Living Today with Jeanne Stevens (Mental Health & Wellness Series)

Too often, you may be rehashing the past or rehearsing the future, instead of living today.

Jeanne Stevens talks with the AllMomDoes Podcast host, Julie Lyles Carr, about how learning to ask herself one little question changed everything and taught her how to live today.

Interview Links:

• Find Jeanne Online | Instagram | Facebook

Transcription:

Purposely: Your life, God’s purpose. Listen at onpurposely.com.

Julie Lyles Carr: Hey there I’m Julie Lyles Carr of the AllMomDoes podcast where we are in a series on mental health and mental wellness. Let’s jump right into the next episode.

Today on the AllMomDoes podcast, I’m so thrilled to be able to introduce you to Jeanne Stevens. She is in the Chicago area. She has some really great insights she’s going to share with us today about how we need to get a little more comfortable with dealing with our today and how to do that. Well, Jeanne thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Jeanne Stevens: Uh, thank you, Julie. It is such a delight to be here with you and your listeners and talking about something that is so near and dear to my heart. So thanks for having me. 

Julie Lyles Carr: Oh, we’re just so thrilled to have you and. I am thrilled because you live just right down the road from my oldest daughter who is in Chicago. I did not realize this. Right. So tell us what you do in Chicago. 

Jeanne Stevens: Yes, my husband and I, uh, co-pastor a church, we started it in our living room about 11 years ago now, uh. We’re going to celebrate, uh, 11 years of ministry and, uh, it’s just been an incredible journey of, of growth and transformation and highs and lows and learning and unlearning and, uh, everything in between. I like to tell people our, our mission as a church is that we want to lead people into a transforming relationship with Jesus. And I feel like I’ve been the greatest recipient of the mission. I have been transformed from the inside out. So that’s what we do. Uh, we live in Chicago, we have two teenage kids – a 13 year old and a 16 year old, uh, two very emotionally needy dogs, um, and that’s, that’s our family. So yeah. 

Julie Lyles Carr: Love that. Love that. So you are still in the thick of it with teenagers and, it is, you know, I never want to scare moms who are listening because toddlerhood, I know can be really daunting in its own way. And then you kind of move into a season where they’re a little more independent and then you come into teenage-hood and that is kind of a whole other world as well. And again, not to scare anybody off or to play into some of the tropes that we hear, but there is something to having those teenage years where you’re realizing you’re in the last few pages of all the things that you’re trying to infuse into your kids before you launch them. How have those teenage years been for you and your husband so far as you’re navigating both ministry and then teenagers. And teenage-hood in the middle of pandemic, which is a whole other chapter that we’ll have to unpack at another time. 

Jeanne Stevens: Exactly. Exactly. You know, I, I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and they just had, uh, kids. And so they’ve got some, a toddler and a baby, and she’s like, I’m just tired all the time. You know?

And I was remembering back to that phase of infants and toddlers and preschoolers. And I remember somebody saying to me when I was in that phase, when your kids are young, you’re physically tired. And when your kids get older, you start to become emotionally tired. And so it’s just like a long journey of being tired. So I would say with this journey with our kids – and they’re incredible – Elijah is our 16 year old and Gigi is our 13 year old – and navigating through the pandemic as well has been so challenging, lots of transition. Um, but especially even, you know, you think about what we’re going to talk about here in the moment, um, of, of trying to be in the present with our kids. Uh, I have found myself really trying to practice being here now with them instead of rehearsing, “oh, my gosh, Elijah’s leaving here in two years. Have I taught him everything he needs to know? You know, is he good at his laundry? Does he know how to make seven meals? Is he going to clean up his dorm room? Are his roommates going to think he’s a slob or are they going to think that he’s nice and tidy and clean? And how does that reflect on his mom?”

Right. And so there’s, there’s all of these, um, realizations, when your kids get into those teen years that there, there is a, uh, a new threshold and a new finish line coming. We never, we never stop parenting, but the seasons of parenting shift and change. Right. And I’ve just become so aware of those. And instead of trying to rehearse, you know, him walking out the door, really trying to appreciate what we have right here and now. Um, how do I help him navigate all of the things that he’s experiencing in a new high school, in the midst of a pandemic – spent his freshman year online in a zoom screen, you know, and now trying to, you know, step into all of these new social and emotional realities of high school?

