107 | Marriage: Blossom in Midlife | The Catholic Midlife Podcast
SHARPen up your marriage! We have some high-level tips for you. S is Shared Vision or Story. H is healing in your marriage. A is attend to the marriage bond. R is the R-word, you know what it is: Relationship! Brush up on your R skills! Be a better friend. P is for personal growth. Gotta grow. When you grow, you will bring new energy to the relationship.
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106 | Marriage: How to ask for what you want | The Catholic Midlife Podcast
Husbands really, really want to please their wives. C’mon, I mean, St. Paul even warns us about it! Laura Doyle wants wives to believe it and lean into it by telling their husbands what would please them. The trick is to do so without being demanding or unpleasant. Listen in for this how-to marriage tip!
Referenced Materials
Laura Doyle, The Empowered Wife, Updated and Expanded Edition: Six Surprising Secrets for Attracting Your Husband's Time, Attention, and Affection 2023, BenBella Books.
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105 | Marriage: See the bid? Now turn towards | The Catholic Midlife Podcast
Much of what is taught about having a great marriage is not very helpful, according to marriage guru John Gottman. He says one of the biggest keys is to learn how to cultivate a deep friendship. He writes, “I rarely see small moments of connection in the tapes of couples who later divorce or report their marriage has permanently soured”. Cultivate a connection with the habit of “turning toward” your spouse. There are big moments, like being asked to do something that takes a lot of time; you are not likely to miss those! Be in the habit of also paying attention to the many small moments where you can turn toward your spouse. When they talk to you, give them your full attention. When they point something out, check it out. Look for these “bids” for attention, affection, humor, or support.
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104 | Marriage: Maps and Five Levels of Sharing | The Catholic Midlife Podcast
Our “maps” of who we “know” our husband or wife can get outdated. We have assumptions about them that are not true anymore. We could ask better questions: curious, open-ended questions that are gentle and inquisitive. We give you some good ideas about how to ask those questions. We also discuss the five levels of sharing. It’s surprising how seldom we reach the deepest levels, even after many years of marriage. It’s a lot easier to stay at the medium levels, like making your preferences known, because going deeper can be more risky. We can’t expect our husband or wife to keep up to date on “who I am now” if we don’t share at the deepest levels. Revealing ourselves is part of discovering the depths of each other.
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103 | Five Reasons Goals are Not Accomplished | The Catholic Midlife Podcast
If you are struggling with your goals, we offer you five common reasons that goals are not accomplished. One of them is that our goal does not require taking measurable actions, so we don’t know if we are executing our plan. For example, if you have a goal to improve a certain relationship, that could be a wonderful intention but it does not require any measurable actions, so it’s not a goal. But if you thought about that relationship and decided that you wanted to have better conversations, then you are getting closer. What action could you take for better conversations? If you read a relationship book, you might realize that there are skills to being a good listener. You could list those skills and track how consistently you practice them, and how many times you missed opportunities to do so. You might use a checklist, a journal, or capture notes to your daily planner. Now you’re cooking. Join us as we discuss other common reasons you might not be achieving your goals!
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Episode 102 | Four requirements for change | The Catholic Midlife Podcast
We often lack what’s needed to actually make changes. In other words, we often have a goal and do not realize we are not ready to chase that goal. So we are not successful in creating the change. I think all of us have experienced that!! It’s not as easy as “just deciding” to do “it.” Karen shares the four requirements for change. The first one is to GET RID of the baggage that’s associated with the change. Join us as she explains what that means and shares the other three requirements for change.
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101 | Find your Goals: Do what you are meant to do! | The Catholic Midlife Podcast
Today’s episode is an EXERCISE to create great goals for yourself. Jump in and try it! As we practice the virtue of living in the moment (episode 101) we might wonder: Am I doing what I’m meant to do at this time? Having great GOALS helps with this question. What if you had great, inspiring goals? A strong direction? Often our goals are a glorified to-do list that provides little true direction. “Gotta do more better” is not inspiring and it’s not a great strategy for actually doing better. Join for a few minutes to get some new ideas for goals in your life! Because life is growth and growth is change and you have goals; the question is are they conscious and in focus or just sorta meh goals?
