230: Agency Maximization After Betrayal

Because while someone else's choices may have changed your life without your permission, they did not take away your ability to choose what happens next.

I believe agency is one of the greatest gifts God has given us.

And some of you may call it free will, but just hear me out.

We have the ability to choose, learn, change, grow, set boundaries, ask for help, walk away, stay, rebuild, forgive, say no, say yes, and decide who we are and who we want to become.

But here's something really important.

Agency is not the same as control.

I think a lot of us are trying to control our spouses and other people.

You don't have control over everything that happens in your life.

And that is an uneasy thought if you really sit there and think about it.

You don't control your spouse.

You don't control whether they tell you the truth.

You don't control whether they're remorseful or not.

You don't control whether they change.

And you don't even have complete control over emotions initially that show up in your body, right? I've had so many moments that how I've responded to something, especially finding out my husband cheated on me, It was like an out-of-body experience.

I'm like, wow, I don't know where that came from.

But it's like we, you know, whether we screamed or yelled or whatever happened.

So sometimes we don't have control over that.

But remember, you still have agency.

And learning the difference between agency and control can completely change the way you heal.

And that's my hope for each of you is that we all heal.

So there are five A's that I'm going to go over.

Acknowledge, allow, assess, act, and author.

Okay, so we're going to start off with acknowledge.

Acknowledge first, we got to acknowledge what wasn't your choice.

So we got to acknowledge our reality.