Episode 341 Don't Wait for These 3 Things For More Peace: Time, Energy & Certainty
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[00:00:00] You are listening to episode 341 of the Peaceful Mind Podcast. Welcome to the Peaceful Mind Podcast, a place where you can move out of overwhelm and into a calm, confident motherhood with God at the center. I'm Danielle Thienel, certified life coach, Catholic mom, and creator of the Cyclone Mom Method. I help you create emotional steadiness and peace of mind from the inside out so you can experience more balance and more joy in your busy mom life.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, let's get started.
Hello. I'm so glad you're here. Welcome back to the Peaceful Mind Podcast. I'm Danielle, certified life coach, Catholic mom, and welcome to the Peaceful Mind Podcast. Today, I want to lovingly take apart three things that a lot of you moms [00:01:00] are waiting for before you are letting yourself experience peace, and those three things are you're waiting for more time, more energy, and certainty.
And I'm gonna show you on the episode why waiting for them doesn't work and why peace doesn't arrive by mail and what exactly creates it instead. Because here is the headline of this whole episode: peace is not on the other side of your circumstances changing. I'm a little bit fired up and passionate about this right now, again, seeing and experiencing people who come to me who think that it's their circumstances, if those would change, then they would finally have peace.
Peace is created in your mind. Now, with God's help, [00:02:00] and also it's created right in the middle of the life you already have, and the way I speak about that is right in the middle of the cyclone of your life, the swirl. And I want you to stay with me to the end of this episode because I have an announcement about something that I'm really excited about with this podcast, and I think you're gonna love it.
Okay, so let's just start and take a look at these three things. Let's look at 'em one at a time. Peace, more peace will come when we look and we don't wait for time, energy, and certainty. So let's start. Don't wait for more time. Here is what I want you to know about this. The first thing that we are waiting for that's keeping us from peace is more time.
We find ourselves saying, "When the kids are back in [00:03:00] school, when the soccer season ends, when the holidays are over, when the kids are older." We picture this calmer calendar out there in the future, and then we tell ourselves that's where peace lives. It lives on that future calendar. But let me ask you something.
Have you ever actually arrived at one of those quieter seasons? Because I have, and I bet you have, too. And here's what happens. The calendar opens up, and within, I don't know, about two weeks, probably even less than that, new things flood in and fill it. Huh, so interesting how that happens, right? The season changes, but the mind comes with you, the mind that still scans, that still hurries, that's still saying there isn't enough time.
I coached a mom who spent an entire spring [00:04:00] telling me, "Once school lets out, once the tax season ends," I guess you can take a guess at what at what she did for a living, "then things will calm down." But guess what? Summer comes, tax season ends, and then it was camps and swim lessons, and cousins were vis-visiting, and I think they thought, "I think we're gonna move."
And there she was in this future quieter season that she had envisioned and promised herself, feeling exactly as rushed as before. And that is because a full calendar was never the real problem. The real problem is a mind that believes that peace requires an empty one. The truth I teach inside my time and time management work with my clients is you will never find time for peace.
[00:05:00] You can only decide for it. Because peace doesn't come, it doesn't need like a free weekend. It needs 10 unhurried m- minutes in the morning with your coffee and the question, "What do I want to believe about today?" That's what it needs. It needs a deep breath where you choose calm on purpose and thoughts that create the peace on purpose.
And moms with packed schedules, they can feel a deep peace every day, and then moms who have wide open days, they can also feel anxious and frantic because the difference was never the hours. It was what their minds were doing inside of those hours. So for this first one, stop waiting for the season to pass.
This season, the loud one, the full one, it's not the obstacle to your peaceful life, [00:06:00] okay? The next, don't wait for more energy. The second thing we wait for is energy. It's "I'll work on my peace of mind when I'm, like, less exhausted. I'll pray more. I'll move my body more. I'll start the thing when I feel more like it."
But here's the sneaky problem with waiting to feel like it. Feelings don't come first, and you know I've been teaching you all this for 300 plus episodes now. Your feelings come from your thoughts. So if you're waiting around for motivation and energy to show up on their own while your mind keeps thinking the thought, "I'm so exhausted.
I can't handle one more thing. There's nothing left for me," then you're waiting for a feeling that your own thinking is actually canceling out. And here's the part that sounds a little backwards, but I promise you it's true. [00:07:00] Peace is not something you'll have energy for later. Peace is actually where your energy will then come from.
Think about what actually drains you in a day. It's usually not the tasks themself. It's the arguing with reality about the tasks. It's the resentment while you fold. It's the mental replaying of that conversation. It's the worry spinning in the background, like an app you can't figure out how to close.
