Lorissa: (00:37)
Sure. Well, first of all, I wanna say this. I was going through some boxes. We moved recently and I was going through some boxes, putting away some journals, and I flipped open to this journal and from about four years ago, and it was a, I wrote down a hundred bucket list goals. And one of my goals was to get certified as a life coach. And one of those other goals was to go to a life coach school mastermind. So it was so funny. I saw this last week, right before we were getting ready to head to Austin, Texas, for this mastermind. And I was like, oh my gosh, this dream, this bucket goal that was, you know, years ago, written down in a journal was literal about to become a reality. And I know I’m speaking for, for you Sterling and Emily, that it was truly a dream come true to be there. And I feel so blessed and honored that I got to be with you and Emily for this experience, this, this dream come true. So

Sterling: (01:43)
Yeah, it was, it was beautiful and it was also really cool that we got to meet several other Catholic coaches. So, you know, the life coach school is probably the top life coaching school. It’s probably the most rigorous. I mean, I, I know there’s no ranking system like there is for college, but in my opinion, it’s kind of like the Harvard of life coaching programs. And so everyone who’s been through it has just been through this really intensive rigorous program. And it was just so amazing to be in a room full of people who have chosen this as their job, and really are just helpers in the, their whole life is about teaching these tools to other people. So it was just a phenomenal experience.

Lorissa: (02:27)
It was, it was so basically it was two days for us, of being in a room with many other life coaches and hearing from some of the best life coaches out there. Who’ve been doing it for a while and who are very successful running, successful life coaching businesses and kind of getting the best of the best from that. And so of course, each one of us Sterling, Emily and I walked away with notebooks filled with such goodness of things that you know, I think Sterling for me, this experience was so much about affirming what we’re already doing. Like so many talks affirmed, like we’re, we’re putting out such great content Made for Greatness through the podcast, in our master’s program. And then just also inspiring our hearts of so much more that is to come. And so I think that’s what, I’m what my, one of my big takeaways was, was like, gosh, we’re on the right track. And the sky’s the limit of what we are gonna be continuing to bring to Catholic mothers in this world. And this is what God’s calling us to do. And I feel so excited about it.

Sterling: (03:38)
Yeah, it was really great. And I, you know, the life coach school is so generous with their coaches in terms of continuing education and the tools that they keep giving us. And sometimes it’s not even a new tool, but they’ll just show us how to take an existing tool that we have and take it deeper and further. And so it was so exciting to think about it in terms of my own life, like how to take those, those tools and those tips that we learned so that I can up level my own life. But then of course, bringing it all back for you guys and being able to teach you these things as well was just so inspirational.

Lorissa: (04:15)
Yes. Okay. So let’s dive in. We’re gonna talk about some of the things that really impacted us, Sterling. You wanna kick us off?

Sterling: (04:23)
Yeah, so we, we both were kind of like what was the biggest to share the biggest one and the most powerful, the most impactful. And for me, one of the coaches was talking about, she was actually talking about the process of building a life coaching company. And so this analogy works for any kind of major goal that you have, whether you’re building a company you’re trying to lose weight, maybe you’re wanting to run a marathon, anything where you have a goal. And she said, it’s like going to the store. And she said, right now you don’t have a lot of drama in your mind about going to the store, even when you’re in a new town. And you’ve never been there before, you don’t have a lot of drama about finding the store and getting there. And then she said, particularly when you hit a stop sign or a red light or a detour, we don’t hit those things along the way to the store and then pull the car over.

Sterling: (05:22)
We don’t pull the car over and then do a bunch of thought work about why we hit a stop sign, except this idea that going to the store is going to involve stop signs and red lights and construction. And she also said, and I thought this was so beautiful that we all live different amounts of time away from the store. So even when you have a big goal, when you’re running with others towards your big goal, some of them are gonna get there faster than you. Some of them are gonna get there slower than you, but how many of you are going to your mom’s group? And you’re like, well, I only live nine minutes from the store. How far do you live? We don’t do that to each other. We don’t make the amount of time. It takes us to get to the store, meaning anything about us.

