From Weakness to Warrior

This week Bree is talking with Christian life coach, Lindsay Rodriguez. Learn to shift your focus and find your purpose.

As a coach, Lindsay’s gentle approach comes from a place of deep compassion and love as she has had to overcome devastating trauma from her own childhood. She has a strong conviction of the Savior as she has learned to lean on him through her darkest days.  Lindsay believes that our weaknesses are actually our greatest strengths and that when we choose God we choose to be changed. 

To learn more and work with Lindsay, find her at trueyoulife.com

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Transcript

Are you looking for a space where you will learn to improve your mental strength, emotional health, and heal your insecurities from the inside out? Take the first step to living a more meaningful life with the Better Me with BodyByBree podcast. I'm your host, Bree. I'm a certified personal trainer, entrepreneur, and mother of three.

I've helped empower thousands of women to take action through fitness, nutrition, meditation, personal development, and aligning thoughts with action. This podcast is for those who are ready to feel inspired and motivated to live a more purposeful life. Let's grow together.

Welcome to the podcast, friends.

Today I have my personal friend, Lindsay Rodriguez, who is a Christian-based life coach, and she is full of knowledge. We're talking all about how we can turn our trials or our anxieties or our triggers into a strength and how it can actually be beneficial in your life. Let's get started.

Hi friends, welcome to the podcast. Today I have my beautiful friend, Lindsay Rodriguez, and she is a Christian-based life coach. And she's going to help us today. We're talking about how to go from weakness to warrior and the difference is God. Lindsay, welcome to the podcast. How are you? (Lindsay) Thank you. Thank you for having me.

(Bree) I'm excited. This is awesome. Lindsay, tell us a little bit about your background. Like who are you and what do you do?

(Lindsay) Okay, so I am a faith-based, Christ-centered life coach, which I was just telling Bree that I absolutely love to  have this space where I can talk to women, empower women in this Christ-centered approach.

I think for Christians, we know that Christ is the ultimate example of compassion, love, understanding, truth. These beautiful principles, these beautiful things that I believe we're all in need of in this hurting world in this, you know, painful world. A lot of people are struggling and looking for hope, looking for change.

And  due to my personal experiences, I've been led on this path, God-led on this path to find hope and healing for myself. And a beautiful part about the gospel of Jesus Christ is once you have found hope and healing He always says,  now go and find your brothers and sisters, help your friends, help your family, go gather and strengthen those around you.

And that's something beautiful that the Savior teaches that I like to instill in my coaching and is a big part of what I do. I love that.

(Bree) She's so good. First off, let's talk about kind of how we met. So you were a client for, still are, for a long time. And this is so funny. I moved from Santa Clarita to San Clemente and I was at the gym and I literally bumped into Lindsay and she's like, Bree, I'm literally doing your app right now as we speak at the gym. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, Lindsay!  So then we've been hanging out ever since, it was love at first sight.

(Lindsay) And you were so kind to me, strange girl.

(Bree) No, stop. Are you kidding? We instantly bonded. We went on a beach walk and I was like, Oh my gosh, this girl is so wise, so beautiful, has the most amazing soul. Found out she's a life coach and I'm like, of course you are, that makes so much sense. She was life coaching me the whole time. I feel like I even had my own personal session cause I'm like, why are you so wise? This is incredible. So I'm just a firm believer in shat you do, who you are as a person and I just wanted to bring her on the podcast because I felt like she could add so much value. And, um, she has so many amazing golden nuggets that I'm like, my listeners need to learn from you.

So when we were trying to nail down a topic, we have like 12 different topics we wanted to talk about because we could talk forever and Lindsay's incredible. But the one that we kind of wanted to hone in on was how you can take your weaknesses and they can actually become your strengths and you're really good at that and you have a really, really cool story, a background story that kind of brought you to this.

So I would love for you to share just a little bit about your journey and your story and how it helped you to kind of start along this path.

(Lindsay) Okay. So, yeah, I mean, from, from the beginning, I feel like I was, you know, a pretty normal child, but at a very young age, I did have some pretty intense trauma tha, kind of led me to really just put a pause on my childhood.

To be honest, I was molested by a family friend. And when something like that happens to you at such a young age, it really starts developing this story within you. For me, my experience was that that story was you are broken, you are different, you should be ashamed, you don't have what these other people have, and you should probably just  be quiet.

