Lorissa: (02:34) And, um, so as we celebrate this past year and look back, it’s, it’s really a, a combination of all of these blessings and the, and the women that have joined us in Masters that are striving for holiness, striving to wanna raise their families and have peace, be able to manage their minds better so that they can truly live the way God is calling them to live.

Sterling: (03:00) Yeah. And one of the cool things about how we run this company, because we really just pray a lot, is that we don’t know what’s coming. Lorissa, and I didn’t know last November or in January, all of the things that we were gonna do. We just pray and then he reveals things to us, and then that’s what we do. And so as we were preparing for this and looking back, we were like, oh, yeah, and we did that, and we did that program, and that was amazing. And it does feel like just watching the work of God, it feels like watching him breathe through us into these programs that we don’t even know are coming. And we’ll talk about how our team grew this year and, and just how special that has been. And so we’re just gonna take this time to reflect on some of those programs that we’ve done this year.

Sterling: (03:49) So the first one I wanna talk about is what we kicked off in January. We had a new program called The Great Life Blueprint. And what was different about this as a goal setting program is we really encouraged women to pick one goal for the whole year. And human brains don’t like that. Y’all want 10 goals. You want a goal for every area of your life and to lose weight and to fix your house and all the things, right? That’s what brains do. They look for danger, they see danger everywhere, and then they immediately wanna change it. And brains also have kind of an all or nothing thinking where they’re like, we have to fix everything right now, but then we know that that doesn’t really work. And so we wanted to create a program where we told women, hang with us for a whole year.

Sterling: (04:36) Have one goal, one goal, and don’t let your brain be scared. You can still make progress in your life in other areas, but we’re gonna have one thing to focus on. And it has been really powerful to watch women do that all year long and reference their great life goal. And mine this year was marriage. And I knew that that was a dangerous goal to set because God would be like, all right, roll up your sleeves, we’re gonna do some work here. But I have learned so much, and every time I feel myself wanting to focus on a different area of my life, I just remind myself, Nope, we can do that next year. My number one goal is to improve my marriage this year. And I have learned so many things this year that have really shown me how to grow in my relationship and how to invite the Lord more deeply into my marriage. And so that was how we kicked off the year, and I’m, I’m just so proud of that work that we did, and we’re still getting to kind of watch women go through that.

Lorissa: (05:46) Yeah, it’s, it’s fascinating. A lot of times on coaching calls or even with one-on-one clients, this topic of this great life blueprint keeps coming up. Women continue to talk about this, this is my goal for the year, this is why I’m still working on it. I’m still focused on it. Sometimes they’ll want coaching specifically in regards to it, but it’s really cool to hear so many of our master’s members that really dove into changing that one aspect in their life. And the, the thing about it, and the reason why we really wanted to focus on this is because when you get good at focusing in on one thing, and you do the thought work, the mindset work that we teach in Masters to really approach it, as you start going, you build momentum, you continue to focus, you start to see changes, you start to see transformations or whatever in that area.

Lorissa: (06:41) And as you’re doing this, like you’re learning a new skill set that really can be applied to any other aspect of your life. But once you, if you are willing to stick with something long enough, you will always, always see progress. You will fall down, you’ll get back up. You’ll maybe make some mistakes, maybe you’ll have to tweak a couple things. You’ll learn things about yourself. You’ll have self-awareness. But if you keep doing it, you will see progress, you will see growth, you will see transformation, you will learn valuable tools, you will work on, you know, changing habit loops, all of it. And once you have those skills, man, you are unstoppable because then you can take what you learned about that and apply it to anything else in your life. And I feel like I’m experiencing that for myself. My great life goal for this year was my health, my overall health and wellbeing.

Lorissa: (07:35) Not so much weight loss as much as just my overall wellbeing, my health, how I feel on a day to day basis. And that’s been my goal for this year. And I have grown so much. Just like you Lane, like you said, gosh, I had to, you know, roll up my sleeves, dive in. Um, I’ve been to more doctor’s appointments this year. , yeah, in my entire life. It got, your body’s changing, you’re figuring things out. Your hormones are all over the place. So I’ve really said, no, I want to figure out what’s going on with me. I wanna be as healthy and vibrant and active, and I wanna feel good as I possibly can. So that’s been my goal for this year, and it’s really helped me to put myself as a priority for the first time in my life. That’s been the biggest shift for me, is actually learning how to do that.

Lorissa: (08:35) So that’s been a skill that I’ve been learning and, um, it’s forced me to have to learn how to create some boundaries in my own life. Because health is not just your physical health, but it’s your emotional health, your mental health, all of it. So I’ve learned some skills of setting some boundaries, how to, you know, speak up for my own needs and how to advocate for myself. And I’ve also learned how, okay, what areas in my life do I need to cut back on to ensure that my overall health is okay, all of it. So that this blueprint has been an incredible way to not only kick off the year, but help us throughout. And I know so many of our members, including you and I, that have benefited from this greatly.

Sterling: (09:25) Yeah. And if you hadn’t heard that podcast episode, even though this is coming out of Thanksgiving, we still have six or seven weeks left in the year. So I would encourage you to go find that episode, I’m sure it was right around January or right before, listen to it and create your own intention around the number one thing that you’re gonna focus on for the rest of the year. And then we’re gonna do that again. We’ll take people through it again in January, and you can set another one for 2023. And so that was just a really great program that we had. I’m really proud of that.

Lorissa: (10:02) Yes. Yeah, I’m excited. I’m excited for 2023 and, and picking another big goal to focus on.

Sterling: (10:10) Yeah. All right. What’s another program that you wanna talk about?

Lorissa: (10:13) Okay, so one of my favorites has been this year, and we did it, it was shortly earlier on in the year, right around Valentine’s Day, but we did our Marriage Transformed workshop. We focused the whole month, I believe, of February on marriage. So we had a number of great topics that we focused on, but then we also did a 14 day Love Your Husband Challenge. And I loved that challenge for a number of reasons. We really, um, focused on putting out a resource for free to any woman that wants to do this, not just our members, but to anyone, um, that wants to, you know, have a little bit more fun in their marriage, have some mindset things to focus on, and some fun flirtatious text messages that were included in it. And then we also had a number of our masters members contribute to this, um, challenge by writing prayers each day.

Lorissa: (11:17) So there’s 14 days of prayers, 14 emails that were sent out with this challenge, and it turned out so beautifully. Um, so I was just really proud of that opportunity for women. We did a big launch of that right around, you know, Valentine’s Day, but it is also still up on our website. So if you are listening to this, and if you have not done the Love Your Husband Challenge, it’s a free 14 day Love Your Husband challenge, where you get 14 emails into your email box, one each day. And it’s a great way to kind of just, you know, reignite a spark in your marriage. Um, it’s all laid out for you. So yeah,

Sterling: (12:03) We have had 6,000, almost 7,000 Catholic moms go through that. Like it has been such, I mean, it was just so touched by the Holy Spirit, and I think it was, it’s been so successful because it’s so simple, it doesn’t take a lot of time. You just read that email and it just kind of puts your husband at the forefront of your mind. Yeah. So it doesn’t ask you to do anything crazy. It’s just like putting your husband at the forefront of your mind. And then we give you a couple sweet texts or spicy text examples that you could send to him. And just like a really thoughtful question, like, could you do something nice for him? Could you wear something? Just a very, very simple challenge or thing to think about. And I think in its simplicity, it’s very powerful for moms because we’re busy and we’re doing house stuff and kid stuff, so we don’t always have that guy at the forefront of our minds.

Lorissa: (12:59) Right? I know. It’s just a little bit of an effort and really the things that we think about are gonna lead us to what we get in our life. So even though we have so many other things going on, it is important to think about our husbands throughout the day to think about what he means to us and to think about some memories and just to, to bring those things to the surface because it, those thoughts will create emotions that are very loving and very generous and hope, hope filled as well. And that’s what we wanted to do with this challenge. And it’s been super fun to read the feedback that we’ve gotten from it. So many emails from almost 7,000 women. I mean, obviously we haven’t had that many 7,000 emails, but we’ve gotten quite a few emails thanking us for this challenge, letting us know how it’s impacted their marriage and what a gift and joy and blessing it was to go through those. We have women that say that they wish that they would just keep getting emails like that every day. Yeah.

Lorissa: (14:08) They’re like, oh, it’s over now these 14 days. But I wanna tell you also, if you have done the challenge, and maybe it was back in February, sign up again for it, gosh, like do a refresher maybe, um, you know, every time you read those emails, you’re gonna get something new from it. And so I would just like to encourage you to check it out if you want to do it. It’s on our, you know, front page of our website, so just go sign up, share it with your friends. We’ve had a lot of women that did it with their friends, like a group of their friends all signed up together and that was super fun because they were able to, you know, text each other and, and have some, you know, sense of comradery during all of that…So

Sterling: (14:54) Yeah, that was great. And then in April we did a parenting course and we had the previous year done a program called Raising Saints, where we gave some scripts for teaching some of the mindset stuff that we do to children. But we were like, have we not done a parenting course? We talk about parenting all the time in our classes, but we didn’t have a specific course. And this was really great because we really tackled understanding of your parenting from wounds. When you are wounded from your own childhood and you haven’t made peace with that and your, your brain is still believing things from a child perspective, which is completely normal, right? Things happen to us when we’re children and your seven year old self or your 10 year old self makes sense of it, but then a lot of times, however you remember it, you just carry that with you.

