Have you ever wondered how small, intentional adjustments can reshape your relationships and life? Join me, Sylvia Worsham, as I reveal my transformative journey towards living purposefully in 2025 by choosing gratitude over negativity and embracing therapy to heal past wounds. Drawing inspiration from Shanti Felden’s “The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages,” I explore how believing the best about our partners can revolutionize our approach to marriage and parenting. In our latest episode, I share a touching story of a couple navigating grief, and how choosing love over resentment can strengthen bonds even through life’s toughest moments.
This episode is all about the power of choice and its profound impact on our relationships. Discover how gratitude journaling and self-reflection have helped me move past the narratives that once held me back. With heartfelt insights from my personal experiences and expert advice, we’ll explore how conscious actions today can lead to healthier, happier lives tomorrow. Whether you’re facing personal loss or simply seeking to improve your connections with loved ones, the lessons shared here promise to inspire and guide you towards a more fulfilling future.
Transcript:
Speaker 1:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt or worry and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, sylvia Worsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, sylvia Worsham.
Speaker 2:
Hey, lightbringers, it’s Sylvia Worsham. Welcome to Released Out. Reveal Purpose. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about those little changes that we can make, starting in 2025, that are going to have the greatest impact in our life, and I know that with my word being purposeful, I am being very, very conscious of the choices I am making, of the language I am using, and when I mess up right away, I take ownership for it, because it’s important for me to move forward purposefully in 2025. And that means taking ownership. That means doing gratitude, journaling and really thinking the best of the people around me and removing those negative thoughts that have a very easy way of coming to the forefront of my mind and, if I’m not careful, creating these big emotions that are simply not true. Right, for those that don’t know, I am currently in therapy.
Speaker 2:
I did that purposely for a lot of reasons. I made the choice to clear out those feelings that were no longer useful, no longer purposeful in my life. Right, feelings that occurred when I was a teenager, in high school, in the bullying years of my life. I’d never dealt with these feelings before. They were starting to penetrate my relationships in a very negative way with my parenting style with my younger daughter and in my marriage, and I told myself I am not going to do that. I am going to choose to do the work to move through these feelings and to get healthier, and so that’s what I’ve been doing the last couple of months. Aside from marital counseling, we’re also in individual counseling and it’s made a ton of difference in our relationship. And one of the things that I started to do differently just very recently is habit stack, my habit of praying first in the morning, having my coffee conversations with God and praying, and then reading a chapter in books that are making a difference in my marriage. And one of those books I’m holding it out here is by Shanti Felden, and it’s called the Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages, and I’ve got to tell you it has revolutionized the way I am approaching my marriage. A lot of it it happens to be choices. The choices we are making in our relationships are what are determining whether we’re happy or not. So one of the points that I found that was very insightful in this book is the point of believing believing the best of your partner, and the example they used in this book is really powerful.
Speaker 2:
So there was this this couple. Who’s the? The guy’s mom had just passed away. So he’s been through this grief journey, right, and it started putting a lot of stress in their marriage and lots of conflict, and there was going to be this day that they were going to go on a date after so many months of stress. And that day he also had the opportunity to go play golf with his buddies and he told her I will be back in time to go to dinner and a movie or something like that. And so she set up babysitting for their two kids.
Speaker 2:
And the time comes, the day comes, and he doesn’t make it in time and then he takes a nap and you know, something like this could really hurt a relationship, right? She chose to believe that he loved her, regardless of how he acted that day, because the way she told herself when she interrupted the negative thoughts of he doesn’t love me, me, he doesn’t care for me. Who does he think he is? You know all those things that are part of our inner loop of thinking right, and she made a different choice and that that example really hit home for me, because I lost my dad last year and it does put a lot of stress in your relationships, because you yourself are going through this major storm personally and you’re drained and you don’t always have all the energy in the world and you do want to have those days where you can have a little bit of joy and, like this wife in this scenario, you know she chose to believe and and told herself you know he needed that day to be with his friends he’s had such a hard time with his mom being up. We can go on another date but I know he needed it and and that belief and that choice that she made saved her marriage from really taking a horrible turn.
Speaker 2:
When you believe the best in people, you find it everywhere because it’s really the focus of your mind and you have control over that every single day. Because it’s really the focus of your mind and you have control over that every single day, you can choose differently. You can choose to tell yourself a different story, even if you’re going through therapy and you’re going through reframing. They call it reframing in coaching Reframe that story in your mind. You can have a traumatic event and you go through therapy and you work through it through EMDR and different scenarios, and then the coaching piece of it could be you reframe it in your mind, you start to notice all the beautiful things of that day instead of all the negative things that took hold of you for so long In marriages. It’s believing looking at the bigger picture of your marriage, looking at your spouse and saying what are good things about this person?
Speaker 2:
And that’s why, in 2025, aside from reading a chapter every morning after my prayer time is every night or every day during the day, whenever I have a gratitude journal practice I did it in 2021. I changed my world around. It was the best thing for me, and then I stopped doing it for whatever reason, and now I started to do it again in 2025. But this time I’ve actually changed it up a bit. Instead of saying what I got to do that day and kind of doing that piece, I am being grateful about the values and the things I appreciate and the people that I love. So, starting in January 1st, I started to write what I appreciated, what I was grateful for for my son, my daughter, my husband and myself.
Speaker 2:
Now, this one was a key thing for me because as women, as nurturers, we’re always thinking and loving on others, but we fail to love on ourselves a lot of these times. So it’s that self-love piece and at first it felt funny to write something I appreciate about myself. But I have found that, like I’m on day what day is it today? The 14th I’m on day 14th and it’s becoming less and less icky for me to write something about myself. And I find also that when I write these things about the people I love, even when I have conflict with them, also that when I write these things about the people I love, even when I have conflict with them, I can go back to what I appreciate about them and that could be a way for me to reframe my mind and my focus and my feelings around them and us.
Speaker 2:
So I want to encourage you guys to think of the small actions you are going to take in 2025 that are going to give you the biggest return on investment of your time and energy. For me, it’s that gratitude journaling piece, it’s reading a chapter in books that are making a difference in my relationship, in my marriage, in my marriage. Taking that time being very purposeful with that time and energy. Those are two things I’m going to be working on in 2025. And I challenge you to leave it on my YouTube channel, leave it in my social media channels in a review, if this video meant anything to you, if this podcast episode gave you some insight into what you can do. So just kind of sit down, reflect and think about where you’re putting your time and energy right now, and is it giving you the return on investment that you’re seeking? And if it’s not, it’s probably time to let it go and to replace it with a new habit.
Speaker 2:
I’m Sylvia Worsham. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode talking about those small actions that are going to have the biggest impact in 2025. Have a wonderful week, stay safe. Love you all. Bye now.
Speaker 1:
So that’s it for today’s episode of Release Doubt Reveal Purpose. Head on over to iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on iTunes will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a $25,000 private VIP day with Sylvia Worsham herself. Be sure to head on over to ReleasedOutRevealPurposePodcastcom and pick up a free copy of Sylvia’s gift and join us on the next episode.