You should probably just be, you know, be hidden in these different ways. And that I believed for a really, really long time, a really long time,  and it started becoming just such an issue for me  to realize that for so many years I had been hiding. I had been trying to keep myself out of any type of spotlight, any type of limelight, any type of attention on me because I felt ashamed of who I was  and as I grew up and realized more and more that there is lightness and darkness to life, that there is  not only is there a God, but there's also an enemy trying to stop us trying to prevent us from being our best self.  I started recognizing that I think I have more power than I realize in my life. When I was, this is okay to share, when I was a youth, I got a patriarchal blessing from  my patriarch at church and in that blessing, and this is something only I share because it's so powerful and it helps every single one of us.

The line in there talks about the adversary only has,  he only has influence to the degree that you allow.  And so, as I read that, I realized, I have power in how much he deceives me, in how much he stops me, in how much he prevents me from becoming my best self. I actually have choice in that.

And that really started helping me shift and change my life in a direction where I realized i  Satan has this much power and influence in my story, what can God do? What can God change in my life? And I really started going on this journey, this path of, you know, who is God? And what is He to me?

And it's been quite the journey and it's been a process that is still unfolding and still unraveling, and it's brought me to coaching. And I realized, you know, as I've been healing myself, as I've been changing my direction, my course, I've come to this realization that this is powerful,  that anything that God touches will live.  You know, if you ar  in a marriage, if you include Christ in that, your marriage will flourish.

Now, that doesn't mean that you're not going to have struggle, because you will.  Struggle looks different to God than to us. We think struggle is bad. Struggle to God is the very thing that helps you become. Struggle to God is actually growth.  And so it's like these different paradigm shifts, these different ways of looking at life that have actually helped empower me.

And I have to share that with others so that they can do the same.

(Bree) That's so beautiful. When we kind of talked about before how you were saying, this is so fascinating. One of the golden nuggets that you said to me was how you can take traumas or triggers or anxieties and how they can help you in your life.

Can you talk to that a little bit? Cause I feel like, for example, this trauma that you just told me about led you to something really beautiful, which is life coaching. And not only that, but relating to the one in four, I think it's actually one in three now, women who have had some type of sexual assault or have been sexually molested or something to that degree.

So now you can help them personally and walk them through and help them heal and have empathy because you know how they feel and so that led you to something beautiful. So can you talk a little more about how being curious about our traumas and our triggers and our anxieties can actually help us?

(Lindsay ) Yeah. So I'm in the school of thought. I really do believe that. Our life has a purpose that we are here intentionally, that we want to be here, that there is a plan for each of us and that we have  sort of like a mission here on earth. And for me, that didn't really make sense when I had something so big that was stopping me from becoming much of anything.

I saw my friends, you know, graduating and going off to college and starting their lives in these great directions where I just felt stuck. I felt hopeless. I felt like I didn't have any direction because there was this constant voice in my ear You're not like the others. You're broken. You should be ashamed.

Just, you know, stay put, stay where you are. And oftentimes that's when we want to numb. That's when we turn to substances or abuse often to kind of escape that feeling,  that darkness that kind of engulfs us in those traumas, those triggers, those stories that we're telling ourselves of, Hey,  just being busy.

(Bree) Or just like when moms like for me, when I don't want to feel anything, I just distract myself. I don't turn to an addiction or alcohol or anything like in my mind serious. For me, it's distraction. 

(Lindsay) Well, and that's interesting that you say distraction because two of the most powerful tools the adversary uses are distraction and deception. And I didn't even say, addiction in that, right? Distraction and deception. And so that's really interesting because distraction can also be a powerful tool for the adversary for the enemy to stop us from doing anything great.  So going back to triggers, which we were talking about, you were asking about triggers can lead to anxiety in our life.

And if you've had anxiety before, you know, that anxiety can be debilitating. It can just really prevent you from doing a whole lot because you're so uncomfortable in your own skin and I know that feeling all too well.  Now, anxiety oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes starts with something that triggers us.

Now, I've learned to use that to my advantage. Instead of saying, you know, My day's ruined because now I have this anxiety, I've learned to turn that around and be more curious, kind of like what you were saying. This curiosity is a very powerful tool.  Because I try to be so Christ-centered in my life, I know that prayer is so powerful. So when I get triggered by something and that anxiety starts coming in, I immediately turn that to God and I say, in prayer, I am really triggered right now. What is that? What is that? What is the root of that trigger? And it's really important for me in my curious mind to figure out what possibly could be the root of that trigger.

Now you might ask yourself, why get so involved in our triggers and our anxiety, like can't I just take a medication for it? You absolutely can and there's a time and a place for that, but there is also power in discovering what started the trigger. There is a root cause, and that root cause can give you powerful, powerful information.