Sterling: (15:46) And so it’s so worth the time and effort to revisit your childhood and just rewrite some of those stories where you go. Wow, my parents actually were doing the best that they could and I saw exactly what was going on. And you can make peace with them. And I will tell you that the more peace you make with your own childhood, the more, the less pressure you will feel being a good mom to your own kids, right? Because if you feel like what’s happening in your life right now is negative because of the way that your parents raised you, you’re gonna feel so much pressure to do something in a perfect way so that your kids don’t think that about you. But if you can make peace with your childhood and just see it for this kind of beautiful, messy thing that it was, and that they loved you and they were doing the best that they could, if you can make peace with that, you’ll know that your children will also have that opportunity.

Sterling: (16:46) They’re also gonna grow up and just see that you did the best that you could and that God was there and that you had the childhood that you were supposed to have and they had the childhood that they were supposed to have. And so we talk about teaching mindset to little kids and teenagers. We talk about obedience and discipline. One thing from that class was really knowing what you expect of them. A lot of times moms will come on our calls and they’ll just talk about, right, the chaos of having kids, but I’ll say, what was the rule? And they won’t be able to articulate it to me. And I’m like, yeah, if you as an adult can’t tell me what the rules are around sibling fights, I think that’s such a great example. Cause we all, sibling fights drive us bananas, but the rules aren’t usually clear. It’s kind of just gray. And so we work with moms to help them get really clear about what the rules are and the consequences, and then it makes parenting so much easier because you’ve decided those things ahead of time. So that was just a really, a really powerful course that we taught. And um, I’m really proud of that.

Lorissa: (17:52) Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think really in regards to that whole concept of discipline is this whole understanding, we teach this in that we, we taught this in the, in that course is that discipline is about helping our children to learn. That’s the goal of discipline, is really teaching them to learn. I mean the word discipline is associated with teaching and you know, the discipline of a subject or whatever mm-hmm. . So it’s really about learning. It’s not about punishment. And when you just switch your mindset from like, okay, whether it’s sibling fights or a child’s not doing what they’ve been asked to do, whatever. If you really look at it and say, how can I stop as a parent right now? And, and really think about how I can make this an opportunity to learn and to help them to learn what I meant to teach them in this moment versus just their behavior and, and and punishment.

Lorissa: (18:53) And so that’s really so much, and it comes back to exactly what you said, sterling setting expectations, having very clear expectations makes it so much easier when we’re disciplining because then we can just have a, we can have an expectation and we can have a consequence. And there doesn’t have to be a lot of emotion to it. Mm-hmm. , it just is what it’s, and then we parent from a place of loving authority. Like, we’re like, okay, this is just the expectations. We’ve made it clear this is a consequence. I love you. You’re my precious child, you’re a gift, but this is what we’re learning here. This is the process of learning that’s gonna help them to grow and be the best that they can be. So I love that parenting, um, series that we did. There was so much good content, everything from raising small children, teenagers, adult children. Yeah. All of it was in there.

Sterling: (19:51) Yeah, it was really great. And then we also had, I feel like three months that really helped moms just mom better. So not parenting. We had time management, we had mayhem, which was helping them manage the craziness of May. And then we had a month of being a fun mom. So I feel like all three of those were kind of similar in a way, but they were all just really helping you love your daily life more,

Lorissa: (20:17) Right? Yeah. How can we have more fun? How can we be more intentional about bringing pleasure and joy into our lives as parents, as women, as wives, all of that. That was a huge focus. And then really how can we manage our time so that we’re not feeling stressed and overwhelmed? That we’re very intentionally creating the days and the hours within our, within our week and stepping into them with great intentionality and, and joy because we can have busy and full lives, but we can also live those lives from a place of peace and joy. And I think that a lot of, a lot of us women don’t really understand that or believe that. I know I certainly did for a number of years in my life. I thought, whoa, is this what I signed up for, you know, six, seven kids and a life that felt like it was constantly in a state of chaos?

Lorissa: (21:20) And I was like, where’s the piece? Where’s the joy? Where’s um, the sense of, you know, anything really being something that I looked forward to? And I hate to say it, but that’s kind of where I was until I learned how to very intentionally manage my mind and, and show up to my life with a sense of like that I feel like I’m a little bit more in control of how the day unfolds. I’m more intentional about how I wanna show up. I get to choose what I wanna think and feel and it really does change things. So that was our hope for those three months of how we can be moms that have more fun? How can we be more in control of our schedule and how do we manage how we show up?

Sterling: (22:13) Yeah. And I think one of the biggest lessons that we taught was this idea that you really do choose everything in your life. Because a lot of us feel out of control and we just feel like things are happening to us. But when you learn how to manage your mind, you really choose. You say, and then we just did, I just did that episode on calendars where you, everything on your calendar you choose. And even if it’s something like the dentist and you’re like, mom, I don’t wanna go to the dentist, but yeah, you do, you do. That’s why it’s on your calendar and you can view your whole life like that. And so I, you know, I’m kind of in the thick of this transition right now. My boys are three, four, and five. And on one hand not being pregnant and not having an infant or nursing is amazing, but also y’all three, four, and five, that’s hard.

Sterling: (23:03) Okay. And it’s loud and it’s just like a whole thing. But I just choose them. And that’s what I tell myself every day. I’m like, I chose this circus. I love these boys. I am doing a good job. And I put myself in every hour and every day just saying like, what do I want out of this hour? And how is it what I choose? And it just makes you feel amazing when you have that kind of controller agency knowing that you get to choose how you show up. And we’ve had a lot of members who have been with us for two years now, and that’s first of all just utterly incredible. It’s utterly incredible and such a testament to the work that we do that somebody would pay for two years to keep listening to us teach things. But it’s because they say things like, my life is so much better now. And they’ll tell us unexpected things that happen and they’ll say, I don’t know how I would’ve done that before you guys before this work. I don’t know how I would’ve handled that. And I’m just so grateful that I had these tools to process, you know, someone being laid off or somebody dying or of surprise pregnancy or just all of the things that life brings. And you know, those time management classes really I think helped women to just feel more in control of how they experience their daily lives.

Lorissa: (24:25) Yes. Yeah, I know it has, it’s been an absolute game changer for me learning these time management skills and applying them to my life. I feel so much more in control. I feel so much more peace. And in the weeks that maybe I don’t really do it well, like don’t plan, I don’t take 30 minutes to plan out my calendar for the week. I feel that kind of anxiety rising up that I used to just live with every single day. And I’ll know instantly I’ll know exactly what’s going on. It’s like, oh, I didn’t really plan my calendar this week very well, and now I’m trying to remember everything that I need to do in my head and it just leads to anxiety and stress. And I don’t wanna live like that anymore. I, I don’t, I wanna, yeah,

Lorissa: (25:13) Yeah, Go ahead.

Sterling: (25:14) That is such a, I think that’s, that’s exactly how it feels. Like. It’s not like you, we learn these things and then we do ’em all the time. But now when I don’t use any of the tools and we have so many, and I’ll feel one of those emotions that overwhelm our anxiety, uh, I, it’s almost like my brain goes, oh, right, we weren’t using the tools. And so instead of feeling hopeless or spiraling, I’m just like, yeah, go back and use the tools. I feel even in control in that way, when things aren’t going well, I know exactly why. And that’s an amazing feeling. And kind of tied into that with this other class that we did for two months, we spent two months going over the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And even the timing of it was really beautiful cuz Lorissa and I had been talking about it for a while and then there was just this time we were like, now, now is the time.

Sterling: (26:02) We’re gonna spend two months doing the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And you know, Lorissa, you have taught com confirmation for a long time, so you might have been more familiar with the gifts. I knew that there were gifts and I could probably even name them, but I didn’t really know when to ask God for them. And so I had been Catholic for 10 years not asking God for the gifts. And for me, diving into each of them and knowing when to ask for them has just been such a game changer in my own life. And now I just know exactly what gift to ask for. And you guys, the one I ask for the most, which is crazy, is fear of the Lord. Because that gift corresponds with the virtue of temperance. And so whenever I want to manage my screen time or manage what I’m eating or even manage the time that I’m working, I pray for the gift of fear of the Lord, which is about wanting to honor God with your day. So it’s not about being scared of a consequence like that. God the Father is mad at you. It’s about loving him so much and seeing that he created you and gave you this day and you just wanting to make him so proud. And so you just say, Lord, give me the gift of fear of the Lord so I can honor you with my time and everything that I do today. And that, that whole process just really opened up my faith life even more than I I expected it to.

Lorissa: (27:32) Yeah, I think so for me too, it was a real deep dive. Like I’ve, you know, I’ve obviously, I’ve taught that in confirmation, but I’ve taught it to teenagers. And so you’re obviously teaching it in a different way than I think that when you’re teaching it to Catholic women who are really wanting to go deeper into it, into the spirituality of who is the Holy Spirit, how do I strengthen my relationship with the Holy Spirit and what are the gifts of the Holy Spirit that have been given to me? My baptism strengthened within me and my confirmation that is present every single time I receive the sacraments and this outpoint of grace and the Holy Spirit is active, it’s an animation in our lives. And the more we give him permission, the more we invite him to work and to move and to breathe within us, man, the more we will literally sit on the precipice of miracles.