Sterling: (06:14)
We’re just all at different starting points. And so this was such a big takeaway for me in my business, because I think I have this idea of a business that I wanna make. And sometimes I feel frustrated that we don’t have everything like Larissa. And I would love to have you guys always ask us for things like t-shirts and mugs and journals. We’d love to have retreats and conferences. There’s so many things we wanna do with you guys. And I wanna do them all right. Now that’s one of my struggles is I want the store to be right outside my house. And I want everything in the store but it was so comforting to me that I could be on this journey, not have all of those things, not even see how I’m gonna do all of those things. And to know that the obstacles that we reach along the way are not a problem.

Sterling: (07:07)
So the obstacles in our business, you guys are things like technology, things where it’s like when you sign up for masters, you get six emails. Did you know that you get six emails from us? We tell you to make a folder, a master’s folder. And part of that is you get your login to our awesome password protected area. You get two separate emails that invite you to our two private podcasts. So you’re happy about all six emails that you get, but it’s a lot. And we had to figure that out. And there was a sign one day where we didn’t know how to figure that out. And so for us, as we’re doing business, we’re always learning these things Lys. And I was just talking about taxes and the structure of our business. And as we grow, we have to think about that differently. And that’s not even necessarily a stop sign.

Sterling: (07:57)
Sometimes it’s just a yellow where it’s like, oh, we gotta slow down a little bit to figure this thing out. So it was deeply impactful for me in the way that I look at our business. But then I was thinking, how many of us get frustrated on the path to motherhood? It’s the same thing. We all wanna be good moms. We all wanna raise kids. And yet anytime we get to a stop sign or a part where we have to slow down, we think that something has gone wrong and we stop believing that we’re gonna get to the store. Now, the first thing I wanna say about motherhood is a lot of us have this vague idea of what we want to create in the kids. But it’s not very clear. For example, if I asked you, do you think that they should get married?

Sterling: (08:52)
Do you think that they should go to college? You’d immediately go, well, I don’t, I don’t really know. We don’t really know for each of our children what we want them to do. We could say that our ultimate goal is to raise saints, but we don’t really know what that means either. Our human brains only kind of understand that. But if I just told you that, whatever it was, even if you couldn’t tell me the, whatever, this deep longing of your heart to be a good mom and raise a Saint and raise, you know, a well adjusted kiddo and you were going to the store, that was for sure gonna happen. We didn’t even question whether that was gonna happen or not. How would you show up differently on the journey? Because we know people who have a lot of anger issues on the road, right? We do know people like that. Some of it it’s you for some of you are like, that is me. I’m gonna raise my hand. I get really upset when I’m in traffic. For some of you, it’s your husband or a friend that you have, and they’re going to the store, but they’re having a terrible time. The journey is terrible when it’s an option for them to just accept the traffic or the stop signs and to listen to a podcast.

Sterling: (10:12)
And so that was just such a profound visual for me, such a, a powerful analogy that I wanted to share with you, that if you just relieved that you were gonna go to the store and there were gonna be stop signs, and there were gonna be yellow lights and maybe even detours, but you were completely confident that you were gonna get there. How do you want to experience the journey? And for a lot of us moms, we’re doing it with grumpiness and fear and doubt and guilt. And it’s like, you’re on this road trip and you’re ruining it for yourself. And maybe the other people in the car, right. It was so, and it was just such a simple story that she shared. And I know she was trying to hide people, but I was like, ah, this is all of us moms. We’re just, we have this idea of how we want it to go. And then when it doesn’t go that way, we just think this shouldn’t be happening. There is a problem. I’m screwing it up, the kid isn’t what they should be. And we’re not enjoying the journey.

Sterling: (11:33)
So I just wanna leave you with that. If you knew that whatever it is, this deep desire of your heart that you have for your kids, probably St. Hood is probably our deepest desire for them. And if you knew that was going to happen, how do you wanna be in the car when you get stop signs and yellow lights and detours, do you want your windows to be down? Do you wanna be singing? Do you wanna be having a great time or do you wanna be filled with negative emotion and discomfort and anger? And do you want that to be your journey? Because both of them are gonna end up in the same place, but you get to decide how you wanna show up. So for me, I’m going to the store. I’m going to the store with this business. You guys, we’re gonna bring you all those things in the next 10 years, hang in there with us. And I’m gonna do that with my kids. My kids are gonna be saints. We’re gonna be a family in heaven together, singing the praises of God with the angels and everything else. It’s just part of the trip. And I get to decide how I wanna show up. That was my favorite thing from the life coach school mastermind that we just went to.

Lorissa: (12:47)
So, right. Yes. I know. It’s funny because after, you know, we were at the conference, then afterwards, we were having all of these really powerful discussions and sharing our breakthroughs. And this was one that all three of us, like we kept coming back to this. This was like our mantra throughout, like, okay, we’re just going to the store. And for me with that takeaway too, like everything you said, Sterling, you just tied it up so beautifully, but there was a point to, in her talk where she said, you wouldn’t get to a place like a stop sign or a de or, and just give up and go back home.

Sterling: (13:22)
Right, right. Yeah.

Lorissa: (13:24)
You know, like, and how many times do we do that? Whether it’s with, you know, with our parenting or even whatever goal it has to be, maybe it’s weight loss or whatever. We get to a stop sign where we feel like maybe we’re not making any progress. And we’re just like, just going home. But instead, like what you just talked about, like, no, I’m on this journey and I know I’m gonna reach that goal and I’m gonna experience all of it. I’m gonna experience when the road is just going straight and I’m just breezing through and I’m gonna celebrate the stops and the detours, and even look around to find what is it that is trying to teach me in these detours mm-hmm and what am I meant to learn? So that’s so beautiful. Okay. So another one that was, was one of my biggest takeaways, and I know yours as well.

Lorissa: (14:12)
Sterling was one of the speakers. She’s a very successful coach making, you know, building a huge coaching business, but yet even after going through all of that, she talked about struggling with dismissing our accomplishments. And again, you can look at this from any, any regard, whether it’s in business or in our personal lives, in our motherhood, how often do we, as women, manage our own accomplishments and what does this look like in our lives? How does this show up? And in a lot of ways, especially when it comes to motherhood, it looks like us. Like, whenever we say, you know, like I’m a good mom, but, and then we follow it up with something or somebody gives us a compliment. And we say, well, you know, like somebody says, oh, Larissa, you’re such an amazing woman. How do you know, or how do you do what you do?

Lorissa: (15:13)
And I think to myself, oh, she’s just being nice. That’s just an accomplishment, you know, that’s just a compliment. She doesn’t really mean that. So you know, or we just don’t even take any credit for the things that we do well, like, oh yeah, I did them, but it was just a fluke. So a lot of these statements that we find ourselves saying to ourselves that have the word, but in it, yes, I’m a good wife, but I could be better in this area. Yes. You know, I’m an okay mom. But if I was a really good mom, then I would be doing this, this or this. And what happens with this is the more we dismiss ourselves, the more we live like this in our lives, what ends up happening is we start doubting our accomplishments. We diminish our accomplishments and it leads us to playing small in our lives.

Lorissa: (16:12)
These were kind of the notes I had. Like we end up playing small and we end up giving into the emotions of fear, doubt, and hopelessness in our lives. And we do this a lot and Sterling and I were talking even right before we got on here about how, not only do we do this a lot as women, as mothers diminishing our accomplishments, but it’s even like, even as Catholics, as Christian women, we struggle with this because we naturally don’t wanna be too prideful. Like we see being prideful as a sin. And so we really like that, to be humble, we have to diminish ourselves, but that’s not what God wants from us. We know that when we, when we actually recognize our accomplishments and our successes, we actually end up showing up more confidently. We show up truly being the kind mother that we want to be.

Lorissa: (17:16)
And it actually helps us to be the saints that God is calling us to be, of course we are not gonna walk around saying, Hey, everyone, look at me. I’m the best mother in the world. That’s not what we’re talking about. But what we are talking about is recognizing the areas that we do well in and owning that for ourselves. Not always trying to diminish it, not always trying to make it smaller or less than. And the example that this woman, this coach talked about was for her in her life. What she did was she placed pictures of herself as a child above her desk. And she thought to herself, like when she started to diminish her own accomplishments, her own gifts and her own talents to herself as a grown woman, she imagined saying those things to herself as a child and Sterling, I don’t know about you, but when she did this, so she like pulled up the pictures of herself, like, and she actually started talking to her, the childhood hood hood version of herself.

Lorissa: (18:24)
I actually like it. That just struck me to my heart. I mean, I remember tearing up in this moment because totally, yeah. We would never talk to a six year old child and diminish her in that way. Like we would never, like, for example, talk to our 10 year old daughter who just finished a big project and got an A on it for, for example, like a, my daughter came home after working on this big project. I would’ve never said, oh, well, great job, sweetheart. But you had, you worked on that project project with other girls. So I’m sure that they, you know, the success of this was because of them. Right. We would never say that. We would never say, well, you did a, you did a good job, but there’s, you know, but you could have done better.

Sterling: (19:18)
Right.

Lorissa: (19:19)
Right. When we start talking to a child with the words that we use to ourselves, when you actually say it out loud and envision speaking that way to a child, it almost sounds verbally abusive.

Sterling: (19:34)
Yeah. It was so uncomfortable when she did it. Like, we all were just like, oh, don’t talk to children like that.

Lorissa: (19:39)
Yes. I mean, that’s what hit me so hard is like, we would never talk to a child like that. How do we talk to our children? We were like, wanna build our children up, like, look at what you did, way to go. We wanna be our children’s biggest cheerleaders, but why is it so hard for us to do that for ourselves? Why do we always wanna diminish anything that we do even decently? Well, why do we always put a butt on the end of it? Even when we intentionally like our own masters members, we’re always encouraging them to celebrate their wins. But even like, when I try to celebrate, celebrate my wins, I will oftentimes put a bet on it. Like, but I could have done better. I did this. But you know, you know, I’m a, I’m a, I’m a good mom, but I probably shouldn’t let my kids watch so much TV.

Lorissa: (20:39)
What are those butts that we put in there? How do we diminish ourselves? How do we do? And instead of showing up and saying, yeah, I’m a good mother. I love my children. I provide for them. I take, I’m doing everything that I can to lead to Christ. And I’m proud of these accomplishments. And I know that God is proud of me. I know that he is looking upon me and he delights in me. And the, because this is the ladies. The more we think about these thoughts, our brain says, oh, that feels good. We want more of that. And the more we do that, the more we end up showing up as the women that we wanna be, we’re celebrating our successes and we, our brain wants us to do more. Good, more, good, more good things. Let’s celebrate more good things. And then all of a sudden we start to become that woman that we are really, really proud of. And so, I don’t know, Sterling, if you have anything you wanna add to that.

Sterling: (21:57)
Yeah. I would just encourage you guys to make your list, make your list that says I’m a good mom butt. And just let your brain buts are, or think of three or four women that you really respect and think of whatever about them makes you feel bad. Right. So when you’re looking at another mom and she likes home cooks all her paleo meals for the kids, and then you think, well, I’m a good mom, but I don’t, I don’t make really healthy food like Stacy does. Right. That’s your version of diminishing who you are and not believing that you’re a good mom period. Like full stop. There’s nothing after that because we are the good moms you guys. We are. So if we don’t think so, we’ve got a whole planet full of people that don’t think that they’re good moms. And that makes me so sad. Right? That makes me so sad.

Lorissa: (23:01)
And that’s, and when we believe that we’re not, then we show up not fully being who we know God is wanting us to be. That’s where that fear and the doubt and the hopelessness creeps in. And if you were to, you know, be with us, hanging out with us, and if we were to do a model on that, we’ll show you where hopelessness goes. If we, if we are feeling hopeless, we have thoughts that we’re not good enough. It leads to the results that we’re not able to show up the way we want to. So that’s the importance of this mindset work and where we need to start cleaning that up a little bit. I know for me, that was my, one of my biggest takeaways is like Larissa, let’s clean this up a little. This is an area where I’m where I need to start being a little bit more of my bigger, biggest cheerleader.

