What fulfilling your purpose really is

When we say, “I want to fulfill my purpose,” we often mean, I want to figure out what my purpose really is, and then act on it.

This implies that you don’t know what it is already, or that you don’t yet have a purpose.

Let me just make this really simple for you: Your purpose is to return to live with God someday. That’s it. That’s all. Are you doing what is necessary?

Awesome. Now what?

If you look up “purpose” in the topical guide, the first thing is says is “See also, Desire.” It also lists “Will” as an alternative to look into.

This makes me think that our purpose is just our desire, aka, our will.

Huh.

Then if you check out all the scripture references below Purpose in the topical guide, desire can be replaced for each one, and it is enlightening:

Every desire is established by council.
A time to every desire under the heaven
This is the will that is desired upon the whole earth.

I could keep going, but you can check it out for yourself here.

I have heard it said by my coaching mentors, there are only two reasons why people hire a life coach:

  1. Because they know what they want (their purpose), but they need help doing it, or
  2. Because they don’t know what they want. (their purpose)

I love that I get to help people discover and live out their purposes, their true desires.

And I love that it always starts with my faith.

If any of this resonates with you, I encourage you to meet with me for free. Let me help you figure out your purpose or how to live it. You’ll leave this free 60 minute session with a deeper understanding of yourself and some next steps. Sign up here.

In the meantime, go think about what you really want.

To all the LDS ladies: You are enough. Really, you are.

You. Are. Enough.

No. Hear me: You are enough! Right now, exactly the way you are.

You are enough for the job, for the calling, for the kids, for the husband, or for whatever else is going on in your life.

You have done everything “right.” And you still feel a lack in your life.

It’s because what you DO doesn’t determine how you feel.

You kept the standards of the Church. You served the mission. You never say no to a calling. You got married in the temple. You had the kids.

And now you don’t know what you want or who you are.

It’s because you were doing all those things for the wrong reasons, and now you are tired of chasing your happiness.

You thought that if you did what everyone told you, you would feel better. You would feel good.

Wrong.

I know– the way our Church leaders talk make it seem like that’s what will happen. They say that if you are obedient, blessings will come. If you have the Spirit, everything will work out.

They aren’t wrong, and you aren’t wrong.

It’s just that you took their words and made it mean that you should DO certain things. And certainly there are certain actions that qualify or disqualify us.

But it matters with what energy you check all the boxes.

Stop focusing on the actions! Stop trying to go to the temple every week or show up to every single activity even when you don’t really want to. Stop going through the motions of your calling and wondering if it’s really worth it. Stop putting on the make-up because someone might see you. Stop dwelling on what you said or did that you shouldn’t have.

Stop it all.

And start believing.

Believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Savior of the world. Believe that the doctrines of the Church are true. Believe that you are blessed and that more blessings are coming. Believe that the one blessing you reeeeeeally want is on it’s way. Believe that you are exactly where you need to be on the path that will eventually bring joy and fulfillment. Believe that you can feel joy and excitement and fun NOW. Believe that your desires are not bad and don’t make you bad. Believe that you are enough exactly the way you are.

When you truly, madly, deeply believe these things (and more), you will start to FEEL them in your body. That’s how you will know you believe them. And then what to DO will become clear.

When your mind is in the right place, your actions will be too. You will keep the standards of the Church for the right reasons or not at all. You will do the calling or go to the temple or read your scriptures because you love the Lord, not because you are trying to “get blessings.”

The Lord wants you because He loves you. But he isn’t going to force or chase. You have to come to Him for the right reasons. If you feel like he is ignoring you, maybe he is just waiting for you to truly love him first. Maybe the blessings you have already received match devotion you have already given.

God is asking us to raise the bar, to lengthen our stride, to be more committed. By necessity, that means that some people will be left behind. We are in a refining time in our Church. We are at a turning point. And it feels uncomfortable. It’s supposed to.

The question is: what do you really want to believe? Not because it will bring blessings, but because it feels right to you?

I hope you want to believe you are enough. Jesus Christ made you so with his sacrifice.

***

If you want help with your unbelief, let’s have a conversation together. This is why I’m here. I promise I won’t try to get you to think or do anything. I am only here to help you discover who you are and what you want. But I am the perfect one for you, because I have lived with the Gospel and without it. I understand both ways. And I don’t think there is a right or a wrong way for you. I just think there is a way. Figuring it out is your work. I can be your loving, gentle, non-judgmental guide.

You are only one click away: calendly.com/denitabremercoaching

Negative emotion never comes from God.

While I was listening to this podcast today, (it’s so good, go listen to it!) I had a bit of an epiphany:

All positive emotion is from God.

All negative emotion is from the adversary.

In my opinion, these thoughts line up with this scripture:

For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God.

Moroni 7:16

Kurt Francom suggests that God is never disappointed in us in the podcast I mentioned. He gives lots of great evidence why this is. So I thought to myself, “Where does disappointment come from then?”

My first thought was that it comes from ourselves. But as I thought more, I came to the conclusion that the person who is ultimately the most disappointed is Satan. He must be living in disappointment from not keeping his first estate. And for centuries, he has seen how he missed the boat.

So what if God really never has any negative emotion toward us? What if he is just cheering us on, encouraging us, listening, loving?

I like to think of him watching us as if we are mice in a maze. He might be amused, but He is still also being our fan.

And what if, because of the principle of opposition in all things, Satan is the only one discouraging and confusing us, tearing us down, and making us feel bad?

I used to think there was a place for negative emotion such as guilt if it compels us to make positive changes. But now I see that guilt is just a mis-match between our personal values and our behavior.

Of course, it is human to feel negative emotion. It is part of being here on earth. We are in a fallen state.

I like to think that the mortal part of us naturally listens to the adversary. And our spirits naturally listen to the Spirit.

If we are never confused that the Spirit will only offer us positive emotion, then if we are feeling “bad,” we know that is coming from the adversary.

So, who do you want to listen to? And can you give yourself permission to learn from the negative emotion and listen to the positive?

To Know Him

I had a little disagreement with my husband last weekend over division of responsibility of household chores. The age-old “I want you to WANT to do the dishes.” 🙄🤮 But as I dug deep to figure out WHY I wanted to feel appreciated in this particular way, I journaled, “It says ‘I know you.’” And “It would mean I am noticeable, special, unique…” I think this is something every human wants to know: that they are loved and treasured.

Fast forward to yesterday when I attended a bible study class my stake hosts. It’s one of those classes that I’m always grateful I attend after the fact, but try to talk myself out of going beforehand. But every time I attend, I feel the Spirit telling me this is how God is speaking to me and I need to be there.

Part of the discussion centered on Christ’s intercessory prayer and how he wants us to have eternal life “that they might know thee, the only true God…” (John 17:3). And the teacher had us read this quote by Bruce R McConkie: “It is one thing to know about God and another to know him….[W]e know [him] when we enjoy and experience the same things [he does]. To know God is to think what he thinks, to feel what he feels, to have the power he possesses, to comprehend the truths he understands, and to do what he does. Those who know God become like him, and have his kind of life, which is eternal life.”

And then the💡 went off for me: I am asking my husband and my kids to know me the way God wants us to know him…. but I don’t always do that. I don’t always even know myself! How can I expect them to do it? I am walking around this world with a very self-centered point of view, yet I am asking the people I love most to NOT do that very thing.

Needless to say, I was humbled. The Spirit again reminded me why I should be in that class every week: Heavenly Father knows EXACTLY what I need and meets me there in that class. And isn’t that the ironic thing? I don’t even need my family to know me intimately because Christ does. He already experienced every pain and frustration I feel. How do I know? There have been too many “coincidences” to be anything else.

A Spiritual Prompting: My Story, a Bird’s Eye View

{This is the edited version of my video on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U536C4ShOKM}

I want to tell you a story.

About 15.5 years ago, I was walking the halls at church with my little baby- she was getting fussy or maybe she was walking and couldn’t sit still. We went into the hall and somebody had prepared a bulletin board on the topic of Write Your Personal History. As I read that board, I felt a spiritual impression that I needed to write my history. But I was young (24 years old with my first little baby) and just figuring life out; I didn’t really know how to write my story or tell my story! Over the next 15 years I would go on to start and abandon many blogs trying to tell my story. But I think in hindsight, the problem was I didn’t know who I was talking to. So I would start writing and then I would get overwhelmed: how do I do it? Do I do it chronologically or by theme? SO I never really did it and I’ve been trying to ignore this prompting for almost 16 years now!

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago when I heard an interview on one of my favorite podcasts talking about storytelling. It piqued my interest; I thought it was an interesting topic. Matthew Dicks, the author of the book Storyworthy was being interviewed, and he mentioned how he teaches storytelling workshops and he has to continuously tell women (specifically women) that their stories are worth telling. After that podcast finished, I was on a walk and I felt these words enter my mind: “I’ve given you time to tell your story.” I felt a little chastised by God that he has asked me several time over the past decade and a half to tell my story. But I think I was getting tripped up thinking he was telling me to write my story. So in the last couple of weeks I have had almost daily spiritual impressions that I need to tell my story. It’s not that I even have one story to tell. I know my life story is interesting—it’s almost movie worthy. But I am just a normal person. I don’t know who wants to hear my story, or who is out there for me to touch, but right now I am working on blind faith and I am going to move forward with telling my story.

I wanted to just give you the birds eye view. I don’t know who you are, but I feel like I can’t start without the 30,000 foot view. SO today I am just going to give you the nuts and bolts of my history, who I am, where I came from, and a few really important events in my life. As I go forward I don’t know what this is going to look like: a youtube channel, a podcast, a blog or what, but I will tell more stories and go more in depth.

I am going to start with 0-18 years old in which I was born in a suburb of San Diego. My mom was a teenager: she was 17 and one month. My dad was 20 and they weren’t married. But they made it work. When I was 6, immediately after I finished kindergarten, we moved to Washington State because my dad had lost his job (future story) and his parents had moved to eastern Washington and were building a house and retiring. I grew up in this tiny little town in the Okanogan valley. (I’m not going to get more specific that for privacy reasons for other family members.) Basically, my childhood was pretty tough. Most people would agree that it was a tough upbringing. My parents did drugs, they were alcoholics, there was physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Money was always tight. My mom was a SAHM until I was in 8th grade-ish. There’re some primitive living situations- no running water or electricity for a several years.  But overall, I always knew my parents loved me. I really enjoyed growing up in a small town. It felt safe to me. And I really loved my grandparents who lived there. I got to spend a lot of time with them. I graduated as the valedictorian of my graduating class- ’98. And I went off to college at the University of Washington.

The second chapter of my life was from the time I was 18 until about 23 where I went to college. I was engaged to my high school sweetheart and broke it off with him because I met my now-husband my freshman year of college. I was inactive from the church I grew up in (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) from about 14.5 until 20 years old. During these college years I decided to go back to church and my live-in boyfriend at the time came with me, investigated, and he’s now a convert to the church. Also during this time was one of the biggest turning points of my life: my mother passed away after a car accident. But I went on to graduate from college and start working.

The third chapter starts when I am pregnant and we’ve just moved to the Bay Area. My husband started working and I am plunged into motherhood, which was not an easy transition for me. I always wanted to be a mom, but surprisingly it wasn’t easy. We had babies, we bought a condo (a story about trusting the lord). But during this time, I was really lost in who I was and what my purpose was. I was not being the kind of wife and mom I wanted to be. I have three children, 2 girls and a boy. My oldest is almost 16 years old right now, my 2nd is almost 13 and my son turned 11 a few months ago. When my oldest daughter started 2nd grade I began homeschooling her and I homeschooled her and my other kids for 5 years until the time we moved to Germany.

The fourth chapter starts with Germany. My husband and I love travel; it’s a really big value of ours. We always dreamed of living abroad. We never really thought it would come true, but we had this rare opportunity so we had to take it. We ended up living in Germany for 1 year. We lived 30-45 minutes away from where my husband’s grandmother grew up, so that was close to our heart (she raised my husband). And we lived in a town called Bremen. Our last name, Bremer, means from Bremen. I have tons of stories about living in Germany and how that really stretched me and was a turning point in my life to where I am now. I was in Germany when I found life coaching through the podcasts of the amazing Jody Moore and her mentor Brooke Castillo who runs the Life Coach School. Right after we moved home from abroad, I signed up to go to life coach training and now I am a life coach and I’m building my business and it’s the hardest most wonderful things I have done besides raising children. I’m learning how to lean into my negative emotions, how to juggle lots of different moving pieces with still being a mom and my husband works full time and running a household and friends and church callings and all the things.

That pretty much brings us to today. We’ve been home from Germany for 2 years. I have changed so much in the last 2.5 years since finding life coaching. I literally went from being a shy, anxious scared person over pretty much everything: from cleaning my house to driving cars to talking to people. To now I truly honestly feel so confident and I know who I am and I am so much more sure of myself. Not to say I don’t have tons of work left to do, but I am a totally different person. I don’t know why I am supposed to tell my story, but I know that I am supposed to. I know that a higher power wants me to, which I can only assume means that someone out there will be changed or inspired or taught by some of the things I’ve gone through in my life.

I will be talking a lot about the lessons I’ve learned and the themes I’ve seen in my life. As I put together a really quick outline for this today I realized there were some themes I could already see:

  1. Trust the Lord- you’ll be hearing more about my faith and spiritual experiences and the miracles I’ve seen in my life.
  2. If you feel it, chances are others are feeling it too. So many people I’ve talked to feel like they are alone in feeling broken. I want to assure you that pretty much everyone feels that way. I’ve clung to the idea that I’m not alone even if I don’t know who else is feeling the same way, but odds are if I feel this way someone else does too.
  3. Many of my transformation moments have come when someone else tells me what they’ve seen in me and it resonates. I have several stories about this.
  4. Work hard. You grow through your trials, through the hard, tough stuff. It requires you to work hard on an emotional level.

Thank you for reading along. Feel free to share this or any future stories with anyone you feel could use it. Follow me on social media or subscribe to my youtube channel. If you feel like I have some wisdom to impart or questions to ask me, feel free to reach out: @denitabremercoaching on IG and FB, or email me at denita@denitabremer.com

Focus on what you get from sex.

Let’s talk about giving and receiving in relationship. Specifically with sex.

Many of my clients have an underlying belief that sex is for men. That the purpose of sex and sexuality has nothing to do with women, other than they are required to show up, at least in the case of a monogamous relationship.

(I’ve been there friends.)

This naturally leads to the idea that when engaging in sex, women are only giving, not receiving.

If this is true for you, of course you don’t love sex! You are constantly giving and serving everyone around you, and it’s just one. more. thing.

You may even feel like you have lost yourself amongst all the giving.

You don’t think of sex as a necessity, at least in the strictest sense.

Sex is the means to an end: having children. And sure, sex is for bringing husband and wife closer together.

But what if sex is also about receiving?

Photo by Hanneke Laaning on Unsplash

Think about compliments. When you give a compliment, it feels good. You have lifted someone else’s day.

What about when you receive a compliment? Does that feel good, or is it a little uncomfortable? Are you able to receive it graciously? Can you say ‘thank you’ and then just sit with the compliment and let it sink in? Or do you immediately feel the need to reciprocate? Or justify. “These old shoes? My sister gave them to me!”