Lorissa: (28:33) And that’s why we named it Miracles Abound. That was the name of Series Miracles abound. Because when the Holy Spirit is working in and through you every day in a powerful way, when you’re open to him working through you, when you’re asking him to work through you, you’re gonna just have front row seats to miracles. And I think that for me, that’s what’s helped me the most is because since doing that series, I’ve found myself every single day praying specifically to the Holy Spirit, obviously to God, the Father to Jesus as well. But the Holy Spirit was the third person of the Trinity that I didn’t really have a strong relationship with. And that has changed this year because of this series. And I’m excited to see how it’s gonna continue to grow, um, as time goes on. But I do too, I find myself like, I’ll go into a situation and, you know, maybe it might be a challenging conversation with someone, maybe a family member or something comes up and you have to, you know, have a conversation and it’s like, come Holy Spirit, please strengthen within me in this moment, the gift of counsel, as I really want to be guided by you.

Lorissa: (29:52) Help show me where, what, like what do I need to see in this moment to have clarity how like reveal the things that maybe I can’t see in a, just a normal like human way, but help me to see in a supernatural way what I need to know and understand about this situation so I can come to it from a great place of holiness and humility versus my own pride or my own ego. And so, ah, man, it’s been so good to just have a little bit more knowledge and understanding of those gifts.

Sterling: (30:27) Yeah. That was really special. And then the other thing that we did this year, which I also feel like came from the Holy Spirit, was at the, towards the end of the year we decided instead of having, um, a different topic every month, which is what we had done for almost two years, we decided to move to a quarterly theme where we would make one beautiful workbook and we would spend three whole months on a topic. And so for October, November, and December, we have been focusing on cultivating peace in our lives. And we called it prepare the Way, which was what we had originally wanted to call our advent program as we prepared our hearts and our families for the coming of Christ at Christmas. But we thought that’s kind of everything. I mean, having peace and preparing room for Christ and our life is an everyday goal. And so we moved to that model and it has been so powerful. We have not run out of things to say at all. We have so much to say about peace, and we talk about it every Monday with our members. And it has just been such a gift, at least to me. And I, I think to our members too, as they, as they come and talk about it, to really spend three months saying, how can I, how can I have more peace in my life? And the fruits of that have been really phenomenal.

Lorissa: (31:53) Yes, yes. We’ve had such great feedback on that. And again, um, we’ve been using Father Jacque Philippe’s book, um, searching for Maintaining Peace is kind of the framework for this prepare the way. So we highlight some of the things that he teaches in his book, which is so powerful. And again, having these profound breakthroughs. Our faith is so beautiful and God wants to, he wants us to have peace because when we are in a state of peace, he’s capable of working in and through us even more, more powerfully. I mean that like only makes sense, but that was like one of the big takeaways I’ve had, um, from this series is really realizing that he wants and he needs us to be women of peace. Because that is when we can be most used as his instrument.

Sterling: (32:50) Yeah. It’s hard. We talk a lot about helping moms be the peace center of their home. And I, I love that phrase because we can kind of just see that is what the heart of a mother is. The heart of a mother is that peaceful place for her family to land. And I know that most of us feel very far from that all throughout the day. So I don’t want that to be discouraging to you. What we teach is that yeah, you are gonna lose your peace a hundred times a day, but we will show you exactly how to bring it back so that you notice that you’ve lost it and you come right back to peace and that you feel confident that you know exactly how to do that.

Lorissa: (33:25) Yes. Ah, that’s so good. And we still have six more weeks to Prepare the Way. So if you are not in masters and wanna come join us, this is the time, six more weeks to really focus on the piece that Christ desires for you. Yeah. We look forward to welcoming him.

Sterling: (33:45) Yeah, I just did, um, I just did a call about relationships. We just talked about having peace and relationships and not letting other people’s struggles steal our peace. We can love them and support them and empathize with them and pray for them, but we don’t wanna go to the place where they steal our peace. And one of the members on this call was saying, it just happened to be her one year anniversary in Masters. And she said she had joined at this time last year because her mother-in-law had had a terminal diagnosis and they had kind of a strained relationship. And so her mind was trying to make sense of that. Like how when you, when you have a difficult personality in your life and they’re dying, like how do you love them? How do you spend time with them, particularly around the holidays? And um, and so we kind of helped her through the holidays last year and then, and then she, she passed away earlier this year, but she was just saying how grateful she was for the tools because it allowed her to set boundaries to still enjoy time with this woman and to feel so good about their relationship after she passed away.

Sterling: (34:54) And I think it’s, that’s really such a great example of the work that we do with women is we just gave them peace and difficult situations and that is what we will continue to do. All our work is about leaving women to God and God wants you to have peace and he tells us it’s possible in any situation.

Lorissa: (35:13) Yes. And he tells that to us over and over and over is scripture. Like that is one of his most profound messages that he wants us to really embrace. But I used to think this sterling, I used to always pray for God’s, like before I knew any of these tools Yeah. In this mindset, I used to think, God send me your peace. Like almost as though I expected him to, like I was feeling all of this chaotic emotion in my body, stress, overwhelm, you know, struggling relationships and feeling all the tension of that. And then I would be like, God, gimme your peace. Gimme your peace. As if he could somehow just like, I wanted him to come in and override

Sterling: (35:58) Yeah.

Lorissa: (35:59) All those emotions. Like just come in and just take away all the stress and all the overwhelm and all attention and just, just give me your peace. It’s like infusing your peace into my body. Yeah. And now I’m just starting to understand, he’s like, I do want you to have peace and I do wanna give you my supernatural graces, but as long as your mind, it’s, it’s your mind, it’s your thoughts. It’s generating all of that chaotic emotion in your body. And so once I learned how to calm that down, all of a sudden it was just like I could feel him pouring his peace into me, his graces into me. It was like I was able to put those other things to the side. And again, you’re right, those things still come up like we’re human. But when we learn that we actually have power to calm quite a bit of that, it makes room for God to bring in his graces and then we actually recognize them more. But he’s not gonna just override us and just like he needs us to cooperate with him is what I’m trying to say. He’s like, let’s be a team here, Lorissa. I need you to calm your mind down a little bit and then here I’m gonna give you this grace. Let’s work together here. And I think that was what was so empowering for me was to realize like, oh, I have some I can contribute to to the lessening of this stress kind right now.

Sterling: (37:33) Yeah, absolutely. I mean one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, like none of them is peace. There are other things that give you information that allow you to think things to feel peace. And I thought that was so interesting when we went through that course that peace isn’t, it’s just exactly what you said. He doesn’t give us peace. We can commune with him and he gives us information and then we can trust him and surrender and then feel peace. And another program that we did this year was the food freedom Intensive. And this was a new kind of program for us. We had not done any small group coaching and this was around having peace around food and you know, it was a little bit about weight loss, but I think every single person who’s been through that program would say it isn’t.

Sterling: (38:23) It’s about learning how to turn to God instead of food and being able to be around food and not have that dominate your thinking. And it was such a powerful program and we just, we just launched it again and it sold out. And so I wanted to let you guys know that we created a wait list. It’s gonna come out again at the end of January or the beginning of February, somewhere around there. And so if you wanna do it, if you missed it this time and it sold out, I want you to be on that list because the people on that list will get to sign up first before we kind of open it up publicly. So that was just another thing that we did that was all from God. We didn’t see that coming. We didn’t see this new coach that we hired Denise, who’s just so touched by the Lord so Catholic and, and really helps women find freedom and break them out that prison of, you know, binge eating shame and, and being trapped by food.

Lorissa: (39:22) Right. And I think this is, again, this is what I was kind of speaking to at the beginning is the amazing ways in which God has brought women into through masters. Cuz Denise was signed up as a master’s member. She reached out to Sterling for business coaching as she’s, you know, working. And then like God just was like bringing us together with her to be able to help. You know, we saw within her, gosh, I think we think that Denise can really help our master’s members. And it just, just started that whole thing. And so it’s been really fun this last year just seeing who God has brought to our membership, the relationships that have been built, so many amazing women. And then, um, just the great gift of bringing some of these women onto our team. We also have Kelly as our new director of operations, what a gift she’s been, again, she was a member, she’s been a member for, since we almost launched masters.

Lorissa: (40:23) And um, not only have we had her as a member and, and a great gift as a member, but now she is in a very significant role in our company helping us to grow it and helping us to reach even more women. Um, and then we’ve also brought on Christina, Christina Brown is one of our new coaches. And again, very similar, just, um, she joined Masters and found this work to be life changing. It started impacting her life in very significant ways. And she’s like, how do I learn how to help other women with this? So she went and got certified and went through all the training and then came back to us and said, I, you know, I wanna help serve the master’s members. And so it has been really exciting. Again, you and I Sterling, we didn’t see any of this coming last January. I mean, we had hopes and dreams for growth in this company and, and reaching more women. But really every step of the way, every new addition, every new member has been because of God and him opening those doors.

