Coaching with LDS values

Episode 87 Believing Fiercely Can Strengthen Your Adult Child Relationship Welcome to the podcast, loving On Purpose. I'm your host, Bonnie Lyman. If you're having trouble navigating through your relationships with your adult children, if you are struggling to connect with them or having specific challenges, you're in the right place. This is Bonnie Lyman and you are listening to the podcast, loving On Purpose, episode 87. Believing Fiercely can strengthen your adult child relationships. Hello everyone. What are you up to? S some of you, I know were seeing your grandchildren maybe on a little vacation for the last time before they went back to school or squeaking a visit in before, or maybe still have some kids at home that you're getting ready to go back to school, but. September's always seems like a new start, even more so than January. September seems by choice. January seems like, yep. That's what you do. You make New Year's resolutions that hopefully. You can keep, but it's kind of a time, it's a beautiful time of year here in Spokane and it's a time for reflection of the nice summer that we had, the beautiful place where I live, and the change of color and the miracles that God places on this earth every day. And. Am I going in my life where I want to make go be going? Am I doing what I wanna be doing? Am I the person I want to be? So hopefully this episode will help you with all that, and I hope that at the end you are hopeful. That you believe harder, that everything is gonna be okay, because that is a choice we have. And there's a 50% chance that it's all going to be okay. And yep, there's a 50% chance that may, maybe nothing will change in your relationship with your adult children, but let's at least give 50% of our time thinking and believing that it's all gonna work out. What if all you had to do. Was believe really hard. That means really, really believing. That means secretly believing that everything is going to work out in our relationships with our adult children, not in the next life, but in this life. I am going to try to convince you of the power of believing that can cause even the worst situations to improve. It Will. This episode will at least give you the how. Of how you can help to move this along so that there is more love in your family, and when there's more love in your family, that means there's more love in your community and when there's more love in your community, that means there's more love in the world and things get better and better. I can remember a time wanting my grade school age children to learn how to play the piano. Only problem was we didn't have the money to buy a piano, and I was fixated on figuring out how to get. Get one. I believed fiercely that somehow we could get one. I looked into renting one and I looked into buying a used one, and at that time I. You looked in the newspaper for things to sell and I was searching for ads to see if possibly anyone was maybe even just giving one away. And I talked to everyone I knew about the kind of used ones to buy and where I could look and asking them to let me know if they heard of anyone. Selling inexpensively or giving away their piano. And one of the people I talked to was my mother-in-law and several weeks later she called me and told me she had talked to my mother and had talked her into shipping the piano I had used as a child. Because it was just sitting in our house totally unused for years, and my mother-in-law even offered to pay the shipping. It was like a miracle. There is something almost magic that happens when you fiercely believe that something can happen. And every time something happens like that, I always give credit for every good thing to my Heavenly Father. I believe it was a combination of fierce believing effort on my part and God conspiring in my favor that we were able to get a piano. This magic is actually generated with the help of God. Of course, by first of all, you believing it can happen, and number two, when you believe it can happen, then you take action to make it happen. But sometimes we are stuck in taking action because we don't know what action to take, and that is where the power of believing comes into play. That keeps you from giving up. I am gonna read you a scripture here. In Mark 1124, mark says What things so ye desire believe that ye will receive them and you shall have them. And I think he's talking about righteous desires, but what, what could be a more righteous desire than to have a better relationship? I. Your adult children, I, being a Christian, would call this belief faith, but I'm gonna refer to it throughout the episode as believing. Now I wanna share a story with you. And it's from a book that is important to me. Many of you know that I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and we have another book, which is called The Book of Mormon, that we regard as scripture. And printed on the front of this book, it even says the book, A Mormon, another Testament of Jesus Christ And I. We study this book because we believe we can learn more about Jesus Christ and we also study the Bible equally as much, but we study so that we believe. That God has given these further teachings to help further understand why Jesus Christ has asked us to love everyone, to not judge anyone, to forgive everyone, to turn the other cheek, all those things that are really hard. So I'm gonna tell you about this story. So if you want, you can turn the podcast off now, but further on, I'm gonna give you five steps of how this processing of believing helps you, can help you have a better relationship with your adult children. But this story I'm gonna tell you comes from the Book of Mormon. And it's about a father named Lehigh who had four sons and two of his sons valued what he valued and didn't give him much flock. And then he had two sons that were quite contentious and stirred up things in the family. And in this story you'll see because of one son's belief, mighty things came to pass. The family of a man named Lehigh was inspired by God to leave their homeland of Jerusalem due to. The wickedness and destruction that prevailed there, and so they embarked on a long journey into the wilderness guided only by their belief and their trust in God. There were three other sons, but in this account, I'm only going to talk about one of them. Nephi Nephi's father, who is named Lehigh, received a vision from God commanding this family to build a ship to cross. The sea to cross the ocean to a better place. And two of Nephi's older brothers, they were filled with doubt and they murmured against their father and against the Lord's commandment to do this. One younger brother to Nephi believed as Nephi did. But the older brothers question if it was even possible to build a ship, because how are they gonna do it? And they made fun of Nephi that he believed his father, that it was commanded by God. And if it was commanded by God, there was gonna be a way. To be able to build this ship. And so de, despite his brother's doubts and complaints, Nephi firmly believed that with God's guidance, they could accomplish the seemingly impossible task. He not only believed, but he believed with. All the energy of his heart. He believed fiercely. He believed hard. He believed, there's just no doubt inside of him because Nephi believed, but because he didn't know how to build a ship. Because of his belief, he was motivated to seek guidance. He believed that God would guide him. He would provide a way. He didn't know how he, he would, how God would guide him, but he believed