There's the, "This shouldn't be so hard," kind of commentary running under everything you do. But try this little kind of audit today. Pick just one of your ordinary chores and just notice the difference between the two minutes of actual work that it takes to get it done and the 20 minutes of mental commentary wrapped around it.[00:08:00]
That, that kind of commentary is the leak in your tank. And I'll tell you where I proved this in my own life. When I decided to take my health seriously when I turned 50 years old, I didn't wait until I felt energetic to begin. I saw those pictures from my 50th birthday milestone trip, and I still didn't have any energy to make the change, 'cause if I had, I would still be waiting because tired is like the baseline, and then of course my brain didn't want me to...
It wanted me to conserve my energy. But I started with the energy I had, small step by small step, and the 10% philosophy, and the momentum and the energy actually showed up each day That's how it works. And [00:09:00] when my clients learn to manage their minds, they consistently tell me the same thing. It's like I'm doing kind of the same thing, like nothing really like changed and other people didn't changed, but I'm not as exhausted like I was.
It's because they didn't realize, first of all, that they were adding that other layer of exhaustion from their mental and emotional energy being drained, but they stopped spending their energy fighting their lives and fighting what was going on in their brain, and they started spending it purposely living it, like consciously, deliberately living it.
So don't wait until you've rested, until you decide you're going to pursue and have peace. Make peace be your priority. And again, nothing else in your life has to change for you to have it, [00:10:00] because the feeling comes from your thinking. And watch it start handing you back what it is you desire. And in the meantime, yes, I want you to s- totally, exquisitely care for yourself and get some rest and go to bed and get that physical sleep, but you have to know you don't need to earn it first.
Okay. The last thing that I wanted to have you stop waiting for is certainty, because that is what we do. We wait for it. Certainty. I'll have peace once I know. Once I know if this school is the right choice, once I know how the diagnosis turns out, once I know whether the money will cover everything, once I know whether the marriage will be [00:11:00] strong, whether my adult child will find their way.
We all believe peace will arrive when our unknowns resolve, that what we're worrying about isn't something that we have to worry about anymore. But here's the truth. I guess I'm here today in these three things to give you the truth of it all, and that is certainty is not available, not for any of us.
It never was. Even the things you can feel certain about today are still not guaranteed, and you actually know that all logistically, logically is really what I meant to say is you know it So if peace requires certainty, then peace is permanently out of an option for all of us. The moms you know who seem peaceful, they don't have any more certainty than [00:12:00] you do.
They're human, living these human lives, and the way that God made things and the way that what happened in the Garden of Eden happened, right? None of us, zero out of the billions of us on this planet, have certainty. But those moms that have peace just stopped demanding it as what they need in order to feel peace.
So actually available are two things, and they're better than certainty. And the first is trust in yourself. Not the belief that nothing hard will happen, but the belief that whatever does happen, whatever life gives you, you will be able to handle it. Look at your track record. You have handled every single hard thing that has ever come to you so far your whole entire life, all of them.
And how do I know this? Because you're here. And the [00:13:00] second is to trust in God. He has never once left you. He has never left you unprovided for, not once. And you don't have to see the whole staircase in front of you in order to climb that one step Just take the step to trust Him, and He'll take care of the rest.
That's what our faith is for. If we had certainty, we wouldn't need faith. I got to really live out this really sweet full circle moment with this recently. So my twin daughters graduated from college this last spring, and I thought about all of the crossroads over the years where I demanded to know how things would turn out for them, right?
If the school decisions were the right one, the worries that might have kept me up a little at night that would happen during that season. There was things that I wish [00:14:00] I just... I was sure I needed an answer before I could relax, and not one of those outcomes unfolded the way that my worried mind scripted it out.
And now afterwards, and I look back at their experiences at school, God's version, it was so good. All that demanding of certainty I remember feeling before they went and through the process, and it just brought me it didn't br- it brought, didn't bring me peace. But now on the other side I do remember as I was going along creating that this, creating my peace within it, within the uncertainty.
Yes, I'm on the other side to look back and look like, ugh, everything worked out. It was a great experiment experience. They chose the great schools, and they ended up having great friends and everything like that. [00:15:00] And but it was before they went, there was all this uncertainty that kind of, I got all wrapped up in.
And then along the way, I see that it was my job, even though that there was challenges and ups and downs and hard stuff and the last thing I wanna say about certainty, because I know your brain will argue that worrying is useful, and I will tell you that turning it over and over, turning it over to God is being responsible.
But worry, it doesn't prepare us for anything. Worry rehearses pain without producing a single plan. So when we're uncertain about something, I want to caution you about choosing worry. If there's something to do it. If there's something to decide it. And everything after that belongs to trust.
Trust in God, trust in yourself. So when your [00:16:00] brain says, "I just need to know how this all turns out. I wanna be certain," you can lovingly answer, "No. I just need to know who is in it with me." And that, my friends, I know you already know. So those are the three things, time, energy, and certainty. We wanna stop waiting for these things before you create peace for yourself.
But let's just zoom out a little bit, because did you catch what time, energy, and certainty all have in common? Every one of them places your peace outside of you and out in the future somewhere that you aren't right now, at some time that isn't the present moment. And as long as you believe that peace lives outside there, you can't have it, like by definition, because you only ever get to live right here in the now, in this hour, in this house, in, [00:17:00] with this energy level.
And you only get to live it with the uncertainty of not knowing how everything turns out But on the flip side, the place I'm trying to take you to, when you understand that peace is created from the inside through the thoughts you choose, the feelings that those thoughts create, and the action of trust that you place in God and yourself, then peace comes straight to you.
It becomes available on any type of days, the loud days, the tired days, the chaotic days, in the middle of not knowing, in the middle of uncertainty. This is the entire foundation of how I coach. It's the most important thing I will ever teach you. Your circumstances do not have to change for you to feel better, to feel peace, to have peace of mind.
And ironically, [00:18:00] when you feel better first, you can handle whatever comes your way with your time and your energy and what you are uncertain about. You can handle them better than you ever did while you were waiting if you create the peace first When you stop waiting on time, energy, and certainty, they all-- they have a funny way of showing up, right?
But the mom who creates peace in her full calendar suddenly notices, "Oh, I have pockets of time I didn't see when I was, like, so frantic here." Okay? So catch yourself if you're somebody who's in the waiting. Every time you hear, "I'll feel better when," or, "Once this settles down," I want you to stop and ask, "What am I waiting for?
Time, energy, or certainty?" Name which one it is, 'cause naming it takes away half of its power right there. But then [00:19:00] ask that follow-up question, "What would I think and do and trust if peace were available right now, right here?" Because it is. Right? Write that question on a sticky note if you have to Okay, everyone.
Now, I did tell you at the beginning of this episode that I had something for you to announce, and here it is. Everything I taught you today, that peace is created and not found, and that you can feel calm, in control, and confident no matter what's swirling around you, I laid out step by step in my signature book, "The Cyclone Mom Method."
If you're a long listener or longtime listener, this won't be something new to you that I have this book, and it's the process that I take all my clients through. It's like the blueprint, right? Foundation. Pretty much that's underneath almost every episode of this [00:20:00] podcast, and if today's episode stirred something in you, that book is your next step, and I've made it as easy as I possibly can.
The paperback version has been available to you. It's always-- You can get it in the show notes, but you can also get it if you go to my Resources tab on my website. But I also have a digital version, and that digital version, it's just $4.99, but it comes with an, a bonus audiobook and a bonus workbook.
So you can read it or you can listen to it when you drive, walk, fold that laundry. And again, if you go to daniellethienel.com in the Resource page, you'll be able to get those versions if you want. But here's the announcement part, something that I've never done before, is starting next week, right here on the podcast, I am [00:21:00] going to give you my entire Cyclone Mom method for free.
What I'm doing is it's going to run for four weeks, and I'm gonna give you a part section of the book through that whole month of September, and this is when it'll come out live. Now just for you to know, the audiobook, I recorded it when I wrote the book years ago, but it is only ever been available if you buy the digital version.
It comes at that bonus. This is the first time I'm making it available in another format. So the whole method, the audiobook itself, I'm gonna break it down into a series, and I'll frame each part for you along the way. But here's how it'll work. Each week, I'll come on, and I'll set up what the parts of the book you're gonna hear covers and what to listen for, and then you'll listen to the [00:22:00] sections of the audiobook in full.
And then I'll probably close a little each episode by pointing you towards what's gonna come the following week. But by the end of the month, you will have received the complete method, start to finish. The same framework that has helped so many moms go from spinning in the cyclone to standing calmly in the eye of it, where all of the power lies.
So I've done some series, but I've never done anything like this. And I'm doing it because I want so much for you to stop waiting for more time, for more energy, for more certain, to have the tools, to have the method and the process available and at your ears. So that is the announcement that I have, and all you have to do is show up next week and press play, okay?
And tell a mom friend who needs it. Pass it on, share it, or maybe better [00:23:00] yet, tell her today and then get prepared and you guys can go through it together and talk about it. That would be awesome. Your own little book club for peace. All right, my beautiful mamas. That is what I have for you this week. I will see you next week for part one, and until then, may peace be with you always.
Thank you for listening to the Peaceful Mind podcast. If you've been feeling a quiet desire for more peace and steadiness in your motherhood, I invite you to take the next step of scheduling a free coaching consultation with me. We'll meet over Zoom to explore options and possibilities of how having a personal life coach and mentor could help you experience the exact motherhood and life your heart desires.
To talk through current options, schedule a free coaching consultation today. You'll find the link to schedule in the show notes. It would be an honor to support you at any stage of your motherhood [00:24:00] journey
