And so we, this course is brand new. It’s brand new to masters, it just hit. And so all of our masters members have full access to this course. And if you’re not in masters, this is a great time to join. So we’re gonna be talking a little bit about how to process our emotions, how to process negativity in this, or through negative emotions in this podcast today. And we’re going to share with you some exciting things. We’ve got coming up in the month of August. So Sterling, how are you? 

Speaker 2: Sterling Jaquith

I am doing well. And we are having a good summer, a full summer. I like the word full instead of busy because I used to say, oh, we’re so busy. Right? And then it would cause drama in my mind. And so now I just smile and I say, we’re having a really full summer and I choose all of it and I’m here for it and I’m really enjoying it.

Speaker 1: Lorrisa Horn

Good. What would you like? What is one thing that’s kind of a standout for you this summer? 

Speaker 2: Sterling Jaquith

Well, actually we have a lot of trips. We’re not normally trip people. And so that didn’t, COVID in that way. Didn’t really change our lives that much, but we have a lot of camping trips and we’re having a big family reunion and then spontaneously, we decided to get a puppy. And so now we’ve added this puppy into the mix and we’re remodeling our kitchen. So all those things make it a very full summer. 

Speaker 1: Lorrisa Horn

Puppies! What kind of puppy? 

Speaker 2: Sterling Jaquith

A great Pyrenees puppy. So for those of you that don’t know, those are giant white, fluffy dogs. So it’s like, I have a polar bear in my yard now. She’s quite lovely. 

Speaker 1: Lorrisa Horn

Oh my gosh, what’s her name? 

Speaker 2: Sterling Jaquith

Her name is Lily. She’s white as the snow. We love it. And she fits in with our flower girl names. So yeah, we’re enjoying her and she adores the kids and you know, it’s a special experience, but it is another thing. So she’s getting added into the mix. 

Speaker 1: Lorrisa Horn

Oh my gosh. Awesome. So much fun. My kids keep begging me for a puppy.

Speaker 2: Sterling Jaquith

Don’t do it. All of you. Don’t do it. I’ve always every time we do it, I’m like, why didn’t we do this? But listen, it’s because I’m obsessed with them. And so when I talk to a mom that isn’t, I’m like, don’t do it. If you don’t want it really badly for you, don’t do it. What do you guys going on this summer? 

Speaker 1: Lorrisa Horn

You know, we followed your lead. We just moved surprise, surprise. And we’re just getting settled in, although we are doing, we’re doing a trip to Michigan as well here soon. And let’s have some fun things going on, just getting ready for school to start and all of that. Trying to just soak in these last few weeks of sunshine, sunshine, it is so hot here. And anyways, just trying to just take it all in. It feels like it’s just flying by though. And it’s trying to hold on to every little minute. So that is what we are doing. And so let’s dive in to this processing of emotions because Sterling like you, and I know this is what we teach women, how to do. This is a big part of our master’s program, where we teach women Catholic moms, how to manage their minds, how to manage their thoughts. It’s a huge part of self-awareness. And there is this skillset really that I want to highlight. I mean, I want to highlight so much that this is a skill set.

And unfortunately for many of us, I know for me from my life, no one ever taught me these skills. Right. And so that’s why we feel so passionate about teaching women, these tools, and it’s a skill set. And so it’s something that you kind of learn and then you have to practice it and practice it and practice it. And eventually you get better at it until one day you do it almost automatically. And then you think, oh my gosh, my life has changed because of this skill. Now that I know how to do this. And the power of this work is that we, as moms, as we’re learning these skills, as we’re learning these tools, then we will automatically be modeling it for our families, our children. And eventually like we can teach these tools, these skills, our children so that when our children are 40 years old, they’re not saying no one ever taught me this.

So I dunno. So basically there’s, I mean, there’s so much that we dive into in this course, but a big part of it is really recognizing first and foremost, that life in life, we have a lot of emotions. We have a wide range of emotions and although we all want to have the really good and happy and comfortable emotions, that’s not what life is like. Life is the good, the bad, the hard, the challenging, the awkward, all of it, all of those emotions. And so how we just, how we process through all the emotions really impacts how we live our lives. Because particularly when it comes to the negative emotions, most of us, if we’re, unless we’re intentional about it, unless we know this skill of processing through them, we want to run from them. We want to resist those negative emotions. We want to hide from them.

We want to push them away. We want to ignore them. We want to numb them. We want to buffer them. And what this ultimately ends up doing is it just makes the pain worse. It may help the pain temporarily. Like if we buffer which, which I go into that in this course, what is buffering and all of that. But basically buffering is when we turn to an external thing, like food or alcohol or zoning out on social media, like when we turn to one of those other things to distract us from our pain or numb the pain, or just temporary relieve it, like it will, it will temporarily solve for the pain. But what we don’t realize is that the pain comes back more and it comes back stronger. And, and then we can oftentimes create a vicious cycle for ourselves of not actually dealing with the pain, not addressing it, not working through it and just making that problem worse.

Speaker 2: Sterling Jaquith

Yeah. And I think one of the ways that I know when my clients aren’t feeling their feelings or processing their pain is when I hear a lot of fines. I’m fine. My marriage is fine. My kids are fine. School is fine. I hear this often. And it’s just a signal to me that a mom has kind of closed the box on those negative feelings. And oftentimes we do that for so long. We even believe that we’re not having feelings or some moms will say, yeah, I just don’t feel things very strongly or I’m very calm. Most of the time often what it means is that she’s kind of buttoned-down that part of her and she’s been resisting it for so long that she’s right. She doesn’t know how to label those feelings. She doesn’t know how to feel and process those feelings, but they do always come out eventually right? And that’s why we tend to have bouts of anger that seemed to come out of nowhere, right? Your husband will ask you for one thing. And then all of a sudden it’s wow, I have a long list of stuff comes out of your mouth. Or we do the same thing with our kids or about our responsibilities or the weight on our shoulders or managing the kids’ school schedules. It’s like, we’re fine until we’re not. And that is such a big signal that we haven’t been processing our feelings along the way.

Speaker 1: Lorrisa Horn

Absolutely. I think for me, that was, I mean, you nailed it on the head. I can look back at my life and I used to be so good at suppressing my emotions. I would just, you know, partly because we are as moms, we’re so busy, we have so much to do that.

I would say a negative emotion would come up and I would be like, I can’t deal with this right now. I can’t handle this. And I would suppress it, suppress it, and things would build up, build up, build up. And I thought that I was dealing with it, but I wasn’t. I thought, you know, and it was building up and then it was showing up, like I was just turning to other things, turning to food and overeating to try to numb that buildup. But then like you said, eventually it really does come out. You explode or it wreaks havoc on your relationships. I can look back at the times that, you know, I would really take it out on my husband, giving him the silent treatment or whatever, and it wasn’t even his fault, but just because I didn’t know how to manage those emotions.

I didn’t know how to process through them when they came up. And ultimately, I mean, for, like I said, for most of us, we never have really learned how to do this. We’re all just doing the best we can in life. So we go to kind of survival mode. And for us, like when you’re experiencing negative emotions, when you’re experiencing pain when you’re experiencing suffering, you just turn to the things that are going to provide you some sort of relief. And unfortunately, we all know that even temporary relief oftentimes, well, first of all, it doesn’t solve the problem. And second of all, oftentimes it just makes it worse. Yeah. For example, for me, if I was filling a really negative emotion, like disappointment, for example, like let’s say something happened and I was feeling disappointed and then I go E or maybe overeat something, eat, eat off-plan or eat something that I didn’t want to eat, but I eat it.

And now all of a sudden, not only am I feeling disappointed, but now I’m feeling shame or guilt for overeating. And even though temporarily, I felt better in that moment, maybe I had a dopamine hit or, you know, I was distracted from my disappointment. All of a sudden now I’m feeling the disappointments even stronger and feeling disappointed in myself and feeling shame or whatever. So it just compounds things. So that is why, you know, learning. This is so valuable. 

Speaker 2: Sterling Jaquith

Yeah. And I think another example, that’s such a good example where we turn to food. Sometimes what we turn to sounds really productive. So I know that in my business and in my homeschooling, both of those, when I would have that feeling, oh no, I don’t know what I’m doing or I’m screwing it up. Right. I think those show up both for me when I’m thinking about homeschooling the kids and what we’re choosing or in my business, then I don’t want to feel that feeling.

I don’t want to feel dumb. I don’t want to feel like I don’t have what it takes. And so instead of feeling that and processing through that pain, I would choose to read a book or listen to podcasts and I’d be like, well, this is great. And when I listen to those, it makes me feel better. And I would get a dopamine hit from listening to a great podcast or a book. And that sounds good. Like, oh, responsible people, you know, educate themselves. But really, while I was doing it, it was to avoid feeling this pain that I didn’t know what I was doing. And the more I would throw myself into self-help books or podcasts, the less I was working in my business or in my homeschooling when the answer was probably to feel my feelings process, the pain, get to the point where I realized I’m the perfect mom to homeschool my kids.

I’m going to figure it out. I’m going to figure out what to do in my business with the help of God, because he always guides me and then just getting to work in either of those areas. But it’s so interesting that when we don’t want to feel our pain, we just hide. And sometimes the hiding looks productive on the outside, but it’s not what we should be doing.

Speaker 1: Lorrisa Horn

Right. Yes. And so, you know, really in this course, I dive in real and I explain truly the process of how to process negative emotions, how to process pain, how to process suffering all from both. Well, actually both from a life coaching perspective, using all the life coaching tools that we teach. But then also what we have as Catholics is so beautiful because from the beginning of the church, from the time of Christ, like he has been the one who has laid that foundation for us of what it means to process our emotions.