Um, I have found that a lot of times the root cause is a story or belief that I have within me that is not founded on truth.  Okay? And so  that will sit unwell inside my soul, that will lead to a trigger, which will lead to anxiety. When I noticed that in my life, it's almost like God saying, pay attention to this thing, because there's something you're believing that is not based on my truth.

And it could be a thought of, you know, me not being enough, which obviously is not true because if you were to sit in a room with Jesus, he would literally sit there and tell you all these amazing things of who you are and your potential and who you were before you came here and how he sees you and how gifted you are, right?

So we limit ourselves. We tell ourselves these stories that don't serve us well, so we have to get to this truth, this idea of truth  and truth is just going to settle a lot of that anxiety that sits within us. At least that's been my experience and that's actually one of the things I work a lot with when working with clients is to focus on those triggers and focus on more of the root cause than anything, and help them to have clarity, help them to see, Am I even believing this right? Am I even seeing this correctly? This situation that I'm in, that I think is detrimental, or there's no hope in, but how does God see that? Does He have hope in that? Is there an out?

Is there a better way? And I promise you, there's always hope. There's always hope.

(Bree) Well, and it's interesting because, have you read the book, oh, we talked about this, Feelings Buried Alive Never Die. So, when you don't address the triggers, they store in your body and then they manifest in other ways, oftentimes through your health. I'm just like relating to what you're saying because we were at my retreat and I we were doing this a sound bowl, a sound bath, and she had played these chimes and I don't know why the chimes made me start crying.

Like there was this, the despair and sadness. And I was like, what the heck? And I was embarrassed because I was running the retreat. So I was like, oh my gosh, I can't like, what's happening? Why am I all of a sudden, I didn't even know where it came from. I didn't know why it made me so sad. I didn't know what I was feeling.

I just had this huge pit in my stomach and I was like, I don't know what's going on.  So I went into my room and I said a little prayer. My beautiful friend, Sophie, which I want to introduce you to, you will love her, she was the one doing the sound bath and she came in and she's like, are you okay? And I was like, yeah, I don't know.

What's happening? I just started crying. I was like, these chimes, something in my childhood triggered something. I don't know why. Well, apparently I hadn't worked through that memory and there was this severe trauma that I didn't remember as a child and it was manifesting was coming up in that moment. But my personality is that I want to be positive all the time and I don't like to feel it. So even in my life if I feel like I wake up and I'm a little negative or like I'm a little down I'll always turn it around. How are we gonna be positive today? Because I'm a seven and I don't like to feel the heavy and she was like Great I really think we need to feel this and release it so that you can clear the trauma.

You know, what is it and why are you feeling this way? And we just got curious, kind of like what you're talking about. And we worked through it and it was this memory that I had blocked out and I was really young and it was pretty traumatic. And I think I just stored it in my body, but I didn't even know it was there.

And so instead of covering it up and moving on, we did this cool exercise and I could release it. And I felt like a thousand pounds had lifted off of me. And then the next night she did the same sound on the same chimes and it didn't affect me at all. Not at all. And she came over and she's like, were you okay?

I'm like, yeah. I was completely fine because I had rewired my brain to not have that trigger anymore. So the whole point of this is I'm such a believer in actually working through the triggers and why you're having them so that they can actually become  maybe helpful for us. So I love that. Thank you so much.

(Lindsay) Okay, I love that you shared that because that's a really good example of how this works. You know,  I'm human here on earth having this human experience and I know that any kind of discomfort that comes into my life, I actually just want to be rid of it, I want it to go away, I don't want to feel it. I think that's very normal, right? But what I've learned in this God space is that's actually where God wants us to be. He wants us to see that plant that's kind of uprooting and causing pain or bringing attention to us. And He wants us to say, Hey, you know, look at that. What is that over there? And to be curious about it. And there's something really powerful about examining it and getting to the root, like your experience, as opposed to just chopping it off at the top or burying it, or hiding it. Because it's just going to come resurface again, until we get to those, to the bottom of those things.

And the reason for that is because God wants us to refine. He wants us to heal. He wants us to have this process of growth in our life. And so He's actually going to make us uncomfortable at times, always for great purpose. That is how He works. He's always doing things with the purpose of us becoming greater than what we even imagined.

And so as we step into that process, it's funny because we, you know, we call ourselves Christians, but the work of a Christian, the work of a disciple of Jesus Christ is actually really uncomfortable a lot of the time.  You're working through all of the nuances of life, all of the ins-and-outs of what makes you who you are and also working through these innermost parts of our heart, our heart chamber of like the trauma, working through the baggage, working through the generational stories that have been passed down that aren't serving us anymore.

Those are the things that He wants us to refine and work through so that we can be our best selves and, and become more like him. 

(Bree) So, if, let's say our listeners are  doing this on their own and they don't have like a Sophie or a Lindsay to walk them through, like let's say that they feel a trigger, what would they do in that moment? How do they become curious or how do they walk themselves through these steps so that it's productive?

(Lindsay) Okay. So, usually what I would say to people is, first and foremost, it is so, so important that we drop any kind of judgment, shame and just completely work in a space of compassion and curiosity towards ourself realizing we don't have all the answers, but we're trying to discover the truth in the situation.

So we know that Christ is the father of truth. Satan is the father of lies. It is important that we start, I always, I always offer a prayer. I always ask or I can even just say in the spirit, you know, Heavenly Father, Is that your truth? God, is that your truth? And oftentimes I'll even hear sometimes just an audible, um, no, that's not even true that, you know, or Yes. Just a simple Yes, and sometimes you'll get an inkling or a feeling. Oftentimes I'll go to my scriptures if I'm studying my scriptures and I'll ask a lot of questions in my scripture study even and I can get very specific answers just by being led in my scriptures by the spirit. And that's a really powerful tool that we could talk about another time.

But for right now when you're just like in a grocery store and you're triggered and you don't know what's going on, you don't really know why all of a sudden you're so uncomfortable, the anxiety comes in, questions are so powerful. Just start asking questions. Is this true?  Am I seeing this correctly? And you will know that you are a far more spiritual being than you realize and that God is right there to answer those questions in a very simple way. It doesn't need to be a big production.

It can be very simple and very quick and direct. And I think that's kind of the goal as we align ourself with God to get in that communication with him where we can get answers quickly and refine that. I think that's a big goal in this process because we're seeking truth and in order to get the truth, we have to have the channel clear,  right?

(Bree) And I feel like too, a lot of times people don't realize what they're actually feeling. They just say, I feel anxious or I'm feeling anxiety. But I feel anxiety is kind of a blanket statement for feeling uncomfortable, like you said. And so sometimes I'll be like, Oh, I'm, I'm more agitated or I feel heavy or my chest is heavy or if I do feel anxious, but I don't realize that it's because I have some sort of trigger or some sort of underlying, like for example, when I first moved here and we were on our beach walk, I was like, Lindsay, I kind of have a little bit of anxiety, moving here. Why do you think I have this anxiety? And I let it sit with me for three weeks. And I finally was like, what is this underlying feeling?

I think the first step is asking, like you said, and knowing that sometimes that anxiety could be deeper instead of just, Oh, I'm just stressed or I'm overstimulated or the kids are really loud. For me, I was like, no, this isn't normal. What is this feeling? You know? And then, Oh, it's whatever the deeper feeling was. So I think a lot of us just label it as anxiety.

(Lindsay) We do. Yeah. It's a very broad term. It's true. But something that I like to do also is write down the thought that comes to my mind. What story am I believing right now? You know? What possibly could have triggered me? And even in my phone if I'm checking out the grocery store or something, I'll just kind of type out just a couple of ideas. Just that curiosity is going to be really powerful because studies show that even just labeling the emotion that you're feeling, a very specific emotion, just by labeling it, it decreases it tremendously just by putting light on it because I'm recognizing. It's in the hidden is where the discomfort is so we want to bring everything to the light and then examine it without fear, without shame, without guilt and just be in that God space of it is seen and it's right there in front of you, and we're not afraid of it. You can't be afraid of it.

(Bree) Right. And giving yourself the time to do that, when you're a mom, I feel like so many times it's just like, I don't have time. I don't have time for the quiet. I don't have time to wake up early. So for me, I get all of my answers and I feel so centered when I'm just quiet. When I'm quiet either on a walk, in nature, in my closet, just giving space and holding space for yourself to just do a quick check-in with God, with yourself.

What are some think tools that you give your clients when they're feeling like they want to be able to kind of work through this stuff?

You said to first acknowledge it, write it down, and you were telling me before, Sacred Time.

(Lindsay) Sacred time. Yeah. Okay. So a while ago I had a wonderful friend that was a mentor to me and something that she taught me was really simple but actually shifted a lot of things for my mind. I like what you said about oftentimes we kind of get stuck in that I don't have time, I don't have time.

But what my friend taught me was, Lindsay, everybody has the same amount of time, 24 hours in a day, right? And if you know Bree, she can run circles around a lot of us where she gets a lot done in one day, right? And that's something I really look to you for because you're just like a doer. You get stuff done.

So It's funny how we tell ourselves certain things, but the reality is if we want to make it a priority, it will be. Right? So I learned that I needed to make time for the Lord in order to get the answers that I was seeking day in and day out. And with somebody who had a lot of anxiety, I needed a lot of answers and clarity in my life to get out of that discomfort that kept coming up and up as I was working through many different things.

And so I realized after watching my mom for many years as a young child, she would get up at the crack of dawn and she would have a towel on her head. She's already showered and she'd be reading her scriptures in this quiet time. Now I had six siblings. There was never a quiet moment, but in the stillness of the morning, there was this quietness.

Studies show that when you wake up, there's something to that with the circadian rhythm, right? The sun rising with the sun, there's this, this stillness in the earth and you can kind of feel it if you get up early and start your day. So my suggestion always to my clients is to produce or provide this sacred space, this sacred time where you are protecting the environment and the time for you to connect with God and to be able to refine, get some refinement, get some clarity, before your day's even started and to give God your best hours. And that's usual. I mean, a lot of people say I'm not a morning person, you know? So you have to sort that out. But I wasn't a morning person either and I just took it to God and I said, Heavenly Father, I have a really hard time waking up in the mornings. Can you help me in that? And you know what? He did. And so sometimes we limit ourselves. God's limitless. He's limitless. Just ask.

(Bree) That's so beautiful. I wouldn't have thought, can you help me be more of a morning person?

(Lindsay) Oh yeah. You can ask him anything. I love that. I love that.  So in one of my sacred time experiences, I was brought to this scripture in Ether, which is in the Book of Mormon Chapter 12, Verse 27 and it talks about weaknesses, which I thought was so interesting because a lot of times we think weakness is bad. Weakness is negative, but let's hear what God has to say about it. He says, "And if men come unto me, I will show them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me." And then He goes on to say, "then will I make weak things become strong unto them."

So this is so cool because you realize when you turn to truth,  God's truth, through the scriptures, you will learn weakness is actually a very, very powerful tool to becoming your best self.  They're meant to be there. The struggle is where the growth lies and once that changed in my story, everything changed.

It moved mountains for me in my life and that's something I'm really passionate in showing my clients is that, you know, we think of the story of Moses, the Israelites, they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. Do you know that it was actually an 11 day journey?  An 11 day journey. So, you apply that to our lives, right?

God can quicken things. He can make things powerful. He can move things quicker than we can even imagine if we're willing to align ourselves with Him.  When we're doing it on our own strength. We're wandering for that 40 years of trying to figure it out, trying to understand why our relationship struggles, trying to understand why we can't get that job we want, why we can't focus on that dream that is  just outside of our reach.

And the difference is God. The difference is including God in that process. It really does make all the difference. 

(Bree) Lindsay, see why I wanted her on the podcast? She's so wise. She's so incredible. I just love, this was like the tiniest little snippet  of what Lindsay does. This was like one golden nugget.

Like I think we have probably 10 pages of notes here that we didn't even get to. So we'll have to have her on again because she's so great and she's so helpful. So Lindsay, if somebody wanted to work with you as a life coach, what would that process look like? 

(Lindsay) Go to trueyoulife com and we'll schedule a consult call and in the consult call if you sign up for a package, you'll get 10 percent off just by mentioning you heard about me through BodyByBree podcast.

(Bree) Awesome. I would suggest doing that because you never know what you want to work on or what you need until you talk to her and I swear she has this gift of just pulling it out of you and you're like, oh, yeah, you're right, that is what I need to work on! So she's very talented, very gifted, and I think that's so generous that you're offering a free consult call. So, thank you, Lindsay. You also have an Instagram, Lindsay, which is @trueyoulife. Okay, so you guys can follow her too because she shares a lot of amazing content there, too. Totally free. Thank you so much. Thank you for being on here. We'll have to do another follow up because we have so much content that we didn't get through.

(Lindsay) Love it. Thank you.

(Bree) All right. We'll talk to you later. Thanks for being here.  Thank you for joining us in today's episode. If you liked the content and want to hear more, remember to hit that subscribe button and write a review. As a small business owner, I appreciate it more than you know. If you are looking for a program to help with self confidence, to lose weight, get in shape, and work on your mental, physical, and emotional health, check out my training programs on www.bodybybree com. My team and I help to hold you accountable through the BodyByBree app, where you log in to see all your workouts, custom meal plan made specifically for you and your needs, and communication through the messenger.

You are never alone when you're on the BodyByBree training program.