Lorissa: (23:59)
How do we become our best friend? How do we talk to ourselves? The way we would to the six year old version of ourselves? Yeah. Larissa, you’re a great mom. Look at all that. You’re doing. Look at the way you get up in the morning and you take care of those kids and you provide for them and you love them. And you’re praying with them and for them, and look at the stuff you’re doing way to go, you’re, amazing. Let’s keep ourselves up. And this is how we become the hero of our own story. And when we do this Sterling, like, I absolutely believe that when we live from this place. So like, if you, if you were to look at diminishing your accomplishments to actually accepting your accomplishments and humbly rejoicing in them, how much would that change? Especially the women around you. Because I think for me at this conference I would like witnessing other women, celebrating their successes, man, it brought me to tears every single time. I was like, look at her, go,

Sterling: (25:15)
Yeah,

Lorissa: (25:16)
She’s stepping into her dreams. She’s living this, she’s doing the hard work. And she’s believing in herself every single time I see a woman who’s living from that place of believing in herself and joy scene in her accomplishments. I’m so inspired. Like, I’m like, girlfriend, you go, thank you for paving the way for me. And I know that’s how I wanna be. I want other women to look at me and see an example of what’s possible when you believe in yourself. And if we had more moms that were doing that, imagine how that would change the world.

Sterling: (25:59)
Yeah. And I think that’s one thing, you know, the life coach school talks a lot about money and making money because I think they wanna normalize that particularly for women. But one of the things that struck me about these two days or how many of them did talk about their kids, how many, that two of, two of the main speakers were pregnant, which was incredible. Another speaker, her kids were there and they really did celebrate that aspect of themselves as well, because it’s easy to get on the stage and say, I made this much money and everyone can stand up and clap for you, but we could each one of us. Right. I wish I could take each one of you and put you on a stage in front of 2000 people and say, she’s raising her kids this year and have everyone stand up and cheer for you with tears in their eyes, because they are watching you live out your dreams and they are just celebrating you doing something so incredible. And so it starts with you giving that to yourself. You’ve gotta learn how to give it to ourselves. But just like Lua said, if we start doing that, we will also teach other women how to do that for themselves. And we will start creating a culture of women who are just so proud to be moms and who have stopped telling themselves that they are bad at it because we are the good moms.

Lorissa: (27:28)
Yes. Yeah. So good. All right. What else? Sterling.

Sterling: (27:36)
Okay. One more thing that was so powerful that we wanted to share with you. I mean, first of all, there were about 200 things. So the amount of notes that we took was crazy, but you will get them all throughout the year. But just in this episode, one of the speakers came out and said, and all of the talks were right. Were designed to be really inspirational. So she was talking about being an inspiration and she said, okay, I want you right now to think of someone, think of a woman who really inspires you, who is an example of what is possible for you and your life. She just waited. And everybody was thinking, and I was thinking, I was like, Ooh, do I wanna pick a scene? Or do I wanna pick somebody I know, or someone who has something that I’m working towards. And then she said, how many of you thought of yourself?

Sterling: (28:28)
And you could just hear the gasp from all of the women. Everybody was just like, oh, because of course, none of us, none of us were thinking of ourselves. None of us were thinking, I am an inspiration. I am an example of what is possible to me. I am so proud of myself. I look to me for inspiration. It was just such an incredible moment. And so I just want all of you guys to think about that. I want you to think about how you are your own inspiration? What came up for you or when they asked that question?

Lorissa: (29:12)
Oh, I mean, I completely agree with you. It, it, again, I was, I was moved to tears when she said that, but this is the deal. There are, there are people that are looking to all of us right now there, like someone in the world when asked that question is thinking about you and me. And whoever’s, you know, like in each of our lives. So we just don’t ever stop to realize it. But imagine if we do step into that a little bit, I know that this coming week, I wanna spend some time thinking about how I do wanna be my own inspiration and what that looks like, but I know I’m gonna spend some time journaling and to spend some time reflecting on that again, I know that this, the thought of this might feel uncomfortable for some people, it might feel too prideful or boastful, but that’s not what this is about.

Lorissa: (30:14)
This is just like owning who it is that God made us to be. Because even like St Torres, one of the things that I love about her is when you read a story of a soul, like she cut her own hair. She cut her own hair and put it in bags because she believed so much that she was gonna be a Saint and she wanted to keep her hair so that people could use it as a re someday. You wanna talk about massive belief in yourself? What if we lived like that? She believed that she was gonna be a Saint and she didn’t believe in it because she thought she was just so great. But because she knew that God had placed that on her heart. Yeah. And that it was God that was making her the same. She was gonna become.

Lorissa: (31:07)
But what if we believe so fiercely that we are gonna become saints and that we have greatness within us. And that, that greatness within us comes first and foremost from God. It’s not what we do on our own accord, but it is God living in and through us. And that is greatness. And that we can with the gifts and the talents and the love that he’s placed in our hearts, we can be an example to others of what’s possible when we live fully in him. And that we don’t have to hide from that. We don’t have to shrink it or hide it or hide it under a bushel basket. This is where God is saying, no, my precious daughters in Christ, I want you to shine. I want you to be a light on top of a mountain, shining for the world to see my glory in and through you. We’re done playing small, oh, God needs us to show up in this world and to shine for him.

Sterling: (32:19)
Yeah. And one thing I wanna say, as you listen to us, listen, Larissa and I both have the gift of speaking. Okay. We were probably born that way. Okay. We’re like born with little microphones, ready to walk on a stage. And we know that that is a gift that God has given us. So when you hear us talk about writing brightly and living big lives, I think some of you are like, oh, it looks like having a podcast or writing a book or being a speaker. But I’m looking at you moms, especially those ones who are like in your yoga pants with messy mom buns and food on your shirt. And you’re just going through the day, taking care of those little kids. And it doesn’t look sparkly to the rest of the world. You inspire me. I think that that is such an incredible journey and a gift that mothers give of themselves, mothers make the world happen.

Sterling: (33:14)
Literally, literally we would not have anything that we have without mothers, without this army of mothers who wiped bottoms and fed, you know, mushy food to their kids and dealt with teenagers and helped them find their first departments and all of that. So your life may never look public the way that ours does, but it is no less important. You can be your own inspiration. I want you to thank you for getting up this morning and doing whatever you did. The simple, ordinary things that we do, just feeding those kids and vacuuming the carpet and hugging our husbands. Those are miraculous gifts to the Lord. I think it’s miraculous that you are choosing the life that you are choosing. So that question, who is your inspiration? I want you to sit and ask yourself, how am I so inspired the way I am showing up, be inspired by yourself. It is really such an amazing gift. And I agree with Laura. I think the more that we do this for ourselves, the more we are going to see so much more positivity and goodness in the world.

Lorissa: (34:34)
Yeah, there is. There is a lot of darkness, a lot of negativity in the world, and God is calling us to counteract that we don’t need to contribute to that. Every time we diminish our, every time we diminish ourselves, we just add to the hopelessness, to the fear, to the doubt we don’t need more of that. Let’s build ourselves up, be our biggest cheerleaders, and then allow God to work through us in the ways in which he’s calling us to live and to love him. And I absolutely do. I do Sterling. We’re gonna do this. We’re gonna someday, we’re gonna do a conference and we’re gonna just yep. Celebrate the moms. We’re gonna bring . Cause we talked about this, right? We talked about the dream of bringing moms up on stage and just celebrating what we do as moms and making that a thing. Yeah. Thinking that like the really big deal that it is, because this is the hardest work, right. That there is. And the most important work that we’re called to, and we don’t celebrate it enough. It’s priceless. It’s like the value of it is so extraordinary. And so let’s be that let’s be willing to walk up on stage. And that stage is the stage that we show up in every day of our lives. And let’s lift each other up in that as well.

Sterling: (36:09)
Absolutely ladies. So I just want you to remember you’re going to the store. Okay. You’re gonna be a Saint. You’re gonna raise saints and the world is gonna try to distract you. The world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were Made for Greatness.