Feeling On Purpose With Judge Lynn Toler
Welcome to Feeling On Purpose with Judge Lynn Toler, where we dive deep into the emotional landscape that shapes our lives, relationships, and personal growth. Judge Lynn, a Harvard graduate and the longest-presiding judge on TVs Divorce Court, brings her wisdom, experience, and candid insight to help you understand and manage your emotions with intention and clarity.
Each episode unpacks essential life topics, from understanding your own emotional triggers to navigating relationships, tackling anxiety, and pursuing joy. With segments like "Word of the Day," "Today’s Tolerism," and "You Asked, I’m Answering," Judge Lynn offers practical advice and heartfelt guidance, empowering you to master your emotions and live a life of purpose.
Join Judge Lynn as she explores how cultural, familial, and societal influences shape our feelings and decisions, and learn how to take control of your emotional narrative. Whether you're dealing with fear, seeking happiness, or striving to improve your communication skills, Feeling On Purpose is your go-to podcast for emotional wisdom and self-discovery.
Tune in to start your journey towards a more intentional and fulfilling life, where your emotions work for you, not against you.
Feeling On Purpose With Judge Lynn Toler
Embracing Self-Reflection: Judge Lynn Toler on Boundaries, Emotional Growth, and Mental Resilience
Imagine standing in front of a mirror, ready to face the parts of yourself you've been avoiding. In this transformative episode, Judge Lynn Toler, known for her wisdom on Divorce Court and Marriage Boot Camp, shares her personal journey of emotional growth and self-reflection. Learn how Lynn's powerful "bathroom mirror mandate" can guide you in identifying and overcoming emotional challenges, turning weaknesses into strengths. Her insights inspire you to let go of the limiting “that’s just how I am” mindset, embracing a path of intentional self-improvement and mental health growth.
Curious about how setting boundaries can improve your relationships and mental well-being? Lynn Toler dives deep into her own life experiences, illustrating the power of asserting yourself early to avoid unnecessary conflict. Through touching stories, including a memorable moment at a department store, she emphasizes the importance of emotional resilience, kindness, and self-help strategies. Lynn's empowering messages inspire you to stay true to yourself, face challenges head-on, and navigate life with confidence. Tune in for actionable advice and motivation to help you harness your inner strength and create a more fulfilling, mentally healthy life.
You know her as the longest presiding judge on divorce court, for more than 14 years. Marriage boot camp and many other programs. A graduate of Harvard, judge Lynn Toler is the author of my Mother's Rules Making Marriage Work and Dear Sonali Letters to the Daughter I Never had, all of which are dedicated to the proper emotion, what it is and how to find it.
Speaker 2:Remember under your skin is a sovereign country. Don't go passing out passports all willy-nilly to people who don't belong there. Let me help you protect your emotional borders so we can all start feeling on purpose. Hi, how you doing.
Speaker 2:This is Judge Lynn Toler and I want to welcome you to another edition of my podcast, feeling on Purpose, where I acknowledge that you have the right to feel the way you do and you have the right to the feelings that you have. But the question becomes are the feelings that you have doing right by you? See what I'm saying? I'm not trying to tell you how to feel right by you. See what I'm saying? I'm not trying to tell you how to feel. I'm trying to share with you some processes and procedures so you can decide how you want to feel and implement that at any time.
Speaker 2:It is very difficult to do, especially in the world as it exists today, but I'm a woman who had to do it all her life. I'm having to do it again and part of that, part of being in charge of your emotion, part of feeling purposeful, is having a good, solid understanding of what is wrong with you. Do you know what's wrong with you? I don't know what's wrong with you, but I think you should. What's wrong with you is where people can reach you and get at you and do things to you. So you got to secure where you're weak. And you can't secure where you're weak if you're not willing to look at it. I mean I'm talking get in. It's like I call it the bathroom mirror mandate. You need to. I mean, turn all the lights on, get a spotlight if you got one makeup light this is all metaphorical Look in that mirror and say girl, dude, fella, whatever person, fido, how you doing? Fido, my dogs are driving me crazy. What's up with you? Where are you weak? What aren't you good at? Now? It's not an easy thing to do. You know our brains accept criticism like it's an injury. You know it's like oh my God, I'm being bothered here, I'm being battered. So, and everybody wants to put their best foot forward and I always say focus on that. One dragon behind, because that's the sucker, will trip you up should you have to break out into a run. So I'm going to ask you again get in the mirror, turn on the lights, review every bad thing you've done, every insufficient outcome, every anything else, and ask yourself what's wrong with me. Now it's not an easy thing to do, so I'll go first.
