Loving People as They Are with Jody Moore

Kathryn Davis 0:00

The Greek playwright Sophocles wrote, "One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life. The word is love." Hello, and welcome to Magnify, and LDS Living podcast where we talk about using our influence as followers of Jesus Christ to make a difference in the world. I'm your host, Kathryn Davis, a mom, a seminary teacher, and a Traeger enthusiast who loves God. Today we're digging into how to love no matter what, how to love the friend who says something hurtful about you, the sister in law leaves you out. The ward member who let you know your child is annoying. The coworker who puts you down in the meeting, who is that someone who was hard for you to love? My guest today is someone we all love, the friend next door who helps us solve our problems and gets us out of our ruts. Jody Moore is a certified life coach, a mom of four and the author of "Better than Happy," and I learned that Jody has a hidden talent for reciting the alphabet backwards and under 30 seconds. Can you really?

Jody Moore 1:10

That is true. Do you want to hear? It's my party trick. ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA.

Kathryn Davis 1:20

How did you figure out that that was a trick?

Jody Moore 1:22

I don't know why that's so impressive to people. My grandpa used to be able to do it. And we always would say, "Grandpa say the alphabet backwards!" So when I was a jogger, and I'd be on long jogs, I just decided to memorize it one day, because I don't know why it's impressive to people. It's not really a hard thing to learn.

Kathryn Davis 1:38

I think it's super impressive. So this season, in the Magnify community, we are talking about, how to be women that love well, because it feels like if we can get good at love, so many of our other problems will melt away. And I've loved listening to you coach and so much of what you coach about and coach people on is their ability to love no matter what, you often use the platter analogy, that when it comes to our emotions, we have a whole platter of options we can pick from and you recommend that we pick love. Why do you think love is the best emotion?

Jody Moore 2:18

Well, yeah, I recommend that you pick love. And we can choose actually, is partly why I use that analogy because it feels like emotions just happened to us. But ultimately, they're our choice. Love is the best one. First of all, because of how it feels for us when we're feeling it. It is the best, I would say maybe most alive and most pure version of us, I think, that we can experience here in our earthly states. So it feels expansive, it feels full in our bodies, it helps us access creativity and problem solving and solutions. It's the opposite of worry and fear and all those negative emotions that we don't like. And it helps you, you know, be better to yourself and make your own life better, but also then show up better and contribute better in the world. So I can't think of another emotion that is as powerful and as useful as love.

Kathryn Davis 3:14

So if it's so powerful and so useful, why don't we pick it more?

Jody Moore 3:19

Yeah, good question. So first of all, we don't realize I don't think that it is a choice. Right. Again, like I said before, most of us think that emotions just happened to us. And the truth is, what I teach as a coach is that our thoughts create our feelings. And part of the principle of agency is agency is not just the ability to act and do anything that we choose. But it's also the ability to think anything we want to think and therefore feel anything we want to feel. But that said, we have to be in our conscious brains in order to choose thoughts intentionally. Otherwise, our brains do just offer them to us all day long as they're supposed to. So I'm not suggesting that we could or should be in a conscious state choosing thoughts and emotions all day long. I think that would be exhausting. I don't know that it's even possible. But in moments when you can and we just take particular situations that life offers, and we slow it down and we take a look at what we're thinking and that is the best way to choose love. So reason in answer your question. The reason we don't do that is because we're either not conscious, not aware that it's a choice, or we haven't found a believable thought to think that is going to generate love. So I can give you some examples. Okay, so let's say, like I have a daughter who's a teenager and so she's in the thick of, you know, friend drama right now, let's just say okay, so if one of her friends says something that she finds to be offensive or hurtful. Then in that moment, she's not feeling love for those friends, she's feeling hurt, and maybe she's mad at them, or maybe she has judgment for them or what have you. So in order to get to love, first, we have to slow it down and decide that's what we want. Because sometimes we just want to be hurt or mad. And I think that it's necessary that we process and allow for emotions like that. But once you get tired of feeling that way, and I feel like there's a shift from like, this is an appropriate way I want to respond to this life experience versus like, now I'm sort of becoming bitter, and I get sick of myself when I'm in that state. And that's how I know I'm ready to take a look at my thoughts. Then it's not just let's just love those friends, that may not be, those may not be, I should say believable thoughts to my daughter, she has to find thoughts that feel true, and that create the sensation of love. And that is challenging work for us to do as humans. I think we've all probably experienced that when you're not ready to forgive or love someone and someone says you should just forgive them and let them we reject that. So it's a matter of timing and consciousness, and then finding the thoughts that would generate love.

Kathryn Davis 6:10

So do you think we have to fully believe the thought, for this thought work to work? Or do our brains kind of accept the truth as we consciously choose that thought?

