The Ultimate Gift Guide

Inspired by all the gift-giving guides out there this time of year, in this episode I’m sharing my ultimate gift guide to enrich your own life and bless the other people in your life, too.

This time of year, it's easy to focus on the things that we're giving and the things that we're hoping to get, but when we boil all those lists down, what we want is a feeling on Christmas morning. These are all the best gifts that you can give yourself to feel how you want in your life. 

Gift #1: Peace with your past

If you are someone who likes to spend time traveling to the past and beating yourself up for how it was “supposed to” go, this is the gift for you. 

It never should have been different than it was, and it is time to let yourself off the hook for that. Everything you've done - every action you've taken, every decision you've made - was always because of a thought that you were thinking. And at that time, you simply didn't know how to think anything else. 

The other thought that I want to offer you is that the past is always right. It is the way that it happened, and either you got what you needed from that experience or you got the lesson that you needed from that experience. 

Cost: Trade in those old thoughts and ideas that you should have done it differently in any way. Accept that even if you got it wrong, it wasn't wrong. There were just lessons there that you needed.  

Gift #2: Forgiveness

We often think that forgiveness is about making somebody else feel good - absolving somebody else of wrong. But it is really about releasing ourselves from the punishment of negative emotion that we have taken on because of somebody else's bad behavior. 

Everyone in your life is just practicing love, practicing being a human, practicing choosing, and most of us are not good at it. 

Many times you are hurting yourself, punishing yourself for other people's bad behavior. 

As Edith Eger said, “forgiveness is a gift I give myself.” She said that forgiveness is about freeing yourself from the prison of your own mind. It's about reclaiming your true self, feeling how you want to feel in your life, and no longer being bound to feeling the way someone else made you feel. Just because they have behaved badly doesn't mean you have to suffer.

You do not have to wait for anyone else to change to forgive. This gift is always available to you through your own mind.  

Cost: Your hurts, those thoughts you have about how others should love you, treat you or behave.

Give up the pain, acknowledge the reality of what happened and decide how you want to think and feel next. 

Gift #3: Unconditional love

This is the gift for that really picky person in your life, the person who is impossible to please (hint: it’s probably you!). 

I lived much of my life just longing to be a better person, to be the kind of person that I like, to wake up in the morning motivated to live a life that matters, to feel worthy and like I belong. But instead, I just had this awful ache inside of me. 

Withholding unconditional love from yourself doesn’t motivate you to be better. It keeps you stuck. 

Just like the other humans in your life, you are a mess and you are practicing. You can either love yourself through that practice or you can hate yourself ( which just makes it longer and more painful).

The way to get everything you want is by approving of everything you are.

Cost: Set down the conditions you have for loving yourself, and choose to do it now.

Gift #4: Reorganize

For all you organizers out there, I want you to reorganize your responsibilities for other people’s results. 

When I was able to do this, it not only gave me immense emotional relief, but it also improved every relationship I have. 

Release yourself of the responsibility of what's happening in other people's business. You cannot take responsibility for other people’s thoughts, feelings or actions - these are theirs and are completely out of your control. 

Trying to manage things that are outside of your control makes you miserable. 

When we stay in our own model - our own thoughts, feelings and actions that we have control over - we can feel better even if the other person does not. 

Cost: Letting go of trying to control or change others. 

Gift #5: A limitless future

What if you could go into your life and choose an item, choose an experience, choose an outcome, choose a result and know that if you pick the right thoughts, it will show up in your life?

When you know that your thoughts are creating all of the results of your life, you suddenly have the key to accomplishing anything you want.

Everything ahead of you can be created by possible thoughts that you are willing to think.

Cost: Your old stories and limiting beliefs and the willingness to believe something new.

Gift #6: Confidence

For the person who has everything (and is worried about losing it)...

This gift of confidence is about knowing that no matter what happens, you will be okay.

Sure, we live in a world where anything can go wrong at any time, and there’s so much that we have no control over. So many of us spend our lives scared of the bad things that are coming. 

Confidence is knowing that you can handle anything that happens - that you have the skills and the ability to manage your mind, that you have the skills and ability to feel your feelings. When you have those two skills, there is nothing that can happen that you can't handle. 