So I really bring in the teachings of our faith and how we, you know, I mean, Jesus has called us to, to not run from our sufferings to not, to not hide, but to pick up our cross, to follow him, to embrace the cross. This is all like part of it. And the beauty of uniting our sufferings to him for exp you know, for grace that can abound in this world in ways that we may not ever see until we’re in heaven, all of it. So it’s infusing the truth of our Catholic faith around pain and suffering and bringing in these tools. I think when you have both of that, you have the fullness of what we have, what we need to really be able to step into pain and suffering, to feel it, to experience it, to should learn from it. And she United to Christ.

And you know, I talk about this in the course a little bit, but this reality that of John chapter 10, 10, I have come to give you life and life to the full Sterling. You and I, we use a scripture passage a lot in our master’s program and what we do, because it just relates to so many things. But, you know, Jesus never said like, you can’t find anywhere in the gospel where Jesus said, I have come to give you life so that you can be happy, right. All the time. Like I have come to give you, I have come, you know, so that you may never experience pain. He never said that. Obviously we know that we have our sights set on heaven and that’s going to be a different reality than what ours is now. But we know that in this life it’s going to be hard, but we also know that we’re not going to be alone, that he’s with us and that he has called us to live life to the full.

What does that mean? I love that you started out this podcast saying my, my like summer is full. It’s like right. Our life don’t we want to live a full life. What does that mean? It means that we’re always happy. Does it mean that we’re always content? I think when I think about this, I think if my, if I was just happy 24 7, I would, it would mean that I was missing out on so much. That God, I know that God wants me to experience. And so our life is the fullness of the emotions that in this life we are going to have happiness and we are going to have sadness. We are going to have life. We’re going to have death. We’re going to have every emotion that comes in between. We’re going to experience frustration and anger and joy. You know, I mean, we experience the pain of childbirth and the suffering that comes with that.

And the beauty that comes with that. So we experienced that dying to ourselves and the pain and the, of childbirth. But then we also experienced the great joy of watching your son as a 15 year old kid hit his first home run. And you think, gosh, like my heart wants to explode, right? And the full gamut of all of it, we want to experience disappointment. We want to experience this appointment because disappointment tells us that we have hope in our lives. Like we want to experience the opposite. Like sometimes we want to feel sad when a friend moves away because we like, it just tells us how much we loved that friend and how much that friend has met in our lives. Like we want to be like, we want to experience all of it. I don’t know if you want to speak to that at all.

Speaker 2: Sterling Jaquith

Yeah. I mean, I think one of the reasons Loris and I wanted to do this podcast together is because we know it didn’t sound great. Come, come hang out with us. And we’ll process pain together, right? Like that’s not a great pitch to people, but we both know that this is the key to you. Getting everything that you want, right. Processing pain is the key to losing weight and improving your marriage and being more confident as a mom and feeling more in control of your life. Like, I think all our deep longings come from God. And, you know, I talked to so many women who just want to control everything. And I say, that comes from God. That is a good thing. We’re just, we think that we want to control our circumstances, but that’s the thing we can’t control. But what we can control is this. 

We can control how we show up and experience all of these feelings. And it’s when you guys begin to practice this, and it is a practice, you will begin to feel so powerful when you control how you process the pain that shows up because the pain is going to show up. But then when you step into it, it’s like choosing to get a massage, right? It’s like when you go to get a massage and you’re like, oh, this hurts a little and it hurts, but you’re choosing it. And you’re like, just present for it. And you feel it you’re like, this is painful, but in the same way, I like it. And I know what this is doing for me. And it’s going to help me. That’s what it begins to feel like, to process pain in your own life. And it makes you feel, I think, in control in the way that God always wanted us to be.

And it’s such a powerful way to move toward your goals. And so, you know, we didn’t start out this program talking about this because we wanted to give you some of the more fun things first. Right. And the things that sounded exciting, even though this is probably the number one thing that we have learned as life coaches, and I don’t know about you, but it’s definitely the thing that’s changed me the most in my life. 

Speaker 1: Lorrisa Horn

Right. I, I, I would say the exact same thing for me. This has been one of those skillsets that now I use every day. Yeah. I mean, I know every day am I going through like major suffering, but every day I am experienced. I mean, there are some days where there’s, there’s some major sufferings. We all have some really big, big crosses that we have to carry in our lives. 

But from on a day-to-day basis. Yeah. There’s, we all experience negative emotions every single day. And for me, this has been one of those tools that I am able to now experience when I like I’ll recognize my feeling like the emotion in my body. And I will use like, what I teach in this course, like the, how to process through it. It’s what Sterling, what you and I teach in. Masters like how to process through our emotions. And I can do it pretty quickly now and move through it, process through it. I kind of, I use an example in, in the course of the kind of like crossing a river. Like you have to like to walk through this river of pain and you have to experience it, process through it, to come out on the other side. But every time we come out on the other side of it, we’re stronger.

We’re better. We are more resilient. We have learned something many, many times. We have grown closer to God, which isn’t that what we ask for every day. Like we learn how to love more. We have more compassion, all of it. And so for me, being able to feel a negative emotion in my day and not want to run from it or not want to suppress it or numb it is a really powerful sense of feeling in control. 

Speaker 2: Sterling Jaquith

Right? Yeah. And I think here’s the thing you guys, because no one teaches us how to process pain. We’re running from it because it sounds so scary. And we think it will consume us and we will, we will be lost to it and maybe we’ll lose our minds. Right. We don’t know. It just kind of feels like a scary, scary thing. But when you learn how to process pain, you come to realize it doesn’t even take that long.

And in the beginning, before you learn this, when you’re avoiding your pain, it ends up causing problems for days per day. So like, you’ll end up having a yucky feeling and then it will chase you and you’ll be upset or grumpy or in a shame spiral for many days. And now when I have these things come up, I just process them. And I sit with them maybe for a few minutes, maybe even an hour. And I just allow myself to be in that place. And then I move on and it makes me feel so free because I know that previously it would have sunk me for a long time and now I don’t stay in that place anymore. So it is actually less scary. And that’s why you can become a person who likes to process pain. 

Speaker 1: Lorrisa Horn

Right? Yes. And that’s kind of what I want to highlight today is like, what is it costing us, not knowing how to do this? Like, what is it costing us? And I think you just nailed it. Like it can cost us a day’s worth of extra pain and suffering that maybe isn’t necessary in our lives, or it causes us to, again, turn to other things that aren’t good for us as a way to, you know, anytime, like, is it over drinking? Is that overeating? Is it, you know, overspending so many moms like, we’ll just, you know, be instead of going feeling that pain, they’re like, let me just jump on Amazon right now. What can I buy to give me that quick fix of like, I’ve got something tangible that I can look forward to, but what if we didn’t need that to feel happy? What if we could process through the pain. And then the reality of going through that experience actually brings us to this other side, where we can determine the positive emotions that we want to feel after we processed through the negative ones.

It really is life-changing. And this is one of those things. One of those things that we need to be modeling for our children, because they’re watching us so much and for us to be able to help our children when they’re going through pain or with our husbands when they’re struggling with something, how can we be, you know, that kind of solid rock in their life that allows them to, you know, we’re able to create some space for them to help them to be able to help them, you know, ask them certain questions and help them to be able to process pain in their own lives.

Speaker 2: Sterling Jaquith

Absolutely. And I, that is one of the biggest things that I do with my kids. Now, I just sit with them in their pain and I just allow them to feel it and I help them to know that it’s totally fine and good to just sit and feel that. And I don’t try to cheer them up. I don’t try to move them on or distract them. And I just teach them how to identify their feelings and to feel them. And I just can’t even imagine the kind of people they’re going to be having learned this as children. I mean, it’s such a gift that we can give our kids. 

Speaker 1: Lorrisa Horn

Absolutely. So Sterling, did you have an example? I know that you were mentioning to me that you had kind of an example of a recent processing and processing. 

Speaker 2: Sterling Jaquith

Yeah, absolutely. So we are modeling our house. We bought an older house and you guys might actually hear them selling some things in the background today. And so we took out a wall, which of course looks so easy on HGTV. Okay. Joanna just takes it out. It’s no big deal. But in our house it was a load bearing wall. So we had to put in a beam and we had to put in these columns and I thought the columns were just going to go through the first floor, but they ended up one day I was gone and they met with my husband and they said, no, they have to go all the way through to the second floor, which means they were going to have to go through the basement. And so my husband said, yeah, that’s fine and agreed to it. And I wasn’t there. And we already have three very big columns in the basement.

And so then we were going to have five and they were going to be off center. So we were going to walk into my big basement and have five kinds of weird columns there. And I was so disappointed when I walked in and I saw that this was happening and I felt kind of upset that I didn’t know that it was happening. And it was so ugly. You guys, like if you went down there, you would think that it was so terrible. I don’t know if you’d think that, but I feel like all the women would be on my side. And so it was so upsetting because here’s this beautiful home and I’m trying to create this place for our kids. And, and it just, wasn’t what I wanted. And previously I would have made this be a poor kid story, like, oh, you’re a poor kid. You never know how to get the things that you want. Of course you weren’t going to get the beautiful thing that you wanted. Everything that you get is always weird or second-rate rate or knock-off. Right. I mean, cause that’s just how I grew up.

We didn’t have a lot of money, so that was the story. But I’ve just carried that with me for my whole life. So I probably wouldn’t have said anything before. I would’ve just been sad and then probably watched Netflix and eaten food and felt sorry for myself for many days. And I probably would’ve pouted with my husband a lot and it would’ve just been awful and so yucky. And instead, when I noticed that this was coming up for me, all these feelings were bubbling up. I just said, listen, I just need a minute. And so I left and I just processed my feelings and I sat with the person inside with me and I just, I just talked to her and I said, I love you. I see that. You’re really disappointed. This is so terrible. It’s not what you wanted. And I just thought with her, and I don’t want to describe all the steps to processing pain, but there’s some very specific steps that you take. And I, I just allowed myself to feel all of it. And then I came out and I, you know, these guys are such great guys who were helping us and it wasn’t their fault and it’s not their fault that, you know, the dynamics of weight-bearing walls is the way that they are. And so I thank them for what they were doing. I made peace with it. And I, I expressed to them how I was feeling. And they said, Hey, you know, I’m not disappointed in you guys. You’re great. This is just not exactly what I thought it was going to be. And then I left it and I left and came out of that room and ended up walking up outside.

And I saw my four kids walking in this field that we have, the four kids were walking in the field with our new dog and they were just smiling. And I felt like the Lord was showing me like, this is your treasure. This is what makes you happy. And I am just thankful that we have the full spectrum of our emotions. I’m so thankful that we can feel disappointment, mint and sadness because it shows you the incredible contrast of when we feel love and joy, we wouldn’t even know what love and joy felt like if we didn’t have the other feeling. And that was it. I didn’t spend three, three days feeling bad about myself and telling myself a story that wasn’t true. I had a yucky couple minutes and then I just moved on and it was such a gift because I just feel so free. That is the word that I would use. I feel so free in my own way. Life now.

Speaker 1: Lorrisa Horn

Ah, so powerful Sterling. Yeah. I think that is such a great way of describing feeling free because I can look back at most of my life before, like really understanding how to do this, where I felt so enslaved to my emotions. I felt like my emotions completely ran my life. And I didn’t, I didn’t understand how connected our emotions were to our thoughts. I didn’t understand. I just felt like I was a victim of my emotions. And so I would have these really strong negative emotions a lot. And not only did I realize that I actually had power over them. Like, are they that I could experience them, feel him and learn from them, all of those things, but also choose if I wanted to, to, you know, decide another course or take another route or, you know, be grateful for these negative emotions, all of that.

And so now I agree. I think that sense of freedom is, is super, is, is in a perfect way to explain it. I know the other day for me, I was driving in my car. It was interesting. I was driving and all of a sudden I just had this kind of sick feeling in my stomach. And it was so weird. It was one of those moments where I just kind of felt sick to my stomach, but I didn’t really know why. And this is the power of this work that we teach because a lot of times emotions will come up and we won’t necessarily know what’s causing it. And for me, because I know like I just was like, Ooh, this is an interesting feeling. Why am I feeling kind of like yucky? Why am I feeling this like sickness to my stomach? And I just settled into it.

I didn’t want to try to distract from it. I wanted to know like I wanted to discover it. And really, so it’s like part of it’s just like leaning into it. And it was very like what is causing us emotion. And for me, I know, we know that it’s a thought. So I was like, okay, what is this thought? What is the thought that’s really causing me to feel this? And it’s so funny because for most, for all of us, only 5% of our thoughts are coming from our prefrontal cortex that are in our consciousness. 95% of our thoughts are hovering in our subconsciousness. So sometimes we have to like dig them up a little bit. And so I just sat with this negative emotion, really tried to pinpoint it, tried to really fill it and then sure enough, the thought popped right in.

And I looked at it and it was just, just like you always say, like, we are the observers of our thoughts. And I just did. I mean, even do I was doing this while I was driving, I was like, oh wow. That was, that’s an interesting thought. And without judging it without like being like, oh, stop thinking that thought, I just was like, oh yeah, that is that thought. And no wonder I’m feeling this emotion. I just kind of sat with it for a while. And I realized, okay, what do I need to address this? Is there something that I need to, you know, do as a result of this thought and emotion. And I just realized that this thought was that I was worried about something that may or may not even happen. It was like, it was kind of this thought of like, what if this happens?

And it was causing me to have this really negative effect on my body. And all of a sudden, I just thought to myself, okay. So what if that happens, let’s come up with a plan. Well, if that happens, worst case scenario, if that should happen, what are we going to do? How are we going to handle it? And I went through this process of kind of coming up with a plan. And then all of a sudden, all that negative, like the sickness in my stomach just went away completely. Like I had no physical effect at all from it, the fear, the worry, all just faded away. And I just continued driving and I ended up having like, the rest of my drive was like wonderful and happy. I turned the music on. I felt great, but it was so powerful for me to know. And I mean, like, I think that took me maybe three to four minutes to do that.

