Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Changing Ideologies with Jen Hatmaker

Episode Date: August 30, 2021

In this episode, Sharon sits down with author and speaker Jen Hatmaker to address the challenges of confronting firmly held beliefs, how to grow and adapt without abandoning your identity, and giving yourself the permission to explore. If you are trying to reconcile new and old ideas amid growth and change, dive into this riveting and humorous discussion between Jen and Sharon. For more information on this episode including all resources and links discussed go to https://www.sharonmcmahon.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Visa and OpenTable are dishing up something new. Get access to primetime dining reservations by adding your Visa Infinite Privilege Card to your OpenTable account. From there, you'll unlock first-come, first-served spots at select top restaurants when booking through OpenTable. Learn more at OpenTable.ca forward slash Visa Dining. This episode is brought to you by Dyson OnTrack. That's ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca.ca. Dyson OnTrack. Headphones remastered. Buy from DysonCanada.ca. With ANC on, performance may vary based on environmental conditions and usage. Accessories sold separately.

Yay, you're here. And so is Jen Hatmaker. If you don't know Jen, allow me to tell you that she has already written 1 million best-selling books. She has a cookbook coming out. She has a very popular podcast called For the Love. Today we're chatting about what it looks like to walk away from something that you've known your whole life and to move in the direction of what you believe to be true and what you believe is right for you, even if it means leaving behind a lot of what you've known. It's a discussion about what it

means to sort of change ideologies. And I think you're going to find it really insightful and interesting. Jen is just funny, approachable, so likable. So let's dive into this episode. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Jen, thank you so much for joining me today. This is an absolute pleasure. I love your podcast. Thank you for paving the way for people like me to be like, you know what's a great podcast to listen to? That Jennifer hat maker. Do you hate it when people call you Jennifer? Well, no, it's actually nostalgic for me because the only person in the world that only calls me Jennifer is my dad.

That's it. Full iteration of Jennifer at all times. And so anytime somebody says it, it's like nurturing to me. It's like parental. Yes. Yes. My instinct, for whatever reason, just in my mind, I think of you as Jennifer, even though there's absolutely no reason to call you that. I just like, oh,

Jennifer. Although the reason could be potentially that is my name. And so you're not way off. You know, I think I so wanted to have Jennifer differentiation because obviously every single girl child born in 1974 was named Jennifer. Every one of us, there was no exceptions. And so I just so deeply wanted to be not Jennifer Kay. Like, cause that's what I was in every classroom from all of my life. And so Jen was born like, you know, I met Jen. It's, it's cuter. It's a little edgier. It's shorter for crying out loud. And so it just is what it is. And my dad's like, hello, Jennifer, forget that noise.

I will call you what I named you. That's right. Well, I'm going to call you Jennifer. Okay. You have all the permissions. So if people are not familiar with your acclaimed success. Oh, mercy. Please fill us in.

How many books have you written, Jennifer? Well, I think it's 12, might be 13. And that's a genuine not sure. And let me just tell you, critically acclaimed, that's a slow burn, lady. So don't get it wrong. It wasn't like, woo, Jen hit the scene and just like powered up. It was a super slow burn. And fortunately for literature, fortunately for mankind, nobody read the first few. And this is such good news for everyone.

Finally, you know, so people started reading some things that I wrote. And so writing is my first love. I do a lot of other things and I love them too, but there's just something about putting my fingers on that keyboard. It's where I learn what I think. It's how I figure out what I know. It's how I process and it's how I act obnoxious. And I need all those things in my life. Are you a journaler? You know, you'd think I would be, wouldn't you, as a career writer and someone for whom writing is such a processing tool. But I'm actually not.

Unless you just consider that my books, because who writes 13 books? That's for maniacs. My books are something of a journal. Yeah. They're all nonfiction. So there's so much of my life in there and my story and my processes and the arc of a ton of things I've walked through. And so they end up sort of reading like a journal, but in the day to day, I am a mental processor. I don't know how you do. I think it all out all the time. I'm thinking and thinking and thinking. Are you verbal processor?

Are you a mental processor? No, I'm a thinker. I don't want to talk about it until I already have some opinions formed about it. Like, don't talk to me about this right now. I cannot help you. When I say it out of my mouth, my opinion is in cement. That's where I'm at. Okay. You are

just getting a conclusion. This is not a conversation. Here's, here's where I am. Yeah. Take it or leave it. And you can choose to leave it. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and plenty do plenty do. Okay. Here's one of the things I wanted to talk to you about, because this is something I talk about quite a lot, even though we are both mental processors and we have already formed opinions about things before we start talking about them. Sometimes those opinions, feelings, viewpoints change. They change and rightfully so. It's actually the mark of intellectual maturity. Absolutely. Human growth to say, I have changed my viewpoint. I know that you have walked that road publicly. I want to hear from you a little bit more about that process

of starting at point A and arriving at point B. And it's not even that important to talk about what it is that you changed your positions about. I want to hear more about the process of how do you go from here in a public position A to over here in a public position B. It's a tricky needle to thread. I'll tell you that. I don't necessarily envy other leaders who have the responsibility of doing this work in the public eye. You know, most people get to really wrestle through their ideologies, maybe their theology, their perspectives privately because it's sloppy. You know, it's a sloppy mess. It's not tidy at

all. The only thing that is tidy, perhaps, is where you start and where you finish. That can be encapsulated a little bit in cleaner language, but the middle part is just a sloppy mess. It's tricky to navigate that, and I have done it. You're right. For me, because I kind of came up initially through a faith space, All of my early work was located really inside evangelical subculture. That was where I was raised and that was my native tongue. And that was the worldview, the only worldview I had ever owned and had never been challenged. So the process for me,

it's true because we can swap out the thing, whatever the thing is, the thing that's evolving. But the process is really similar, I think, for a lot of people, which is that for most of us, and again, this is such a wild positive. Like this is a good thing. This has been couched, at least often in faith circles, as dangerous as being not faithful, not obedient, straying from the truth or whatever. But I find spiritual curiosity a wonderful characteristic. And I would love to see our faith spaces embrace curiosity more than we've embraced certainty. So for me, my process of evolution always begins because I've evolved through a ton of things. It's not just one thing.

A sense of cognitive dissonance. That's usually where it starts for me. It starts in my head. My head, my eyes, I'm observing something that isn't matching something I either believe or I thought I believed or I've been told, it's out of alignment. So if this, then this, but this is not that thing. This is something different. If this is supposed to produce life and joy, but what my eyes and my ears are suggesting to me is that it's producing pain and disconnection, something's wrong. And so for me, it's a cognitive dissonance where I just kind of go, okay, if something's wrong, could it be my understanding of this thing that maybe the thing itself has some merit to it? Or I don't really know. I'm not sure. Can I evaluate this? Can I be curious about this? And then the next big step for me, which I think is

where a lot of people get hung up. And I understand this so deeply. My compassion for this is wildly deep is then permission to explore internal permission. Like Jen, you get to ask these questions. If something is not proving out the way it said it was going to, you get to ask some hard questions of it. You get to push hard on it and see what holds and what doesn't that despite what you've been told is not a sign of a weak faith or a weak character. I think it's the opposite. I think it's the sign of emotional intelligence, mental intelligence, and ultimately spiritual intelligence. With permission granted, if you can give it to yourself, because it can be disorienting

in your own heart and mind to ask hard questions of tenets that you once held dear and assumed were immovable. But then you have a whole world of opportunity in front of you. Teachers are everywhere. We have so many ways to listen and learn, so many tables we can pull our little chairs up to and go, what do you guys think about this? What are you talking about here at this table? What's your perspective of this thing? And to me, that's when it gets really exciting and we get to use our own good brains and our own good instincts and even evidence. Kind of like you, I'm a little bit nerdy. I'm an evidence data-based person. And so sometimes the data just proves out and you go, oh, I think the way you are understanding this is more true than the way I was understanding it. And I'm just going to head

in this direction. That's a real long answer. I love it though. I love the idea that there are so many tables that you can pull your chair up to. I love that mental picture of there's so much to learn in the world and to take the position of 100% certainty of all things, of all things, instead of curiosity to learn, because we have brains that crave learning and to shut that down and say, well, I'm certain about all of the things we are actually shutting down a tremendous potential for growth. Totally. That's very interesting and exciting because I love to learn things. Yeah, me too. Me too. And, and I think there's this really necessary element that goes into this stage of learning and reconsidering, which is a sense of humility that we get to the point where we are able to say, my perspective is deeply located in a microcosm.

It's my gender. It's my race. It's where I was born. It's who I was born to. It's the type of environment I grew up in. It's the traumas I've experienced. Like this is one perspective. It's mine, but it's just one. I mean, it's pretty arrogant to imagine that I have figured it all out, you know? So I think this humility to walk into these conversations saying, I know what I know, but I don't know what you know. And I'd like to hear it. I'd like to be challenged. The moment that we've closed the door on that and said, no, I've got it.

It's sealed in. I hope I never get there. I hope I am still curious when I'm dying. I totally feel that. Talk to me a little bit more about the challenges of changing ideologies, of changing your mind in the public eye and what has been the reaction and how have you handled that? It's a big one. And I would never suggest that there aren't repercussions to changing your mind or changing your ideology or changing how you identify or changing your beliefs even because there are. Of course, as I mentioned, I was very deeply embedded in evangelical women's subculture, which is a whole thing. I mean, it is just a whole thing.

And I knew it well, I can navigate it really, really well. I just knew it backwards and forwards and I knew how to succeed there. And I did, I knew just the right note to hit and the right words to say. And I knew what I was supposed to do and also what I was not supposed to do. I knew what I was supposed to think and what I was not supposed to think. And so I'm a rule follower. That's shocking. I know because I followed none of them in my adult life, but in my bones, I'm a rule follower. And so I was just set up to succeed there. And I did. I was perfect for it. So I knew going in when the cognitive dissonance was banging, and it was around more than one thing, women in leadership. It was around the LGBTQ community. It was around doctrines of authority, around church structure, around male leadership,

patriarchy. I have a long list. I already knew because I'd seen other people do it in the public eye what was going to happen. It wasn't a mystery. It was incredibly predictable. I knew exactly because in that subculture, and really, I think this is maybe true of most of our subcultures, whatever they are, the prize, of course, for staying neatly inside of it, following the spoken and unspoken rules is belonging. That is your prize. You get to belong. You get to stay. You get to be cherished here. In my case, you even get to succeed here. But that's also the first thing that gets revoked. So when you step out, belonging is the first thing to go. I knew saying these things out loud, wrestling with them in a public way would have major and real life effects

on my life financially, in my career, in my ministry, in my friendships inside my subculture. And it absolutely did. But I got to the point where I realized that I could either have my career as I knew it, or I could have my integrity, but I just couldn't have both. I was going to have to sacrifice one for the other. And I picked my integrity and the fallout was immediate and it was punitive and it was painful. My belonging was immediately revoked and my books were pulled off of shelves. And in one case, And my books were pulled off of shelves and in one case put entirely out of print. It was just a carte blanche cancellation. Lost a lot of friendships.

I say lost. They've just drastically changed. These would be people that would pick up the phone still if I called today, but drastic changes. And I knew it was coming. I don't think I expected the severity of it or how much it was going to hurt and how scary it felt. It felt really scary to be at the center of that much fury and outrage and disappointment and judgment. around a real sincere investigation of their own faith, of their own beliefs. But I'll tell you that now, and this is in my rear view mirror, this was largely 2015 kind of coming to a culmination in 2016. My only regret is I didn't do it sooner. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast

Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It is my girl in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Ladies 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there.

Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. I am so free. I am out here free as a jaybird. I mean, I have now built and lead the community I always dreamed of. What a delight and joy it is to find that integrity is actually worth it.

It's enough. Even if I hadn't rebuilt all my career, which I did, but even if I didn't, it's still worth it to be in full alignment that there is no one version of me here and a different version of Jen over here. There's just one. And the relief, the relief is worth every second of it. I just, I love that. That integrity is worth it.

One of your more recent books is about building your own identity instead of just having the identity that you were handed by your family of origin, by where you lived, you know, by all of the external forces that tell you who you are. We all have these external forces that were raised with telling us who we are. And you made the conscious decision to say, thank you for this. This served an important purpose in my life. And I love my family. I love where I came from. Thank you for this, but I'm choosing this instead. Even though I know that this is also going to be choosing some painful experiences to go along with building this new identity. Can you talk a little bit more about how do you build a new identity for yourself

that is not the one you were raised with? Right. I wasn't sure. I didn't have a plan. I didn't have like a business plan or what to do. And I didn't know truthfully, like who will have me? I don't know. Is there a place for me to belong? I don't know. Are there other people like me? I'm not sure. And so I was left with the horrible choice to just simply be who I am in the world. I just didn't have it. I didn't have a plan B like, well, rather than pine away for all the ones who left, let me lead the ones I have. And so with as much honor and truthfulness and authenticity as I could possibly muster, I led the ones I had. And I just had to believe that what you draw them with is what you draw them to. And so I was hoping to draw people with honesty and a wonderful new sense of curiosity and

safety. Like this is going to be a safe little corner of the world. We're going to ask hard things together and we're going to be kind about it and smart about it. Like grownups, we are going to prioritize human dignity. And I decided that I didn't have to forfeit my humor. I don't know how to do that anyway. I don't have that gear. So I'm like, I'm just going to be myself. The true me,

the one that had been tucked away in a private room in the back for some time. But when I decided that there was only going to be one gen, that was the real gen. So that gen went into high rotation and it was really a marvel to watch because the truth is none of us are like ever alone in whatever the thing we are in, we're evolving through, we're wondering about, we're growing towards. There are people in the exact same spot. There's people 10 steps ahead of us already. There's ones behind us going, can you reach a hand back? Can you come back 10 whole steps? I don't know how to make that very first one. wonderful world out here of all these incredible people. And now I feel like the community that we have here is it's strong and it's interesting and it's smart and it's curious and it's so less quick to just cancel and reprimand and babysit and punish. And it's a real joy, but it was slow to your question. That was a slow build. And I just made a decision at the beginning of that rebuild. I will be who I am at every turn, every post, every word, every response, every interview. I will not take the low hanging fruit of pleasing the audience,

telling them the safer answer, the answer that I know they would prefer just in order to save a little tension. I just decided, guess what my new best friend is tension. That's my new best friend. Tension is real fun. But you know, if you stay that course for year after year after year, what you end up with, this is not good language. I can't find a better word, but you end up training your community

on how to respond to you and to each other, right? That in this world, integrity matters. We get to say it. You get to say it. You get to have it. She gets to have it. She gets to have it. She gets to have it. And we're going to honor it in each other.

And so I'm largely purged of the millions of comments I used to get all the time that were like, Jen, I'm so disappointed in you. If I had a nickel. I'm like, get in line, lady. Get in line, Linda. I mean, there's a club out there. I think there's like a nickel. I'm like, get in line, lady, get in line, Linda. I mean, there's a club out there. I think there's like a website. And so anyway, that's been my experience and it has been beautiful and surprising. You just have such an interesting and wise viewpoint unwilling to be who I am not to spare your discomfort. That's it. Right. I love the phrase tension too, because that applies to truly almost everything in the world. Truly. There is

a constant tension and that is the human experience to wrestle with that tension. And that again, speaks to that curiosity that you're talking about that as soon as we have certainty, we lose that tension and we are turning a blind eye to the tension that actually exists. We just refuse to see it. That's exactly it. And it's so much more interesting to live in the tension. That's where the life is. That's where the conversations tension. That's where the life is. That's where the conversations are. That's where the discussion is. That's where the change is located. That's where justice becomes realized. And it's how we expand too. We're more interesting if we are willing to live in the tension. And so discomfort is not the great deterrent that we have imagined it to be.

It's not the worst thing in the world. I think stagnation is worse. And so we can handle a little discomfort. The people around us can handle it. It's not going to kill us, but it might stretch us. And I think we're better for it in the end. It's like what therapists refer to as distress tolerance. That's it. The idea that you actually can tolerate a fairly high amount of distress. It might require some coping skills. It might require some practice, but you can practice tolerating that distress or tension. And the more you practice that skill, the better you get at it. Yeah.

And you can then sit with people who don't agree with you on something and say, that is a really interesting perspective. Thank you so much for sharing that. And you're not obligated to agree with them at the end of that conversation, but you can still love each other and still be in each other's lives. It's like a miracle. It's like a miracle. I know. I know. I didn't know that that was a possibility because I sat in certainty for so long. So we didn't really have these conversations. We didn't really have these discussions. There weren't robust discussions around complicated ideas. It was just sealed over already. It was pavement. And so it is so exciting to realize that there is a different way to be with one another.

realize that there is a different way to be with one another. It can even strongly disagree, but there's the possibility of respecting one another's humanity inside of it. And even listening, listening doesn't mean agreeing, you know, listening doesn't mean you're endorsing, but it does make you a better human. I've never sat across from somebody with an opposite ideology than me, having listened to them sincerely for an hour and haven't walked away with something that I like deeply respect about that person or that I learned about that person or that drew me to that person or created some sort of compassion or connection in me. And so there really is some magic to it. If we'll trust it. Listening to learn instead of listening to argue

or listening to respond. Too many of us in politics, in faith, just in life, we are listening to argue. We're listening for a point that we can refute. We're not listening to learn. And we have forgotten that learning is in and of itself valuable. Doesn't require you to arrive at the same conclusion as the other person, but you will walk away having learned a fact or learned a skill or learn something about yourself. Yes. Learning is its own reward. Yes. Yes. It's a wonderful thing to prioritize. And in that case, we're kind of free at that point. When we liberate ourselves from this self-imposed idea that our job in life is to get everyone to agree with us. That's the worst.

We're the worst. That's the worst job. It's the worst job in the world. And it's going to, it's a hundred percent failure rate. One hundred percent. Yeah. Changing that mindset from this isn't my job. It is not my job or my responsibility. It's not my lift. This is not my task. Then we're a little bit more free inside all of

our conversations to let people be wherever they are. You can tell I'm in therapy right now. Let people be where they are. That's theirs. That's their life. They get to be where they are. be where they are. That's theirs. That's their life. They get to be where they are. And then it kind of lift the pressure to have some end game that we'll likely not get to. It's not my job to move you from the position that you are currently in. You know, like I can sit with you. I can sit next to you in it. I could hear you describe it. I can learn from that, but it's not my job to like pick up the 200 pounds of you as a large man and set you down over there. It's not my responsibility to do that. Yay. I don't have to work out. I can eat chips. Yes. That's my job is chip eating. And I'll sit here next to you while I'm eating these chips. I love it.

Tell me more about just generally speaking about how your family has done in this life transition. You have had to leave behind a lot of what you knew and did and have new things that you know and do. How has that been for them? Yeah. Challenging. A lot of my shifting and evolution really began when they were younger. And so they actually don't have a ton of memories of me deeply embedded in evangelical subculture. They barely remember their evangelical church experience. Most all of their like memory years have been kind of where we're at now. I worked really hard to shield them from a lot of the public yuck, the, the online stuff, which was really, you know, definitely reached a fever pitch there for a while. And I just tucked that right away, just put that in a drawer and shut it. And that did not have

any bearing on the way in which we operated as a family, what we cared about. Cause you know, somebody could cancel you, but you're the same person you were the day before. So it's not like I was a different person. I was their same mom cared about the same things, just added some to it, cared about new things, additional things, and additional people and additional groups. So I think my kids navigated it really well. It is interesting though, because kids are smart and they're savvy and they're paying attention. They see the world, they hear. So it's interesting to watch my kids navigate their own faith. They're 15, 17, 18, 21, 23. So they're upper teens, young adults, and they're doing it differently. They're navigating faith differently, differently than I

did differently than my mom and dad did in some ways differently than I like. And I'm like, Oh, it's my turn. It's my turn to watch the next generation zig where I zagged and I'm taking deep breaths and I am reminding myself that this is their story and they get it. They have autonomy over their own path. So I hold this with very loose hands and I don't quite knuckle it for them. We don't should each other ever. And I kind of let them be where they're at in faith too. And they've just seen some of its worst. They've seen its underbelly. I would say that these last five years, this has been a hard five years to be evolving teenager. They're not sure what to do with this. They're not sure what to do with the

disconnect between this is what we said, but this is what we see. And I don't blame them for saying, what is actually real here? Because a lot of this isn't real at all. It was built on sand and it just washed right out with the storm. You know what? They'll grow up. They'll write books. They'll tell us what we got wrong. You know, just like I did, just like I did. What advice would you have for somebody who is questioning their beliefs, questioning their ideologies, wondering if what they were raised with or where they are now is where they are meant to be. You have been through the ringer on this topic. You're about 50 steps down the road from a lot of people who are like,

I'm just dipping my toe on this path here. What advice would you have for somebody? I love that question. I would say two things like, and this would be what I would go back and tell myself too. I think the first one is you get to do this. There's nothing wrong with you. Nothing. The fact that you are asking hard questions of your belief package or your ideologies or your understanding of systems, whatever the thing is, it's not indicative of an anemic point of view. To me, it is indicative of a very robust maturity that you are willing to re-examine something that you maybe even once wrote in ink. And so you get to do this. This is wonderful. You have permission. Do not be scared. Don't scare your own self out of your journey.

Don't scare your own self out of your questions. And don't let the impending conflict and tension with other people around you deter you either. Because honestly, you'll probably get that. Sorry. I wish I had better news. People don't love for us to change. Change in general is viewed as suspect. And of course, people just like us to continue to tend the little worlds we've been tending exactly as

we've been tending them. Because sometimes when we change inside of a system, there's disruption for other people. Of course there is. That's natural. So people don't like it. And also people are scared of change. And so they act mean and they act mad and they act judgmental. But a lot of that's just fear. So first of all, permission to ask, to push, to examine, to read, to listen to new teachers, to listen to new thinkers, to pull your chair up to a new table. Do it. And the second thing is this.

This is just a North Star for me. I am a person of faith. And so it actually matters to me that I am pursuing what's true. That matters to me. I care. I'm not just a rogue renegade out here creating my own thing. It matters to me that the thing I'm reaching for is good and it's true. So everybody has different ideas on what is good and true, even polar opposite ideas on what is good and true. So that makes it muddy. That makes it confusing. And for a searcher, a question asker that can really muddy the waters. My North Star, when I am searching for truth in something is just an old trick that actually Jesus gave us. He just, I think, knew that we'd have to wade through a lot of competing and conflicting ideas forever. And so he gave us a

trick for discernment when we're not sure if the thing is good or if it's bad. He just always said, if you're not sure or you're hearing different things, look to the fruit. He told a little story like, if there's a good tree, if it's a good tree, it's planted in good soil, it's going to have good fruit. That's just how it goes. That's just science. If it's a bad tree, if it's poorly planted, if it's a diseased tree, it's going to have bad fruit. So when you're not sure if the tree is good or bad, because maybe they kind of look the same from the outside, look to the fruit. Is it good fruit or is it bad fruit? This has served me immeasurably in my adult life because some of the things that I was reexamining, I was told, were rooted in a good tree. This is a good tree.

The thing that we believe here is true and it's good, but all the fruit was rotten. The very occasional red apple, that was the outlier, not this main story. Most of the fruit was bad. In a similar way, I was told this tree is a bad tree. It is a diseased tree. This is no good. And we say no to this, but I'm looking and all the fruit is good. I'm like, well, that doesn't make sense because it's bearing good things and there's life here. It is creating life. And so that's my grid. Now, when I'm not sure what is it producing? And that's a pretty good indicator of whether it's a good or a bad treat. I love that. I really love that. I have used that same kind of mindset many times.

I have tasted the fruit of this belief, whatever it is, and it is bitter. And it is, I don't want to eat that anymore. That's it. I feel that before we go, teachers are life-changing and I would love to hear about a teacher in your life, a teacher that you would love to give a shout out to if they were listening and why. My favorite teacher that I'm just remain so grateful for and to was my junior year English teacher, Mrs. Palmer. I didn't have any sense of my own path. I didn't really know where I was going. I didn't know what I was good at. I didn't know what I was meant for. I didn't have any idea, but Mrs. Palmer

was always telling me, Jen, you are a good writer. Like you're a good writer. You're naturally good at this. Some of this can be taught and some of it can't. And you have the part that can't be taught. And I remember her telling me that and I was just stunned by it. Just stunned. Like, how do you know this? Like who gave you the authority to know this about me? And it never occurred to me that I could be a career writer. I didn't know that was real. I thought that was a fake thing, but I didn't know that that was a possibility. She probably doesn't even remember telling me that, but it was just so impactful to me to have a teacher call out a gift and really like highlight it and say, this is real. And this is something in you. And I see it. I mean, I'm still talking about it. I'm 46 years old.

And so it matters the words that our teachers say to us. Yes. Golly. I mean, those students, boy, they tuck those words in their heart for good or for bad. Those good, powerful words from teachers, they'll last a lifetime. It's so true. And we don't always know what it is that somebody is going to remember. And it just makes you want to be that much more mindful of your conversations with people. Well, Jennifer, this will not be the last time we chat. Thank you so much for joining me today. You're welcome. This was an absolute pleasure. It was for me too. I'm so happy to meet you. It's been so fun

to watch your leadership just grow and shine. It's just right on time. It's right when we needed it. I sense that you deeply operate out of integrity and I just respect it and I honor it. I'm very excited to just see what's ahead for you and where your leadership goes and where your career goes. It's all just terribly exciting to watch. Thank you so much. That's so kind of you. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories

or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. I cannot wait to have another mind blown moment with you next episode. Thanks again for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast.