people as they are, as they show up, as they are themselves, it's because we either have a bunch of thoughts that make us feel inferior when we're around them, or we have a bunch of thoughts that make us feel superior when we're around them.

Okay, so these are like the two main ways that we when we're not feeling love for them, it's usually because we're either feeling inferior or we're feeling superior. Okay, so one of two things can happen. First, we can be around them and we can have lots of thoughts from our brain that tell us about how we're not good enough, how we're never going to be good enough, how we need to, like, prove that we're good enough, right? And how they don't love us. And there's a part of our brain that thinks, like, maybe that's because we aren't lovable or there's something wrong with us or we don't fit in here.

And we have a lot of negative thoughts about how they think we're doing it wrong and how they judge us. And we feel defensive and insecure about that, and that makes us feel terrible whenever we are around them. Okay, so all of these thoughts notice, are creating a feeling of inferiority within us. And so, when we're around them, we hate that feeling, right? And and so it's good to know that, like, that's that that's what can happen on one hand. On the other hand, sometimes when we are around the people in our family and we're having a difficult time loving them, what's happening is we're having lots of thoughts about how they're doing it wrong and how they aren't good enough and how they should behave better and how it's too hard to love a person who thinks or acts or does things in this like worse way than you do, right, And that they should know better and they should act better and they should be better and they should know how to treat you better.

And this makes us feel like they are less than in some way in the way that they're showing up. They are doing it wrong and they are less then. And that in fact, puts us in a place where we feel superior or better than them. So, I think that is just like so interesting to notice, right? Just like notice that if I didn't feel in some way inferior or in some way superior to them, I could love people and accept them exactly as they are. But my brain is offering me thoughts and making me feel instead either inferior or superior when I'm around them. And that makes love hard, too hard to feel and hard to choose and hard to access. Okay, so in these moments when we feel bad around them, right, and we feel either inferior or superior around them and, you know, it's hard to feel loving thoughts towards them we think that they need to change that. If they could be different than I would feel less inferior. And if they could be different, then I wouldn't have to feel superior, right? But what we really need to change is our thoughts are a collection of thoughts are making us feel inferior. Our collection of thoughts are making us feel superior, and they don't have any control over that. That is in our control, okay?

And so, it's up to us to decide what thoughts we want to change so that we can stop feeling less than somehow. Or we can stop thinking that they are less than somehow. Okay, so really notice that if I think they need to be different so that I can feel better. It's first of all, not true. And second of all, impossible, because they aren't good at being different, right? They are who they are and what's happening really is that deep down, the way they act makes me not like myself, because in that moment I feel inferior. Or deep down, I think like I you know, I don't like them because I'm right and they're wrong, and this makes me feel slightly superior to them. So, what I want you to see is that our brains are always trying to make sure that we are okay. They are always looking around and ranking us in terms of the other humans that are around us. So, as we sit around the Thanksgiving table, our brain is trying to figure out like where we fit, if we're good or bad, if they're good or bad and they are, and we rank ourselves according to to these other humans.

And your brain is always trying to figure out if you are good enough to stay alive and to be a part of this tribe, right? And so it's always trying to assess where you fit and if you are better or worse than the person next to you. And so, your brain's tendency to rank, you then end up ranking other people as well, making them superior to you or inferior to you. And when we think that they're above us or below us, better than us or worse than us, then it is really hard to love people exactly as they are. People can't be better or worse. They are not easy or difficult. They are not superior, inferior, they are not remarkable, actually, in any way. They are all just people. They are just people making choices. You are a person making choices, and so are they. They are just people making choices about what they think and what they feel and what they say and do. The way they treat others, right? All of those are just choices that they are making. But it's my judgments about those choices that are making it possible or not for me to love them.

It's just my assessment, my view of those choices that makes it possible to love them or not. It's my thoughts about who they are, about what they think, about what they do, about how they treat me that either prevent me from loving them or allow me to love them. It's not actually them. It's not their actual choices, even, it's my thoughts about those choices. And I think this is really good news. Okay. At least on two very important levels.

So first, I think this really good news and it's in my thoughts and in my control, because it means that I can love and feel love in my body. For anyone at that table, no matter what they think, no matter what they choose, no matter what they say and feel and do whatever choice they make, love is made available to me whenever I want it by my choices and not theirs. So that's first of all, amazing news came second. It's great news because if people don't love you, it's actually not your problem. I think it is a choice that is happening in their mind, okay? Now, because of who you are or the choices that you make or what you think or say or do, you are always 100% lovable, and so are they. And any time one of you might choose not to love the other, but that is based only on the choices in our minds and not on either of our inherent love ability.