And it was just, I mean, it’s just life changing when you, when you know that you can, that you have the tools to do that. 

Speaker 2: Sterling Jaquith

Yeah. And I think that’s what I want to offer to all of you. Most of our emotions, most of our feelings we can process in about 90 seconds, like just sitting and feeling them actually moves through our body’s biologically in about 90 seconds. Right. Shame. You could just feel like, oh, the most deep form of shame or embarrassment or rejection, but when you really just sit there and you feel it, it actually doesn’t last that long, this thing that we’re so scared of this thing that we’ve been pushing down and avoiding and numbing out when we just allow it kind of just moves through us. And then you just feel like, oh, okay. And it doesn’t mean I get spit out on the other end and I’m feeling cheery, but I don’t feel wretched.

And it’s just like that it can happen very quickly in the car or while you’re walking. I am amazed at how fast now I am able to do a 180, but it’s not because I do this. It’s not because I go, oh, Sterling, that feeling came from a thought so just think something else. Right. I don’t use the thought work against myself instead. I always meet myself where I’m at. And you are just feeling so upset right now. So disappointed. And they just sit with it and I process it through. And then it allows me to come out and choose what I want after that. That’s when I choose what I want to think instead. And it’s just the most powerful thing. 

Speaker 1: Lorrisa Horn

Yeah. The things, you know, kind of in wrapping this whole topic up that has hit me really hard. And it kind of hit me when I was working on, you know, putting this course together and recording the course and diving into this content is the power of negative emotions.

Again, none of us want to feel negative emotions we want to run from, and we want to hide from them. But most of the time it is going through negative emotions that makes us better in our lives. And it really hit me hard because for us here in our masters and like made for greatness, we love this quote so much. It’s the highlight of what we do in everything, which is Pope Benedict’s quote, the world offers you comfort, but you are not made for comfort. You are made for greatness. And what does this mean? Like we want to live lives of greatness. But what he’s really telling us is you have to be willing to be uncomfortable. And uncom like discomfort is a negative emotion. Discomfort is an emotion that most of us want to avoid at all costs. But yet it’s just comfort that propels us towards the life that we want to live.

Just as Sterling said a little while ago, if you want to lose weight, it’s going to be uncomfortable. There’s discomfort in it, but doing that and not so saying, okay, well maybe I’m not afraid to feel uncomfortable. Or in those moments where discomfort comes up, instead of running from it, I’m going to actually walk into it. I’m going to feel it. I’m going to experience it and become greater because of it. I talk about this in our, in the course, like we all want to be courageous, but you can’t be courageous unless you’re willing to feel fear. And fear is a negative emotion that most of us never want to feel courage. It’s a virtue. And the only way you become a courageous person is by practicing overcoming fear. And you get more courageous the more you, so if you want, if you want to be courageous, you have to be willing to feel the emotion of fear.

If you want to live a life of greatness, you’re going to have to feel uncomfortable. What are the things that you want to do in your life? What are your dreams? Do you want to write a book? Do you want to become a speaker? Do you want to start a business? Do you want to quit your job and be at home? What is it that you want to do? What are your dreams? The bigger, the dreams, the bare, the discomfort, the bigger, the fear, the bigger, the challenges, the bigger the heartache, the bigger all of it. And so we really want to pursue the big dreams that we have in our life. The big dreams that God placed in our hearts, we have to be willing to experience and process through negative emotion. It is the only way we can get there. And all we have to do is look at Jesus to watch him to witness this firsthand.

The greatest thing he ever did for us was give us the gift of salvation. He had to walk through pain for that, the greatest pain like we could ever imagine. Give us the greatest gift that we’ve ever been given. All we have to do is look at the saints to see lives of greatness, to know that they, none of them be like there is not a Saint in our church that became a Saint by being comfortable, ever like that. It was their willingness to step up out of their comfort zone. Their willingness to leave you like mother Teresa. She could have just stayed comfortable teaching at the Catholic girls school at this wealthy school. No, she’s like, I’m gonna go out and I’m gonna like to leave all of that behind to go serve the poorest of the poor and be totally poor along with them, all of the saints. 

And so, and not that we necessarily, as moms are called to lives of poverty or lives of, you know, giving everything up, but as mothers, so much of what we do is laying down our lives for our children and our and everything. And so how are we doing it in a way that we’re processing through that negative emotion so that we can truly be the saints that God is calling us to be in our motherhood, in our vocation. 

Speaker 2: Sterling Jaquith

Yeah. And I think that, you know, when you listen to Loris and I, and you hear our big dreams, God has called us to some very public things, right? We are, God has put, you know, speaking and writing and this in our hearts, some of you, your dream is just to love being a wife and a mom. And I don’t want any of you who have that dream in your heart to think that it’s small, that is such a big dream. 