Jody Moore 6:22

Yeah, we don't have to fully believe it. But we do have to at least partially believe it. And here's what I mean by that. I don't know what you mean by fully belief, but to me, so let's say, we'll go back to the example with my daughter. And this happens with adults, too, not just teenagers, but I might offer my daughter a thought like, you know, those girls, maybe they were treating you that way because they felt insecure. And they were just trying, you know, to feel better about themselves. And sometimes, you know, when we feel scared or insecure or nervous, we all do some questionable things, or say or behave in questionable ways. Right? So I might offer her that thought. Now, as we slow it down and say that, if she agrees with that, usually these are obviously real conversations I've had with my daughter, she'll nod her head and say, yeah, yeah, that's true. So she partially believes it. What I mean by she doesn't fully believe it is that her default brain still wants to go back to, but that's not right. That's not fair. They shouldn't talk to me that way. They shouldn't behave that way. I would never do that, all of the other thoughts that are generating judgment. So you have to at least, when you slow it down, a part of you has to go, "Yes, I know that's true." And then you have to want to focus on those new thoughts. Because you're gonna have to redirect your brain every time it goes to self pity, or judgment are the all the other emotions, you have to go, "No, we're done with that. We're remembering that those girls who treated me that way, probably were in some kind of pain themselves." And as you redirect it, then you do actually like the science actually proves that we create new neural pathways in our brains. And so then it becomes much easier to think that thought maybe the next time something happens, but you have to at least a part of you has to go Yeah, I do think that's true.

Kathryn Davis 8:12

So it has to, it has to start with a believable thought?

Jody Moore 8:17

Yes, a believable thought that makes you feel something closer to love. Like, even just compassion or empathy or understanding is pointed in the direction of love.

Kathryn Davis 8:31

I love that. And I love in your book, you share a quote from Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin. And I love this quote, he said, "The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of transformation. It takes us as men and women of the earth and refines us into men and women for the eternities. The means of this refinement is our Christ like love." And I think just choosing that thought to be more like Christ, right, like, first of all, what do you think Christ like, love looks like? Or feels like?

Jody Moore 9:05

It's a good question. And what I love about that, quote, is the word refining, in there, right? I do think that is, you know, that's what we believe is the purpose of us being here on Earth is to become refined, to become more like our Heavenly Parents. And you know, people do some pretty terrible things in this world. And to be able to love even in situations like that, requires something of us that refines us. And so I think Christ like love looks like how Jesus Christ lived his life. Right? It looks like forgiveness. It looks like not holding a grudge. It looks like understanding that hurt people, hurt people, and that everyone is worthy of love, and that we don't know what anybody's circumstances are or what experiences they may have had that have wired their brains the way that they are. Or what education or lack thereof or love in their lives or lack thereof, we just don't know. And so I think it looks like giving everyone the benefit of the doubt. And I do want to say that it includes love for ourselves. And one of the things I learned at coach training that has been so amazing is when a client starts telling me about a situation their lives, a problem, I am trained to love everyone in the story. So a client might start telling me about like her daughter in law, who judges her and doesn't, you know, doesn't let her spend time with the grandkids or what have you. I love my client as she's telling me this story. I love the grandkids, and I love the daughter in law. And I'm not able to do this all the time, I'm still human. But when I'm coaching, I turn on that part of my brain that just knows everyone in the story is lovable. And everybody has emotions, driving them, thoughts driving them, and everybody's doing the best they can. And sometimes our best is pretty terrible. And I think Christ was perfect at understanding that. He could love everyone in the story all the time. And sometimes loving the people in the story means having boundaries and protecting them and saying no, so I want to be clear about that. Because sometimes people misunderstand when I say love everyone, that I'm saying let people take advantage of you or mistreat you. That's not what I'm saying at all. We got to love everyone in the story. And that's the goal in the end.

Kathryn Davis 11:22

And that's how developing Christ like love can refine us.

Jody Moore 11:27

Yeah, because in order to do that, it requires that we overcome what we call the natural man, or the fear based part of us that we learn to manage that part of us, we don't let that part of us drive and get out of hand, we step in and go, "Okay, it's alright, here's how we're going to think about this. And here's what we're going to do next." And the process of being able to, I think, overcome that human natural man part of us is, I think what refines us in the end.

Kathryn Davis 11:56

And I think it's really interesting that you just pointed out that it starts with us, right? That that Christ like love, we have to be able to love us the way Christ does. And that's hard. That's kind of a hard place to, to get to.

Jody Moore 12:11

It is a hard place to get to. And I find that for a lot of people loving themselves is harder than loving other people. Sometimes I see it be the opposite. But either way, remembering that we're all equal. And that our our love-ability doesn't change. We're all lovable, right? 100% lovable, there's nothing Kathryn that you or I could do that would make us less worthy of love, or that would increase and make us more lovable, more worthy of love. We are all 100% complete. We're children of heavenly parents, that part's a done deal. So the question becomes, okay, then why is it that some people are really annoying? Or some people are harming other people or are dishonest? Or what have you? How can we say they're all lovable, they are all lovable. It's just our ability to love one another is the work of our lifetime, to increase the ability to love one another. And you can love someone and say, No. You can love someone, and choose to never even see them if that person is really harmful or toxic.

