The Happiest Lives Podcast
The Happiest Lives was designed for Christian women who want to stop being disappointed in their relationships and feel more loved and loving. Here you will learn to think better, feel better, and love better.
This podcast is hosted by Jill M. Lillard, MA LPC, a licensed counselor, and Gottman Certified Couples Therapist. Jill has been helping people manage their minds, process their feelings, and have better relationships for over 25 years.
For application exercises and support in applying the concepts learned on the podcasts, you can access growth tools + Live Coaching inside her cost-effective coaching program: Clarity+Courage. Join and cancel anytime.
For more intensive support, check out Jill's signature coaching program, The Happiest Lives Academy, where you receive all you need to make FIVE transformations in FIVE months. Registration opens once a year.
Discover all her programs and courses at www.myhappyvault.com.
You can email Jill at jill@thehappiestlives.com.
The Happiest Lives Podcast
E23: Expose: Bring What is Hidden Into The Light
Today, we begin The Heart Scan Series, where I introduce you to The Heart Scan Process, my ultimate tool for creating a better life and relationships. I spotlight the first step of Heart Scanning, EXPOSE, where we bring what is hidden into the light. I show you how to constrain, focus, organize, and look at a problem so you are no longer spinning in feelings such as overwhelm, despair, confusion, or fear.
If you want to quit living your life on default mode and instead nurture God's spirit living in you, it always begins by asking the Lord to search your heart and expose what is hidden. Being the woman God says you are starts with capturing your thoughts and bringing your mind in step with the Spirit. You won't want to miss this episode as I show you an interesting and fun way to do that.
If you are ready to become the woman God says you already are, you have to join me in Clarity+Courage, my cost-effective coaching group for Christian women. Learn more and enroll at www.myhappyvault.com/clarityandcourage
Discover ways to work with me at www.thehappiestlives.com
Questions? Email Jill directly at Jill@thehappiestlives.com
You are listening to the Happiest Lives podcast with Jill Lillard, episode number 23. Welcome to the Happiest Lives podcast, where you'll learn to think better, feel better and become the woman God says you already are. Here's your host, jill Lillard. Hello everybody, I am super excited about this month because this is Heart Scan Month.
Speaker 1:Inside Clarity and Courage, october is when I like to take a moment to solely focus on the process of heart scanning. Now that work is interwoven all the time throughout the work we do in all of my coaching groups, and I talk about the process of heart scanning in the podcast. But October is where I send out an invitation to anyone who wants to master this process, who wants to get really good at heart scanning. And so the last week of this month, october 23 through the 27th, we are going to have the Heart Scan Workshop and it is a five-day workshop where I will teach you about the Heart Scan, but we will spend most of our time applying the Heart Scan, as I take volunteers who would like to get coached on specific problems that they are experiencing in their life and I'm going to show you how to navigate that problem and figure out why you're having the problem, what you want to do about it, to help open you up to some new possibilities and help you figure out how you want to move your way through it. And so, if you have never done a coaching group, they are amazing. Group coaching is so powerful because sometimes you get to observe someone else being coached and your defenses are down a little bit, and so you're going to learn something more than you might have learned even if you were the one being coached. So I encourage you to sign up for this workshop. It is a steal it's only $27. And when you sign up, you are going to get access to a Slack group for that week, which means you have 24-7 access to me. You can ask me anything. You can post your Heart Scans. As you learn how to do those, I will give you feedback, you'll be able to communicate with other women in the group, and I think this is a really good way to test drive the Happiest Lives Academy.
Speaker 1:And so the Happiest Lives Academy is my most intensive coaching group. I run it once a year, january through May, and I work with a small group of women who go through five transformations, and so I always say the Heart Scan Week is a good opportunity to see, to just get a taste. To get a taste of what it looks like to do regular coaching with me, to see what it feels like to be in a group like this, to see what Slack looks like and we sign up for the workshop. You will also get a workbook. So I encourage you to do that. If you're interested, go to myhappyvaultcom, where on the banner at the top, if this is the month of October and not just a replay that you're listening to this, you can find the link and you can sign up. So I hope I get to meet some of you there.
Speaker 1:So this month, in on the podcast, we are going to focus on the Heart Scan process. I'm going to tell you why the Heart Scan process is useful and helpful, why I put this process together for all of my clients, and we're going to focus on the first step of Heart Scanning today, which is the part where we expose, we bring what is hidden into the light. And so, as we look at the Heart Scanning process, the concept, the reason we have the Heart Scan, is because we all have problems. To be human is to have problems. We live in this fallen world and we know, ultimately, the only answer for our problems and for peace in our inner souls is that relationship with Christ. And yet we all are going to have different, various problems of different degrees in our life. From the kids are all screaming and I'm trying to make dinner and I just burned something where we may just emotionally shut down, that may feel like a problem, especially if it's a habitual way we experience life. Or we may have a problem that someone we love was just diagnosed with cancer or some illness, or we lost somebody that we love, or we're having a really hard time in our relationship. Maybe our husband is drinking excessively and we're not sure what to do about that. Okay, so we can look to scripture to navigate those problems, to gain wisdom, and we can also use other tools that the Lord has given us to approach those problems as we invite him into that process.
Speaker 1:It can be really hard to be objective when we're having a problem. We are in the pool, we're swimming in the middle of it, and so it's hard to sit far from it and just look at it as an observer, and so I wanna help you learn how to do that. We can get so emotional that we're not sure to do with our emotions. We're not even aware what emotions are going on, and so we might find ourselves creating secondary problems. As we resist our emotions, as we indulge our emotions, we're just becoming reactive in our situation, and we can't control the other persons, the people in our life. We can't control circumstances that may surround us, and so we might feel really powerless. And yet we might find ourselves putting all of our energy on the parts that we have no control over, which does not serve us at all. It just makes us feel like a victim. You, as a believer, may say you believe certain things that God is good, that he is loving, that he is in control, that he is going to work all things out for his good and glory and for our good, and yet we might find that we aren't living out those beliefs in our daily life, that fear and anxiety and worry are running the show. This is part of the human predicament. This is part of being human.
Speaker 1:The solution that I offer as a therapist and a life coach is a systematic way of approaching your problems and navigating your emotions, and so this is the process that I have found myself using with clients in all my years as a therapist, and so I have put it into a way that is teachable, pulling in different concepts, pulling in some cognitive behavioral therapy, pulling in some emotionally focused therapy, and putting all of that through the lens, the filter of scripture. And so I wanna teach the tool to all my clients so that they can systematically apply those same concepts to problems as they face those. So when we use the heart scan, we're going to abide in greater joy and peace. We're still going to have problems, we're still going to have different emotions that come up, but as you regularly heart scan, the goal is that you are experiencing joy and peace more frequently. The heart scan is going to help you pause the problem, sit far from it, look at it so that you can gain deeper insight. It's going to shift your focus off of the circumstance and on what you can control and onto the one who is in control. It's going to show you what else is possible. It's going to help you engage with the Lord, using emotions as an invitation to experience His presence, and it's going to help you reroute your energy and take action even when you don't feel like it.
Speaker 1:So the four steps of heart scanning are expose, renew, engage and press on. So when we expose a problem, we are bringing what is hidden into the light. We're taking time to be aware of what's happening in our heart, and so our heart is our mind, our emotions and our will. Why are we doing what we do? We're looking at what's at the root of our actions and we're asking the Lord to search us, to show us anything that is hidden. When we heart scan, we are opening ourselves up to being transparent, open and curious. This does not come from a place of condemnation and judgment. We do it through the spirit of grace and faith and hope and love. And some of the questions that we're going to ask when we're exposing is what have I been believing? How have I been feeling? Why am I feeling this way? And we're going to separate the facts of a situation from our assessment of the situation, and we're going to look at how we've been showing up. When we feel a certain way, you're going to ask are my thoughts serving me? Are my feelings and my actions honoring the Lord? Are they producing good fruit in my life? And so we're just going to pause that and become aware.
Speaker 1:The second step of heart scanning. And we're always cycling through these right. So it's just a constant process throughout life of recycling through these different parts of how we're experiencing life. So the second part is where we renew. We renew our mind, we renew our spirit. We consider what else is possible, and my favorite way to do that is to look to the truth of God's word. God may give us a scripture that specifically speaks to our situation. He may give us a way of looking at a problem that puts it in the bigger picture, or there may be some new thoughts, some new truths that aren't directly related to scripture but are alternative ways of thinking about that.