Uh, and how do I as a mom be present with him instead of just try to get him out here in the future where I think he needs to be, or, or even for me personally, um, rehashing things, you know, that’s also a thing as a mom where you think. Maybe I missed something. Maybe I should have done this. Why didn’t I do this earlier?

You know? And that’s such a, a possibility to pour on guilt or to pour on shame on ourselves. Right. Uh, and so, yeah, it’s, it’s been such a – people always say, “you write what you need.” I realized I wrote the book that I need, uh, in helping me learn how to receive the gift of the present. And gosh, are my kids, some of the best professors to help me live in the moment and help you learn in that moment.

Julie Lyles Carr: You know, I love that what you’ve tapped into when we’re not living in the moment. I think we often go into overwhelm and I certainly find this for myself. So often I will be doing things that I think are helping me navigate a certain level of anxiety or stress or whatever. And then I’ll find myself with this sense of being very overwhelmed again.

Now, for me in this stage of my life, it typically has to do with deadlines and tasks and things that I think need to get done. And oh yeah, this kid’s coming home for a couple of weeks. I need to make sure I’ve got this done and that kid. And what I’m finding too. That’s interesting, Jeanne, right now, as we are emerging, many of us from what has been a time where things have been a little more shuttered and there was an overwhelm that came with that, but I’m now seeing our calendar populating again, in a way that I’m going, oh, wait a minute.

I’m seeing the kids that I still have at home. I still have four at home and I’m seeing their schedules skilling back up. And the 14 year old twins, they’re going to be needing somebody to drive them a variety of places in the evening. I’m like, oh, This, I kind of forgot about that for a while, and I can feel that overwhelm coming because I’m typically someone who is already rehearsing the future. 

But it seems to me, there are a couple personalities and I’ve heard Dr. Les Parrott talked about this in an interview we had, and we’ll, we’ll go back to that interview and post it in the show notes so people can go listen. But those of us who tend to live more in the future, those of us who tend to live more in the past, talk to me about how we can determine within our own personalities – are we somebody who’s rehashing a lot of where things were and that’s why we’re feeling overwhelmed? Or are we someone who’s living way off in the future getting overwhelmed by what we have coming? So where do you find people kind of land and how do we determine who we are in that lane?

Jeanne Stevens: I love that question and I, I think that, Julie, all of us do both at some point or another. Um, we either rehash the past or we, we rehearse the future. And in many ways, uh, when you think about it, um, when we’re doing that, we’re not here, right? We’re somewhere else in our mind. And thinking about the past or thinking about the future, are ways we contemplate life.

And that’s an ineffective way to actually transform your life. It’s just a way to, to get stuck in your mind, um, to rehash something, rehearse something, instead of actually receive what’s here now, which is the title of the book. It’s, it’s a question to help you pull yourself back to the present moment.

But what I have found is there’s, there’s five markers of how we rehash, and there’s five markers of how we rehearse. The markers for how we rehash – and if you ever find these things showing up in your life, and, and again, like I said, we all do this. So, uh, you know, if you’re rehashing the past, you tend to be somebody that gravitates towards blame.

Um, you potentially gravitate towards some shame that you’re carrying around. There’s most likely some unprocessed grief in your life. Maybe even some bitterness or some unforgiveness or even guilt. Those are the five markers that when you see those things rising up in your life, blame shame, grief, bitterness, or guilt.

Those are indicators that you’re not living in the here and now – you are in the past. You’re thinking through something that did happen, you wished it didn’t happen. Um, you know, you have some regrets over that and you continue to play it over and over and over in your mind. Those are the markers of rehashing.

The markers of rehearsing are usually worry – like you just talked about that feeling of overwhelmedness, um, even a sense of denial. Denial is actually something that’s out in the future and you don’t want to face it. Pretending, uh, is another one. Obligation – feeling like I “should” do that; whenever the word “should” shows up in your thoughts, that’s an indicator you’re rehearsing the future, uh, or waiting in control.