Speaker 2:I've written it down and published it in a book. Actually, I did it twice. That book I published in 2020. Oh my gosh 2007. And this one I published in 2019. I have what's wrong with me in each book. Now, number one I write these things down so they can take solid form. I don't do well with amorphousness, you know, when thoughts are just kind of hanging around your head and you don't know where they are. I like to put things in solid form, in solid form. So if I put my thoughts, my feelings into words and then I take those words and I throw them on some paper, I have access to them in a different way.
Speaker 2:I feel like they're more tangible Can you hear those dogs down there with all that nonsense More tangible. So that's why I do that kind of thing. Now I'm not going to read the whole thing because the list is long, but I'm going to give you an idea of how it's done. This is 2007,. My week list.
Speaker 2:I talk too much, I talk too fast, and if I'm talking to someone who talks too slowly, I'll finish his sentences for him. That was my poor, poor, poor husband. He never got to finish the sentence for 20 years. I tend to look for the worst in everything and the best in everybody. I bore quickly and spook even faster.
Speaker 2:I've been known to get distracted by my own thoughts. I engage in worry as an art form, and it goes on and on and on. But the thing is, those things exist within me, whether I acknowledge them or not. So if I acknowledge them without getting upset about it, you know what I mean. Being motivated is the art of being dissatisfied without being discouraged.
Speaker 2:There's things about me I can't change. Ain't nothing gonna happen? I'm never gonna be any taller than 5'1". I might get short. I used to be 5'1 and a quarter, but you know, you get old and you compress, so I'm 5'1". I can't do anything about that, but I can do something about all the things that I've written down, because I acknowledge that they're hurting me more than anybody else. I want to be in charge of my day. I want to be in charge of how I feel.
Speaker 2:Now the thing is, there's absolutely no point whatever Dogs are killing me no point whatever to know what's wrong with you if you're simply not going to do nothing about it. It used to drive me crazy. On divorce court, people would say that's just how I am and that's just how I am. That is the title page and the ending sentence of a book that ain't got nothing in it. That just ain't how you are. I mean, you are that way, but you can decide to be something else altogether.
Speaker 2:Now, listen, I got that list and I've worked on that list for years, and in 2019, when I wrote another book look at that, this is how my life is right. I am a mess. I wrote and I wrote another book. Look at that, this is how my life is right. I am a mess and I wrote my weaknesses in there, but I thought I had the page number, but now I can't remember. If I can find it, I will read it. But apparently that's another thing that's wrong with me. I very rarely can keep up with things. I'm a messy person. But anyway, I'd read it too if I can find it. But I can't find it. But anyhow, the point is the list in 2019, though it had some similarities to the list in 2007, it's different because I work on them.
Speaker 2:I work on each and every issue I have. You know took a while, but finally my husband got to say something in the marriage when I started to figure out the less I say, the more years. I finally figured that out and so I was fixing me. Get my hands out of my head. I was fixing me. I learned to do a lot of those.
Speaker 2:Now some of the things haven't changed because some things are very deeply ingrained in your personhood. For example, anxiety is very deeply ingrained in my personhood. I'm anxious, I'm depressed. Sometimes. Every once in a while I mean, I see my psychiatrist once just to make sure if something's jumping off in there. I want to be the first to know. I want to get in there and tinker with it and fix it and mess it up.