So it's good news for those two reasons. First, you get to love anyone you want and they do, too. And if they don't love you, that isn't about you. It's never about you. It's about them and the choices that they are making in their heads. Okay. So, see, like I told you, such good news, right? So we can just like that means we can feel as much love as we want, and we don't have to worry about if whether or not people are feeling love for us. Because it isn't. It isn't up to us. It's never about us.

So, now you know that it is possible to love anyone at the table. And you also know why that is the case. Why? It's possible because it's all in your control, in your mind. Okay, so now let's talk about how like, like, okay, I understand that it is possible, but also how right. How is it possible and what can I do to make that possibility into a reality this Thanksgiving or this Christmas? The next time I see my family, how do I make this like, okay, they're possible to love, but like, how do I make that happen? All right.

So, I'm going to give you some things to think about, to adjust your thoughts, because remember, it's it's possible because of what's happening in my head. So, what we need to change our thoughts about that other person. So, the first thing that I want you to think about is just to remind yourself that people can't be ranked. When you find yourself feeling inferior or superior, you have to just remind yourself, okay, this is just made up by my brain. People can't be better or worse when I feel inferior or I feel superior. It's always a lie because nothing I do will make me better or worse than someone else. And nothing they do will make them better or worse than anyone else either. And so, allows me to just drop my defenses and stop needing to prove that I'm good and prove that I'm worthy of their love or their approval. Like so much of the conflict we have is because, like we want to be like enough in their eyes, right? And it's really just because we have that feeling of inferiority. And you just have to remember, listen, that is just made up by my brains. Humans can't be ranked. We are all just humans making choices, as I said, and none of our choices make us better or worse or more lovable or less lovable.

They our choices are just creating experiences for us, and everybody gets to choose that experience, okay? So, just knowing like, I can't be ranked and neither can I, that will allow you to, like, stop performing and thinking. You need to like, seek someone's approval allows you to just set that down. And it will also allow you to stop needing other people to perform or behave in order to like, get your approval. Like nobody here needs anybody else's approval because we are all we all good, like we cannot be ranked. We're all the same. We're just humans choosing our experiences.

Okay, that brings us to the second thing that I that I think is really useful to think and remember. And I said to myself all the time, when I find myself in these moments of like finding it hard to love is to just remind myself everybody gets to choose. It's good just to remind myself when I'm like, hating. How they're showing up is to remind myself they get to choose anything they want. They get to choose how they think. They get to choose how they feel. They get to choose how they act, and so do I. Like, that's the only part that I get to control my choices. So, always just bring it back to your own model. Your brain is going to want to focus on them, what they're doing, what they're thinking, what they're saying. Like it's just going to want to, like, focus on them and tell you it's all wrong. You just always want to bring it back to you. What am I choosing? What do I want to choose? What do I want to feel? What do I want to think? You got to bring it back to yourself. That's the only thing you get to decide.

And whenever I find myself thinking that other people should be doing it differently, I am wrong because they get to choose like God gave them agency. And no matter how good my ideas are or how reasonable my requests are, or how much sense it makes that I like think we should all be kind, nice humans. God doesn't let me take their agency from them. I'm not allowed they get to choose whatever they want, even, like, really bad behavior that is up to them. And like, we are not in charge of making sure they choose, right? We are only in charge of choosing what we want, right? Choosing like the experience that we want. We're in charge of our choices and you just want to take the focus off them and examine yourself. Like what is happening inside my mind, inside my heart? What am I choosing?

The next thought I want to give you, you might want to reject, but just bear with me. The next thought is that everyone is always doing it, right? So, like, as soon as your brain starts to say, like, No, they're doing it wrong, they should be different. They should act different. They shouldn't treat me that way. I wonder like this thought can be so useful. Everyone is always doing it right, even when they're doing it wrong. Okay, and what I mean by that is our actions are always following our thoughts. You know the model by now, if you've listened to this podcast, we have thoughts. Those create our feelings, those drive our actions. And so, when we see people in our lives behaving in ways that we don't like, those ways are still right because they are just coming downstream of their thoughts.

