I guess I had left a job that I had been at for many years and the job that I was quite comfortable in and understood and knew very well and was stepping into a completely new phase in my life. I left one job, moved into another, was spending more time at home. And then I started really diving into wanting to improve certain areas of my life, which led me down the path of learning about life coaching and life coaching tools, which led me down wanting to be certified in life coaching. And so I was kind of like going through this whole new, you know, kind of opening my eyes and my heart to things that I had never really known before. And it was, it was quite exciting. And I was kind of just, like I said, stepping out of the boat, trying some new things, learning new things, applying new things to my life.

And it was, it was really exciting. And I remember one night getting into bed and just talking with my husband and he kind of pause from when we were having this conversation and he just paused and he turned and looked at me and like straight in the eyes very seriously. And he gave me really an incredible compliment one that I will never forget, but he looked at me and he paused and he’s said to me, he said, Lorissa, you are one of the most dynamic women I have ever met. And I cannot believe that I get to be married to you now, what do you said that I can literally like, I can pick up so the moment and I can remember everything about it. And I remember like, I almost couldn’t breathe for a second. It literally was one of those moments that took my breath away.

And I have to say this, first of all, my husband, like he’s an amazing communicator. He was a communications major between the two of us. He just, he is the better communicator between us. And he also is really amazing. Like one of his love languages is giving compliments and I am so blessed that I am married to him and, and get to be the recipient of those kinds of compliments. But this in particular compliment was one that he has only given to me that one time, I don’t think he has ever before said that to me or after like, he doesn’t tell me on a regular basis that I am a dynamic woman, I think. And I’m actually like really glad that he does it. I’m glad that this happened one time. And I it’s so funny because I can, like, even as I’m speaking, I can go back to that memory.

And it evokes that same emotion within me. Like it happened like as if it happened yesterday, even though this was probably like four years ago. And I remember waking up the next morning thinking about that. Like, gosh, like he thinks that I’m a dynamic woman. Like just the word dynamic is a really cool word to begin with. And I remember even like looking it up, like the definition of dynamic and I mean, we all know what it means, but ultimately like the inner standing of dynamic is whether it’s related to a, to an object or to a person it’s something or someone that is changing or growing, developing a dynamic person is someone that is, is always learning is, is growing, is changing, is in the process of becoming better, right? That’s, you know, that’s what it is. And when we think about dynamic people, we think about people that are captivating and people that are intriguing and people that make you, you know, that draw you to them.

And because there’s something about their personality, right? All of those types of things. But I just, you know, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this because ultimately like we are dynamic human beings as human beings, as women, we are dynamic men and women, but obviously like we are dynamic. We are people that grow and change and become better and we learn things and we grow and we learn new new skills and all of these things that it’s just absolutely fascinating to me, the way God made us to be these dynamic creatures that live and function. And I mean, even if you think about, you know, from the moment of our conception, like ultimately who we are at our essence, like in our essence, that doesn’t change, that that’s not dynamic in the sense that at the moment of my conception, I was Lorissa.

I had my DNA, God infused into my being like a soul that will live for all of eternity. That in and of itself is not changing. But if you were to look at me at the moment of my conception and then look at me, 45 years later, I have changed significantly, right? We all have like, we’ve gone from being this little microscopic cell to like growing. And, you know, we become babies and we’re infants. And then our body, like obviously our body and our brain and it grows and develops and changes. We learn language and have memories and we just continue to grow. We are dynamic. And the fact that we are dynamic reveals something about not only about who we are, but who made us, we are created by a dynamic God, right now, we all know that God, in his essence, like he is unchanging.

He is the alpha, the omega. He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, like he doesn’t change the essence of who God is, doesn’t change. But the way He reveals Himself to us is in and of itself dynamic that we could spend an entire lifetime learning about God and learning about His truth and His teachings and His beauty and His love and His goodness. And we would just barely scratch the surface that there is always more of Him that He’s revealing to us. It’s not that God changes in His love itself. Like it’s not like tomorrow, He’s going to have more love for us then He did five days ago. That’s not what I’m saying, but what I’m saying is in His revelation of Himself to us like that in and of itself is dynamic. But there’s always more that we can learn about Him.

That we, there’s always more ways that we can experience his love and come to know his goodness. And that we not only will spend a lifetime learning about him and experiencing his love, but we will spend, you know, hopefully in heaven, like all of eternity and we will never grow bored of it. Like God will continue to reveal to us himself. And so that in that revelation of himself, like that revelation is a dynamic because it’s new and it’s, and it’s there and it expands and it’s just mind blowing. And I believe that God is calling us to live dynamic lives, to be dynamic in the way we, we live in our relationships and our relationship with him. And not that God is calling us to change in our essence, but that he is inviting us to continue every day to open our mind and our thoughts and our experiences to recognizing him in new ways and being open to ways in which he’s calling us to grow.

Now, I want to use an example of the iPhone. I don’t know about you, but for me, when I first got the iPhone, I got the iPhone four. I was probably one of the last people to get an iPhone. I was like holding out with my little flip phone forever. And then I got the iPhone for the first time as iPhone four version. And I remember thinking how cool it is and how amazing this little phone was. And then of course, a year later, the iPhone five comes out. I didn’t buy that one. I think I held out again until like the iPhone, iPhone seven, but then like the newer versions come out, I got the iPhone seven, like kept it for a couple of years. And whether you have an iPhone or an Android or whatever, we know that we have these devices and we keep upgrading them.

But the features and the essence of the iPhone for example, is what it is like my iPhone for my iPhone X or whatever I have right now is it’s still an iPhone. It has all the iPhone features and the things that I like about it, it’s just that over time with each new phone that has come out, the features have improved. Maybe the battery life has gotten longer, or the camera has gotten better, or the memory, you know, capability has gotten better. So there’s certain features on the phone that have improved, but the essence of what it is like it’s an iPhone and the things that we love about it are, you know, for the most part stay the same. It just continues to improve if apple never, like if there was just the iPhone four that came out and they never upgraded the phone or never improved or never came out with new features, eventually just the iPhone four would just become obsolete.

It would, you know, it would end up dying out and other new phones would come and take over because we aren’t dynamic people. And we are always working at improving things. I mean, just look at the evolution of cars in our country, from the first car that came out to the Teslas that people are driving right now, like right, such a dynamic change. And we can see this in so many aspects of our lives. So this is like who we are like, who we are in our essence, our personality, the things that make us unique and make us who we are. Like, those things are not changing, but yet we are called to constantly be growing. And this is where I want to really talk about because sometimes in order to be dynamic, we really have to use our brains and we have to like take control of our brains.

We have to take control of our thoughts and we have to do it in a very intentional manner. And I may try going to try to explain this to you. Kind of what I mean by this. Now our brains are like the most extraordinary thing in the world, right? So amazing. And the way our brain works, it’s, it’s absolutely fascinating, but it is working so hard all the time. And the brain has a number of goals. Number one, the brain wants to keep us alive. Like, that’s this number one function is to keep us alive. Thankfully like God made it that way. That’s a really good feature of our brain. But then, and in order to keep us alive in order to keep us moving forward and living our brain has to be efficient. So if you could just imagine, like, there are literally millions of pieces of information that our brain is processing every single moment from images and things that it’s processing into memories and words, and sounds, and smells and all of that, that it’s trying to process every single moment.

And then of course, tens of thousands of our thoughts that are going through our mind and like sh you know, like is shuffling through all of that and storing things in our memory and getting rid of things that aren’t necessary and all of it. And so in like in its effort to be efficient, a huge amount of our, the way the brain processes like stores things and our subconsciousness. And in fact, so much like once we learn something or once we’ve seen something enough times, or once we’ve had enough thoughts of something, it automatically, our brain just like dumps it into our subconsciousness, really like so much of our existence is like the part of our brain that we’re using is in our like subconscious part, our prefrontal cortex, which is the active part of the brain that is thinking consciously is like only taking up like 5% of the part of the brain.

Like most of what we do falls into that subconscious part in an attempt to be efficient. And this is just, what’s so crazy to me, that is why so much of our lives, especially as we get to the adult stage in our life like seems like it’s running on autopilot. If you really think about it. If you think about your day for the most part, so much of your, of what you’re doing, you’re not even thinking about it, like actively engaged in really deep thought about it, unless you’re learning something new or trying to figure something out, you’re not really using the part of your brain. That is that 5% of active, engaged thinking. Whether it be like you wake up in the morning, you go through your morning routine, you brush your teeth, you do your hair, you get ready. So much of that is on autopilot.