Cost: Worry over all that could go wrong.

All of these gifts are here to give you relief and to make your life experience a little bit better. And they are available to all of you through the choices you make in your mind. They are the gifts that you give yourself, and they will never stop blessing your life. 

You’ll Learn:

• 6 gifts to help you feel the way you want to feel in your life
• How to forgive others in your life
• An exercise for cultivation unconditional love for yourself
• New thoughts to release responsibility for others’ thoughts, feelings and behavior

Resources:

The Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford

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 188 of the 100% Awesome Podcast. I'm April Price and have I got a fun one for you today! I'm so excited about this, but before we get into the episode, you should know that my next coaching group, which is going to start in January, the registration for that is happening right now and it ends on Sunday. So, if you have been thinking about coaching, thinking about changing your brain and changing your life, this is the perfect time to get signed up. I have a group that is going to be meeting on Tuesday afternoons and a group on Wednesday mornings, and they are both filling up. But as of today there are still a few spots in each one of those. So, if you want to get signed up into one of those groups, there is a spot there for you. Like I said, registration is going to end on Sunday and so it is time to decide. The moment of decision has arrived. So, if you've been thinking about it, but you can't decide if it's right for you, if you're going to get the results that you want, if it will work for you.

I just want to offer you some thoughts that I offered another client last week. She was trying to decide whether or not she wanted to sign up for 29029 next year, which is the endurance event that I did earlier in September. And we did an exercise together where we listed out the negative and positive emotions that she would likely feel in both scenarios, like if she didn't sign up, well, what are the negative and positive emotions she might feel? And if she did sign up, like what are the negative and positive emotions she might feel in that scenario? And we found out that there wasn't a whole lot of difference in the negative emotions, that there was going to be negative emotion either way.

But what was different was the amount and the variety of positive emotion that was available to her from signing up. There was so much more positive emotion available to her for doing it and getting outside our comfort zone and doing this thing that really right now scares her brain, right. And a whole bunch of things that she was never going to be able to feel if she didn't do it. And so, here's the thing I want you to remember. We are most of the time making our decisions for our life. And we're doing that trying to hedge against negative emotion. We're like, what's the the the best thing I could choose to have the least amount of negative emotion, right? We're trying to pick the thing that is going to create the least amount of net negative emotion and then deciding our lives based on what is going to hurt the least. But what we don't see is that when we live our lives this way, when we live our lives like hedging against negative emotion, we are missing out on a whole lot of positive emotions and a whole lot of positive experiences that we can never have by just hedging against negative emotion.

Our brain is always like trying to add up the negative emotions that we might feel, and it isn't ever focused or curious about the rewards and the benefits and the feelings of like pride and joy and love and accomplishment and and meaning that we might feel from doing the thing like our brains are just like like that doesn't even enter into the equation, right? They're just like adding up what negative emotion we might feel if we if we take the chance. And so, as you go to decide and decide what you want for your life and decide like what you want your year to look like, what you want your life to look like, like all of the choices and decisions that you make.

Like don't forget that. Don't forget to factor in the positive emotions that you are going to feel, the positive experiences that are awaiting you after you make that decision. Don't forget to ask yourself, like what it would feel like to live a life that I love and do get to show up in my relationships and in my business and my life and like my health and my money in all these areas. Like, what would that feel like to have that be different and what would it be like to love myself, to have compassion and appreciation, understand myself, understand my brain, understand how to get the things that I want.

Like, don't just let your brain emphasize the negative. It is very good at that, as you all know. But if we only make our decisions hedging against negative emotion, we are missing out on a whole lot of amazing experiences in our lives. Coaching is the very best thing that I have ever done for myself, for my family, for my children, for my children's children, for my future, like for my entire Earth life experience. It has changed that experience. And I want that for you if you want it, too. So, if you want to be a part of my coaching program, you need to get signed up you can go to aprilpricecoaching.com and click on the button for work with me and we'll give you all the options to be able to sign up. Also, you can just text me or email me. At Aprilpricecoaching.com and I will help you get signed up. So, it is going to be awesome! And I hope that if you want to be there that you will be okay.

Onto this very fun episode! So, this episode has kind of been inspired by like all the holiday gift guides that I have been seeing, that other people are putting out influencers and podcasters. I've listened to a few podcasts that are like the ultimate gift guide for 2022 and like the best things to get the people in your life. And I thought like, Oh my gosh, that would be so fun to be able to give all of you an ultimate gift list as well. So, this is a list of the very best gifts that I think you can give yourself. So, they will bless the other people in your lives. But for this list, these are all things that I think you should be giving yourself and that I want you to figure out a way to provide these things for yourself in your life. They are the best gifts that I have ever received and I want to share them with you.

Okay, so the first gift is a gift for the travelers out there. If you are a traveler, especially those of you who like to spend time traveling to the past and beating yourself up for how it is supposed to go, this is the gift for you. And this gift is peace with your past. I really want to offer you that. This is one of the best gifts you can ever give yourself is to make peace with your past. And what I want you to know to help you with this is that it never should have been different than it was. And it is time to let yourself off the hook for that. I like to make peace with the past. You need to understand that everything you've done, every action you've taken, every decision you've made, that was always because of a thought that you were thinking past you. Whatever decisions they made or didn't make, whatever actions they took or didn't take was because of what they were thinking.

And at that time they didn't know how to think anything else. So many times we're looking at the past and saying, oh, I should have been thinking this, but we didn't know that back then, right? And all of our actions are just flowing down from whatever thought we were thinking at the time, whatever we believed about ourselves, whatever we believed about what was important, whatever, whatever we believed would create the most happiness for us. And listen, if you could go back in time, if I could just magically put you back in time, you would be back in time, but you would still have the exact same thought you had back then. And most likely your choices would be exactly the same because you would be using the exact same thoughts. The other thought that I want to offer you is that the past is always right. It is always right. Not because everything went, quote unquote right, but because it is the way that it happened. Like with the exact details, with the exact experiences, that is the way that it happened. And either you got what you needed from that experience or you got the lesson that you needed from that experience.

So, as you think about giving yourself this gift of peace with the past, you probably are thinking about like, well, how much is it going to cost, right? Like, how much does it cost to get this gift for myself? And I want you to know, like it is expensive. You have to trade your thoughts. That you should have known better. Like some of you are so attached to that thought. And you beat yourself up with it all the time. You tell yourself, I should have known better. I should have done this differently. And you have to give up those thoughts and trade those in and exchange them in order to make peace with the past. You have to trade in the idea that you should have done it right or done it differently in any way. You have to accept that even if you got it wrong, it wasn't wrong that you did it wrong, right? There were just lessons there that you needed. And a lot of you I know you don't want to give that up. That feels like a really like hard price to pay. It feels too high, but I want to offer you that. What is really expensive is the price you are paying to keep the thought that it should have been different. That is making every single day of your life more painful and that is too expensive a price to pay.

Okay, the next gift that I think is amazing that every one of you should give yourself is forgiveness. So forgiveness, as Edith Ear says, it is a gift I give myself. And it is a lot of times we think that forgiveness is about making somebody else feel good, absolving somebody else of wrong. And it is not, it is about releasing ourselves from the punishment of negative emotion that we have taken on because of somebody else's bad behavior.

So, what I want to remind you of is the fact that people are a mess like all of the people in your life. They are just practicing being human. And most of us are not good at it. Everyone in your life is just practicing love, practicing being a human, practicing, choosing. And most of us are not good at it. And so many times you are hurting yourself on account of all the other humans in your life. Not being good at choosing, not being good at loving, not being good at being human. You are punishing yourself, in fact, for other people's bad behavior. And I'm not saying that their behavior is good, right? Like it. I'm not saying they're doing it right. What I'm offering you like this gift is about, like, allow yourself to stop hurting yourself and feeling bad because they didn't do it well.

So, I really love the work of Edith Eger, and she is a Holocaust survivor and a psychologist. And she talks about forgiveness a lot. And like I said, she said it is a gift that I give myself. And she says it's not about absolving other people of their wrongs or minimizing what has happened to you. Right. Like, she didn't have to minimize what the Nazis did to her and to her family and to her people. She didn't have to minimize that and say like, that was right. But if she continued to feel the hurt and pain and negative emotion created by that, she was keeping herself in a prison, that's how she described it. She said, and forgiveness is about freeing yourself from the prison of your own mind. And it's about reclaiming your true self, like feeling how you want to feel in your life and no longer being bound to like, feeling the way they, quote unquote, made you feel. Just because they have behaved badly doesn't mean I have to suffer.

Okay, so how do we do this? How do we forgive the people in our lives so that we can be free? We have to change the thoughts that are causing the pain that are causing us to hurt. These thoughts sound like they should treat me better. They're my family, so they should love me. Thoughts like they should act better, they should know better, they should be better. Even though those thoughts sound so reasonable, they are so painful because the other people don't treat us better. They don't love us better. They aren't better. They are who they are, okay?

So, when you think about forgiving others or even when you think about forgiving yourself, you have to start with the recognition that we are not good like the other people are doing it right. Neither am I, right? But we don't have to suffer because that's true. Like, forgiveness in many ways is like making peace with the past. And it feels expensive, it feels like we have to give up like our hurts, and we do. And sometimes that feels like, well, that me. That's almost as if, like, you know, it didn't count or it didn't hurt or like, we want a record of it, right? And so, it feels really expensive to be able to give that up. It feels like it costs us a lot because it means like we have to give up our idea of how someone is supposed to treat us or how somebody is supposed to behave.

But I promise you, it doesn't cost you anything except your pain. It doesn't cost you anything. You don't have to give up anything except the pain that you have. Every time you think that they should have treated you better. It is really about acknowledging the reality, the reality of what happened, that they did behave in this way. Or if we're trying to forgive ourselves that we did behave in this way and now how do I want to use my agency to think and feel? What do I want to think about that so that I can feel a measure of peace and release myself from these negative emotions from this prison.

So, one time I was talking to one of my brothers about a mutual friend that had hurt and offended both of us. And, you know, he was really hurt and upset about it. And he said, you know, like I was just talking to him about where he was, how he was feeling, whatever and, you know, he was kind of like a little bit upset with me because I had like moved into a place of forgiveness for this person. And he said, you know, like, I don't understand how you can do that. He's like, it wasn't good what they did. It wasn't good. And I said, Yeah, you're right, it wasn't good. But the difference is that I don't think it was supposed to be. And just that little tweak like believing that they weren't supposed to do it well, that they weren't supposed to get it right, allowed me to reach a place where I could be at peace. It's not pretending that it was good. It's acknowledging that it wasn't and that it wasn't supposed to be. So, the thing about this gift, the gift of forgiveness is we often are looking outside of us for other people to give us this gift.

We are looking to other people to show enough sorrow or make enough like reparations, kind of look to others to make it right and to apologize so that we can receive this gift. But you do not have to wait for anyone else. And in fact, I recommend you don't wait. It is a gift you give yourself. It is a gift that is always available to you and in fact only available to you through your own mind because that feeling is only available to you by the thoughts that you choose, no matter what that other person does. The next gift is a gift for that really picky person in your life, the person who is like impossible to please. This gift is for them. And P.S. it's probably you. Okay, so this is the gift of unconditional love. And when I talk about this gift, I'm talking about unconditional love for yourself.

So, I was recently rereading a book by Debbie Ford called The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, and there is a paragraph at the beginning of that book that I just want to read to you. It, like, so captures how I suffered myself for so many years of my life. Okay, and listen, the gifts, every gift that I'm talking about is like, to relieve our own suffering, to give us relief. Okay, so this is what she said. She wrote, I had suffered for so many years trying to be a better person. Let me just interrupt like that. That is me. Like, I read that sentence and I'm just like, Oh, that is me. Like, I just suffered most of my life trying to be better. And it's like wishing I was a different kind of person.

Okay, she said "I had suffered for so many years trying to be a better person. I wanted to walk tall, believe in myself, have the courage to ask for what I wanted and needed, and live a life that mattered. I wanted to wake up in the morning with a smile on my face and know that I was loved and that I belonged. I was desperate to feel worthy, and I was hungry for the opportunity to live my fullest potential. The ache inside me was more than I could bear until the day I met my real self, my whole self, my authentic self." Like this paragraph, like, resonates so deeply with me. This is how I lived much of my life, just longing to be a better person, to like, be the kind of person that I like to wake up in the morning to, like, be motivated to live a life that mattered, to like, feel worthy, to feel like I belong to, like, live my potential. And I just had instead just like this awful ache inside of me. And what does she say is the solution is to meet your real self like we are suffering so much against who we really are.

Like we are suffering like with the burden of who we are. And I just want to invite you to unconditionally, like, set down every condition, set down every rule you have for yourself. Set down every condition you have for loving yourself and just love yourself. Stop needing to be good first, stop needing to get to a finish line or a mark or a or an accomplishment first like that is never coming. You are never going to achieve or like become your way out of this. Like self-hatred. You have to choose it. And I just want to offer you that. Just like the other humans in your life, you are a mess and you are practicing. And you can either love yourself through that practice and through that process, or you can hate yourself and just make it longer and more painful, like hating yourself, being frustrated with yourself. It doesn't make you better, faster, it doesn't eliminate your bad. It just makes the reality of being you so painful. The reality of being you imperfect, you human you just like so excruciating.

And I just really want to offer you, like, did you know you were never supposed to get it right? Did you know you came to practice? Did you know you get as many chances as you want and as you need? Like thinking that we're supposed to be good is one of the most painful thoughts that we can have.

The other day I was talking to a client and she was telling me about her dad, and she kept saying like, you know, she had some issues with some of the things that he has done and some of the ways that he raised her. And every time she said one of his issues, she would tell me. But he's a really good man. But he's a really good man. He just kept like inserting that. And I finally interrupted her and I said, No, he's not, like he's not a good man, just like you. Like he is good and bad. Just like you. He is half bad and half good just like you. And like we really need to make peace with that. Like, it's so hard to love people when we think they're supposed to be all good. It's so hard to love ourselves. We think we're supposed to be all good, and like, if we can just acknowledge, no, I am not good and that's okay. Like, that isn't required for me to love me. Like, I want you to make peace with the fact that, like, none of us are all good and we're never going to arrive there. You are holding yourself hostage or holding your love hostage, waiting for whatever improvements need to happen before you can love yourself.

And know that it feels uncomfortable to give yourself this gift. It is. It is the greatest gift that will make the biggest changes in your life than any other gift you could give yourself. And the reason that people don't want to give it to themselves, the reason that they withhold this gift of unconditional love from themselves is they think, If I love myself like this, I will stay this way forever. We think like will be just become satisfied with mediocrity or satisfied with awfulness. Right. But the truth is that the shame and the hate that you feel for yourself right now is the only thing keeping you stuck. And I just want to invite you to be proud of all of you. Of like, even the mess. Like you are a human doing your best. And I know, like, some of you are like, it's not my best. It really is. I promise you that, right? And when we can have curiosity and compassion and love from that, we can free ourselves from the tyranny of needing to be different before we love ourselves. If you really want to change your life, I want to invite you to love yourself unconditionally. This is the way.

This morning I was on a coaching call with all of my alumni. Everybody who's ever been in one of my programs and I was coaching somebody and I said this phrase that was like captures it all and I want to just share it with you. I said, The way to get everything you want is approving of everything you are. And like, I just want to put that on mugs and t shirts and like, shout up from the rooftops. The way to get anything you want is to approve of everything you are.

Okay, the next gift that I want to give you is a great gift for you guys that are organizers out there. I want you to reorganize like the responsibility for other people's results. So, really think about releasing yourself of the responsibility of what's happening in other people's models. What I mean by that is I want you to stop taking responsibility for the things that are other people's business. This is one of the very best gifts I ever gave myself, because not only did it give me immense emotional relief, but it also improved every relationship I have. Okay, so what do I mean by other people's business? Other people's business is anything that is in their control, in their models and not yours. Okay, so that means not taking responsibility for other people's thoughts, for other people's feelings, for other people's actions, for other people's results. We spend a lot of time as humans worrying especially about how other people are feeling and how other people are behaving.

And like our brain spends a lot of time over there wanting to control that, wanting to control how they feel. Why don't you control how they behave? But our agency extends only to ourselves. It doesn't extend past us one bit. I think other people's choices are always theirs. All of their choices are always theirs. That includes the things they do, and it includes how they feel, what they decide to think. The other day I was talking to a client and he was talking to me like. Like if I could just do it right, then my wife would be happy and we'd have less contention in her life. Like, I've just got to figure out how to, like, be better, right? And I told him, like, you are not that powerful. Like, no matter how good you are, how perfectly live your life like you are never allowed to choose somebody else's experience. You never allowed to choose their happiness. Like, no matter how well-intentioned you are, God is never going to let you take someone else's agency.

Like, even for him, he is God. He's the most powerful with the very best intentions. And even he doesn't intervene and take our agency and tell us how to feel and tell us how to behave. So, what this kind of looks like, looks like these sort of like well-intentioned thoughts in our lives, like I want my child or my husband or my wife to be happy. I want my children to have a good life. I want other people to like me. I want people in my life to make good choices because I know it's going to make them happier. I just want everybody to have a good time, right? Like, I want you to think about that for a minute. Just that phrase. I would like let's say we're doing a holiday get together and we're like, I just want everybody to have a good time. Like, what we're saying there is I want everyone to make a choice in their brain to think the same thought that produces joy. And I want us to all do that at the same time. I guess like a nearly impossible request, right? Sometimes it looks like I just wish they would love themselves, like they sound like such lovely thoughts. But they are not lovely because they are none of our business. And instead, I want to invite you to the thought of like, I'm going to let them choose.

I love them enough to choose. If they want to choose even to hate themselves, they get to make that choice. The other day. One of my children was struggling and I noticed like just how much resistance I had to their struggle, I wanted it to be different for them, like, I just kept thinking like, no, like I want this to be different. But I got to peace. When I stopped resisting their choices and their right to choose. Even when it was things that I would never choose for them, they get to choose that. And as soon as I get back in my model, it feels so much better. And it's not because the circumstances change. It's because I felt better, because I was back in control of things that I actually have control over. Like, I want you to know, like, it is so uncomfortable to need to control things that we don't control. Like, you kind of get panicky, right? And you are making yourself miserable, trying to give yourself a job and the responsibility of like managing things that are outside of your control. So, this gift is really about trusting other people with their own agency and letting them choose and not making either one of you wrong for those choices.

Like one of the reasons this is so hard and why we don't give ourselves this gift is because when we take responsibility for their choice, we experience some shame with it. When they're hurting, we feel some shame about that. And it's like all of that disappears when we when we give them responsibility for their own models and their own choices. Like, this gift is just an invitation to move out of shame and out of judgment for how they're doing it, how you've done it, and move in to love for whoever they are and however they are showing up right now.

It's like moving out of their model and into love in your own model. Okay, a couple more gifts. This next gift is for the adventurer out there, okay? And that is the gift of a limitless future, okay? So, I want to offer each of you the idea that when you know that your thoughts are creating all of the results of your life, you suddenly have the key to accomplishing anything you want. Like when you know, like every result I create in my life started as a thought, started as a belief I had. Then you can literally create any future you want, any future result you want. By trading the sentences you are saying to yourself every day right now for different ones. I want you to know that you have a limitless future. None of it has been created like everything ahead of you. It's just like possible results that can be created by possible thoughts that you are willing to think.

So, I really want you to imagine the power of being able to put any result anything you want. Like into your future. Like what? If you could write that into your life and then just back that up and think about what would I have to think in order to create that in my life? Kind of like Amazon Prime. Like, you just go in there and you just pick it and you like, know it's going to show up, right? Like, you put in an order and it's going to show up at your door. I want you to think about your future like that. Like what? If you could go into your life and choose an item, choose an experience, choose an outcome, choose a result, and know that if you pick the right thoughts, it will show up in your life. It is inevitable. It is going to occur in your life. Like, I just think there is just no better gift possible. Like, to me, it's just so amazing.

And listen, the only price that you have to pay to get this gift is to give up your stories, to give up the limiting beliefs, to give up the things that you've always told yourself about yourself and being brave enough and willing to believe something new. Like as I went through the 29029 experience this year, I was shocked at how much my brain wanted to hold on to the old stories and like, keep telling my coach the old stories about like how I wasn't athletic, Like my coach was like, Do you want that to be true? After I'd heard it the thousandth time, right. And it just you just have to recognize, like, okay, the price for the future I want is giving up this sentence for a different one. And then all I have to do is, you know, pay the price in every present moment to take action and to be uncomfortable and to do those things that are hard and that my brain is resisting. And to do that, all you have to do is manage your brain to be in charge of your brain and to, like, decide like, it doesn't matter how much I protest, I'm going to believe these things and create them in my life.

The last gift on the list is the gift for the person who has everything okay and who's maybe worried about losing it, right? So, I really want to talk to you about the gift of confidence and really believing that you will be okay no matter what. This is such a gift that you can give yourself. I used to spend a lot of my life worrying, worrying about the future, worrying about the past, worrying about everything that could go wrong. I used to worry about like, you know, financial crisis. I used to worry about like, you know, what if one of my children died or my husband died, I worried about pain for me or my children. Like bad outcomes, the bad things that could happen. And here's the thing. Like, I know you know this, but I give you a newsflash. We live in a fallen world where anything can go wrong at any time. Like, we just. There is so much of it that we have no control over. And like, I talk to my clients about this a lot, right? Like, they'll come to me and say, like, things are good. Even when things are good, I worry that they're going to turn bad.

I'm worried about what's going to happen next, right? Like you're not allowed to have it good for too long. Like the bad is coming for sure. And like, we spend our lives scared of the bad things that are coming. And this is why it's such a gift to feel confident. And here's the thing. Like, we are vulnerable. Like. Like I said, anything can happen. But confidence isn't about avoiding all the bad things. It isn't about trying to believe that only good things are going to happen. Confidence is knowing that you can handle anything that happens, that you have the skills and the ability to manage your mind. You have the skills and ability to feel your feelings. When you have those two skills. There is nothing that can happen that you can't handle. Like, I love knowing that when bad things happen, they will only be bad because of the thoughts I will be thinking. And when and if that happens and when and if I choose those thoughts and create negative feelings, then I will just feel those feelings. But I am in charge of all of it, and that gives you the ultimate confidence.

Real confidence is knowing that the worst thing that can ever happen to any of us is a negative emotion. And you know what to do with that. You know that you are the creator of it and you know how to feel it. That makes you confident in any situation that makes you powerful. It means you are not at the effect of anything that happens outside of you because you are in control of what is happening inside of you. Okay, I told you, that's a really good gift list, right? Like, if you had that, you wouldn't need anything else in the world, right? Like, all of these gifts are here to give you relief and to make your life experience a little bit better. And they are available to all of you through the choices you make in your mind. They are the gifts that you give yourself. And they never stop giving to you or blessing your life. So, this time of year, like, it's easy to focus on the things, right? The things that we're giving, the things that we're hoping to get, the things that we're buying, the things that we still need to buy, the things that. But like, yeah, and those lists are long. But really and truly, when we boil all those list down, what we want is a feeling on Christmas morning, all we want and all the people in our lives want is a feeling.

And I want you to think about what are the feelings that I want most in my life and just know that those are gifts that you can give yourself. You can feel how you want to feel in your life. And there's no greater gift than that. And if you are thinking, April, okay, but how? I want all these things. I've tried to get all these things, but I haven't been able to. I can't figure it out. I want you to know that the best place to get them is through coaching. Every tool you need to access these gifts in your life is there in coaching. And when you create these things in your life, your life gets so good. This is your life. Like, shoot all the shots. Do all the things while you're here. How you feel and what you experience. And the things you do while you're here. These are the gifts that are more valuable and more important than money. They are the reason that you are here on Earth. I hope you give yourself the chance to experience all of them. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome. I love you for listening, and I'll see you next week.

The next round of my coaching program made four more starts in January, and I want you to be a part of it. I'll show you how to change your brain to create more joy, more love, and more accomplishment in your life. The only thing between you and the life you want are the thoughts in your head, and coaching will show you how to change that. Go to Aprilpricecoaching.com to sign up.