Speaker 1:So I've mentioned before a power thought I have in my marriage my relationship is rich, is the perfect person for me. When I think that I really believe it. Now, that's not a scripture verse, it's not really even a biblical truth, but it is a truth that I believe. The Holy Spirit speaks to me of trusting that my husband is the perfect person for me and that can change the course of how I show up in my life. When I'm thinking about him in that way, and when we renew our mind, we are asking questions such as what result would I like to be experiencing instead? Okay, so we've exposed the problem. We've looked at the results that we're experiencing in our life and probably the reason we're wanting to renew our mind is we're not liking that result. Something is off, something's not right with that. And so we can ask well, what result would I like to experience? And if I was experiencing that result, what would I be doing to get that result? How would I have to feel to do those things? And what would I be believing, thinking about my situation, that would change the way that I'm feeling?
Speaker 1:The third part of heart-skinning is where we engage. We are allowing the emotion to be a portal to experience the Lord. We're turning toward him. We're pausing the feeling, without resisting, without indulging, so that we can move from suffering to a place of surrender. The fourth part of heart-skinning is where we press on. We take action. Despite our unwanted emotions. We do the next best thing. We march toward what we are afraid of, what we are fearing. We do that with praise and thanksgiving. We're taking the new action despite the unwanted emotion. We don't have to obliterate and get rid of the human part, like that part still gets to exist, but we start to maybe operate more from the Spirit. So those are the four parts of heart-skinning, and the result of making heart-skinning a regular part of your life is you will experience more of the peace of God, which transcends all understanding. He will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.
Speaker 1:So let's look at the scriptural basis for exposing hidden things, and then I'm going to show you how I do that, how I like to apply that truth in a practical, tangible way. I like to make things practical and tangible, okay, concrete. So some key scripture passages that emphasize the importance of bringing hidden things into the light are Ephesians 5, 13 through 14. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. So the light exposes and what is exposed becomes light.
Speaker 1:If there's dust in a room and there's boxes sitting around the room and different clutter and things piled up, just because you turn on the lights did not create that situation. That situation was there already. We just turned on the lights, we just exposed it, we made it visible. And when we made it visible, then it became light, it became information, it illuminated a reality to us which could lead to change. It could lead to new actions, as opposed to just leaving the lights off, to sticking our head in the sand to ignoring it. Eventually, everything will be exposed and brought into the open.
Speaker 1:We read that in Luke 8, 17, where there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open. Everything is going to be brought into the open eventually, and scripture tells us that we thrive and we experience mercy, we abide in mercy and grace when we bring what's hidden into the light. We read this in Proverbs 28, 13. Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy. Our participation in the story of redemption begins with repentance and turning toward the Lord. That is the salvation story that we confess our sins and we confess Jesus as Lord and Savior of our life. We receive Him with our mind. Psalms 139, 23-24.
Speaker 1:Search me, god. Know my heart, test me, know my anxious thoughts, see if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way of everlasting. That is my prayer. That is the prayer I like to say each day. Lord, search my heart, show me what I'm not seeing, show me ways I'm deceiving myself.
Speaker 1:Jeremiah 17, 10 says I, the Lord, search the heart. I examine the mind to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve. So the Lord searches our heart, and so we want to align our will. We want to be willing to let Him search our heart and reveal things to us so that we can walk in truth, knowing that he is going to help us. He's going to do the work in us. We want to be willing to cooperate with that process Romans 8, 27. And he who searches our hearts knows the minds of the Spirit. Because the Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God, so the Holy Spirit will intercede for us. So we want to align our wills with the Spirit.
Speaker 1:Verse Chronicles 28, 9. And you, my son Solomon, acknowledge the God of your father, serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, where the Lord searches every heart and understands every desire and every thought. If you seek Him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake Him, he will reject you forever. Let's be willing for the Lord to search our mind. Let's be willing and open, with a willing heart and mind for him to work with in us. And this starts with exposing Christ's sacrifice on the cross, provides us with the opportunity to approach God with our hidden struggles and fine redemption. So if you have struggles that you are hiding, struggles with yourself, struggles with how you are processing, maybe, things that happened to you and it's creating some sort of pain, the Lord wants to help you and bring you healing and it starts with coming, as you are, jesus of the light, and when we walk with him we have the light of life. The Lord wants us to live in the light of his love, where we find healing, restoration and a deeper relationship with God, with Jesus, with other people and with ourself.
Speaker 1:John 8-12,. I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. We will have to give an account to God for how we lived our lives. Hebrews 4-13,. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him, to whom we must give account. The grace and compassion of Christ invites us to come as we are and he offers healing and transformation. He does not leave us how he found us. He does the work of making us new and we get to participate. This happens as we turn toward him with our hearts that are open, humble and willing, willing to be searched.
Speaker 1:The heart scan process is a fun and interesting and a tangible way to examine your life. So how I use the heart scan, how I apply all of this and plug it in, is I use concepts of cognitive behavioral therapy combined with the emotionally focused therapy, the process of how do we process through our emotions, and I do this all through the lens of scripture. But the way that I find to that I most enjoyed applying these cognitive behavioral concepts, the way it's just the most simplified way to teach, that is using the self-coaching model. So in this part of the process where we're exposed, we will use the self-coaching model, which is cognitive behavioral therapy, and it starts by separating our circumstances from our thoughts about our circumstances. There are situations, there are things that happen. People say words, people do things. It rains, people get sick, you have a certain amount of money in your bank account, you gain 10 pounds, you lose five pounds. Okay, these are all circumstances.
Speaker 1:Your thoughts are different from the circumstances. Your thoughts are optional and everybody is going to have different thoughts about a circumstance. Paul had thoughts about his circumstances. He was shipwrecked, beaten, in prison, right, and he considered those things joy because of what he was thinking. So we have to separate the circumstance from our thoughts. A lot of times we start thinking things and believing it as though it's a fact and it's not even true. So we want to take ownership of huh, what am I making this mean? What am I thinking about this, so that we can know if that thought is serving us. Because that thought puts a whole, puts all the other parts in motion. Based on what you're thinking, you will have a feeling and your feeling is going to be the fuel which generates the actions that you're taking, the things you're doing, the things you're not doing, and those actions are going to create results.
Speaker 1:So we put this in a linear format CTFAR, circumstance, thoughts, feelings, actions and Results. We stack those on top of each other. Notice the CTFAR sounds like sit far. We're sitting far from the problem and looking at it and we're identifying what is the fact. Here we're going to constrain and focus and not talk about 12 different things that our husband did or didn't do or things he said. We're going to pick one thing and that and we're going to separate what is our thought about it and what is the circumstance and we're going to put the circumstance he said words. We can write the exact words he said, or we could put he said words that's the circumstance. And what did we think about that? What did we make that mean?
Speaker 1:If we're making it mean that he's being a jerk, then we're going to feel a certain way. He's so arrogant, he's being such a jerk, then we are going to feel maybe is superior, self-righteous. We may feel irritated, frustrated, but we'll pick one feeling and I provide feelings list for you. You can find all kinds of feelings list out there, but you sometimes it helps to look at a list of feelings to identify, yeah, what is the feeling that I have when I'm thinking this about my husband, when I'm thinking he's being a jerk, how do I feel? I feel annoyed. And so then, when we feel annoyed, we are going to take certain actions.
Speaker 1:When we feel annoyed, we aren't usually warm and receptive. When we feel annoyed, we may be short and snappy, we may ignore people, we might be a little abrasive, we might not make efforts to connect in a loving way, and so those are the actions that are fueled by the feeling, and the feeling is created by the thought. Husband says words. The thought is he's being a jerk. We feel annoyed, we get short and snappy, we don't make bids to connect, we kind of ignore him. The results as we examine those actions. Those actions are like a recipe card. They create something. So if you do those actions, the result is I'm being a jerk.
Speaker 1:The reason you're being a jerk is not because your husband said words, but it is because of how you are thinking of the situation and our result is going to reflect some version of what we're thinking. Either we're going to find evidence for the thought maybe our actions are such that we're finding all the evidence that he's being a jerk and that's the result we're creating or it's going to be some flip of that that I start to act the same way, because what we judge in others we start to do ourselves. But a lot of times we don't want to see that we justify what we're doing. So that is step one expose. And that is the structured process of how I help you sit far from the problem and expose and look at it in a way that your defenses can be down a little bit. We do that through the lens of grace so that we are open and curious as opposed to judgmental, and it helps us see ways that we are being judgmental toward the other person or even toward ourselves. We're either blaming or shaming.
Speaker 1:Exposing is the first step of heart scanning. It's super important. Exposing is how we even begin our relationship with Christ. We expose and reveal our own sin and recognize our need for him. And that starts with our repentance. But we can't repent if we're not turning on the lights and exposing. So I encourage you guys to join me Heart Scan Week, to take this work and apply it and see it applied to real problems in your life. So we will meet again next week here on the podcast and we're going to talk about the second part of heart scanning, which is renew, where we examine what else is possible. Thank you guys for showing up today and I hope you have a great week.