Sterling: (41:32) Yeah, we make plans, but now we know to make loose plans because we just know that the Holy Spirit’s gonna show up. And I can’t tell you the number of times that Lorissa and I will have a call and we come to the call and one of us will say, I had this crazy idea. And the other one would be like, I was thinking the exact same thing and it wasn’t something we were planning on doing. And, and it’s so beautiful to run a company like that. It’s so beautiful to just to know that we both pray and we talk to the Lord and, and that our, our what we hear in our prayer life is confirm with each other when we see that. And so we’ve got some really exciting things coming. Um, one of the things that we’re doing is we’re raising the prices in December.

Sterling: (42:17) So we have had the same price for the past two years. And I know for a lot of you it feels like a really big investment. And I want you to think that, I want you to think this is a big investment because investing your time and your money is just the beginning of your transformation. The real investment that we ask of you is the willingness to be uncomfortable as you grow. Because that’s the first thing that’s gonna happen. You’re gonna get in there and you’re gonna see, oh, I have to grow. God is asking me to grow in virtue and to manage my mind and to let go of some stories that I’ve had. And it is a huge investment and we love that our members take that so seriously and we love watching people commit to growing in new ways. They often come and they grow in the area of life that they wanted and then they pick a new one and a new one.

Sterling: (43:15) And it’s really neat to get to see that. And so we are raising our prices December 1st, so everyone who is in before then will be at the current price and they’ll be grandfathered in. And you will always see that price as long as you stay a member. And in addition to raising the price, we’re also offering a new tier where you can sign up for the quarter. So it’ll be $85 for the month is the new monthly price and then $177 a quarter. Because a lot of women come and they know they’re gonna be there for three months, especially now that we’re moving to this quarterly model, you’ll know, you’ll say, I really wanna focus on that theme that they’re doing for three months. And then if you sign up for the whole year, that price is actually the same monthly as it is right now.

Sterling: (44:08) So it’s actually even a little less, which is awesome. And so you can sign up for $497 for the whole year and then you’ll, you’ll get to do the four quarterly themes that we commit to throughout the year. And we just are so proud of what we’ve created that is still, I want you guys to know that is still an incredible deal for life coaching and everything that we offer you will not find any program like this. You will not find the level of transformation that you can get in the works that we provide anywhere else for that price. And it is absolutely worth your peace of mind, feeling more confident as a mom, managing your time better, improving your marriage, and most importantly, learning how to draw closer to the Lord and to hear, to hear his voice and feel confident that you’re doing what he wants you to do with your life.

Lorissa: (45:05) Yeah, absolutely. And I was listening to, I, I can’t remember who it was, it was a podcast recently of, uh, big time financial person who’s very successful. And somebody asked him, if you could go back to your younger self, what would you tell yourself to invest in? And I know that the person that was asking the question was like, would you invest in stocks? Would you be investing in real estate? What would you be investing in? And he said, he goes, hands down. If I could go back to my 20 year old self and tell myself to invest in anything, I would say invest like 50% in yourself. Invest, take the courses, do the coaching, get the help, get the support, invest in yourself because then you add so much value to your own life. Yeah.

Sterling: (46:00) And

Lorissa: (46:00) You get to show up from, you know, an even more powerful place than you. It changes all your decisions, it changes your relationships, it changes your life so much more for the better. And Sterling, and you and I, I mean we’ve, you know, we love this stuff. We wake up every single day thinking, how can I be better? How can I grow? What am I meant to learn today? And I think that’s really profound because God didn’t make us stay stagnant. We we’re human beings that grow and learn. And that’s why when you’re 60, you’re a lot different than when you’re 30. You have so much more wisdom and knowledge. Um, but I just, I see life as just such a gift that I want to experience the most of it, like the most from it. And I wanna be the best that I can be. And so I, I’ve started to learn the value of investing in myself, you and I, we invest in ourselves probably more than many people that we know. Like with, with our time, with our money Yeah. Learning and growing and saying, I wanna be better today than I was yesterday.

Sterling: (47:14) Yeah. And because Lorissa and I do that so much. And we really do. Um, you guys benefit from that. So we’re taking some classes right now that will probably show up, you know, in Masters next year on, you know, processing shame and trauma and self-image. And that was another thing that we learned a lot about this year. And one of the, the major themes of next year is quarter one we’re gonna focus on helping you get to know and to create your own sacred self image. So your self image is what you think about yourself. Um, it’s so much more than self-esteem or self-confidence. And the things I learned this year, I had never learned before. And I’m so excited to teach it. And I, I think when you want more self-esteem or you want more self-confidence, what you’re really wanting is to intentionally create your sacred self-image.