It is such a big dream to love your daily life. And that is why our goals program is about not having goals other than loving your daily life. And this too is the secret to loving your daily life at home as a mom and as a homemaker and as a wife, those are big dreams. Those are big goals and processing your feelings will bring you so much closer to your husband and so much closer to your children because you will be willing to examine your own thoughts, your own heart and what you’re believing. And you’re willing to go through the discomfort of bringing all of that stuff up and saying, is that true? Should I still be believing that, and that process is uncomfortable, but if you can do that, if you can go in and learn how to manage your mind around just the day-to-day stuff that comes up, you can experience an incredible amount of joy in those roles. And so I just want to invite all of you, think about what you want, think about something that you wish was better in your life and just know that processing pain is the thing you have to walk through to get it. 

Speaker 1: Lorrisa Horn

Yes, that’s it? That is it. That’s amazing. All right. So my sisters in Christ, if you want to come check it out, come to masters, we are, I’m just trying to provide really relevant and meaningful tools to Catholic moms so that they can live their best life. And that is what it’s about. So, like we said, the processing of emotions, processing pain is all in there right now for you to come and experience along with courses on weight loss, stress, and overwhelm, raising saints, minimalism, and so much more on how to have better relationships, all of it. And Sterling you have a course that’s going to be coming out in August as well. Yes. It piggybacks on what we were just talking about, which I think is so cool. And so why don’t you tell us about that? 

Speaker 2: Sterling Jaquith

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we wanted processing pain to come out first because what’s coming out after in August is our course on auto-immune and chronic pain and the thing, and we, I wrote, I sent her an email to our email list and said, Hey, you know, for those of you that struggle with these things, tell me what’s hard about your life. And so many of you emailed us just paragraphs of what it’s like to live with autoimmune diseases like Hashimoto’s and fibromyalgia and joint pain and chronic pain and chronic migraine, some things I hadn’t even heard of and just what crosses are involved with those things. 

And I already knew what I wanted to cover in that course, but I wanted even more examples. And you guys just gave me so much that I was able to use and address in this course where we really teach you how to manage your mind around those things, because when you break your leg, right, and it hurts, and the doctor’s like, you have to wear your cast for six weeks, it’s pretty challenging. And it kind of disrupts your life and you have to change things. But the whole time in your mind, you’re thinking, well, it’s only six weeks, right? 

You have this start and an end. But when we deal with crosses, that may not have an end. And when they show up unexpectedly, like when it rains or when we ate something at a restaurant and we have no idea what was in it, now we’re having a flare up. We can have a lot of thoughts about that situation. And so in addition to the pain that we are experiencing from our auto-immune disease or our chronic pain, we also have a lot of thoughts that we layer on top of those symptoms that make the pain even worse, even louder. And so in this course, I help you identify those thoughts and really separate out what are the facts, what are the facts of what you’re dealing with versus the thoughts. And I’m probably going to do a whole podcast just on this to kind of explain a little bit more about it.

But that course is coming out in the beginning of August. And I know it will be just such a huge gift to so many of you that are feeling unseen and hopeless and alone and broken, right. And we’re going to tackle all of those things. And my hope is that with the holy spirit, it ends up being a very, very healing process for a lot of you. So I know that sounds serious, but I also think it’s going to be fun and really, really helpful. 

Speaker 1: Lorrisa Horn

Awesome. Some I know in, in coaching women, these are the topics that come up a lot, and these are the realities of, of what we’re dealing with. And a lot of us, whether, you know, I don’t currently have any major chronic pain in my, but I actually broke my back in high school and in a skiing accident, I was almost paralyzed and very thankful that I wasn’t obviously incredibly thankful, but but every time I’ve gotten pregnant from the moment of my pregnancies, that my back has got, I’ve had extraordinary back pain. 

And I know Sterling, you understand that really well. And I know a lot of our moms, you know, maybe it’s not chronic pain, but maybe there’s a lot of pain during pregnancies. So those nine months can feel like a really long time and all of that as well. And so, yeah, like what are we doing? Like, are we, are we making it worse with our thoughts or is it, are there ways that we can make it better? And I know that you’re going to show us, teach us how to do that in a really meaningful way. So I’m excited for that to come out. 

I got a really exciting thing that we’re doing. Oh my gosh, 

Speaker 2: Sterling Jaquith

Barry, we’re so excited about this. You guys. 

Speaker 1: Lorrisa Horn

Oh my goodness. Okay. So ladies, we are going to be putting on a 30 day husband make over there, 

Speaker 2: Sterling Jaquith

yes! making over those men.

Speaker 1: Lorrisa Horn

Makeover our husbands in the month of September.

It’s so funny, Sterling. And I told my husband about this. He kind of stopped in his tracks. He’s like, what are you doing? What are you doing? Are you kidding me? And I’m like, no, no, no, no. You got to hear this. It’s going to be so good. So tell us about it, Sterling. 