You’ll go through the day, have most likely, a lot of us have kind of the same breakfast. We have our same routines. We may drive the kids to school, or we go to work the same route every single day. We can travel for 20, 30 minutes and not even really be thinking about it. We can be thinking about a million other things while we’re driving to work. Our brain has, has done that has mastered that skill of driving to the point that unless like we’re driving on like a snowy winter road, we don’t really know where we’re going. Like we’re not really thinking about it. And I just think this is fascinating, just like, is incredible what we are capable of doing without really thinking a whole lot about it. And so what I want to like say about this though, and this is like, where had to be aware of this.

Like, we have to be aware of that. Especially as adults now, children are a little bit different because children are like thinking and learning and trying new things all the time. Right? So they’re, they’re not necessarily as much on autopilot as we are, but after we’ve spent years and years of doing things and figuring things out so much of what we do, kind of just goes on autopilot. And so this is what I am talking about. Like when it comes to living dynamic lives, like we have to step into being really intentional. And we have to, instead of just allowing our brain to like put us on autopilot, then we have to like take the initiative and we have to take like, be very intentional about how we want to live our lives. Like we’re going to like take the control of our brain. So often we just let our brain and the, you know, they just, the autopilot part of our brain just kind of take over.

Now, the brain likes to be on autopilot because when, when when we’re on autopilot on the brain knows that like we’re safe. Like we kind of just, when we have the same routines that we do the same things every day, the brain is like, okay, this is good. She’s comfortable, she’s safe. Same routine. We like the same routine. Let’s not switch this up. The brain wants to just keep us kind of like doing the same things, because it, you know, when we start try new things and stuff that just creates [inaudible] for, you know, things to go wrong. And so I just want to like bring this to our awareness, because what happens so often in our lives is that we go through the same routine and we’re comfortable and we’re safe and it’s easy. Life gets, we’re just like going through the day today.

But then all of a sudden, one day we kind of wake up and we like after months, or maybe even years of just kind of going through through the same routine, we can like, feel like our lives are maybe a little bit stagnant. We feel a lot of times that our relationships grow stagnant. Oftentimes our marriages will grow stagnant. We’ve just kind of like gone through the motions. We go through the routine, even if we have date nights, like we’ll go on date nights and it’ll be like the same day night or the same restaurant, the same conversations. And we just are stuck. We find ourselves just going through the motions. And then all of a sudden we realize that, gosh, like where’s the passion and where’s the joy. And where’s the excitement in our lives and our marriages and our relationships and our friendships even oftentimes in our relationship with God.

And so how do we kind of shake ourselves out of this a little bit when we want to live as dynamic women and we want to have dynamic lives, we have to be willing to step out of our comfort zone. And I know that you hear Sterling and I talk about this all the time. It’s like the whole premise of this podcast, which has made for greatness, which is, you know, you are not made for comfort, but you were made for greatness. And like every time we challenge ourselves or every time we’re faced with a challenge that we overcome, that challenge, we grow and we take a step like this is how we’re stepping closer to a life of greatness. When we step out of the boat, when we try something new, when we are willing to feel the emotions, even a fear or, you know, cause there’s a lot of, a lot of times when like it’s new stuff, like we’re scared.

Like what if I fail? What if I mess up, what if I can’t do this? But yet we’re still willing to try. Like, that is a sign of someone who wants to be dynamic. I want to like try something new. I want to improve myself in some way. Maybe it’s taking control of my health or getting in better shape, eating better exercise, like trying new forms of exercise or signing up for like a marathon or a half marathon or something like that that pushes us outside of our comfort zone. And it pushes us to experience that, you know, that growth and that change, which I believe at the heart of who we are, it ignites something within us. And so that’s kind of what I just wanted to share today. Like this is, what’s been on my heart and especially when it comes to our marriages, because I think that every marriage finds itself at times in these maybe what you would call a rut or just going through the motions or kind of just, you know, it’s safe, it’s comfortable, but it’s also like so routine and you just kind of get so used to each other that you’ll, you can start taking either taking each other for granted or not necessarily even recognizing the gift that you are to each other.

And I know that that’s happened in my own marriage and I know that something that my husband and I even like, we talk about that often, like, okay, like how can we switch this up? And how can we be creative in our marriage and bring more fun into it and try, you know, like experience like new things and keep our relationship fresh and, and fun and exciting. And not that it has to always be that, but I think it’s really important for us to be thinking about ways in which we can have those types of relationships, relationships that are always growing and becoming stronger and where we’re working together to build each other up. But even at the heart of having a dynamic marriage, I think it really starts with us as individuals like working at, looking at our lives and saying, okay, this is, this is who I am today.

Like, this is who I am in my essence, but how, how might God be calling me to grow right now? And there’s ways that we can even like, like help train our brains so that, because again, it’s so easy for our brain. Our brain just wants to be safe and comfortable and efficient, but there is like little like mind hack or brain hack things that we can do. For example, to switch things up, you can brush your teeth, your non-dominant hand, like try that out in the morning for a month, see how that goes. Maybe it’s every once in a while taking a cold shower or like putting like the shower temperature at a cooler temperature is experiencing like, okay, this is a little bit different for me. Maybe it’s taking a different route to work or drive the kids to school a different way.

And actually having to think about where you’re going to turn and you know, which way you’re going to go, things like that. Those are simple things. But then what are like things that maybe you could do for yourself that might push you a little bit that might push you out of your comfort zone a little bit. Maybe it’s maybe there’s like something you’ve always wanted to learn here. Like, okay, because every time we like learn something new, I think that is a form of becoming more dynamic, maybe as wanting to learn a new language, or maybe it’s wanting maybe like for me, I’ve always wanted to take up painting and like taking some art classes or maybe it’s sitting down and giving a shot at like writing a book and kind of pouring into that. Or maybe like writing a chapter or writing a poem, you know, maybe it’s taking a writing class or going to the gym and signing up for a new workout class, a class that you’ve never done before.

Things like that. Maybe it’s signing up for a new ministry at church or participating in a different Bible study, getting to know some new people, all of that, those types of encounters, those types of experiences help us to grow and to become more dynamic and more excited. Like it helps us to like wake up in the morning and go, gosh, you know, I’m like, I’m really excited to try this new thing or to go spend time with some new friends or to go for a walk in a place I’ve never gone before. And like, try to experience something new, something that kind of sets your heart on fire. Those types of things I think are so incredibly powerful. And those types of things are so attractive when, you know, like I know that when I’m growing and I’m learning new things and I’m building my confidence in myself, like, okay, I like didn’t know how to do this one thing, but now I’m learning it and I’m growing in this and I’m getting better at it.

I know, like I can tell from my husband that he is attracted to those qualities, like as I am learning and growing, and it’s vice versa when he is learning new things and try new things and sharing new ideas with me, I’m like, oh, that is like so cool. And it it’s so attractive. And I’m like, oh, I like find myself falling more in love with him as he’s growing. And I think that he falls more in love with me as, as I’m growing. And yet, even though we’re growing, you know, in our own individual interests and things like that, we’re also growing together in our love and our support of each other. And then I think it’s also so important. A lot of times, every few months, my husband and I we’ll sit down and we’ll take some inventory of like, okay, what are our dreams?

What are our individual dreams? What are the things that we, the bucket list, things that we want to do for ourselves, for each other, for our family as a couple you’re like, and then what are we doing to create those things and actually make those things a reality. That’s why I think it’s so important to plan vacations, like far out in advance that you can be looking forward to it and talking about it, getting excited about it, whether it’s with the kids or if it’s just, you know, a couples, little getaway, those types of things like where you actually have something to look forward to and you can dream about it and talk about it and plan all of that, like so much fun. And then also like, what are we doing? Like switch up date nights or try something new, trying new recipes, cooking new things at our house.

Like, for example, I mean, it’s so easy for us to get into the routine or we just cook the same meals over and over and over. But how fun is it? I know we’ve all had those moments where we’ve tried a new recipe with the kids and, or we tried a new experience or gone somewhere. That’s totally new. All of a sudden, like people are talking more and they’re laughing more and it’s just so much fun to try something new or to start a new tradition, all of these things. And it’s even like so important with our kids to continue to look for ways that we’re making our relationship with them even more dynamic. And that the times that were spent, like spending together, that we’re putting effort into trying new things with them and keeping kind of a sense of adventure going now, I know this is hard.

And as a mom of seven, like this is probably one of my biggest challenges, but it’s been something that’s been on my heart lately because I know that like, for us, it’s always easy to just to do the same thing. Or if we’d go out to dinner, we’ll always go to the same place. But right now, like I really, I know my husband’s like pushing me. He’s like, let’s try some new things. Let’s go like, go on hikes with the kids or go to go and do ha like create new memories and new experiences. And all those times that we do that we watch and we see how our relationships grow and develop. And I think that is just so beautiful. And ultimately like, isn’t this what we’re called to, even with our relationship with God. I know it’s oftentimes at least for me, it’s very easy for me to get into the habit of just having like my prayer life is, is what it is.

And I, and I have a good prayer life and, you know, I have my go-to prayers. And as a family, we, you know, we pray the rosary. We try to pray a decade or a couple decades or a full rosary every night. We have our whole family, holy hour. I love adoration. Those are like my go-to prayers, but yet I can even see in that at times, like it’s not bad to have a set prayer routine, but I also will notice that it’s like, oftentimes I can find myself getting, like, just going through the motions in my relationship with God in less, from time to time, I switch it up a little bit and try a new form of prayer, you know, pray a different, like maybe try a new novena or pray through the scriptures or turn on my hallow app and try a completely different new form of prayer.

And all of a sudden I’ll sense. My heart kind of just like coming alive a little bit. And I will hear God speak to me in a new way. I think that is so incredibly powerful. But in order to do this, like we have to take controlling. This is where we have to manage our minds and say, okay, all right, Lorissa, we’re going to try something new today. We’re going to try a new form of prayer and be intentional about it, or, okay, Laura. So we’re going to take a new route to work, or we’re going to try a new recipe with the kids tonight. Like, these are the things that we have to be intentional about, and if we’re not intentional about it, then we’re just going to go to like, what is comfortable? What is easy? What is efficient? What is safe?

All of those things. And a lot of times, I just want to say this as I kind of wrap this up, when we try new things, when we say to ourselves, okay, I want to like have a dynamic life. Like I want to live like this. Our brain is instilling and I don’t want to freak out on us is going to be like, no, no, no, no, don’t try new things. Just stay safe, just stay comfortable. And that’s where we have to push ourselves. Like that’s where we got to be like, okay, brain, we’re totally safe. We’re not going to get hurt in this situation, but we are going to try something new and it’s going to be fun and it’s going to be exciting. And it’s going to renew us. Like we have to kind of be the ones to take control. So my sisters in Christ, this is my invitation.

Like we are all dynamic. I want to like, if I could be sitting there with you, like face to face, I would want to like, look at you. I would say to you, my sister in Christ, you are a dynamic, amazing, extraordinary woman created by an dynamic, amazing God. And we are, we, we are like Kevin, this one life to live. And not that we need to go and change everything up as is not what I’m saying. But what I am saying is that for the sake of our own hearts, our hearts, that desire to be, you know, set on fire and to be renewed and challenged. And so my friends, this is what I have for you today. And as I close out this podcast episode, I do want to invite all of you. If you have not checked out, master’s like, this is the time to do so.

Sterling and I are running a very special series in the month of September. It’s called the Husband Makeover and our tagline is have a new husband in 30 days. But there is a spoiler alert. We are not going to change him at all. Does that just peak your curiosity, are you at you’re like, how do I have a new husband in 30 days without changing him at all? This is the beauty of masters. I know any, like all of our masters members that are listening to this right now, they, they totally know what I’m talking about because of the power of the work that we do in the master’s program. But we are deep diving into our, you know, one of our most important relationships, which is our marriages and our relationship with our husband, how we look at him the thoughts that we have about him, all the good stuff.

We’re going to be peeling back the layers and really diving in doing the intentional work, striving to have dynamic marriages, which is what God is calling us to. Right. Have extraordinary marriages. I don’t think any of us ever dreamed of getting married and just wanting to have kind of an average marriage, right? We all like wanted to have an extraordinary marriage. And yet I think we all got married and then thought, oh my goodness, I was not expecting it to be like this. Like, this is a cross. This is hard. This is one of the, you know, like, I don’t know any Catholic marriage that hasn’t had major crosses involved in it. And oftentimes like what, I had no idea that it was going to be this hard. And so that’s why it’s so important for us to come together as Catholic women, like-minded women to lift each other up, support each other, encourage each other.

As we strive to grow in holiness and lift up our husbands, lift up our marriages and do the hard work of loving the way God is calling us to love and living the way that God is calling us to live in marriages that really transform the world just by the way we show up, right? The way we show up and the way we love our spouses or husbands and the way we love our children, that our vocations are a light in this world. And so I want to invite you to come and to be a part of masters, especially even if it’s just for this one month, it is our hope. And it is our prayer that at the end of September, all of our masters members are walking, like not walking away, but like saying, oh my gosh, this really helped me as a wife. And it really helped us in our marriage. That is what we are going for. So come check it out, go to madeforgreatness.co. We can’t wait to have you join us in masters. And with that, my friends, I hope you have the most amazing, extraordinary dynamic week. Remember mama, you are made for greatness. God bless.