That means every time they are behaving, they're saying something, they're doing something. They're behaving in a way like that. Action is always right in that it is the exact thing that follows. Thinking like that and feeling like that. And this just allows us to stop arguing and stop telling ourselves like they're doing it wrong. They never are. Byron Katie always says, If you thought what I thought, you would do what I do. And that's just the truth. And so, everyone at that table, no matter what choice they're making, it's always the right one because it's just coming downstream of whatever thought their brain is giving them, whatever thought they've chosen to believe. And you can just stop arguing with it.

Number four, this one is so important, and that is to allow for your own humanness. So, one of the problems becomes is that like we're just trying so hard to prove that we are good and worthy of love. And I really want to offer you. Like, what if you stopped trying to be good and like, show other people that you're good and prove that you're good and worthy of their love and approval. Like half the problems I am convince, probably more 75% of the problems are because of our feelings of inferiority. We're just like so scared that we're not good when we're around other people. We just have all of these thoughts that are like reminding us that we're not good. And so what I want to offer you is one of the thoughts that you can have that will help you is to just acknowledge that you're not like if you have to, like always think I'm good, and then you get around people where you have thoughts that you aren't like. That can be like, really uncomfortable, right? So, when we feel inferior, we get defensive and we really like, just like cling to the really hard to trying to, like, prove that we are good.

And I think it just can be so helpful to instead just admit like, I am not good and also I am not bad. I am both. And that is perfect. And every one of us at this table are good and bad, and we don't have to, like, prove that to each other. Ironically, like allowing yourself to acknowledge the things that are quote unquote bad, that are a mess, that aren't quite right, that you don't necessarily approve of in yourself. Like, ironically, as soon as you acknowledge that all those things are there, your feelings of inferiority disappear, right? Because those feelings of inferiority are just there to like, hide all those insecurities, to hide all the dark parts, to hide all the bad parts, to hide all the past were ashamed of. But as soon as we're like, I don't have to hide this. I'm not good. And also, I'm not all bad, right? And when I don't have to hide that, then my feelings of inferiority can disappear. And like, it's so much easier to love them and to love me.

So, like, allowing yourself to be both good and bad, allowing for your humanness can really, like, illuminate so much of the conflict and allow you to love yourself and love others. So much easier. Okay. The next thought that I want to give you is to really think about letting everyone else choose their experience and stop trying to manage it for them. So, so many times we have these big holiday events or a family reunion or finally getting together and we want it to be good, all good. We want it to be happy. We want everyone to enjoy themselves. We want everyone to feel included. We want everyone to feel loved. We want everyone to like, you know, feel cheerful and not angry and not annoyed and not all of the things, right? And that causes its own set of problems, wanting people to have a different experience than the one they are choosing. And especially like, I think for us moms. Like, it just feels so important that everybody have the right experience. And it can really create like a lot of pressure and expectations.

And then when people aren't happy or aren't enjoying themselves, we end up, like unconsciously rejecting them. And we're not loving them as they are in that annoyed or irritated or bothered or depressed state. Okay so, I think a really easy way to allow you to get to love for other people is to really, truly just let them choose their experience. The truth is you never get to choose it for them anyway. But when you can just put down your like badge that says you're in charge of that and you're in charge of everybody's happiness and everybody's entertainment and stop trying to manage it for them, Like you can accept them as they are, as they show up in whatever experience, whatever emotion they're having, whatever they want to show up. Like, you just get to love them there in that choice.

Just the other day, my husband was talking about our upcoming Thanksgiving and my daughter Savannah has been on had been on her mission. And so this is her first Thanksgiving after her mission back with us. And he's just like the other day, just offhandedly, he said, like it just needs to be so good because it's our first Thanksgiving back, it's like this is a recipe for disaster, right? Like, we just need to, like, let everyone have whatever experience they choose and love that one instead of needing it to be something ideal or something perfect or something happy. Like we just need it to be what it is and, and like, just work on our choices about loving people exactly as they show up. Okay, so the last thing that I want you to think about, a thought that I think will help you here is just to, like, take a minute and just be aware of the reality and also the wonder of the situation. I really want you to think about what's happening at that Thanksgiving table, and I want you to think about all the brains at that table, right? Like there are all these human brains and every human brain at that table is programmed to look for threats and to, like, identify what's gone wrong, what's gone wrong with themselves, what's gone wrong with other people.

They all have a human brain that's designed to rank themselves at that table and and rank everybody else at that table. And like, here we are together, right? Sharing this human experience with these brains that are all programmed to think in this way. And so, like, it's no wonder, right, that that conflict arises. And it's no wonder that it becomes hard to love because we all have these brains that are that are programmed to work in this defensive, protective way and to just always see what's wrong.

Okay, and so I just think it's a remarkable opportunity because really and truly, we are here on Earth in these bodies to learn to love. And not to learn to love when it's easy, but to learn to love when it's not. You have to stop thinking that you're failing when all the brains don't get along, or when people have negative feelings like we're all here learning to choose together. And half the time at least we're going to get that wrong. And we're not going to choose positive, happy, loving feelings. And we are practicing together. And that learning is happening at that table. Even when we're choosing to not feel love. We are learning there. Here in that family, we are practicing together. It is kind of amazing when you think about it that like these people are exactly what I need to do. The practice of love, the people at the table who are so hard for you to love are your best teachers. They are giving you exactly what you need. You don't need any more practice like choosing to love the people who think and act the way that you think they should.

You don't need any more practice loving the people who are easy for you to love. What you need practice in is choosing to love the people who don't think the way you do, who don't like, act the way you think they should. The people who are difficult. Like that's where we need our practice and everyone there at that table is there to like, provide that practice for you. It's kind of it's kind of wonderful when you think about it. All right. I just have one word of caution as I leave you here. I've given you a bunch of thoughts to think, and I think they'll probably be, like, swirling in your head and you'll be like, What am I supposed to be thinking when I'm thinking I'm not feeling love? Oh, no what's the thought? What did April say? And I just want to offer you this. Thought that in those moments where you're not feeling love, where you're feeling annoyed or irritated or frustrated or angry or inferior or whatever you're feeling in those moments, the best thing to do is to just get in your body and describe the feeling to yourself physically. Don't try to think of a thought until you process the emotion. Feel how it feels in your body to feel the irritation or feel the frustration or feel the hurt.

And after you've processed it physically, like you're in your body, you're noticing how you feel, what's happening in your chest, what that emotion is doing inside of you. Then these thoughts will come to your mind what you want to think next. It's just really hard to access the thoughts when you're trying to stuff the feelings down. So this last summer we went to Newport Beach right before Ethan went on his mission. And we were all at dinner together one night, and there were people there that were grumpy and people that were irritated and people that were being mean to each other. And I kind of had this thought in my mind that like, Oh, this is Ethan's last kind of dinner together as a family. I want it to be good, I want it to be positive, I want it to be loving, right? And I could feel myself getting more and more irritated and more and more annoyed and thinking like my kids needed to be different.

And they know how to act better. They know how to be, you know, better than this and this like everything was going wrong. And in those moments that I was thinking that I noticed myself withdrawing emotionally and almost just like leaving the table emotionally and just like kind of withdrawing, I was still there. I was sitting in the chair, but I wasn't engaging and I could just feel myself like kind of withdrawing emotionally because I didn't want to feel annoyed. I wanted to feel love, and I felt like they were making that hard, right? And in that moment I just told myself, April, it's okay to feel annoyed, right? And I instead of withdrawing and trying not to feel something, I just dropped in my body and got close to the feeling of annoyed. And he noticed where it was in my neck and in my shoulders and how there was a little not on the right side of my neck. And I just like watched that little annoyed and I let myself feel the feeling and it brought me back into my body, back into the conversation that brought me back, like connected to the people I was with. And I felt that feeling. And after I felt it, then I remembered, Oh yeah, they're all just learning to choose. They're not ready to do it right, and nothing has gone wrong. And it was like all of that annoyance and resistance just disappeared. So, I just want to offer you that as you go to think these things about the people in your life that you want to love. Remember that you just need to process your emotion of the moment first, and then these thoughts will come to your mind. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome. I love you for listening and I'll see you next week.

If there are goals and dreams that you've had, but you just can't seem to get started on them, or you find yourself giving up long before you've accomplished them. Come to my free workshop from dream to done on December 1st and second. I'll show you how to overcome your fear and your excuses and anything that's in your way and set you up with everything you need to take your dreams to done in 2023 Go to Aprilpricecoaching.com/dream to get registered or text the word dream to 66866.