Speaker 2: Sterling Jaquith

Yeah. So of course we have this great graphic called the, you know, the 30 day husband make-over and we have this like husband with yellow cleaning gloves and a vacuum. And then right under it, we say, spoiler alert. We’re not going to change anything about your husband. So I’m sorry if you guys thought that we were going to teach your husband how to clean the house, but what we’re really going to do is even better. And it’s going to be so fun. We are going to basically find all the thoughts that we have better husbands in their major roles that they play in our lives and with our families, and we’re going to examine them.

And the way I like to say it is, it’s like you’re wearing blue glasses right now. And the blue filter is how you’re seeing everything that your husband does. Right. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to take those glasses off and we’re going to look at the glasses and be like, oh, I was wearing blue glasses. I didn’t even realize that. I just thought he was blue. Right. We’re going to set them down and we’re going to put pink glasses on. And we’re going to see him through these beautiful pink rosy glasses, where we begin to view the things he’s already doing and the way that he is and who he is as a person in a totally different way. And I guarantee you guys, by the end of 30 days, you are going to feel like you have a totally new husband. 

That is how powerful these exercises are going to be. And we’re very excited. Actually, we were going to do this in August, but so many of you said, oh no, I’m going to be out of town and getting the kids ready for school. And it was a crazy month. And so we thought, okay, we can wait one more month. And we were going to start in September and we’re going to do it as a group. And I can not wait to just hear your aha! moments. It’s my favorite part of masters is every Wednesday we share our wins and I’m not gonna lie. You guys, I cry every Wednesday, every Wednesday, I just read them. And it’s just like crying in my office because it’s just so amazing. And moving to see the change that you guys are having in your lives. And we have wanted to bring that to marriage, especially because marriage is just so important to both of us.

And so just to have this opportunity to put this, this make-over together and to walk through it with you, it’s just so fun. And I’m really looking forward to it.

Speaker 1: Lorrisa Horn

Yes, me too. And you know, I think about this often, I, you know, when, when we get married, we have, again, nobody teaches us this stuff. We think we’re going to get married and live happily ever after. And it’s going to be just perfect and easy and wonderful. Like I used to remember for years just thinking that fighting my vocation and finding the man that God had for me, like that was going to be the answer to all my problems. And then you get married and you realize that he’s not the answer to all your problems. And he’s not even the one that should is the answer. Like obviously God is the answer to all of it, but like the expectations that we place on him and all of that it’s fascinating. 

And, and yet all of a sudden we have to navigate life with this other human being. And we have to, like, we have pretty strong opinions on things and ways we want things done. And all of a sudden we have to share a life and share those decisions and share the problems and the mistakes and all of it with another person who is his own person. And it’s hard. And, and so I think all of us know like marriage is probably one of the hardest things we do. And yet I’ve come to realize now, after 18 years, we just celebrated our 18 year anniversary. And is that like, I just don’t, I don’t want a mediocre marriage. I wanted it. I want an extraordinary marriage. And again, I don’t want a happy marriage. I don’t want a perfect marriage. I want a full and beautiful marriage. 

That’s extraordinary. That is willing to face it all willing to like, you know, we make these vows in good times and in bad times and richer for poorer for sickness and in health, like all of it, but I want to have an extraordinary marriage. And in order to have an extraordinary marriage, we have to do the work. And so I was totally excited about this make-over this husband, make-over, it’s going to be super powerful. And when I told my husband about it and kind of laid it out, he was like, huh, that sounds kinda good. I think, I think, I think he should do it. I was like, well, we’re going to do it. And it’s going to be amazing. And I think that a lot of, a lot of our masters members will, will benefit greatly from it and from all of us sharing together, right.

Sharing the struggles and how we can look at things with a different mindset, 

Speaker 2: Sterling Jaquith

Right. Because that’s the community aspect, right? I mean, these programs are so powerful even on their own, but when you see 10 other women say, yeah, me too. Right. I struggle with that too. Then you don’t feel as alone. And you also don’t feel like you have a bad marriage. You’re like, oh, maybe I just have a normal one. Right. And that’s so comforting. It’s so comforting to realize that, oh, this is just that step that we’re in right now. And, everybody kind of goes through that phase and I can then still choose to manage my mind around it and to love myself and him so much more through the process. So, you know, that’s, that’s the gift we’re, we’re going to share with all of you. And so we have got a lot coming up, you guys in the next two months, it’s going to be like, we like to say full and powerful and full of the holy spirit. So come join us. If you want to be part of any or all of these things, because we would love to have you Larissa and I are excited to bring all of these tools to you, and we can’t wait to hear how they impact your life and the life of your families. 

Speaker 1: Lorrisa Horn

Yes. And so mamas, we are leaving it here with all of this goodness to come, and we hope you have an absolutely extraordinary week. Remember as always, you are made for greatness.