You're listening to the Rise Up and Shine podcast with Claudine and Ashley as an empty nester and a mom with young kids. We have both shared very similar and very real struggles from chaos to coaches. We now help other women live an authentic and meaningful life. So, tune in weekly for girl talk and tips on how you too can rise up and let your light shine bright. This is the Rise Up and Shine podcast. Hi, everyone. We are so glad to be back together and Claudine and I actually get to be live in person with each other, which is super exciting. Um It feels like it's been a long time. We got to see each other really face to face, literally face to face. Today, we are talking about a topic that is definitely relatable to all of us women and that is when things don't go as planned. That happens a lot. And I'll even share personally this morning, my day did not go as planned.

We were set to record at one PM. Today I left my house on the way to church and left everything, all my recording equipment, my microphones, I even left my notebook and, you know, I go on my merry way to church and then pretty soon my pants break and I can't zip up my pants. I have an unexpected, You know, more serious conversation with a friend and now it's past 3:00 and we are recording. Oh, yeah, there was an hour long meeting that I just found out about this morning as well. That was a wonderful meeting, but unplanned. So, but this happens to us all the time. We have an idea of what our day looks like. We have a plan of what our week looks like or how a conversation might go, you name it. And things don't always go as planned. And sometimes we have a hard time dealing with that. You know, sometimes we let it frustrate us or we lose patience or we might get bothered by the other person or, you know, I know one thing for myself.

I even told you Claudine this morning, like, well, at least I have my humor, which is really important. But again, today we are talking about when things don't go as planned. And I also just want to make a point that we're talking about the day to day annoyance, write the things that just happen to scenarios that happen in our day and our week that are more kind of lighthearted, um, not big, devastating things that we may experience and definitely don't go as planned according to you know what our picture is in our life, but we're talking more about the day to day. Yes, frustrations, things don't go as planned. And recently just a few weeks ago, we talked about expectations and that we all have them and that's why things don't go as planned is because we had an expectation. So today, we're not talking about that asked, but we're talking about how do we respond when things don't go as planned? So we're going to be giving you practical, how to respond and what can we learn from it? How can we grow from it when we encounter those things like you did today?

You know, that certainly wasn't the unexpected, quite unexpected and then it affected my plans because my plans depended on your plans and it all worked out. So today we're going to talk about how to respond. Yeah. And I like this because like the point you hit right expectations. We all have expectations, how something is supposed to go according to our idea, according to our plan, and we can either react and get frustrated, which I have definitely been there plenty of times or we can, we can actually choose to respond in a specific way and it does take intention, it takes being intentional on do I want to let this really bother me and just get upset? I would tell myself this is kind of a waste of time just to get angry about it. I mean, if you want to, you can, it's all up to you. But I know for myself, I didn't like how I felt. It didn't fix the problem. It, you know, nothing changed. It still did not go according to plan. But I decided that I just, I don't like reacting that way. You know, I don't like how it leaves me feeling.

I feel like it's just more suffering that I'm putting on myself. Well, that's you've hit a couple of things, one the suffering, right? Because we create our own suffering with our thoughts and our feelings. But the other thing you said was intentional. You know, you want to respond intentionally and I love that phrase or word that says response ability, we have the ability to respond, how we want to respond to any given situation. And it is a skill and I think we can learn it and grow in it and not react but to respond with intention. It's our response, ability, response. I love it. Yeah. Another one. Yeah. And I was thinking about us preparing for this. What kind of things do we as women typically plan for? Right? And I kind of broke it down into certain areas in our relationships, whether that's a marriage, you know, we have a plan or an idea of what we think our marriage should look like. You know, especially I think fairy tales have kind of given us a false reality on things and hey, my marriage did not come, you know, work out according to plan.

No white horse, I'm still waiting on my white picket fence, three kids, two dogs and a cat. Um, also our careers, you know, maybe we had a plan in our career, maybe something happened there, whether we got fired or something happened in our life, we had to move or there were struggling in our career or our Children. Also, you know, we definitely make plans for our Children and to our surprise, they grow up and they start having minds of their own. So they make their own decisions that do not go according to our plan. And that could be a very hard one for us women and moms, you know, I mean, I remember it wasn't very long that I was able to control what my Children wore, you know, and I remember my son especially, he is much more of the independent type where he likes to do what he wants to do and has his own plan and our plans weren't driving. And so I even stopped taking family photos like the nice family photos, right?

Like let's all dress up and match. And because, you know, there are stains on his clothes and, but he only wanted to wear one shirt. And so just I know that's kind of a silly example, but even as they get older, they might make choices that we don't necessarily agree with or feel are in their best interest. And, um, and even our schedules, you know, we might not always plan for our schedule. Sometimes we can plan something it doesn't, might fall through. I think that's a big one big, especially for moms. You know, we have things planned and then our child needs something or has to go somewhere sick, I think. Schedule. It's a huge one when things don't go as planned. Yeah. So it can definitely leave us frustrated. Right. And just overwhelmed or, you know, not know how to deal. Um, and again, it's the unmet expectations. We had an expectation for something to go our way really, the way that we wanted to go. And our idea was, and it's frustrating.

Can all really. Yeah. And all the list of emotions that we don't want to stay, stay. So, actually, why don't we share some practical Zell's to help if you are encountering something that didn't go as you planned and you want to learn how to respond differently. We have some practical. Yeah. Well, first one, like, already joked about keeping a sense of humor definitely helps, you know, I mean, like I said, I would get frustrated plenty of times. It did not help anything, did not fix anything. Um, but if we just, like, when my pants broke today, my zipper, I'm like, oh, I guess it's that kind of a day. I just kinda had to laugh about it. I had to do that, even with my kids, certain things like, oh okay, this is, this is happening, this is happening. Um So we do have a choice, you know, as you said, we can react, but we can also be intentional on how we respond. And I've learned over the years definitely through trial and air that I would much rather respond um more positively and just with a sense of humor and okay, we're going with it, we're going with it and let it play out.

Yeah, that's really good. I think I love that. I think I've really learned to have a sense of humor. I think when I was younger and things didn't go as planned, I would get very hurt, very disappointed, very frustrated, very annoyed. And I did have to learn to try to find the humor in it. And again, we're talking about lighter things like schedules, not going or even, you know, as an empty nester. I have adult Children. Some of that is not that light. They've made decisions and did things that did not go as planned for sure. Um, so not, I wasn't necessarily laughing about those things but in the day to day, like your pants and leaving all the recording equipment at home. I mean, we just had to get creative to not only find the humor in it, you know, like ha ha ha ha and then your pants. Ha ha ha ha. Oh, here's an unplanned meeting. That you didn't know about that you needed to be at, you know, but, um, not only finding the humor but also finding the good in it. Like, how can we, how can we make something good out of this?

Like for us today, the scheduled, my schedule changed because your schedule changed and it's okay. I forgive you, but it was great because it gave my husband, I'm like, well, we'll go to lunch. He has to work later anyway, so we can still record and he, and I'll just go have some nice time to have lunch because he was out of town and then I leave town tomorrow. So it worked out, it just worked out okay. Number two, this is where the work is, dig deep. Really spend some time on. Why are you upset? And so I was thinking about when things didn't go as planned. And I remember about, gosh, probably about 25 years ago. I had like, let's say a Pampered Chef party was one of those kind of things and I invited like 10 people and nobody showed up. So that did not go as planned. So there was a lot of hurt and in that moment I was upset with other people like they didn't show up for me. Now, mind you looking back and knowing what I know now, I probably did no follow up calls.

I just assumed one time telling people they should remember and they'll just come to my house and reminders, reminders and this was before cell phones and internet and all that. So, you know, you have to like, basically all of that. It was way before that. But I had to dig deep even then I had a mentor that really helped me, like, go deeper. What are you upset about? And really the heart of it was, I felt like no one cared about me. And so I was upset and reacted not in a great way. At the time, I was shutting down, I was like, I don't want to be friends with these people ever again, which is not the appropriate response, very normal, but it's not appropriate for what happened. And really, I was really upset because I felt like nobody cared about me. Nobody loves me. Something triggered something, right? And so it really had nothing to do with the outside circumstance and everything to do with my belief systems and my thoughts and the stories which we've talked about before and we'll be talking about next week that we tell ourselves.

And so when I got to the root of that, then I could deal with that, right? So, and like you said, that is the work, that's where the work is within, you know, I mean, even like Paul says in the Bible, right? Be content in any and every yes and that is, it takes work. I mean, how even when things don't go as planned, how can I be content? But like you said, I wanted to point out because again, this is, this is really transformative when we work on this area of uncovering and digging deeper that we attach a meaning. You know, you mentioned that there's a story and so your story in your mind and the work was you had to uncover that you reacted, but you didn't know what was going on, you just thought they didn't show but until you pause and really process and think about it. And why is this bothering me so much? Where is this coming from? What is this triggering or tapping into in a deeper place in my soul is that's where you find out like, oh I am translating this or I'm putting the meaning that they didn't show up for me and they didn't care about, they must not care about me, you know, and I'm put last and that which is not only did they not love me, but the even deeper layer was I'm not worthy of being loved by others.

That was the work. And I've shared about that before but years of work to get that healed, right? And I think so many of us women struggle with the I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy all of that. So and that's what without that mentor in my life, I had a mentor who really helped me get to the root and that's so much of the work that you and I do as coaches is having that outside set of eyes that can draw deep, you know, drug deeper, go below the layers to hell uncover what's really going on. Yeah. Well, and I'll even, I want to add another example to yours is like, let's take our Children, let's take as they're growing older, making their own choices that we don't agree with or we yes, are concerned about for their well being. What is that triggering in us? You know, did I? Is that a reflection of me? Am I going to look bad as a parent that I didn't do a good enough job if they're, you know, living out of their car or their, you know, whatever they're, is that what are people going to think of me or another one?

Is, did I not do a good enough job? Did I not show up for my kids the way I needed to? Did I miss certain key areas that I should have taught them, you know, maybe they're not good at managing their budgets or they're spending money like crazy and they're totally irresponsible. Did I not do a good job? And we put these stories on things? So even being cautious in all these areas, right again and with our careers, marriage, any other relationship. So yeah, this is definitely the work to be done. You cannot grow until you know, where to go. I just made that up you cannot grow until, you know where to go and you don't know where to go until you know where you are. You know, and that's the thing. And so when we dig deep and figure out what's really going on, then we can grow because we've tapped into what's really upsetting us. It's important. It's hard, it's hard. It's the word being willing to go there. Sometimes we don't want, were either unaware or it's a hard place to go to because it does dig deeper into our souls and even into our past, that's a hard place to go sometimes.

Well, and I'm thinking about this is we're talking about digging deep, but you cannot even rise up and shine until you go deeper. Absolute. So 3rd and final, practical we have is accept what is and is not within your control. This is another big one. Acceptance is also work. It takes work. I know I've mentioned this many times on our podcast that one thing that has helped me is have a paper divided in half by a line. One side could be what is in my control, the other side. What is not in my control because I think we try to control more than what we're really capable of controlling. We are not in control of others. We're not in control of their moods, their actions, their choices were not in control of just life, things happening. You know, some things happen out of our control in certain circumstances. But acceptance is huge and being able to rise up and shine and be able to grow and choose an intentional response rather than reacting emotionally.

Um And another part of this I want to add on is being flexible. You know, one thing you've said many times is that accepting life is 50 50. You know, if we have that mentality as we go through life and parenting and, and marriage and um empty nesting as you are. If we underst And that life is 5050, it's give and take its highs and lows, then we will be more willing to be flexible and accepting of those things. I know we both in our own lives have tried to hold onto the reins tight. You know, you want things to work out the way I want and some things you have to just let it play out. That's one thing even in my stage right now with my kids preteens, one is closely approaching teenagers, but learning to kind of let go a little bit more. It's hard. It's hard for parents hard just as a human being in general, but learning to be flexible and just really having a clear understanding of what is within my control, which really is just you.

It's your choices, it's your thoughts and your behavior, your behavior, that's pretty much all that is in your control, everything else. Pray about release. You allow yourself just to trust. Yeah, I think flexibility is huge and, and that it comes with accepting, accepting that we are not in control of everything. Like looking back at that party I held 25 years ago, I wanted to put the blame on everyone else. But really, once I accepted that my part in it, like I didn't do all that I needed to do to get a good attendance. Now I throw parties, not those kind, but I know like it's a lot of work. It's a lot of reminders. It's a lot of follow ups. Thank goodness for texting and all the easy electronics we have now. But you know, that flexibility of even for this morning, the flexibility to rearrange to figure it out. Like we're like, we're gonna figure this out. You know, you were, I was like, let's just do it next week. Like I can't, I have a meeting. But yeah, that was my, my intention was like, just blow it out, blow it out.

And I'm like, we're gonna make it today because I have to edit them and be creative and make it work, make it work some things we can make work and you and I had to go back and forth to get it. So that worked for both of us. And that's the flexibility part like, okay, well, we'll move this and you do that and then we'll come here just to use this equipment instead of, you know, are very high end professional recording equipment that we have at your house. Um But anyway, so it all worked out. So, except what is in your control, it's not in the flexibility, so, so good. Alright then. Well, hopefully this was of help to you because I know that everyone listening, there are things that are not going to go as you plan if you need help learning how to be intentional in your responses or learning to dig deeper and find out what's really going on. Ashley and I are here to help. You can find us at mind over chaos dot com or Claudine Sweeney dot com.

Until next time. Take care. Alright, everyone. Thank you for joining in on our conversation today here on the Rise Up and Shine podcast. If you haven't already, please take a second to hit that subscribe button. So you never miss an episode and while you're at it, share this episode with a friend who, you know, it can bless today if you want to visit us as well on our websites, you can catch Claudine over at Claudine Sweeney dot com and Ashley at mind over chaos dot com. Our links are in the description. We also have some free resources there for you as well. So remember ladies, no matter what you are facing in life, it is never too late to rise up and shine and live your best life.