Who You Really Are | Kyle McMurray Coaching, LLC

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Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Look, I’m just going to come right out and say it, everyone’s family is weird. I know, you probably think that you need to put up this big charade to let all of us know that your family is perfect, but deep down, you know, all of us have this one family member. . . and there is some truth to that old joke. . . if you can’t think of who that person is in your family, it may just be you.

You’re listening to Living the Freedom Life podcast, this is episode 124 and today we are talking about Who You Really Are.

I want to pose something to you. Think about this, okay?

If the only interaction I have with my Aunt Nean, (yes, I have an Aint’ Nean as we called her. I told you, I wasn’t raised on a paved road. You can’t make this stuff up) But if the only interaction I have with my Aunt Nean most of the year is by looking on her social media, then I don’t know Aunt Nean very well. I only know about what Aunt Nean posts on social media. See we only post what we want to post. It’s hard to really know someone when all you look at is what they want you to see all year long and then expect to have a real concept of who that person is when you share Turkey and Giblets with them. Now if I were to spend time with my Aunt Nean, holding a skein while she sews, I would find out who she really is.

Another example, If the only time I get to see my daughter’s face is when I walk down the hallway and look at her pictures on the wall, how many of you know that I will always see her as the same age in the photo? And you know that won’t go over well while she is in grad school. She’s an adult now. She’s doing great, she adults better than I do, but I’ll only see her at the age in the photos. I don’t have a chance to see Who She really is.

All of us imagine ourselves seeing the world around us as completely accurate. We think that we have an accurate view of the world. When in all actuality, that’s not true. In fact, it’s nowhere close to being accurate. It’s been proven both clinically and proven in the field by many Psychologists, Psychiatrists and Anthropologists, that our accuracy of seeing the world is pretty poor.

Today, this weekend, whenever and however you are celebrating this Thanksgiving, I’m going to assume that you are around family.

Yes, we are to reflect on things and people and situations that we are thankful for being in our lives.

But one thing that evaporates as quickly as the steam of a good dinner roll, is taking the time to realize that these people, who God saw fit to merge your DNA, your family, are sometimes difficult to deal with. Difficult to forgive. And even more difficult to set boundaries with.

We need to come to a point and realize that they are just people who are trying to do the best at life that they know how. They are living life the best way with the tools they have, trying to make the best of it. I’ll have more to say about that in a moment.

I know, you are too. But we expect mercy from others. We know the reason why we are the way we are.

Let’s take the time to mercifully consider the reasons why others are the way they are.

If there is damage or toxic behavior in your family, then draw boundaries. Please.

Realize that you are worth protecting and if you are being guilt ridden into spending time with someone in your family that is not healthy, then please let me encourage you, draw some boundaries.

I know, the topic of Boundaries is a pretty common topic. It’s talked about a lot.

Let me talk with you a little about the differences between a few things.

There is a difference between someone setting a Boundary, and Forgiving someone.

Forgiveness is releasing the pain you have that someone else caused. Forgiveness is about the condition of your heart, and you having the authority of not letting darkness stay in your heart. Forgiveness is you evicting darkness from your heart. It has nothing to do with their performance or their words. This is all about what happens inside you.

Drawing a Boundary is something a little different, and it is not unforgiveness. Just because you are drawing a boundary with someone doesn’t mean that you haven’t forgiven them.

A boundary needs to happen when you are hurt, or wounded, or something happens where trust is torn down. They’ve done something that you can no longer trust them in some area. In other words, they’ve done something that broke your trust.

You can forgive them. We’ve already talked about that. But when we draw a boundary is where we say, “You can no longer have access to this area of my heart”.

I cannot trust you with this area of my life and you no longer have access to it until something changes. And I say when that is okay.

Now, our challenge is to give them an opportunity to build back trust. Some will fail. That means that we need to keep the boundary in place. And maybe this is an indicator to advance that boundary. We can talk about that one on one if you like.

This gives them an opportunity to build back trust.

This is not done by conversation. Words cannot “fix this”. That’s manipulation.

Words do not build back trust.

Action over time builds back trust.

We’re out of time today, but I want to thank you for listening. It really means a lot to us that you take the time to spend five or six minutes with us each week.

The reason we share these things with you through this podcast is that we want to help. We want to do what we can to help you Live The Freedom Life.

It’s not just a tagline. This is our desire.

Until next time, living the freedom life, this is Kyle.