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100 | Your invaluable skill of Living in the Present Moment
Living in the present moment is a habit to help us reach for interior peace and integrate our lives. God is never early, He’s never late, He’s always right on time. God’s grace is found in the present moment. If you are in the present, as Jaques Philippe says, you “entrust the past to the mercy of God and trust the future to His providence, doing just what is required of you today,“ and that helps you receive grace, because “sterile regrets, rumination on the past, and worries about the future cut us off from divine grace.“ Peace and grace that’s what we need. Listen in as we discuss why this skill is invaluable and give some pointers on how to better practice this habit.
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99 | Putting trust in time | The Catholic Midlife Podcast
Listen to catch some new thoughts about the way you think about time! The modern mind thinks of time as a commodity. As a tool or a resource. There’s a limited amount of it. We have a lot of sayings that reflect this viewpoint, such as “time is money.” Or “living on borrowed time,” or “it’s about time.” But time is more than another object we use. Time was created by God as a way for us to participate in eternity. We often think of time as the enemy, as something we compete with, or as an unstoppable force. We could, however, learn new perspectives that lead us to trust in time, to value it as our participation in eternity, and to connect the past and the future together in the present moment by way of narrative.
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98 | Merry Christmas and the New Creation | The Catholic Midlife Podcast
Christ is born to be King! He IS King, now. Merry Christmas! That makes us agents of the New Creation because Christ has already started the New Creation. Paul talks about this a lot. God wants to dwell with man and will bring heaven down to earth and they will exist together in the new creation; think of the New Jerusalem descending in Revelations. Christ, he says, is the “first fruits” of the new creation. He’s the first to be resurrected, to show us the way. He’s sent the spirit to us, and we, too have the “first fruits” of the new creation.
Creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for… creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.
-Romans 8:19-24
“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy.
-Isaiah 65:17-18
All of creation is groaning, awaiting its deliverance! We suffer with Christ and with the world, which is God’s kingdom, just as Christ suffers with us and with all creation. We are Christ’s children and heirs; we enter into his suffering and are glorified with him.
You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
-Romans 8:15-17
We have a vocation of being the people of God. It has personal and communal consequences. As Paul says, Jesus is king of the whole world. In heaven and earth he reigns. And when we're in Christ, we're fellow heirs to the kingdom. We're celebrating the new creation. We're celebrating that we are part of the new creation. We are agents of the new creation, and we anticipate the new creation right now in the present age as we wait and hope for the new heavens and the new earth.
Always God hears the “groaning.” God is victorious. God acts, and we are anchored in the hope and glory that is there for us, and nothing can separate us from the love of God. No principalities, powers, rulers of the world - whatever it is, nothing can separate us.
Merry Christmas season!
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97 | You are a Citizen of Heaven Now in the New Creation
You are a citizen of Heaven - did you know that? Paul wrote that in Philippians 3. What does that mean about my situation? Paul’s listeners in Philippi would have instantly connected that idea to being a citizen of Rome because having Roman citizenship was so important. Philippi was a colony. Roman citizens there were agents and emissaries of Roman culture, law, language, customs, and power. Roman citizens living in Philippi weren't interested in leaving Philippi and going to Rome if things got dicey. They could call on the emperor to send in back-up.
John’s gospel, which is our focus this season, explains that Jesus has already started his kingdom on Earth. You are a citizen of that kingdom. That makes you an agent and emissary of the Kingdom of Heaven’s culture, law, language, customs, power, and all of it. Citizens living on planet Earth aren’t interested in leaving Earth just so they can go to Heaven. God will bring Heaven down to Earth in the end times. That’s a process that’s already started. Jesus inaugurated it. He rose again as the first member of that blended new creation of Heaven and Earth. We will follow him.
Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
- Philippians 3:20
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95 | Advent; Jesus as temple, a powerful lens for Christmas meaning | The Catholic Midlife Podcast
There’s a theme that you may not be aware of that runs through the entirety of scripture from the distantly ancient text of Genesis to the merely ancient text of Revelation. You’ve heard of this idea but may not be aware of how it is an organizing principle for understanding Scripture. It’s a theme explicitly present in the ancient books of Genesis and Exodus and throughout the New Testament - it’s one that the writers were very intentional about but one that our modern minds simply bloop over because we don’t have the right lens, or I could say cultural framework.
We were amazed when this theme popped up in Genesis, it’s the theme of TEMPLE in God’s creation and that’s what we discussed last week in episode 94. A temple is a place where God dwells with man: it’s a place where the heaven and earth that He created overlap. Throughout all of salvation history, as shown in Scripture, God keeps coming to Earth to dwell with man in Creation. In the Garden, in the desert at the tent of meeting, and in the Tabernacle.
As we approach Christmas we think about what it means for the temple to be in the person of Jesus. What does that mean to see him as the new temple?
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94 | It’s Advent, So why are we talking about the creation story in the book of Genesis?
The creation account in Genesis is not understood by modern people. It’s very unlikely that you have ever heard a correct account of what it means. As modern people, we have pretty much missed every important point in it. We have read all of our modern preconceptions into it and created pointless controversies about it. Listen to the podcast if you want to know what the creation story in Genesis is actually all about.
By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day, he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
-Genesis 2:2-3
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93 | Reframe in life to get a superior angle | The Catholic Midlife Podcast
Reframing is the art of looking at a situation, thought, or belief and finding a different perspective that is also TRUE and MORE HELPFUL. We often lock in on the first interpretation of a situation that comes to us. But we can usually step back and see there are OTHER things that are also true about a situation and these other things can give us a different approach. A new approach that will focus on our agency or shifting our thoughts and emotions to a condition where we can more easily respond. For example, we might fail at a test or on a project and think “I’m terrible” or “I am no good at this subject or task”. With reframing you might end up saying to yourself “I can learn to study more effectively,” or “I had a difficult lesson and look forward to learning from it and avoiding similar fiascoes in the future.” Contrast a reframe with empty positive talk, avoidance, or just shrugging it off, or just sucking it up.
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92 | Say No to the habit of speaking an “IS” identity | The Catholic Midlife Podcast
We have an excellent and very doable language challenge for you this week! We discuss E-Prime, which is a way of using English without any forms of the verb “to be”. That means without any words like these: is, be, been, were, is, am, was, will be, am, are. We think there is one situation where avoiding the “is” and “am” serves you particularly well. We ask you to listen to that situation and reframe your is and am. E-Prime is an intriguing idea and certainly has its advocates. Check it out!
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Episode 91 - Language: Speak Your Week Positively
Your unconscious mind is always listening to what you have to say and will work to make things turn out the way you say. Do you like achievement? Accomplishing things? Improving? Then using positivity in your language is a big help for you! LISTEN to yourself this week. You might be surprised by what you hear. We discuss the possibilities and some limitations of being positive. Get your rational optimist glasses on and prime your brain with sweet, clean, positive speech and emotion for the win! The people around you will say THANK YOU!
Resources:
Robert B.Cialdini, Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade
Curtis one-line summary: Lots of fun research. Mostly about the psychology of sales and persuasion.
Sean Achor, The Happiness Advantage
Curtis one line summary: Positivity is a winner for achievement. The advantages of rational optimism, positive speech, and positive emotion. Mostly directed to business.
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90 | I’m Baaaack!! Boomerang kids. Now what? | The Catholic Midlife Podcast
“Hey, Mom, I’m moving back home!” What do we need to think about if and when that conversation starts? Our first thoughts may be to ask ourselves: How can I help? A better question might be: Is this course of action helping my young adult child move to independence? Create an agreement with your young adult before they move in. Agree WHEN they are leaving and what they need to happen for them to leave. Everybody will have some boundaries: start to figure those out. Think in terms of collaborating and getting buy-in, or at least a mutual understanding.
Resources:
Doing Life with Your Young Adult Children, Jim Burns
How To Really Love Your Adult Child, Jim Chapman and Ross Campbell, MD
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89 | Your Young Adult: The Critical Art of Validating | The Catholic Midlife Podcast
How can you be HEARD? How can you HELP when they don’t want to hear you? If you want her to hear you, then you must hear her first. Do you want him to see your perspective? You must see his perspective first. Being SEEN and HEARD is important to any relationship that has depth and vitality. When you are speaking with your young adults, and pretty much anyone, DO THIS: be on the lookout for how you validate them. When they know YOU understand their perspective, and it’s a perspective that makes sense, then they will be more open to seeing your perspective. When she’s telling you what she’s thinking, feeling, and experiencing… then it’s your turn to explain to HER why it’s understandable that she’s thinking, feeling, and experiencing that. Validation is about showing that, “Hey, considering your experiences, your perspective on life, what you've been through, and your values, it makes sense that you are thinking/feeling that way.”
Listen to the podcast to understand what the skill of “validation” is all about. Look for an opportunity to practice this skill in every conversation. The results will surprise you!
Send a text to us at The Catholic Midlife podcast with your thoughts as you listen: 612-208-9150.
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Episode 87 - Relating to Your Young Adult: Do’s and Don’ts
We discuss some of the biggest DO’s and DON’Ts for managing our relationships with our young adults. What’s the best way to give advice? Our young adults generally don’t want to hear it. They’ve had plenty of it from us in the past. We also discuss how our young adults really hate receiving or perceiving, judgment from their parents. We can carry a lot of judgment of them without realizing it. Or we make the judgment and think, “It’s “no big deal.” Here’s some news: It is a HUGE deal. The perception that your adult child is the target of critical judgment is probably the number one reason parents get cut off or cut out of their children’s lives. Learn how to handle this area of your relationship with a great deal of care and intentionality.
What’s a story you have about successes or challenges in relating to your young adult children? We would love to hear from you!
Send a text to us at The Catholic Midlife podcast with your thoughts as you listen: 612-208-9150.
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86 | Your Young Adult: The Big Goal to Never Lose Sight Of | The Catholic Midlife Podcast
There’s a huge goal to never lose sight of when relating to your young adult! Our expectations of them can conflict with that goal. It’s human nature to focus on what’s NOT happening and to be impatient for what we think SHOULD be happening. We have expectations rooted in our own personal history. Let’s bear in mind that the culture is not what it used to be. Life’s path is less settled and predictable in terms of transitioning into independent adult roles. There’s also lots of brain maturation still happening into the late twenties. As parents, we are transitioning from a role of control (as if we ever really had that!) to a relationship of mutual respect and influence. It’s up to us to model what mutual respect looks like. Our control of our children’s outcomes, meaning the “results” they get, was always limited. Most parents need to consciously move away from taking responsibility for the outcomes their children have. And to release control to them for their experiences of being happy in their circumstances.
Send a text to us at The Catholic Midlife podcast with your thoughts as you listen: 612-208-9150.
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85 | Self Compassion Yes How Why Now | The Catholic Midlife Podcast
Join us as we take a quick break to remember the helpfulness of self-compassion practice, why it’s important that you use this skill now, what it is, and how much we want it as part of our spiritual life. Self-compassion is a skill and a habit. What does that remind you of?? A virtue! Yes, a habitual and firm disposition to do the good. In this instance, to do good to YOU so you can bring God’s good to those around you with serenity, courage, and grace. Need patience? Then you need self-compassion. Need to persevere with hope? Start with self-compassion so you can tap your spiritual gifts as fully as possible.
In this Episode
Check out Karen’s self-compassion live webinar: https://shorturl.at/myB24
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Episode 84 - Interview: Unvarnished Faith with Bill Yoh
Bill Yoh shares how a love of neighbor lit up his life with the fire of the Holy Spirit and inspired him to live a simple, strong, unvarnished faith in a straightforward and consistent way. We were delighted to speak with him as he shared his experiences, from the dumpsters of Nicaragua to the boardroom of one of the largest privately held US companies. He shares lessons taught to him by the poor, by the generous people who serve them and picks out a handful of virtues that will help each of us follow the inspirations of the holy spirit.
In this Episode
Go to Bill Yoh’s website to buy the book, get the newsletter, and learn more: https://unvarnishedfaith.com/
Book: Unvarnished Faith: Learning to Love with a Servant's Heart, by Bill Yoh.
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Episode 83 - Slay the Giant Killer Duty Robot II
How do you know if you have a Giant Killer Duty Robot looking over your shoulder? Dominican Fr. Servais Pinckaers continues to help us see the robot AND tells us what moral theory used to look like before that robot swept down like a terminator from Skynet and displaced the teachings of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and the church fathers. It turns out that, if you want to get your ideas about what you are supposed to do (aka morals) you have to START WITH THE RIGHT QUESTION! Yep. It’s true in your life. And it’s true in our life as a community of the faithful. We discuss how it is (moral obligation theory), how it was (the question of happiness), and how to spot that robot in your mirror!
In this Episode
The Sources of Christian Ethics, Servais Pinckaers https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0823208282/
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Episode 82 - Slay the Giant Killer Duty Robot I
Move over, Goliath, we got a Giant Killer Duty Robot to slay here. Good thing we are getting lots of help from Dominican Fr. Servais Pinckaers, who wrote a lot of the encyclical Veritatis Splendor and the Catechism of the Catholic Church with John Paul II. Servais calls the robot “Moral Obligation Theory.” He traces its roots back to the 15th and 16th centuries. It’s a theory that has become a “lens” that most of us modern Christians use most of the time when we think about morals - it’s so powerful we don’t even know we are looking through it! As with most thought distortions, it takes something that’s good and takes it out of context, elevating it to have a priority that’s misplaced in most circumstances. Moral obligation theory is a giant killer robot because it’s a joy killer. Servais is very clear: this theory stinks and does not help us. If dealing with God makes you feel miserable, or you feel like your entire life is grinding out one duty after another, you might be laboring under this theory of moral obligation.
In this Episode
The Sources of Christian Ethics, Servais Pinckaers https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0823208282/
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Episode 80 - Me, My, and Your Perfectionism
Amanda is a young lady described in a recently published book reviewed in the August 23, 20023 Wall Street Journal. She’s had perfectionism drilled into her, Barbie-style, and she’s internalized it. “Self-directed” perfectionism is the perfectionism that’s directed at yourself; it’s what we normally think of as perfectionism. Amanda has hit all her milestones through her middle-class upbringing: the grades, the extracurriculars, and the great school. And now she has a great job. She’s empty. Why? Answering that question is, in many ways, the point of this podcast. We all know, intellectually, that chasing success can be a trap. Success, however, comes in many forms, including not only professional work but also marriage, family, children, roles in our local church, health, body image, and more. For instance, have you been complaining about your lack of progression in your “spiritual” life for pretty much all of your life? As midlifers, we are likely to need to give up on some of our hoped-for “successes'' if we want to flourish, if for no other reason than the fact that our ambitious and unrealistic 20-year-old selves very likely set a bar so high that we can’t reach it in every area of our life. Perfectionism is one of the big thought traps we can so easily fall into. Most perfectionists refuse to see it for the performance-killer and joy-stealer that it is. As we say in Minnesota: “Go figure.”
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