Are you able to receive well?

How does it feel when you give someone a compliment but they explain it away or immediately reciprocate with a compliment for you?

It’s like they didn’t really hear you.

Now imagine you give a compliment and then they say, “Thank you- I am going to take a moment to fully receive this.”

THAT feels good. As the giver and as the receiver.

Let’s bring it back to sex.

I promise, it’s not all about giving, but also about receiving. Your husband wants to know that he can give you pleasure and that you want to be with him.

You receiving him well is like receiving a compliment well. It feels good for both of you.

Receiving is also giving. It’s a gift you give to the other person, whether we are talking about compliments or sex. You are saying, “I see you. I hear you.”

You can only see and hear others as well as you are able to allow yourself to be seen and heard.

This also means you can only give as well as you are able to receive.

If sex is only for him, you probably aren’t receiving it well and it’s limiting your capacity to give of yourself in an intimate way.

In this case, focus on what you get from sex. And if you aren’t getting anything is it because your husband just isn’t giving or because you are not acknowledging his gift?

My challenge for you this week is to pay attention to how well you are able to give and receive. Is there anything you would like to improve? Does making a conscious effort to receive well change your ability to give well?

Could connecting with your body be the way to results in your life?

Laura Tremaine’s most recent 10 Things to Tell You podcast episode talks about connecting with your body. She discussed “the miracle of our bodies and what makes us come truly alive” with her pilates instructor. This podcast episode spurred in me some reflection about WHY we should connect with our bodies.

I identified three “problems” that keep us from connecting with our bodies. I am sure there are many more, but this is a bird’s-eye view:

  1. We are taught that our bodies are magnificent creations and we should be grateful for them, receiving a body is an essential part of Heavenly Father’s plan, yet when we are talking about our bodies, we often focus on what is wrong. We do not truly embrace our bodies as a gift from God.
  2. We are numbing ourselves– disconnecting ourselves– from our bodies, because we think it will make us feel better. But it generally has the opposite effect.
  3. Many adult women do not have any activity in which they feel true joy in their bodies. This is a problem because emotion is a vibration in our bodies. If we are to feel true joy in this life, it is going to happen in our bodies, not in our heads.
  4. We don’t recognize that our emotions come from our thoughts. In our culture we are taught that our feelings come from outside of us, specifically other people.

Feeling the emotions and sensations in our bodies is THE way to getting the results we want in our lives. I’m not just talking about fitness goals, but EVERY goal. Our emotions drive our actions which bring results. So often we think we are feeling the emotions but really we are just thinking thoughts that feel awful.

Photo by Rima Kruciene on Unsplash

So how do we overcome these problems? Here are some ideas:

  1. Participate in an activity that brings you genuine joy. Like a butterfly sensation in the pit of your stomach. Children are great at this: swings, trampolines, bike riding, finger painting, rollercoasters, etc. It doesn’t have to be complicated. (One suggestion is sex, if it is fun for you.)
  2. When you have an emotion– good or bad– let yourself feel it. Where is it in your body? What does it feel like? Use as many adjectives as possible. Don’t resist or run away from it. Just sit in the emotion.
  3. Be grateful for your body and what it can do. Write a list of every little way your body has been a blessing to you. Dig deep here if you feel embarrassment or shame around your body.
  4. Pay attention to when you engage in any activity to distract yourself or numb yourself from feeling something. This could be snacking or overeating, scrolling social media, sleeping, TV watching. Can you just feel the feeling instead? Remember it is just a vibration in your body.

We need to get into our bodies and feel our feelings if we want to obtain a fulness of joy in this life. AND a fulness of joy requires a fulness of sorrow. This is how our capacity is expanded.

I hope you found this thought provoking or helpful in some way. If you would like help getting into your body and feeling your emotions, I would be honored to partner with you. Click this link for a free 45 minute consultation: calendly.com/denitabremercoaching