Sterling: (48:18) And so we’re gonna talk about how to do that anchored of course, in, in God, and that you are, beautifully and wonderfully made from the Lord. And how you can really show up in your life as if you believe that. Cause I know a lot of us intellectually believe that, right? But we’re not treating ourselves that way. We’re not really showing up in our day to day life as if we believe, um, that we are sacred. And so that’s what quarter one is gonna be about. And for three months, we’re gonna help you understand your, your sacred self image. Not just your body and your mind, but also your home and the things that you surround yourself with. So I know we’re both really excited about

Lorissa: (49:02) That. I’m so excited for it. Uh, even in, in our preparation and our praying about it, putting our workbook together, everything it is going to be, I I believe it will be a very transformational quarter for all of us. It’s why we’re doing it at the beginning of the year. Because if we can get very intentional about our self image, how we think of ourselves, the ways we talk to ourselves, the words we use, the ways in which we want to really show up in this world, it will have such a big impact on every aspect of our lives. So super excited about that. And then in conjunction with the sacred self image, we are also kicking off January with a 30 day fit and holy challenge. Now, some of you are like, I know about fit and holy, I’ve done a fit and holy challenge.

Lorissa: (49:55) And some of you are like, tell me more, tell me more. I wanna hear more about this. This is gonna be a super fun 30 days just overall like health, wellbeing. If you have a weight loss goal, this is for you as well. But, um, we’re gonna do just a, a fun challenge tied into all of the self-image stuff where we’re gonna just make some goals about how we’re eating, moving the water we’re drinking, getting enough sleep, um, taking care of our spiritual selves as well. Like how are we, um, what are we doing with our prayer lives and in our relationships? And so all of that’s tied into the fit and holy challenge. We will be sending out information and sharing more about that, but this is like a teaser for what has come in January because it’s gonna be super fun. Like, gosh, if you are at all on the fence about joining masters, you wanna get in for the new year because we’ve got some really cool things and so many amazing resources to share with you.

Sterling: (51:01) Yeah. And Lorissa, I think you run the fit and holy challenge for five years. I mean, it’s really one of the most popular things that we do, but this time it’s like the same program. It’s so awesome and it’s the same every time. I mean, it’s just that good that we don’t change it, but this time it’s gonna be laid on top of the foundation of working on your self image. So I just know it’s gonna be the best it’s ever been. And so you wanna join before December because then you’ll be grandfathered in at our $49 a month price. The price goes up to 85 on December 1st, and then after that point you’ll have that monthly option, the quarterly option, and the annual option. And for all options. And even now, we offer a $1 trial. So you can for $1 spend seven days in our program to see what it is.

Sterling: (51:54) We are so confident in it that we know that you’re gonna see it and want to stay. And that’s why we offer that so that you can look under the hood and see, see what it looks like and see how Catholic and beautiful the women are in that program because it’s so comforting to get in there and go, oh, these are my people. It feels great. So thank you all of you for this wild ride. These last two years. They’ve been so special to us and I didn’t see most of that coming. So I just know that I don’t, I don’t know all the amazing things that we’re gonna do in the next 12 months, but I’m confident that it will be guided by the Holy Spirit and we will just trust him to bring us whatever it is that we need.

Lorissa: (52:36) Yes. And as we wrap this up, I just wanted to give a quick shout out to our team of amazing women that help make made for greatness and masters. So successful. Of course. Um, Kelly, our new director of operations, we’ve got Kara Johnson, our director of spirituality, who also this year led some amazing book studies and groups and has a strong presence within our community of, of being a really strong prayer warrior for our community. Yeah. We have Apple, our tech and assistant and who helps us with customer service. So many amazing things that she does. And our new coach is Denise and Christina. Um, what a gift you guys are to our, to our membership and we’re looking forward to, um, just the ways in which you are serving our members in a powerful way. So with that, we can’t wait. Um, we are thankful for all of you, all of our podcast listeners, thank you for our, your support of this podcast. Thank you for your reviews and recommendations for sharing it with your friends and family. Um, please keep doing that. We wanna, we wanna see our podcast grow and our listenership grow. And to all of our masters members and all the women that have been touched by this work, we thank God for you and the extraordinary gift that you are.

Sterling: (54:00) Yes ladies, just from the bottom of our heart. We think about you, we pray for you. And none of this would be possible without you. And, you guys are just helping us accomplish this mission that God placed on our hearts to help women, particularly Catholic moms, to have more peace in their life. And just remember that’s a scary mission and it’s scary to step into growth. And your brain is gonna say, don’t do it. That sounds uncomfortable. But remember the whole point of our company is that the world offers you comfort, but you are not made for comfort. You were Made for Greatness.