Those are the markers of both rehashing and rehearsing. Um, and like you were just talking, you know, this, this feeling of overwhelmingness. And I think so many of us are emerging from this iteration of the pandemic. I’m not sure whether it’s over, I don’t know. And we’re, we’re emerging into this next phase and that overwhelmedness is simply living in a “not yet” that is worse than your “now.” It’s it’s overwhelmingness and worry is living in a “not yet” that is worse than your “now.” And, um, as I was researching and studying and even honestly getting to, um, my own sense of exhaustion and overwhelmedness, I realized that I was not consistently here. I was either rehashing things in the past or rehearsing things in the future.

And yet when I studied the scriptures, I realized, well, God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. To access God, you have to be in the present. You can’t, you can’t go to the past and access God, and you can’t go out into the future and access God. The zip code of God is he’s here and now right here, you and I, we get to experience the presence of God in this moment.

And so this question, this idea of what’s here now emerged for me, uh, kind of on the doorsteps of exhaustion and overwhelmedness and burnout and wanting to see if, if there’s another way, like, can we actually learn how to live here and be here instead of somewhere else in our minds or in our thoughts or in our emotions or in our relationships.

And so I did, I came up with this question and I just decided, okay, I downloaded this app. It’s called Mind Jogger. And you can type in a question and it randomly asks you all throughout your day – it just pops up on your screen. And I typed in the question, “What’s here now?” as a way to help me start to practice presence because every time I, you know, kind of took a moment to identify – where am I? – I wasn’t really here. Right? I was thinking about something that happened yesterday or was worried about something that was going to happen tomorrow, or in a week, or, you know, 10 years from now that neither of which I have control over. And so every time this question popped up on my phone, it was a way for me to just answer three questions.

Okay. “What’s going on in my body?” “What’s going on in my mind?” And “What’s going on in my emotions?” And that centering question, it was, it was like giving myself spiritual direction, uh, and, and, and literal spiritual formation to pull myself back into the presence of God in this now moment and welcome myself.

I’m here. This is where I am right now with Julie talking about things I love talking about. I don’t need to worry about all the other things on my calendar later today. Like just be here. And there’s a sense of gratitude that rises up for the present moment. There’s a sense of belonging, right? There’s deeper connection when you’re with people.

So often when we talk to one, another people are not actually really listing. They’re thinking about what they’re going to say next, or they’re thinking about what is that person thinking about me? You know, they’re not really in the conversation. And I find, especially as a mom, when I give my kids the gift of presence, you can tell that they feel it.

My daughter, the other day was navigating through some, some middle school drama. You know, I could tell she just wanted me to come in and sit on the end of her bed and we just sat and we talked, we processed, there was nowhere for me to go. She could feel it. Mom is here with me right now. She opened up and she shared she’s right here.

She felt seen. And I think that’s the desire that we all have in our relationships. I think that’s what we desire in our relationship with God. Um, but gosh, have we learned how to be places other than here the moment? 

Julie Lyles Carr: Right. And it feels like to me, Jeanne, that this is particularly challenging for women. And by that, I mean, this: We have a lot of things showing up now in the literature, in the research that uh, women have 8 million scripts going on at any one moment. And I long felt that way, but there were some really interesting things that came out of the pandemic where women are now trying to work from the house, but also school the kids. And, and we saw, again, the disparity between the inner life often of a, of a guy and the inner life of a woman, particularly a woman who’s got kids and how those things, again, women are just piling – we just have piled on us – so many things that are not necessarily equally balanced between partners. And because of that, I find this notion of trying to stay in the present, even outside of my personality. That’s very future. Like the next, the next, the next. I find that, you know, I am sitting and speaking with someone and I’m really trying to attend to what they’re doing, but there is a side of my brain it’s right here. I’m pointing it to you – that is making the, the the grocery list and there’s the other part of me that’s listening for this appliance to go off. And there’s the other part of me that is very attentive to the fact that one of my kids is going to come through the door here in a minute from their class and I’m going to have to remind them that I’m in studio.

It’s, it’s almost like I can’t shut it off sometimes. Part of not being able to shut it off often means I’m functioning well as a mom, but maybe not so much as a human being. Right. So what do we do? I love the idea of an app to remind me “What’s here now?”, asking that question. The other piece for women too, though, I think is interesting not only is it the duties and roles that we’re trying to fill, and there’s so much going on with that, but I find too for women, there’s a lot of times that we have to ignore the question of “what’s going on” in my, if I am, I’m looking at what’s here now, and I look at the question of what’s going on in my body.

Well, I’ve got to ignore these cramps that are going on because I can’t just double over. And if I look at well, what’s going on within my own mind, well, I’m trying to keep these four plates going at the same time. So regardless of our personality, if we’re a rehasher or, or a rehearser sometimes to me, just by the fact we’re in the office of being a woman makes this presence challenging. 

What are some things we can do, whether we’re going forward into that rehearsing or backward into that rehashing in those things that are just that feel functional as a woman? How do we start to quiet some of those? 

Jeanne Stevens: Yes. Yeah. There’s, there’s so much research that has been done around our thought life and, uh, and I love that you even point out, you know, women have about 30,000 more thoughts a day than men.

Julie Lyles Carr: Wow. I did not know that. Thirty thousand more thoughts? So they just light up an MRI, like a Christmas tree next to her. 

Jeanne Stevens: And, um, you know, it, it ranges from about 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts in a day. So if a man is thinking 60,000, a woman is upwards about 80,000 thoughts per day, and it can be everything that you just said.

Right. Oh, I gotta make a grocery list. Oh, did I fill up the car with gas? Oh, uh, I need to RSVP to that party that I was invited to. Can I even go? I think there’s a volleyball tournament. Oh my gosh. You know, I’m going to be late for this meeting. What should I wear? You know, I mean, I think I just rattled off 10 and in under 10 seconds. 

Julie Lyles Carr: And in my brain, while you were doing that, I was counting out more for you. We’re probably up to about 25, because I’m being really present with you right now. 

Jeanne Stevens: But I actually talk about this in the, um, in the book and the last section, and I talk about the thought scripts and one of the things that I have learned, and this is through a lot of neuroscience, is the power of just noticing and naming.

Um, I’m having the thought versus I am the thought. Um, and it really is a gift and a blessing to just become a noticer of all of your thoughts. To become a noticer of, wow, my mind is really running. Can I pause and just be here now with all that’s running through my mind? And can I name these as a thought script versus a thought truth?

Because I think a lot of times what happens is we believe every thought we have, especially about ourselves as moms. Um, especially when we go into that past, right. I should have done this. I missed this. Um, if I was better at that, if I was more like her, maybe I wouldn’t have. Right. And these thought scripts actually keep us from being in the here and the now.

So one of the best things that we can just do is start to notice. Wow. I am really running a racket up there in my mind. It is going quickly. Um, I need to just pause. I need to breathe. What’s here now. And that noticing and that slowing down usually brings some spatialness to clear the thought script into a truth script, because most of the time my thought scripts are lies. My thoughts scripts are harmful. My thoughts scripts have a lot of should in them. My thoughts. My thoughts scripts have even, maybe have regret or, or worry, you know, about things that I have no control over, out in the future. And when we can shift those thought scripts into truth scripts, um, and notice the ways that it’s trying to take control of our minds.

You know, you think about the passage, take captive every thought, right? And can you imagine if we were trying to take captive 80,000 thoughts a day? I think what often happens it happens is that our we’re not taking captive. Our thoughts, our thoughts are taking us captive and they’re controlling our lives and the practice of just noticing, just noticing – um, wow. I have a lot of thoughts with condemnation in them and replacing that with there’s therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, you know, and just replacing unhealthy thought scripts with truthful thoughts scripts, because the unhealthy ones are just toxic. They’re not going to take us anywhere.

If anything, they’re going to just increase, um, the destructiveness of our thoughts and replacing those with truth, uh, allows us to actually practice presence. And so, you know, when that question would pop up on my phone – it still does – and my mind’s all over the place, I just paused and chose to notice and instead of condemning myself – cause that was usually what I started to do is just condemn.

Like, oh my gosh, you’re not here. You’re here, there and everywhere. Right, right. Um, can you just pause, offer yourself grace, get curious. Why are you, why are you having all of these thoughts? And can you come back into this now moment with God? And a lot of it is the gift of, of mindful practice. It’s the gift of, um, caring for ourselves.

It’s the gift of trusting that God wants to be with us in the present moment, uh, that, that this is where God is and, and God wants to be here with us. Right. Uh, and so can we be here with ourselves actually, um, and, and give ourselves the gift of, of the present moment. 

Gosh as a mom, I feel like I’m just moving at Mach speed at all times, taking care of everyone else but me and so much of the writing of this book was the reminder that I can’t take. I can’t take care of anyone unless I’m choosing to be still with myself and with God. And then the overflow of that is what’s going to be the blessing to others.

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It’s interesting to me that in our faith communities, I think it’s easy for us to slide into this. I know I certainly have been guilty of it. And then that means I’m then practicing it in my own personal walk in a way that can be really challenging that within our faith communities, we have made the idea of being in the presence of God, something attached to, “dream big” or “have big vision” or praying for things that are future forward or even the idea of, well, it’s only when I’m in a really resonating praise and worship service that I’m, that’s when I’m really in the presence of God and to have to unwind some of those ideas and concepts that we’ve put together and get to a place – as you’re saying – of understanding that we are present with him right now, he’s present with us right now. It’s not a location or a date on Sunday or whatever the thing is. And those are great things. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be part of faith communities, but suspend. It’s almost like we suspend the idea he’s with us.

Yeah, because we are pushing that into a future obligation or a future dream we have or something we want to see come to pass. I have heard it said recently that in the midst of all of this, with how crazy our thought lives are and how much is going on in our heads at all times, I have recently come across some research that this really surprised me and blew me away.

That people, there are people out there who don’t have a constantly running dialogue in their own head. Like they’re not, they are not narrating their life as they go. And I got to tell you, Jeanne, I am not only narrating my life all the time and Future-Casting, there’s a soundtrack going on in there. There is like, I don’t know, it’s a huge show.

There’s all kinds of stuff going on here. And part of what I’ve been trying to learn in that is, my particular kind of crazy is, um, not everybody’s inner life, both learning how to embrace the guy, the way that God wired me, because I do think, I think everyone is creative. So let me say that. I do think for some creatives of a certain ilk, We are all over the map in our own heads often, anyway, particularly in this FutureCasting place, but also we can take into rehashing and make it full bloom again, too.

I mean, all the sights sounds and everything. How do we do the work of embracing who God created us to be some of us with albeit noisier heads than others while also learning the rhythm and discipline of asking, “what, what is right now? What is happening right now? Noticing that because for some of us let’s face it, regardless of our role as women or moms, whatever our faith community may be saying to us, we have, we may have a faith community that really helps us practice lingering and understanding that. We may have a faith community that’s very forward reaching and that influences, but the very nature of what goes on inside of some of our heads, the way God wired us, can sometimes make this really challenging to notice in the moment. So how do we do that work of both loving who God created us to be, but also coaching ourselves into a place where we don’t embrace overwhelm is just part of how he created us. 

Jeanne Stevens: Yeah. I love that question, Julie, and I think it starts first with recognizing that presence is not a destination or a place. It’s a practice. And this is something that we are meant to do over and over and over again. Uh, You know, as is we have 60 to 80,000 thoughts in a day, we have the same capacity to practice presence in a day. Uh, it is natural for us to rehash and to rehearse.

That’s not going to necessarily stop in our lives. It’s what we do with it. And, and as I mentioned earlier, just learning how to pay attention. What’s going on here in my body. What’s going on here in my thoughts. What’s going on here in my mind. Um, and, and drawing ourselves back into the present moment.

It’s the gift of noticing. It’s the gift of getting curious. And then when we start to share that with other people, it does start to slow down the rate at which the, the thoughts come into our mind and we really do get to practice the gift of belonging, the gift of, um, what I write a little bit about this of intimacy – and intimacy is “into-me-see”.

And there’s not a human on the planet that doesn’t desire to be known and doesn’t desire to be seen. And we can’t know one another and we can’t see one another if we’re not really here, if we’re somewhere else in our mind. And the gift of this noticing and this slowing down and actually allowing ourselves to pause, to breathe. You know, I, I did it right before we jumped on, uh, our call today. I just paused and it literally took 30 seconds. I just said, okay, Jeanne, what’s here now. Okay. In your body, you’re feeling some butterflies. This is the very first podcast that you’re doing for this book. Okay. Just deal with those butterflies.

That’s okay. What’s here in your heart. I’m excited. A little scared. Okay. Welcome. Excitement and you’re a little fearful. That’s good. That’s okay. And what are your thoughts? I’m really excited to meet Julie and, and hopefully be a blessing to the people that listen. That’s what’s here now and that’s it.

That’s the practice. And then when I dialed up in the internet actually worked and we got on all of the technology happening and I could see your face, I could be present with you instead of everywhere else in my mind, everywhere else in all that’s to come and the rest of my day or what happened earlier, when, you know, I dropped my kids off at school, I could be here now.

And, um, it’s such a gift, right? Because then connection occurs, belonging occurs, gratitude occurs for this now moment that we don’t have to be anywhere else. And I think that especially coming out of the last two years, um, with so much rehashing and so much rehearsing occurring in all of our lives, the gift of receiving and being here.

I don’t know a human on the planet that doesn’t need this, that doesn’t need the gift of giving themselves a breath, a pause, a, a recentering into this now moment. And it’s so powerful because you connect in with God and I’m right there with you. You know, I think I used to think that the presence of God was like a place I had to go.

Like, you know, like, like the old Testament, it was the tabernacle. I had to go into a place. And what I have come to realize through the gift of holy spirit is the presence of God is in the here and now I’m just usually the one that’s not present to God’s presence. Right. Right. God’s presence is always here.

It’s not a place you have to go. It’s not, there’s not a, a list of things you have to do to get into it. It’s not a big worship service with beautiful music and candles lit and all of the right lighting. And while that can happen and you can experience God’s presence in those moments, you can experience it right here.

Now you can experience it when you’re getting ready in the morning. You can experience when you’re in the grocery store, you can experience it when you’re driving home. Uh, God’s presence is always present. And what our invitation is to get present to that person, that presence. 

Julie Lyles Carr: It reminds me of the writings of Brother Lawrence, practicing the presence of God.

Yeah. He, you know, he would see God in the soap bubble while he was clean. I mean, he, and he practiced it. He practiced that presence in the present. So as we begin wrapping up all these great thoughts, I mean, wow, we could keep going because I think we all need this so much. But talk to me about where the balance is, because I will say sometimes Jeanne, I see people avoid things they need to deal with from the past, by staying either present or very future forward.

I often will encounter people as well, who are not willing to. Forward and think ahead in ways that are wise, because they’re just living for the moment maybe. And they’re not thinking about what could be coming in, what they’re saying and doing in there today. So I don’t hear you saying that we are just to jettison things that have happened in the past, or be unwise about what could be coming in the future and not be preparing.

How do we make sure that we hit that right balance where we’re staying present. That we are asking the right question about what’s now, but at the same time deal with both those very amorphous and yet wildly kind of tangible past and future experiences. 

Jeanne Stevens: Yeah. I love that question, Julie. And listen, I have a counselor and a coach. My counselor helps me pay attention to things in my past. And my coach helps me pay attention to things that I am preparing for the future. So I am ALL ABOUT doing the work right, because when you do the work, the work works. And so I believe in soul work, I believe in emotional healing, I believe in forward thinking and wise planning and discernment. I am all about those things. And I actually. I think that since I have begun learning how to practice presence, it has given me more wisdom to know what to go digging in my dirt of the past.

You know, when I realized that my thoughts are regularly showing up with some blame or with some bitterness or with some guilt. Okay. That’s an indicator of, there are some things in my past that need to be faced. I need to do some work because my thought life and my body and my emotions are regularly drawing me to things like blame and bitterness and guilt.

Right. And so, um, and I often like to say that, um, relationships are the litmus test of transformation. And so you’re going to really see it in your relationships. If, if my husband and I, in our, um, strongly worded dialogues – also known as arguments – if blame continues to come up in those conversations, well, that’s a great indicator in the present moment. There’s something to look at, to go digging in the dirt of my past and figure out, okay. Why is blame showing up here on a regular basis or. If, if my thoughts are regularly leading me to worry, perhaps, or, um, a sense of controlling that that’s one of my biggest areas is trying to control everything that happens.

And when I find that I am regularly rehearsing control or rehearsing worry, well, that’s a great indicator of – I’m not thinking about the future through a healthy lens. I’m thinking about it through a lens of maybe trying to escape something, deny something, not face something that’s going on. And so I actually think that those are, um, key indicators to us when we practice presence, when those things show up, it is a good invitation to then go, okay. I need to do some work around this thing in my future and planning and preparing. Um, and I need to do some things in my past over these things that maybe haven’t, you know, had full healing or, um, continue to show up from, from my childhood or from, you know, past relational experiences.

And I, I believe those things can be, uh, indicators as to what to pay attention to. I often like to say that this question of what’s here now is kind of like that big red dot on the mall. Uh, when you go to the mall and the map, right. It’s a way to locate yourself and, and allow yourself to go, okay. Here’s where I really am. And here’s why I’m, I’m struggling with this thing in my past. And here’s why I’m not, you know, contemplating this future opportunity with wisdom. And so coming into the present moment actually is going to give you clarity. It’s going to give you a breath. It’s going to give you an opportunity to see it through a different lens.

Um, I’m a futurist too. I’m a, um, entrepreneur. I have stacks on stacks on stacks of ideas and you know, I’m, I’m a creative too. Oftentimes, I find that, um, if I’m not paying attention to all of that future thinking, it’s because of some level of avoidance of something I don’t want to pay attention to in the here and the now.

Um, and so it actually ends up being a good map for me, um, and then I can dream and anticipate the future from a place of health versus a place of unhealthy. 

Julie Lyles Carr: Such a great question to get a GPS what’s going on in our own hearts and souls. What’s here now. Jeanne, I’m so excited for you about the book it’s called “What’s Here Now: how to stop rehashing the past and rehearsing the future and start receiving the present.” Those three “R”s that you outlined for us. Where can listeners go to find out more about you? Where to find the book, all the goods. 

Jeanne Stevens: Yeah, they can find me at my website, jeannestevens.com, and it’s available at all the normal, um, retailers where books are sold.

So wherever you want to get your, your books from, uh, you can order it, you know, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, all of those places. 

Julie Lyles Carr: We’ll get all that in the show notes that Rebecca puts out. So listener be sure and go and find all those good things and good resources. Jeanne again, what a delight to have you, Jeanne Stevens, so much for being with me. And you can bet that I am going to do a much better job following this conversation. And here I am already future casting, but forgetting in the future, I’m going to do a better job of asking what’s here now. So great to have you. 

Jeanne Stevens: Thanks so much, Julie, such a joy to be with you. 

Julie Lyles Carr: Check out our show notes because that’s where you’re going to find all the great links and extra resources. Rebecca puts those together every week. Hey, before you finish up today we’d love your help with this. We are putting together – first time we’ve done it this way – we’re putting together an episode with your questions.

It can be any questions you have specific to this series, but it can also be just anything general. Faith issues. Mom stuff. Wife stuff. Whatever. Just send it our way. If you would send those to [email protected]. That’s [email protected] I would so appreciate it. We’re really excited to put together a special episode for you, and we want to hear from you. 

Join us on the socials. Go to allmomdoes.com for more posts and resources and great tools. I love to hear from you too. I am Julie Lyles Carr in all the places on the social medias. And I’ll see you next time on the AllMomDoes podcast.