he would in response. The Lord blessed nephi with knowledge and understanding. And then he was filled with confidence and with his confidence, his brain went to work to help him solve this problem. By guiding him, I. Showing him where to find raw materials and tools necessary for ship building, including even, or to make tools, wood, and other necessary supplies to build this ship. As Nephi began constructing the ship, his brothers continued to doubt and criticize him, and they mocked his effort. They believe this task was impossible, however, It didn't phase Nephi because he believed fiercely and he pressed forward, unwavering in his belief that God would provide a way for them to succeed. There was no doubt in his mind that this was possible to build a ship with determination. Nephi diligently worked on the ship following the instructions he'd received from the Lord. Nephi's belief and perseverance inspired him and even his doubting brothers. They began to believe that they could indeed accomplish this great undertaking. So when the ship was completed, Nephi's family hopped on the ship on their journey across the ocean. And while doing this, they encountered storms and tempest, but Nephi guided by his unwavering belief, steered the shift safely through the tumultuous waters, and eventually they arrived at a choice land from this account. We learn that if we believe hard enough, That something can happen. We will have the motivation and determination to make it happen. We will overcome obstacles and we will find new opportunities to make it happen. Then the miracles happen. Things work out in ways we never dream possible. So I'm going to suggest to you five steps that by believing fiercely I. Something you want to happen can actually happen, especially regarding relationships with your adult children. Number one, believe anything is possible. When you do that. It requires you to have a positive outlook on the future. I go back to one of my favorite empowering thoughts. Things never stay the same. Having a positive outlook means you have the confidence that positive changes are possible. This helps you have a hopeful mindset for the future. So that leads us to step number two. Having a more hopeful mindset for the future opens your mind to openness and awareness, more openness, more awareness with your relationship with your adult child. When you believe the relationship can improve, you become more sensitive. And more receptive and more responsive to their perspectives. When you are more hopeful, your brain hopes you to see and notice opportunities for connection that have always been available, but before. You were just focused on everything that was going wrong and you did not have that hopeful mindset. That leads us to step three I. When you start noticing opportunities to better connect with your adult child, it gives you options to try different techniques to improve your relationship. For instance, any communication with them. We wanna be careful that we never mention anything that is judgemental, but we, we talk about things that are praiseworthy of them. Finding opportunities to connect causes you to have even more confidence and more determination to per persevere and be resilient and never give up loving your children and hoping that your relationship will become more amicable. That leads us to step number five, a four. Don't wanna skip a step here. When we believe our relationship will get better and we start becoming aware of more opportunities to strengthen these relationships and those opportunities are there right now. Or perhaps too focused on the negative. Remember that we can't see these great opportunities. It motivates us to keep taking the initiative to find more ways to strengthen the connection besides just praising them. You start focusing on first what kind of relationship they want. Perhaps more than what kind of relationship you want. Often conflict arises when we are fixed in our minds. As to what the relationship should be rather than what their desires are in this relationship. One client asked me, when do we get to do it our way? And that is such a good question to ask and ponder on. My response was, why does it ever have to be our way? Our happiness regarding a relationship isn't about the mechanics of it, of what it looks like. Rather it's about what we focus on. Do we feel love, whether it's done through the way we would like it or the way they choose to show love. So the last and fifth step is noticing the baby steps of progress that is happening. My daughter asked me a question about my coaching business the other day. My son asked us for advice. My daughter called me out of the blue just to chat. My son returned a phone call. I count all of these as wins, baby steps. No, to me, they were giant steps in my eyes. It's again, focusing on what's going right. And when things like that happen, I just soak it all up. There is power in believing because believing feels hopeful and confident. And when I feel hopeful and confident, I act with faith. And when I act with faith, miracles happen. I live an amazing life, not because I have no problems, but because I choose to believe not only is everything possible to have that I righteously desire, but also that with God's help. The two of us will figure it out of how to obtain what I desire. You can attain any, obtain any desired result in this life if you just believe it will happen. A belief is a thought. You choose to think over and over again. What miracle do you want to happen? Write it down every day that you believe it will happen. Then watch the magic happen if you believe hard for it to happen, you. We'll make the effort. You'll take the initiative, you'll have the right mindset, and it's going to happen. You can achieve whatever you want. If you choose to believe fiercely enough, choose to believe. You can love everyone, especially those adult children you may be struggling and connecting with. Commit to Fiercely believing that love is always an option, even for people that are difficult to love. In doing so, you'll live a life you never dream possible. Start believing right now. I'm giving you permission to do so, and then watch what happens in your life. It was wonderful talking to you. If you haven't listened to my podcast, you might well you're listening to it right now, but I invite you to share it with your friends. If you're not on my email list. I sent out some inspiring, just sometimes some fun things to help you live a well live life. Again. It's been my pleasure. To give this message to you and I look forward to talking to you next week. If you like this, be this episode and you felt it was of benefit to you, I ask you to share it with somebody that perhaps it could also benefit. But if you're still feeling kind of stuck in that you don't know how to apply what was talked about or. Where to start on, on changing your thoughts, on changing your perspective, on bettering your relationship. Get on a call with me and we can have a discussion and I can tell you how to apply it and where we start. And then you get to decide what you want to do about this relationship that maybe you're struggling with with your adult children. There's no reason to go on the rest of our lives struggling with our relationships with our adult children. Let's assume the best. Let's assume that we all love each other. And we're just trying to figure out how to maintain our own boundaries and respect another one's, but I can help you with everything. So just go to bonnie lyman.com and book a call. I can't wait to hear from you. .