Speaker 2:And the thing is most people are afraid of that. You know, going to a psychiatrist means you're mentally ill. Going to a psychiatrist it's shameful, it's indignant. But let me tell you something my mental health, if it is not strong and it gets wrong, it's going to hurt me more than it hurts anybody else. I check my physical health once a year, you know. And then you got to go. You got to get a mammogram. If you're a little lady, you got to get a mammogram where they just smush you. But anyway, I'm sorry, you probably didn't want to hear about all that, but I don't know. There's a lot of indignities that go around. I'm sorry, you probably didn't want to hear about all that, but I don't know. There's a lot of indignities that go around. That's got nothing to do with nothing.
Speaker 2:What I'm talking about is your ability to fix what's wrong with you, because what's wrong with you will hurt you more than will hurt anybody else. And oftentimes, when we ask ourselves what's wrong, we say things like I don't have enough money, I haven't done this, I haven't done that, I haven't done the other thing. And I'm not necessarily talking about actions. I'm talking about patterns and procedures, emotions and feelings that get you into circumstances that you don't want to be in. One of the things that I get you into circumstances that you don't know want to be in. One of the things that I get you into circumstances that you don't know want to be in. So I couldn't find my 2019. A list of week or list of issues or things that are wrong with me. But I'm going to tell you it's obsolete because I had a major life event. Everybody knows what it is my husband died and now I have to update that list completely. I'm going to find it and I'm going to go through what's in there, and then I got to figure out what parts of the week that I used to have when he was around are going to have an opportunity to bubble up again because he isn't here.
Speaker 2:For instance, I've gotten really weird about my car. I'm really scared about, you know, the tires and this and that, and I tend to worry a great deal tires and this and that and I tend to worry a great deal. And in 30 years, I never worried about a functioning car because, like once a month, I'd get in my car and my seat would be all the way back. My husband was 6'1" my dogs that means he's been in it. He's checked the oil gauge, he's checked the thing and he's filled it up with gas. He's done all kinds of things that I don't have to worry about.
Speaker 2:Yesterday I was not yesterday a couple of days ago I was driving and the low tire light came on and I cried at the intersection. I've never seen a light. Not that I've never seen a light come on in the car, but the fact that the light didn't come on in the car reminded me why the light wasn't on in the car. But the fact that the light didn't come on in the car reminded me why the light wasn't on in the car. So now I have to get a whole new relationship emotional relationship with my automotive situation. Yeah, I know, the dog is back there. I don't know what to do about it. I'm here, I'm alone. We just going to have to work through it. For those of you who are listening to me, my eight month old somebody is just crawling all in my face. So I have to rework what I work on, because now what I need to work on has been implicated by a huge life change and I have to start all over again.
Speaker 2:The one thing I want to be a takeaway from this is you just can't leave it to how you feel to happen stance, because too much is happening out there and you don't want your stance to be in jail. I always tell this to people feelings are fleeting but felonies are forever, and the people that I used to see in municipal court that were going to jail had a bad moment that led to one second and the next thing you know it was the worst thing in the world. So when you're looking for what's wrong with you, you got to be very, very careful not to start listing other people's circumstances and problems. We have all got some kind of jacked up mess in our history. I mean stuff happens to us all. I mean the family members and the things I used to learn on Marriage Boot Camp about. I knew there was a lot of domestic violence and I knew there was a lot of childhood issues and stuff that weren't cool. But to talk to people and know so many people who had had so much trauma in their lives that are just out there doing well and fine and you just don't know what fights they were fighting it allowed me to see me in a different life is because I always had this huge imposter syndrome going around doing this, that and the other thing, especially given my line of work, and I realized everybody a little scared of something, everybody got a little weird working in the back, everybody got some issues that they're trying to deal with.
Speaker 2:The question is, what are you going to do? Are you going to close your eyes so you don't feel bad about it? Are you going to pretend you ain't got them? Or are you going to do something about them? And that doesn't mean you're not being true to yourself, because you can be true to yourself without being glued to yourself. I am me. I am Lynn Toler, as weird as that is and as weird as I have been over the years. I'm better, but I'm still that. I haven't changed who I am to accommodate society. I have changed who I am to accommodate my better self, because my lesser self will get a hold on me, snatch me by my neck and run me around if I don't pay attention to it.
Speaker 2:Let me give you an example. There was a time in my life I was dealing with my little patch of land theory, and my little patch of land theory was as follows oh, I had thought it out and written it down, you see, because I tell you I don't like amorphousness, I like things to be in solid form. So my little patch of land theory is this I ain't gonna get mad at nobody about nothing. Y'all do whatever you want, but here are my boundaries, and my boundaries are very, very small. I will work with you, I will duck from you, I will. I just I don't want no drama. I am check this out a chick who hates conflict, whose profession is lawyer and judge. Can you imagine that this, you know know, which implicates a week that I had in college that we can talk about later. But anyway, what was I talking about? I'm getting older.
Speaker 2:So, my little patch of land, as long as you don't, if I try really, really hard not to mess with you and you end up, I only have a small patch of land I'm standing on. I don't want a whole lot of this. I don't want a whole lot of that. I don't have to expect a whole lot, but just don't step on my patch of land. But if you did step on my patch of land, I felt free to destroy you verbally or do whatever. I mean, I would just lose my mind, and I've done it a couple of times to a couple of people and I usually have to apologize afterwards because it is unseemly when I go there and I realized after a while that more and more people were stepping on my patch of land. So I had to sit down and think about it. Was my patch bigger? Nope, same rules, same regulation, same borders. Do you want to know what was different People?
Speaker 2:I was training the people that I was around to mess with me, because I never said don't mess with me, I let everything slide. So when you let everything slide, people start sliding things right in your direction. And then, and then so more and more people were like oh, she doesn't get angry about this, I can take advantage of her here, I can take advantage of her there. Oh, she won't say anything. She won't say anything, she won't say anything. And I lure them bit by bit, day by day, smile by smile false, okay, by false, okay, Hush, false, okay by false, okay into the thought that they can do anything to me. And then they would do something to me that I didn't like.
Speaker 2:And the next thing, you know, we were off to the races. And once you go off to the races with me, oh, it's unseemly, I'm embarrassed by it. The dogs are killing me. I'm embarrassed by it. It's too much. So I had to retire my patch of land theory. But it's not enough just to retire a theory, because it's difficult to say I'm not doing this anymore and hold that ground. So when I get rid of a theory I have to replace it with a new theory. Now what I replaced it with is known borders. In other words, I thought about the people I'm dealing with, either at work or at home, or socially or whatever I was dealing with, and I thought about all the circumstances that had led me to light folk. And then I think about how they got there. And then I think about how they got there and I figured out how to draw a line sooner so I wouldn't get angry.
Speaker 2:Do you see what I mean? Now I could have blamed them for making me angry and doing something that was rude to me or really wrong. I mean because they would do really wrong stuff. Because I would let them, I could get mad at them and have a legitimate reason to be angry with them and I could get rid of them. You know how they always say you don't have to stay in relationship with people who are causing you trouble or doing you wrong. You don't have to do all of that. But let me tell you something you can get mighty lonely because everybody can do something wrong every once in a while, and if everybody is one bad event away from being discarded, it's harder to live. So instead of just being angry with a whole lot of people who I trained to mistreat me, I trained myself to require people to treat me nicely and listen, do it in a nice way, and that was part of my problem. I don't like no conflict, so I will let stuff slide, just so.
Speaker 1:I don't have conflict.
Speaker 2:You know I like to be happy, I like to make people happy. I don't like to cause people trouble because I don't like people causing trouble for me, you know. But I had to do the uncomfortable thing, which is assert myself earlier in a situation, so I won't do the ridiculous thing which was as often the case go after somebody inappropriately, unnecessarily, unequivocally and in a manner in which requires a great apology on my part. Yeah, that's what that is. I have tricks to everything that I do and I'm trying to share the tricks with you. So, as I do my update on what's wrong with me, there's your couple long. Write yourself a list. They ain't got to show nobody. You, just you don't. I guess I write them in book. I don't care, because if I know about it I can deal with it Now.
Speaker 2:For several episodes now, I've been claiming that I'm going to answer questions from people and I haven't been doing it. But I'm going to start today and it's a question from a single mother. She says she's 33, single mother of three children. Uh, she's in school and she says that women her age are focused on all the wrong things. 33 years old, okay, and being a single mother, I can't work because I have to be home with the children. I don't have really physical support. I've tried remote jobs. They don't help.
Speaker 2:My dating life is non-existence because guys are only worried these days, are only worried about one thing. That is not recent. They were chasing. Every chasing around at least started in the 60s, because that's what I got chased around man, I was scared of dudes. I went to an all-girls school for the longest and then I went out and then I had a bunch of college dudes to deal with and I was. I was horrified. I mean just horrified day and night. But anyway, my but she's lonely and tired. She says how can I find a hobby with no income? How can I find friends who are like-minded, like-minded like me? How can I find a good, wholesome guy with morals and values who is not trying to sleep with me? Well, first of all, here's my suggestion, and it's what I'm doing now, because I am having to create an entirely different life.
Speaker 2:I'm using the internet now to go on sites like Meetup and Brown Girls who. But if you look, there are local sites about meeting people, but they don't meet around necessarily who you trying to meet. They meet around. They want to read books. They want to do art. There's stitching, stitching B. You know what I mean. Just you know you have things that you do. I've joined a writer's group, which was stupid. Trying to make friends in a writer's group, cause the group is called shut up and write, so there wasn't a lot of conversation going on. So I rethought that I'm going to go to a writer's retreat.
Speaker 2:Don't want to go, but I need to get out of the house. But what I'm saying to you is take that, don't look for a wholesome guy who is not looking to sleep with you, because that's kind of hard to find. You know what I mean. Go find something that interests you and do that, and then you meet more people that you would never have met before, that are interested in things that you're interested in, and then that's how you connect. You cache. Everybody keeps walking around their same block trying to find somebody different, but the same people live on that block. You got to get off that block. You got to start doing something that's different, that's new.
Speaker 2:I wanted to take line dancing classes and I didn't do that. I signed up for a lot of stuff. I didn't go to pickleball, but there's a lot of stuff going on out there that is interesting to people and that have interesting people in them. So expand your mind, expand your brain, expand your. Your your place in the world, and then you expand the people that you can, that you meet and that you deal with. And there are some fascinating people out there that you simply wouldn't run into because they're not on your block. So get off your block and get off your block and find what you're interested in. And these hobbies can be free. You know these meet up places and go hike or do whatever they can be free. So you know, that's my suggestion there there.
Speaker 2:And then I also said that I was going to answer one personal question each time. So somebody asked me what's the best compliment I ever got? And the best compliment I ever got was from a man in May Company. It was a. It was a department store like Dillard's back in the 19, like 1995, and I had bought a couch there that I really wanted. The department wasn't doing well and he had gotten a commission on it and it just kept not coming in and kept not coming in and I didn't want to cancel the order because this guy really needed it. So I would come in and just say hi.
Speaker 2:And one day I guess a friend of somebody else in the department was over there near there and said did you know she was a judge? And she goes. I don't know anything. I don't know anything about that. All I know is she's an awfully nice lady. Awfully nice lady. I was so tickled by that I didn't know what to do. But listen, tell you what Remember folks? Feelings of fleeting, felonies of forever. Stay cool, stay calm, stay within yourself, because under your skin is sovereign country. So don't go handing out passports all willy-nilly to people who don't belong there. That's what I say, that's what I mean. Get out there and act like yourself and remember if knowledge is power, self-knowledge makes you Superman. Get in the bathroom mirror, figure out your week and put your cape on. Get out there, solve crime. Have a wonderful day and don't forget. Always feel on purpose.