Kathryn Davis 13:23

And it kind of reminds me of that quote from Elder Wirthlin. Right, that the more we can develop love, we can become women for the eternities. And what does that look like, like to be able to love and to choose love, and create love? I think that's something that I have really been drawn to and your book. There was a part of that talked about, like being able to create love. I was reading a lot from the gospel topic essays, our "Heavenly Parents." And I've read something that each person is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. And I believe that part of our inherited divine nature is the desire to create. I think that's inherent, that's part of our nature. And that desire comes from heavenly parents, this desire to create and I've always thought of myself as not a creative person, because I'm not crafty. And so I thought, I'm not creative. And as I've studied more and read your book, I've really thought about can I create love? And is that part of my divine inheritance from my heavenly parents? And what does that look like to be able to create love?

Jody Moore 14:51

It's such a good question. And I completely agree with you. I think that, kind of like when you asked me in the beginning, why is love the best emotion? You know, God is love. We understand and that God and Christ and our Heavenly Parents are perfect at loving. We are, as you said, their spirit children, which means we are love also, right? Like I think about my mom has naturally curly hair, and I got naturally curly hair from her. And our heavenly parents are loving beings, they are the essence of love. Therefore, we have at least some of that, if not, maybe a lot of that within us. And so when we quiet the fear, and the insecurity and the blame, and all of that, which is a natural part of our human experience, but when we can quiet it and sort of like sift through all that what is leftover is love. Us at our most pure state. That's why I'm always teaching people no love your daughter in law for your sake. Because love is an emotion that you will feel in your body and it feels so good, it feels, there's just something so true and pure and expansive about it. And so if you're going to be mad at your daughter in law, or your husband, or whoever it is, you're going to punish you by feeling something negative. Now, it just so happens that also when you're loving people, you show up in a way that they happen to prefer also. But first and foremost, do it for you. And I know some people struggle when I teach that because they don't like the idea of us being selfish. But I think that it is self serving and other serving to choose love in the end.

Kathryn Davis 16:36

And the idea of not only choosing love, but that we can create it. That we have that divine ability to create love. To me that just is so exciting, and empowering.

Jody Moore 16:52

And when you create love Kathryn, when you generate love within you, you are actually the only one that can create it for yourself, with your thoughts. And when you create that you will also, there's sort of that internal creation of emotions, you're going to externally create things as well, even if it's, again, the way you show up for people, the way you treat people, you're going to have ideas come to you. I love what you said about us being creative, like our Heavenly Parents. Obviously, that is not just about being crafty, or artistic. Creation is just like ideas. We create ideas all the time. You and I are creating a podcast episode right now, like creation is so much more than than just the arts. And for some people they're creating through analyzing things and putting things into a spreadsheet and creating a an understanding of something. Creation is about this idea, or concept or thing or tool or class or podcast episode didn't exist. And now it does because we showed up. And if love is fueling us, we're going to do a 10 times better job than if we're fueled by fear or something else.

Kathryn Davis 18:01

Yeah because we're trying to become like him. Right? If that's our goal, and love can help us become more like Him. There's a verse in Proverbs that essentially says, we are what we think. And this is what you coach people on and kind of what we've been talking about this whole time, that our thoughts create our feelings, which fuel our actions, which end up creating our results. And so like we've talked about, if it starts with a thought, and how can we, how do you get into that self conscious brain where you deliberately choose a thought, instead of just letting, we think thoughts just happen? How do you consciously decide?

Jody Moore 18:48

Yeah, so what I do and what I recommend for others, is when you have a situation where you decide, okay, I'm tired of feeling this way, I want to feel better, I want to be more kind or more loving, or what have you. The simplest place to begin is just separate out the facts from the thoughts. Because we tend to think that our thoughts are facts. We think that our thoughts are just us observing the world around us. And they are, based on our observations of the world, but they're our observations of the world filtered through the lens of how we see the world based on our life experiences, a little bit our DNA, all kinds of things. So we want to get really clear, these are facts and these are thoughts. So what I always tell people is, okay, facts are the really boring like put on your attorney hat. We could prove this in a court of law, everybody would agree part. Thoughts are the more exciting opinionated, subjective part. So for example, yesterday I was coaching a woman whose son was going to serve a mission. He had gotten his mission call and you know, gotten all the immunizations and his passport and all the things he needed to go and then two weeks before he said I decided I'm not going to go mom. And so she was telling me this story. And she's telling me a lot of thoughts, right that she thinks or her observation, for example, he wants nothing to do with his dad and I now he's really unhappy. He's feeling really lost. And he's not open to anything that we have to say. And I just always really, really wanted him to serve a mission, because I think it would help him mature and grow up. And it's really disappointing that he's not going. These are all thoughts that feel like to this woman, and we all do this, myself included, they feel like just the truth about what's going on. So what we did is we separated out the facts from the thoughts, the facts are just okay, you have a son, he got some shots, he got a passport, he had a mission call, and then he didn't go. Those are the facts. They're actually when we pull them out, we want to pause and go, they're just facts. It's just what happened. We might say, it's disappointing, and it's too bad. Or we might say it's fine, it's understandable. Or we could even, if we had a crystal ball and could see into the future, and if he would have gotten on the plane, the plane would have crashed, you would have died, then we would go, thank goodness, he didn't go, right? So facts are just facts, until we wrap story, and we translate them through the lens of our thoughts. And it's okay that we do that. But I always recommend first you just separate out the facts, because everything that's left over is up for grabs. And it doesn't mean that you shouldn't have thoughts. There are no thoughts that are wrong thoughts. It's just this part is optional. So when she tells me he wants nothing to do with his dad and I, I say, "I know you think that's true. I know you have a lot of examples you could give me. But that's just a thought that isn't creating an emotion that you like." And so we have to sift through those thoughts, and then choose them more intentionally.

Kathryn Davis 21:48

So Jody with that example, and if we're talking about creating love. Like walk me through how you would coach this mom, on some thought work on how to create love for herself for her son, for the situation? How does she create love?

Jody Moore 22:09

Yeah, so ultimately what we decided and remember, it's love for everyone in the story. Okay, so love for herself, love for her son, love for her husband, who was in the story as she was telling it to me, love for everybody in the story. What does that look like? Not an easy question to answer. And it's a personal question, I don't tell my clients what they should do, I just try to help them get to love and then they figure out what to do. But as a parent, you can still hold your child accountable, especially if that child is under a certain age or living in your home or dependent on you financially. And for me, as a mom, I view that as part of me being the kind of mom I want to be is to hold my kids accountable to what I expect of them. I can do that from love. Or I can do that from frustration, and I'm gonna get a different result either way. So for example, when she says that her son, I don't think she did give me this example, but let's say he's talking back to her or something, he's talking in a disrespectful way, right? She can say, "Oh, you know what, in our house, we don't talk to each other that way. So the consequences, either like, you'll just need to go to your room, or you need to, you know, go for a drive until you can calm down, or I'm gonna go for a drive," or whatever you want. Or you take away cell phones, you get to decide as the parent. My point is that you can be in a space of love and do that. And say, I love you. And I can see that you're struggling right now. And I'm sorry, you feel that way. But this behavior is not acceptable. Or what we normally do, what I normally do instead is we do it out of frustration and anger. And then we snap or we yell or we're upset, or we're frustrated, or we do nothing, we just walk away and throw our hands up in the air and complain to everyone around us about it. So the alternative is, the thoughts ultimately that I helped this woman, and she's going to have to practice redirecting a part of her believes it, but part of her brain is still going back to the old thoughts of this is so disappointing. But what I offered to her is like, what if nothing's gone wrong here? What if your child is having the exact experience he's supposed to have? What if he was supposed to, because she kept saying, I just wish he wouldn't have even, you know, done all that stuff and prepared and I wish he would have just from the beginning said I'm not gonna go. And I kind of pushed back on that. And we questioned it. And we just played with like, why do we want him to go so badly? What do we think it's going to do for him? And ultimately, can we take a look at where we're at and decide that? You know, she wanted him to grow? She wanted him to have experiences good thing that would serve Him. ASll good things, right? But I said what if he's having that experience right now? And what if this version of it means that he's going to grow and you're also going to have the opportunity to grow instead of just him? And what if it was always meant to be this way? Now what? Who do I want to be now? What kind of mother do I want to be? What kind of woman do I want to be? How do I want to think and feel about all of this? And ultimately, that's where she's working to get to is what if nothing's gone wrong? What if I'm not just going to go? Alright, I guess I'll deal with this. What if I'm gonna go, this was always going to happen this way. And I wonder what's going to happen next. So it's, it's a sort of a shift away from trying to control things we can't control like our kids, to what we can control, which is ourselves. Who am I going to be now?

Kathryn Davis 25:29

And I think that's why it's called thought work, right? Because it's not easy. And I like how you said, you kind of pushed back on some of her thoughts, that sometimes we have to push back on some of our thoughts that lead us to a certain conclusion.

Jody Moore 25:45

Yeah, and in the beginning, I love that you said Kathryn it's not easy, because that's what people say to me a lot, until they have one time of trying it out. And then they realize it's so much easier than what we do instead, which is trying to control the world around us. It's way easier. It just takes you trusting for a minute, we call it faith and having faith that like this is the Lord's plan, and that he's in charge. And then everything's gonna work itself out. In the end, when you let go for a second, the brain thinks this is dangerous, we should be worried about this, we should be mad about this. But when you just try for a minute, what if I wasn't mad about it? What if I wasn't upset? What if I just chose love? What if I just decided this person's worthy of love, I have no idea what their life experience is, but they're still worthy of love. It's like a relief, because you stop trying to control things outside of your control.

Kathryn Davis 26:38

I love that. It just, this reminds me I have a couple of teenagers. And especially when we started getting into that realm of teenagers, I used to worry a lot about their decisions. Because the consequences seemed bigger to some of their decisions that they were making. And I remember one night I was up really late worried. And I just had this really distinct feeling that God wasn't worried. God's not worried about my kids. So why am I and if I can just let go and realize that he's in charge. So I try and hold on to that thought a lot. God's not worried. God's not worried.

Jody Moore 27:20

And that's what I love about the spirit. I feel like for me, and all of us are individual, but I feel like what you described as happened for me to where if I opened myself up to wanting to let go of the worry or fear or judgment, the spirit offers me thoughts, right? Like that thought that you were, wherever it came from, but like, I'm not worried and God's not worried. Why are you worried? It only takes one thought to redirect you away. And then again, you have to choose because your brain probably tries to go back to worry sometimes, right? But if you choose to redirect it to that thought you can get to peace.

Kathryn Davis 27:57

I just hope that I can keep coming back there as a mom, and just thinking of you have one of your clients that you were just coaching, and helping her create love. Create love for herself, for her husband, for her situation, for her son. And it reminded me of something you wrote in your book, which I think is really interesting. You wrote, "We want people to be different, so we can love them. But if they change for us, then we are not loving them." Tell me more about that.

Jody Moore 28:27

Isn't that crazy to think about? So, you know, traditionally, a lot of times with old school marriage therapy in the past, they would say okay, so wife and husband, you guys aren't getting along. So why don't you tell each other what your needs are, so the other person can meet them. Right? So if I tell my husband, listen, I really need you to compliment me regularly. And I need you to listen to me at the end of the day and whatever, I might give him all my needs. And he might even say, okay, I can do that, I'm in. So now he's waking up in the morning going, I gotta remember to compliment my wife. Let's see, what can I compliment her on? Oh, honey, I love how you made the bed this morning. Okay, I gotta listen. It's the end of the day. Maybe I'm telling him about my day and his mind is elsewhere or he's not interested in what I'm saying. And he's trying to listen. He's pretending, bless his heart, on my behalf. He's pretending, trying to pretend to be who I am asking him to be so that I can give myself permission to feel validated. And we do this all the time. And there's nothing wrong with, I want to be clear. There's nothing wrong with making requests. In fact, I do it all the time. I tell my kids like, you know what would help is if you said to me every day, you're the best mom in the whole world, mom. Like I do make requests. And I try to get people to behave in the way that I want them and sometimes it even works. But I also know very clearly that now they're playing the game I asked them to play and that if they don't because this is what happens, back to the marriage situation is maybe we say. "Yes, honey, I'm going to try to show up that way for you." And we're good at it for a little while. And then we just go back to being ourselves again, usually. And now we're upset again. So what I tell people is make requests if you want, but don't hang your happiness in your emotions on whether or not they meet them. Because they may not, and even if they do, I've coached many couples in this situation, who are like, "Oh, she asked me to do this. And now I'm doing it. And she's still not happy. And she says, because you're not doing it right." Right, I can relate to this, too. Like, no, I wanted you to do it my way.

Because my way is the right way.

And those of us that have people pleasing issues, too, right? We're pretending to be a certain way so that people will approve of us. Okay, but are they approving of you? Or are they approving of the version of you you're pretending to be. And there's a true connection that we can only get from a more authentic place, you just be you, I'll just be me. And who I'm trying to be isn't just someone that says every rotten thing that comes to my head either, like I want to be nice and kind and polite, but I'm going to be me, you be you, I'm going to love me. And I'm going to love you. And whatever you think of you, or you think of me is none of my business. That's where the healthiest relationships are formed. So you just have to be careful about pretending or asking other people to pretend because that does tend to keep the peace a little easier. But it keeps us on the surface. It doesn't create true connection, until we can get real.

Kathryn Davis 31:35

And I think until we can understand what you said earlier that everybody is 100% lovable right now. There's nothing we can do to make us more lovable, or make us less lovable.

Jody Moore 31:49

Isn't that kind of crazy to think about? It's hard to wrap your head around. It's human nature that we will have preferences, yes. But it's just our value our worthiness of love. We are worthy of love every one of us 100%.

Kathryn Davis 32:04

And I think to what would change in my relationships if, I mean, I believe that, but I have to keep coming back to that and how my relationships would change if I truly, really understood and felt that all the time.

Jody Moore 32:20

Here's another trick you can try. So whatever it is that you want the person to do that you wish they did. Like, let me just think of an example. Okay, tell me about, let's do one of your examples. If your 17 year old, what would we like him to say? If he was nice? What would that sound like? What would it look like?

Kathryn Davis 32:42

Okay, so I'll just we can cut this out. I'll just tell you. From the very beginning, when I said that they I was asked to host this podcast, and I just have had so much self doubt. And even this morning, my 17 year old is like yeah, why you mom? Why you? You're gonna be terrible. That's what he said, as a joke, right? He said, but I just kind of I'm like, "Josh, just tell me that I'm gonna be good. Tell me that you're gonna like it." Okay, want to hear yours as well?

Jody Moore 33:14

Okay, I'll tell you mine in a minute. Let's imagine that Josh said, "Mom, you're gonna be so good at that podcast. I'm so glad they asked you to do it. I can see why, you're gonna be so good at it." Okay, what would you be thinking? If he said that?

Kathryn Davis 33:29

Where's my son?

Jody Moore 33:35

Yeah, you'd be caught off guard but the part of you that wishes that he was that? Well, here's the key. Everything we want is because of how we think it will make us feel. Okay, so everything we don't want is because of how we think that it's making us feel. Your son saying, Mom, why you, isn't making you feel bad, it's your thought that's making you feel that. You already have the thought, "Why me?" I don't know, if I'm gonna be able to do this, whatever, you already have some self doubt. He offers one to you. It just validates it and makes it feel more true for you. Right? So if he validated you, or behaved the way that you wanted him to, if he was just like that all the time, and you didn't have the shock about it, what would you be thinking?

Kathryn Davis 34:22

Oh, I am good at it. I will be good at it. oh, will be good at it.

Jody Moore 34:28

And did you know Catherine that you're allowed to believe that, whether your son's says that to you or not? And that it's actually your job to believe in you. It's not your 17 year old child's job.

Kathryn Davis 34:40

Thank heavens. Yes, I love that.

Jody Moore 34:47

It's nobody else's job to believe in us but us. So that's a little hack that people can try is like, whatever it is that you wish they did or said or however they behaved, like wave the magic wand and pretend that we could make them behave that way. Now, what would you be thinking and feeling? Okay, that's all you truly seek. And that is available to you right now no matter what. right.

Kathryn Davis 35:11

I love that. So thanks, Jody. So fascinating. So tell me you were going to give an example of your was it your mother in law?

Jody Moore 35:19

Oh, no, my husband. So I was gonna just use a husband example. Okay, so my husband and I, we run our business together. And I have a lot of big ideas. And he has his feet firmly planted on the ground, which is probably good for us, but I always think you're slowing me down, you're holding me back. Like, I want to do this big thing. And initially, when I presented big ideas to him, he'll say, well, we can't because of this, or this part will be challenging, or this part will probably be hard. It's like, a bunch of no's. And I always get like, Oh, why can't he just like jump on board? You know? Yeah. So, again, I just did the exact same exercise I did with you. Right? Like, okay, if he did say, Oh, honey, that's a great idea. That's gonna be awesome. Yeah, we're totally going to do that. Right, which is what I would want him to say, then what would I be thinking and feeling? I'd be thinking, I have really good ideas, first of all, and second of all, we're going to do this amazing thing in our business, I would give myself permission to believe that it's possible and that we can do it. Okay. That's all I'm seeking. Great. I'm just going to do that. I'm not going to wait for him to do it for me, I'm going to do it for me. it's sort of similar to your example.

I think it's interesting that sometimes, especially as we've been talking, that sometimes we think loving someone is a gift we get to bestow on them that, you know, I am going to give you my love. And I'm going to love you, despite this, or you know, their behavior, but you think choosing love is for us, that it's not a gift we bestow on somebody else, but it's for us.

Yeah. And it just so happens that the other person will probably prefer it also over how we behave. Because we are experts at reading one another as human beings. You know, I was just driving home from some errands today and noticing how even just turning, you know, I was waiting to make a right hand turn for the car coming from my left. And then I realized, oh, he has a stop sign and I don't. But just in that short interaction, I realized, I could tell whether or not he's annoyed with me for not realizing I'm supposed to go, I have the right away. Or if he's just being kind and like, no, go ahead, it's you, you have the right away. Like we can just tell by little whether or not they do the wave, how quickly they take off in their car. We're literally experts that reading and I don't even know that man. I've never even met him, right. So imagine the people we live with who we know very well, we're experts on reading one another. So I can tell when somebody is thinking kind thoughts about me or not, especially a family member or close friend, even if they try to hide it. That's why it feels like love is something we do for other people. But again, only because of what I make that mean. So let's say I can tell that one of my kids, one of my teenagers, I can tell they're annoyed with me. I mean, it's obvious with teenagers, let's use my husband again. He might like just try really hard to be nice to me. But I can tell he's annoyed, I can tell by eye contact or lack thereof, body language, just maybe avoiding conversations or short conversations, right? So that's not the hurtful part though. The hurtful part is what I make it mean, if I make it mean, oh, I'm not a very good wife, I shouldn't have upset him. Or poor me, I have to deal with this grumpy husband now. Whatever thoughts I start thinking, are what caused me to feel whatever I'm feeling same when he's loving me, when he's really kind and open and available and connecting and listening. And all the things that I want him to be are like happy and funny and light hearted. That's still not creating my emotions, my thoughts. This is fun. I like being around him and feeling good about myself. That's what creates my feeling. It's just that we use other people's behavior to determine what we're going to believe is true about ourselves or our lives. And it's okay that we do that. Again, I'm not trying to turn anybody into a robot that's just smiling all the time. But just knowing that you're the one creating it all the time is so empowering. It really is life changing.

Kathryn Davis 39:25

I think that, to me, it's empowering. It doesn't feel overwhelming. I feel like I can do this. It's not dependent on anybody else. It's dependent on me and that's what I have control over.

Jody Moore 39:37

Yes, that's why it's the best news ever.

Kathryn Davis 39:40

It is the best. And I'm just curious, how has striving for you to live from a place of love, has it improved your relationships? Has it improved your life?

Jody Moore 39:54

It's definitely yes improved my personal relationships and my life. I will say, the most obvious way to me is how it's impacted my life in ways I never even predicted because to me just trying to better love everyone in the story, as I said earlier, in my own story in my own life has created a sense of abundance. So let me give you some examples. I heard someone say years ago, it was like one of my good friends, mothers, she said, if ever something gets stolen from me, I just decide that whoever took that must have needed it a lot more than I did. And that really stuck with me, I remember thinking, that's so cool. Like, that's an awesome way to think about it, because you already lost whatever thing got stolen. So that's a bummer. But why do you want to be mad about it and hold a grudge and wonder who it was and become more bitter, let's just allow the disappointment or the inconvenience or whatever. But then shift into love, that person must have needed that thing more than I did, to go out of their way to steal it. And so I sort of took that and tried to apply just the mindset behind it to my life. And we really tried to do this in our business, one of our values, and our businesses err on the side of generosity, and we have to be loving everyone to do that. So if a client or a customer, you know, has a complaint or a demand or a request, sometimes it's easy to get frustrated, like, hey, it says right there in the policy or, or what have you, right, as a business owner, it's easy to get frustrated, they say like, 20% of your clients will take up 80% of your time. And there just always are some challenging ones, we just decided we're gonna love and err on the side of generosity. So if somebody comes along and accuses us of not in this doesn't happen often, but it has before, we had a really high end event. And it was a multiple day, small group. This was years ago. And there was one woman there who was really lovely the whole time, she was there. And she participated. And she even bought like gifts for everybody in the end. And then she got home. And she wrote us this email saying she didn't think it was worth her money. And she was disappointed and all of this. And so instead of going to where my brain wants to go, which is all the judgment, right, all the thoughts, we just said, Okay, would you like your money back, and we just gave her it was many 1000s of dollars, we just gave it all back. And it felt so good to me to just be like, we're just gonna choose generosity and love. We do live events, sometimes we have a an event that our clients who have been with us for a certain amount of time get to come to for free every year. And it's gotten pretty big. In fact, we have like multiple 1000s of people that come to that event. And so last year, we were trying to figure out the check in process, how are we going to check in all these people in a timely manner with the staff that we have? And how's that going to work? And I was like, Wait, why are we checking people in? And my staff said, well, we need to make sure they meet the requirements, they have to have been in our program a certain amount of time. And I was like, But why? If somebody wanted to sneak in, who didn't meet the requirements, I want them to be there. I want them to get whatever they can out of that event. And so again, it requires that we go to love and it creates, it creates abundance just this morning, my I'm not trying to brag here, I'm just trying to illustrate like all of these things make my life easier. Because to not have to go back and forth with a client to not have to check in 2000 people because one or two people might sneak in, it just makes my life so much easier. It's so much less to worry about. We had a mission president in Brazil reach out to us just this morning, or I think it was his wife, actually my husband said his wife reached out and we have a missionary prep course that's part of our membership. And she said I'd love to get this to all the missionaries in our mission here. But you know, I know it's part of your program, how can we make that work? And my husband was like, are you okay, if I just give it to them? It's like, yeah, just give it to them. Like, we want to spread the message of what we're trying to do. And that the only reason I am mostly good at being generous and abundant like that is because I trained myself to love people. To know that like anybody who's going to take advantage of us, you know, I do have an attorney who's always like, no, what about this? Someone might try to take advantage of that. I'm like, It's fine. It's fine. There's plenty to go around. And so it really has made my life so much easier. And then that abundance has come back to us in ways that I never could have predicted. I honestly think that it's I think it's part of the reason that our business is so successful tha we do so well. We are able to provide so well for our family. I just took my kids my two younger kids yesterday to build a bear, which is like the most expensive teddy bear ever right?

Yeah, butyou get to put a heart in it and kiss that heart!

And all of those things cost another $8 or whatever. So, so we're going through Build A Bear my two younger kids, they're super excited. And you know, we get to the end, and they have these ridiculously expensive teddy bears. And there's a girl in the store, who was right behind us in the line, she was a teenager, she was really kind of awkward and shy, and she had like a kind of unique outfit on and she was buying a bear. And it's unusual to see a teenager doing that, I don't know, I kind of got the idea that either like, sometimes I think in that situation, we're trying to get something from our childhood we didn't get, or maybe it's like, a great memory from our childhood that we're trying to relive. But she seemed like she was struggling in some way. And we got up to the counter to pay and they rang up my kids all their ridiculous amounts of clothes and whatever stuff they had on their bears. And then I said to the girl behind me here, let me just pay for yours. And I just grabbed it and threw it on the counter and had the lady ring it up. And it took a while because there were some tech glitches. And so then by the time I turned around again, the girl had tears streaming down her face. And she said, Are you sure? And I said, Yeah. And I just gave her a hug. And then we ran out the store. And I said to my, my little kids, did you guys see that girl? And I said, Did you see what just happened? And I said, I don't know why I just wanted to pay for her bear. And did you see how grateful she was. And I said, you know, we're pretty blessed, we're really lucky that we can just go in to build a bear, and get a bear. And many, many people don't have that life. So Let's always be grateful. And let's always be generous. And let's always look for ways that we can help other people. And I'm trying to instill that in them. It's tough to do when they're as spoiled as my kids are. But that is what loving people has created, the abundance in my life to be able to do things like that.

Kathryn Davis 46:47

And it's so beautiful. What a powerful lesson, really, that if our ultimate goal is to become better and become like Jesus, then that can start with our thoughts that can start with our ability to create love, and to create love in our lives, for our families, for our neighbors, for our community. And that if we can truly believe that I think the power we can have is when we can create love.

Jody Moore 47:20

That's right. That's exactly right. It's the most amazing feeling. It's the only thing that matters in the end, is trying to get to that feeling more often.

Kathryn Davis 47:28

I love that Jody. I want to wrap up our conversation with something you write in the book because it speaks to the transformation that is possible when we try to live in love. You write, "We are more confident and empowered, when we stay in a loving space. We are more effective at anything we are trying to accomplish. We have more courage, more wisdom, more solutions, and more patience. Love breeds goodness in us, and then we pass that goodness along through our actions. Love is truly us at our best." And that story a story you shared, that's such a great example of living at our best, courage and compassion. And I think that's so beautiful.

Jody Moore 48:14

And none of us are good at doing it all the time, I want to say that I'm not always good at it. I have many instances where I fall short. But just thinking about it and striving to put the focus on who do I want to be how do I be a more loving person versus what's wrong with everyone else in the world really does just shift your brain to find opportunities for it.

Kathryn Davis 48:37

So one of our magnify guiding beliefs is that our small contributions can make a difference in our families and communities and the bigger world. So we like to end every episode with one small idea or action from the conversation that we can implement. So before we let you go, what is your small and simple suggestion for the week?

Jody Moore 48:59

I love this question. I would challenge everybody to just one time this week, do this game that I like to do in my head, which is when you're out in public, you've got to be somewhere where there are people around that you don't know. So that's probably going to be at the grocery store or something. Notice somebody who's struggling and write a compassionate story in your head. We don't know what the truth is. But for example, maybe you see somebody who's snapping at the clerk at the grocery store or something, right? Our natural tendency, or at least mine is to go to judgment. He shouldn't be talking to her that way. That's so rude. Or somebody, maybe somebody cuts you off on the freeway, right? And we immediately are like, Oh, how dare she try on telling a different story in your head. So I like to make up a story like, Oh, that guy. He was up all night taking care of his sick mom. She has cancer. She's about to die. He's the only child, there's no one else to help and his dad's not around either. And he's struggled in his relationship with her his whole life. He's trying to come to terms with it now. And he's really conflicted and exhausted, and worried about money and everything else. That's why he's snapping at that clerk. The story is not going to be true, most likely, whatever story you make up doesn't matter, make up a compassionate story about why that guy that just cut me off from the freeway, or that woman that just cut me off from the freeway, she just got a call from her daughter, who didn't make it on the tennis team, and she's crushed. And she's been waiting for this moment, her whole life, and she's trying to hurry and get to her daughter so that she can comfort her. Like just make up a story. That's not true. And notice how your heart softens. And notice how you become compassionate. Again, that doesn't mean allowing anyone to take advantage of you or harm you. But in small instances, we have to just become more forgiving of one another's shortcomings, because we certainly all have them.

Kathryn Davis 50:55

And even I like how you said that before, even if we believe that story, and that thought, our interaction is going to be different. Our response to that clerk or that person in front of us will be different. And we can create that love.

Jody Moore 51:10

And even though when I do this, even though I know my story is just made up. And it's not true. There is a true story about why that person is acting out that way. And it is a story of pain and hurt and wrongdoing and all of that. So it's not a stretch. And you're right, then that's when you say something like, whatever it looks like we're all different. But sometimes it might mean stepping in and going, sir, can I cover the extra $5? They're arguing about the coupon or what have you. Hey, sir, let me get that I want to get it for you, or whatever it is. You're right, we show up differently. We add more love to the world. And that is a very good thing.

Kathryn Davis 51:44

Jody, thank you so much for being here and helping us think about love a little differently. I just am walking away with so much empowerment that I can create a life filled with love. And that I get to create that with my thoughts. So thank you for spending some time with us.

Jody Moore 52:01

Anytime. Thanks for having me, Kathryn.

Kathryn Davis 52:04

And if you want to be better than happy, I highly recommend Jodi's book. Jody is a face you'll see around the Magnify community this season. She's going to help us get good at love. So join us over on Instagram @magnifycommunity. And of course, subscribe and listen to the Magnify podcast wherever you get your shows. Thanks for being here. And let's do it again next week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai