Estimated Reading Time 6 Minutes
Hey You! Thanks for joining me today. I’m Emily Romrell and this is The Vibrant Life Podcast. I’m excited to share a few minutes of our day together and I’m truly excited to be Back In The Saddle Again, haha. The last podcast I published was clear back in September and I’m so sorry about that! Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve and I don’t have any good excuse as to why I let the podcast slip.
Life is an adventure for all of us, isn’t it? And like you, I sometimes don’t manage my time, health, and energy well. I struggle like everyone else to be consistent in my goals and to live up to my highest self. Sometimes I get discouraged in these struggles, but the good news is that none of us are alone, right? I know there are many of you who can relate. Also, the only true failure is to give up, right? So as long as we pick ourselves up and try again, we know we will win the fight eventually. That is such a relief to embrace and it gives me the hope and resilience to continue on. I hope you can find those same sources of strength in your personal journey to a vibrant life.
So for this belated and last podcast of the year, the title is Back In The Saddle Again. Another silly piece of good news is that I was able to use a fun image I got from an AI Time Machine app for the podcast artwork. It showed me what I might look like in various time periods. As a side note, I’ve got to say I haven’t always had the best physical image of myself in my brain, but seeing those images really boosted my confidence in myself. I was able to see a little bit from an outside perspective and it helped me see some of the beauty I have that I just never considered before. So if that is something you also struggle with, you might want to try that as a fun experiment. I may use more of these images in future podcasts, who knows?
I know that was a little tangent, haha. What can I say? Getting back on track, or back in the saddle, picking ourselves up, and trying again, it’s all about practice right? In a nutshell, I think that’s what life is all about. We are here to practice how to live up to our highest potential until we have the skills and experience to continue on into eternity. And whether that is staying focused in a podcast episode, or a conversation with a friend, or something bigger like overcoming addictions, or being consistent in life goals, practice makes perfect.
I played the clarinet in jr. high and high school and my teachers used to say perfect practice makes perfect. I understand the idea there, that you should fix mistakes as you go along so you don’t keep practicing the same mistake over and over again. Then you can practice the song correctly until you can play it flawlessly and easily. To an extent, I think that it’s a good philosophy. If you are able to correct things as you go, or even avoid mistakes by learning from the examples of others. Then you won’t have to work as hard to correct deeply ingrained behaviors. That is a very good thing.
But I think we can be way too hard on ourselves for our imperfections, especially when we make the same mistakes over and over again. Sometimes we deliberately choose to do the same bad behaviors over again because we’re unwilling to give up the perceived benefits of those actions. We’re unwilling to do the work to change. And other times we make mistakes over and over because we are missing crucial knowledge that would allow us to move forward and progress. Whatever the reasons are though, we can be brutal to ourselves, and that just isn’t cool my friends. This life is hard enough without piling even more hurt, hatred, or discouragement on top. And how are we supposed to find the courage to keep going and get back in the saddle if we are mired in those awful feelings?
As we know, I’m far from being my best or highest self. But I can honestly say that I’m proud of myself for the progress I’ve made, especially in the last three or four years. And the thing that has made the biggest difference for me was learning to love myself. Being compassionate and gentle with myself has allowed me to make progress that I didn’t believe possible. For example, there was a time when I never would have considered myself beautiful. And here is the beautiful truth my friends, when you get out of your own way, when you can learn to show kindness to yourself in the same way that you show kindness to others around you, when you can love yourself, then picking yourself up and trying again isn’t really a big deal. Instead of beating yourself up, you can say to yourself, “Oh well, I guess I need a little more practice in this thing.” And you get right back in the saddle.
I’m going to get a little spiritual now because I’m fundamentally a spiritual person. In fact, I think we all are. But one of the biggest things that helped me to love myself was learning to accept the love of my Savior, Jesus Christ. I was able to put his atonement to work in my life and I’m still learning how to do to that even more. If you’re a Christian like me, then you will know that Jesus Christ provided an atonement for us which allows us to overcome sin and bad choices in our lives. Not only that, but he also felt all of our pains, all of our heartache, and I believe all of our joys as well. So when we feel that no one on earth understands us or how we feel, we can find understanding and love in our older brother and our Redeemer, Jesus Christ.
Sometimes people think that repentance is a big scary thing. We must be horrible or at least have done something unforgivable if we need to repent or change. These are lies the adversary bombards us with to cover up the truth. And the truth is that we are all children of God. Each and every individual who has ever lived on this earth is loved beyond our level of understanding.
And because of this tremendous love, our Heavenly Father sent his son, our big brother Jesus, to earth to save us. He allowed each of us to come here to practice how to live. So that we could have bodies and feel the wind in our hair and the grass under our toes. So that we could learn how to love others and how to love ourselves. And so that we could also learn what it’s like to overcome hard things like grief, heartache, and pain. And when we feel so completely alone, we can trust that this is just another lie. Because our Savior, Jesus Christ knows exactly how we feel and he is in that moment with us.
When we embrace the power of this love and allow the atonement into our lives. We are more able to love ourselves. We can be more compassionate with ourselves and with others. And we don’t have to make trying again such a big deal.
Some of you are parents and others aren’t, but we all know and love babies, right? Do we pile on discouragement and hateful things on babies when they are learning how to be human? Of course not! Babies fall over and over again as they learn to walk. Sometimes they even get bumps and bruises along the way that I’m sure hurt. Babies make all kinds of mistakes as they learn how to do simple things like eat food with a fork and spoon, or learn their colors, or whatever the thing is. Do we get upset with them when they say the shirt you’re wearing is green instead of the blue that it actually is? of course, not!
We are all still babies in our Heavenly Father’s eyes. We are still practicing how to live up to our potential. It’s not only just fine if we mess up, it’s expected. That’s why we have an older brother named Jesus Christ who paved the way forward for us. He is our example in every way. And when we trust in him and trust that he really has our backs, that he covered us already so we can learn and grow and make mistakes without fear, then life becomes much more joyful and we can move forward in faith.
As we move into this new year, I hope you can be gentle and loving with yourself. I hope that you can find the courage to keep going, to get back in the saddle again, and keep progressing toward the vibrant life of your dreams. We are all just practicing and some things take a little more practice than others. I’ll join you along the way if you’ll let me. There are some really exciting things ahead and I’m psyched to share them with you. We can make it together my friends. Happy New Year! I love you! Live The Vibrant Life.
