You Are Good

Episode Summary

You are good.

You aren’t good because of what you do. You aren’t good because of the results you create in your life. You aren’t good because of your habits, your choices, or your behaviors.

I mean you are good. Fundamentally.

And as a human with a brain, it’s really easy to forget this. Our brains almost universally tell us that we are bad, that we are wrong, that we aren’t enough.

And when our brain is telling us these things, one of two things can happen: either we wear ourselves out in an endless quest of trying to make up for our lack and prove our worthiness, or we give up and stop trying altogether because it feels impossible to ever be good enough.

On today’s podcast, I want to show you how you are good, and how there is nothing you can do to change that. Because when you know that for sure, then you can stop defining yourself (either good or bad) by your choices—which is the first step to choosing something else when you’re ready.

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 166 of the 100% Awesome Podcast! I'm April Price and I'm just wondering, how you are? How is your summer? How are all the things here at the Price Home? We are preparing for my son to leave the nest and start his mission. He's been at the home MTC here with us. And about five days, four or five days he will be getting on a plane to Argentina and we won't see him for a couple of years. And it's just kind of like the loveliest, hardest thing ever.

Like, I feel like I'm just like riding the waves of emotion. Like in one moment, I'm so happy for him. I'm so thrilled for the experiences and the growth that he is already having and that he will he will continue to have so grateful for his goodness and like his decisions and all of that. And also, oh, my heart is a little sore, my heart, is a little tender and there's so many things about it that make me sad. Like, Yeah, it's so interesting, right? Like the very thing that you want, and of course this is what I want and that's what he wants, and we all want it, and yet it can still make us sad. And that's good to remember, right? That, like I don't want to just be happy about everything that that life isn't like that, that it's nuanced. And as humans, we are here to feel all of the emotions and have all of the experiences of human life and and this is just part of it.

So, anyway, as we've been getting him ready to go, we have been doing all the things like all the things that we have put up and doing all the last minute, like gathering and preparing and putting labels on the clothes. And like I was telling my husband, like somehow, like we have our whole lives to prepare for him to go, and yet here we are scrambling at the end. And this is kind of like how I roll. And I was joking with David that like, okay, like you should be aware that this is how it's going to be for me at the second coming and my whole life to prepare and yeah, at the end I'm going to be scrambling. And there's part of me that really wants to be frustrated with me, and part of me is just like, like, yup, this is how I roll, this is how I do my best work and we're just embracing it. And, you know, at the same time, I know that really there is nothing to be done. Like, my brain is like, we should do this and this and this and like, like trying to, like, acquire the feeling of ready, right? I so badly want to feel ready and I so badly want him to feel ready, and yet none of us are going to feel ready for ever, right? Like there's not a place, there's not a day, there's not a time where we're going to get to where we'll be like, okay.

Already nothing left to do like that just isn't an arrival point. And it's just good to remember that that that sort of feeling that is eluding us is, is not actually probably going to come, right? I don't know if you ever feel ready, it's just time to go. And that's, right? There's nothing to be done except to go, and what he hasn't learned will be learned, right? What he isn't prepared for, like the experience is, will prepare him, right. What I'm not ready for, the experience will make me ready. And this is true of everything in our lives, right? I think that we think like the negative emotion that we feel at the beginning of anything sort of that feeling like, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, I'm not ready to start. I'm not ready to like, you know, do something new. That feeling isn't there because we aren't prepared and because we haven't done enough yet. It's just like a part of the experience. It's just the nature of doing new things.

You know, as I've been preparing for this endurance event, like, I just know that I'm going to get to that mountain, you know, I'm going to be at the base of that mountain on September 22nd, and I'm going to think like, I'm not ready, I haven't done enough, right? Because like, there's no amount of like preparation where you're ever feel, I think, completely ready. There's just no substitute for the actual doing the thing. And so, whatever you are putting off starting right, whatever your brain says, well, no, no, no, we're not ready. Like just know that that is not coming. You don't need to be ready. You just need to start, okay? The experience will grow you into what you need to be. And I think like especially I see this with coaching so many times, right? Like that we think like, I'm not ready, I'm, I don't have enough time or I don't have enough money. I need to be further along or I need to accomplish some things first. Like I need to prove to myself that I can count on myself or prove that I'm going to do it or or like earn it somehow, right? And like, I have to, like, do some work and give up some of my old thoughts and feelings and behaviors and like do it differently so that, like, I can feel ready to start. And like, yeah, maybe your brain keeps telling you that you aren't ready, but the only question you really need to ask is, am I ready for my life to be different? That's all the ready you need to be, right?

My son, he doesn't need to be ready for everything. What he needs to do is like, am I ready to like go forward and try. Am I ready for my life to be? Am I ready to throw myself into that work? Like that's all the ready you need to be, right? And so, just ask yourself, am I ready for my life to be different? And I don't need to do anything else to start, I get to start right now. Ready or not, right? The only ready I need to be is like the readiness for something to be different. Okay, so I just want you to know here, before I start on the podcast that my next coaching group starts the first week in August. So, if you have been thinking about it, now is the time to get on a call with me. I've had so many people reach out and ask like, when is the next group? It starts the beginning of August, the first week in August. And so, if you have been thinking about it like this is your signal, and if you have the thought like, wait, wait, wait. I'm not ready. Like, know if we're ready for things to be different that's enough, okay? Desire is the only ready you need to be, desire qualifies you.

So, I want you to get on a call with me in the next week or so, so that you can see if coaching can make a difference for you to see if you like it, to see if it works for you to see the shifts in the power that it has and to see if, like, you'd like the experience of working with me. That's so important that you find a really good match with your coach and so you can sign up for that call at my website aprilpricecoaching.com. I opened a whole bunch of slots so that you can find a slot there to get on a call with me. If you can't find one, you can just email me at aprilpricecoaching.com and I will help you find a slot. You can also text the word "Call" to 66866. And if you text the word call to 66866. I'll send you the form where you just fill it out and pick a time and we can get on a call together and see if coaching can be useful, and helpful to you, okay?

So, for today's episode, honestly, I've been thinking about this for some time as I coach people, as I talk to people I find that so often we are so prone to thinking that there is something wrong with us. Like, you know, that's just our brains instinct to notice what is wrong with us and to like, pointed out that, like, we're bad. We're awful, we're terrible, we're wrong, we're not enough. Like, it just is, like, constantly telling us that. And so, I've dedicated this episode to just one thought, just one thought that I want you to hear that. I want you to think about that. I want you to believe and I want you, if this is useful to you, to come back to this episode again. And again and listen to as many times as you need to and to really, like, feel deeply the truth of this thought. And this thought is that you are good. I want you to know that you are good. That's it, that's the only thing that I really want to say. You are good.

Okay, we can end the podcast right here, but like, if you know me well, like, you know that I can't just say like one sentence that I have some like follow up thoughts, right? But they are all in support of that thought. You are good. And if you don't take away anything from this episode, I want you to know that that you are good and you aren't good because of the things you do. You aren't good because of what you do, because of the results you create. You aren't good because of your habits or your choices are your behaviors or your decisions like or the way you're living your life. Those things don't make you good, those are just choices you're making. But you are good independent of all of that. Like fundamentally, deep down, you are good.

So, you know, this is an old argument that has been around probably since the beginning of man, like, are we good by nature or are we bad by nature, right? And all the philosophers and all the social scientists and all the psychologists and all the, you know, poets and all of that, everybody has been talking about this same question, are we good or are we bad? Are we born evil from the beginning and in need of redemption and civilization and fixing and alteration, right? Like you're bad and you must be reformed and changed in order to be worthy, right? Or are we inherently good born as children of God, pure and innocent? Fundamentally good, right? Trusted by God to choose for ourselves. Trusted by him to choose and grow. Trusted by him with like incredible creative ability and power for good or evil. Are we, you know, good? Are we beings of intelligence and light with the unlimited capacity to add to that light or intelligence? And as I ask that question, I really want you to think like deep down, what do I believe about myself?

I think theoretically most of us believe, yeah, like I know the truth like we came from God. We are good. But like so many times, we don't think that we are good. Like, what do I believe deep down about myself? Am I always in need of fixing? Am I always in need of change in order to be, like, lovable and whole and worthy, right? Because I think, like, no matter which philosophy you ascribe to, I think that the like when it comes down to it, each one of us are born into bodies that have brains. And those brains almost universally tell us that we are bad, that we are wrong, that we are not enough, and that we need some fixing, right? And we are so many times by that brain veiled from the truth, right? Our brain is the veil between us and the memory of our true nature, right? Which is good. And so, it's really easy while we're here on Earth to forget that we are good. And what happens is that we are either then somehow like constantly trying to make up for our lack or our badness. And we're just like trying to like scramble and prove and earn our worth and our goodness all the time, or we entirely give up and we're just like, it's too hard.

It's too hard. No matter what I do, it's never good enough. And then we just give up, right? It's like, too hard to overcome. My bad, this is too hard to overcome. Like the awful inside me, right? And to ever be good enough. And so, we just give up but this idea that, like, we have to make up something in order to be good is just an illusion created by our brains. We are good, we are all good. And that doesn't mean that we all make good choices, right? We, often make choices that aren't great and that aren't like, in service to ourselves and that do harm to other people, right? And often we're making those choices from unexamined, instinctive thoughts from our brain that that make us defensive, that makes those tactics that create fear for us. And we're making choices from some, like, really bad belief systems and from learned experiences, from traumatic experiences. And lots of times those choices aren't good, right? I would say half the time at least my choices are bad, right?

But that doesn't make us bad, it doesn't make me bad, right? The real me, the true me, the eternal me and you is good, is goodness, is light, is intelligence that can be added to, okay? So, of course, every one of us is going to make choices. And depending on the lens we're using, we're going to judge those, and label those as good or bad. But so, many times we're using the judgment of about those choices to say something about us as people. And like what's available to us and what we have to do in order to be okay. And so, what I want to offer you today, again, is fundamentally that you are good and there is nothing that you can choose or do that will change that.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I had a day where I was really, really struggling mentally, emotionally. I was really down on myself. I was really feeling an incredible amount of shame for a lot of different things. My brain was just like just like relentlessly telling me that I was bad, that I was a bad wife, that I was a bad mother, that I was a bad coach, that I was a bad client. That I was a bad ministering sister. I had given a lesson in church the day before and my brain was like, you did a really bad job on that. You're a bad teacher. You're a bad human. I don't know why you said it like that, it was so bad, right? And just on and on and on. And I felt like I was just being besieged with this thought that I was bad and I was just really suffering and trying to argue with that and trying to change that and trying to, like, get around it and trying to make my brain stop and then I finally remembered something, right?

It's kind of like that question, like, what are you forgetting to remember? And what I was forgetting to remember is that I am good. Now, of course, I do a lot of things wrong. I also do a lot of things, right. Right? Like I said before, it's probably 50/50. That's how I make peace with it. I'm like half the time as a wife and a daughter and a mother and a coach and a disciple of Christ, and as a client and, you know, as a sister, like half the time. In any role that I'm in and any role that I take, I'm going to do it wrong half the time and I'm going to do it right half the time. But that doesn't make me fundamentally bad. Because I am fundamentally good and all of the other choices that I am making are just there for my learning and growth. And it's not a problem that I get it wrong half the time. It's not a problem that I get the choice wrong half the time. It doesn't make me wrong. It doesn't make me bad, okay?

So, the reason that I bring this up is because I think that most of us spend our lives trying so hard to be good, trying so hard to prove we are good. And I know that sounds like a good thing. But we're doing it in such a way that we're just trying to earn our way to good. We're trying to, like prove to ourselves that we are good when we already are. We're trying to earn our way to good. We're trying to achieve our way to good. We're trying to self improve our way to good. We're trying to perform our way to good? We're trying to like church our way to good even. And it's exhausting, and it is so unnecessary because we are already good. And we could put down the need to like, prove and earn and perform our way to good. And we could just, like, allow ourselves to make choices in our lives, and learn from them if we didn't think that every choice like detracted or added to that goodness.

Okay, so, I was thinking about like even listening to this podcast sometimes, like, and I do the same thing. I listen to people's podcast as a way to, like, get better. Like, I just need to hear what they're saying so it can change my life, so I can be good, right? And we're listening to like change our lives so that we can be good. And it's just, like, just so painful. But because notice, we're always coming from behind, we're always lacking. We always are good enough. And we're trying to, like, add to ourselves from there, and I just want to use this podcast to release you from the incredible burden of needing to be calm or evolve or change in 1,000,001 ways in order to finally arrive at good when you are already there. You are already there. You are already good.

Now, of course, we can change our choices and we can change our life experience, but not in order to finally be good. I want you to overcome the idea of fixing you, right? There's, like, something fundamentally wrong needing to be fixed about you. You don't have to solve the problem of you in order to, like, be okay, to be good, to be acceptable, to be lovable. You are already there. You are good, you are acceptable, you are lovable and you are 100% okay. You are a good person who makes choices that are sometimes wrong, but that doesn't change your own goodness. There's sometimes out of alignment with who you want to be, and they're just there to help you learn and grow. And when we're when we use it to, like, define our goodness, it just becomes so heavy and it makes it really hard to make different choices. Sometimes we're going to get our choices right. Sometimes we're not. But it's not going to change like the fundamental fact that you are good. The other day, I was thinking about the idea of happiness and how a lot of people talk about how they want to be happy, and we say that all the time.

Like, I just want to be happy, I just want my kids to be happy, I just want everybody to be happy, right? But I was thinking about like, I don't think that's really true. Like, we don't want to be happy all of the time, right? Like, when sad things happen, when tragedies happen, when bad things happen. When our son goes to Argentina like we don't want to be, like, totally happy all of the time. And what I think we're all really searching for, what we all really want is safety. We all want to be safe. Safe to be who we are, safe to feel how we feel, safe to be able to practice choosing without all the shame and guilt and pain and belittling of ourselves that goes on, right? Like safe to to to be ourselves, to be human, to practice and not to, like, make ourselves wrong all the time. And the only way, really, that we can be safe is when we know for sure that we are good and that nothing can change that, right? Like what is like we feel really unsafe and really vulnerable. We are. We're always having to prove that we're good, and like show that we're good, that feels so unsafe. But when we know we are. And that no choice we can make can change that, then we are safe.

And we can stop, like scrambling to prove that we're good and trying every which way we know to be good. And then still coming up short and feeling really scared about that, feeling really nervous that like if other people knew the truth, right? Like nobody would love me, right? And then we just go on these endless self-improvement quests and like, let me change this, then let me change this and let me change this, like, all the time. Never feeling safe and never feeling good, right? There is just no safety in that. Safety is knowing I am good already and nothing can change that, okay?

So, maybe you already feel like I've just, like, beat this thing to death already, and you're like, Yeah, yeah, I get it but I wanted to give you a little analogy to help you think about this, okay? And it's like, admittedly not a perfect analogy. But I think it can be really useful. So I want you to think about like going to Disneyland. All of us are at like a ginormous Disneyland, right? Like everybody in the world, like, fits into this Disneyland and it's this huge park. And there's so many attractions, so many rides, so many experiences and things that you can watch and see and do. And like, you sort of have this feeling as you're there that you like, have to prove that, like you deserve to be there and you kind of are going around and you're like trying to hit every single ride to prove that you deserve to be there. And that like you're afraid that at any moment if somebody finds out that you didn't take full advantage of it, then they're just going to throw you out, right? And so, you're just like running from ride to ride to ride and trying to, like, do it the very best in, like, hid all the things and not take any breaks and like, you know, go to the very last second and just, like, try and, like, prove that you deserved to, to spend the day in Disneyland because you made the most of it and you checked everything off the list and you did it exactly right.

00:22:29:21 - 00:23:38:27
And you like, listen to all these people who are like, no, you need to do it in this order. And then you need to do it like, you know, make sure you hit this one and this one and you're, like, trying to follow everybody's instructions so that you can do it exactly right and prove that like, yeah, I deserved to be there. And then there are like other people who sort of feel like, well, I don't deserve to be here. And they're like hiding in the bathrooms, right? They're not going on any rides. And they're telling themselves that they don't deserve to be there, and they have earned the right to be there and they aren't good enough, and they don't know which one to ride anyway. And so, they're just like kind of like hiding out all day in the bathroom, right? And I want you to think about, like, it turns out that, like, everybody deserves to be there. Everybody's allowed and everybody deserves to be there, and all the rides are free. And you don't have to prove anything to be able to go on any of them. And I think so many of us are living our earth life like this, right? Like your Earth life experience is an incredible opportunity to learn and grow and try so many things and expand your capacity in so many ways and increase your light and glory and explore your creative abilities and like become and grow in all the ways that you want to.

But we are enjoying it because we're trying to, like, prove our worthiness or because we've already decided that we are unworthy and we've given up. When I just want you to know that your worthiness, your goodness, is not in question, you are good. And when you know that and you feel safe, then you can just decide on purpose. What are the things I want to do? What are the rides I want to go on? What are the experiences I want to have just for the sake of the experience, not to prove anything to anyone. And where are the places in my life I can stop thinking that I have to be something else in order to like get in line for that. Instead, just to say like, no, if I get in line and I stay there, then I get to go on the ride, right? You are good, you are already good. You are always good. And nothing you do will change that. And after you know that, then everything else that you want to create or grow or, you know, experience is just there for you to try because you want to.

You do not have to get better. That is not what coaching is about because you cannot be better, but you can have different experiences. There is an entire park out there for you and you can be brave enough to try any of them and stop disqualifying you from from any ride that you want to go on, right? All the race that you were just like, yeah, that's not for people like me. All of that is nonsense. That's what we use coaching for, not to make us better, not to clean up and fix us right, but to get our brain that is telling us that it's too hard and too scary and that we're not good enough. We want to get that brain, those thoughts out of our way so that then you can go do everything you want while you are here. You are good and there is nothing that you can do to change that. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome. I love you for listening, and I'll see you next week.

Our brains spend a lot of time convincing us that we can't change and we can't have the things we want. But it's always a choice you have the unlimited capacity to change and grow and the unrestricted agency to choose something else any time you want. If you are ready to change any aspect of your life, then it's time to change the way you think. And my coaching program is the best way to do that. My next session starts August 1st. Go to Aprilpricecoaching.com to sign up for a free coaching call and see how coaching can help you!