The Empowered Catholic Podcast

We like Pope Leo's reflection on the parable of the workers. It touches on the pursuit of happiness, the quest for meaning, and the need for belonging. It's a message of hope! Hop in and check it out.    Contact Info Text us: The Empowered Catholic Podcast: 612-208-9150  Email us: EmpCatholic@gmail.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/empoweredcatholicpodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com...

What's "the THING" in your life that you are SO DONE WITH but it's not done with YOU? We share stories of past clients that got rid of that THING in their life that had troubled them for so long that they thought it would never be dealt with. Transformation IS possible!     Contact Info Text us: The Empowered Catholic Podcast: 612-208-9150  Email us: EmpCatholic@gmail.com Facebook: https://www.fac...

"How does coaching help me as a Christian?" was a question recently asked of us. We see people undergo transformations that make a HUGE difference in their life. The kind of changes that change everything. It impacts who they are and how the do things. It impacts whatever roles they have in life, like mother, father, worker, leader, child-raiser… Think about an area of life where you would love to...

Part of our job description as humans is to get busy with the work of the Holy Spirit. Removing interior obstacles is a big part of that job. We have seen, many times, how a focus on what's really important, what we really want, is so helpful to discerning what the Holy Spirit has in mind for us. We often worry that checking in with what we want will lead us astray. Yet once we push aside distract...

Lean into this mindset: Everyone is Doing the Best that They Can with the Resources that They Have. It's surprising how useful it is to keep this in mind. It takes so much of the drama out of people and circumstances that are obstacles to you. Instead of indulging in the drama and responding to THAT, you can respond as seems best without taking most things personally. It's a mindset for excellence...

Sometimes we lack IMAGINATION when we have given up in some area of our life. Imagination is the creative faculty for envisioning various possibilities based on what we know, perceive, or otherwise experience. When we start to think about ACTUALLY pursuing excellence and imagine what SPECIFICALLY may be involved, what is POSSIBLE moves into the realm of what is actual. Vague goals can be comfortin...

Focus on excellence. Likely you are focused more on solving problems, avoiding pain, getting by, or putting out fires! That's human nature. And we naturally resist change. And yet. And yet we crave freedom, opportunity, and beauty. Seeking excellence is so rewarding. Let it be more top of mind for you. What if you pursued excellence in one of these areas of life: Health; Family; Marriage or Primar...

Under one single cover, you can get the latest up-to-date science showing how and why science supports the truth and reality of Eucharistic miracles, the Shroud of Turin, and Marian visitations. It's all in Father Spitzer's book Christ, Science, and Reason, What we can know about Jesus, Mary, and Miracles. You can hear fascinating details in this lively interview! This is a great book that lays ou...

The Shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Jesus. That seems pretty clear. There was some carbon dating in the 1980's that said the Shroud wasn't old enough but, after some freedom of information demands for the original data, we now know that 1980's dating was flawed. And there are other dating methods that point to much older origins. We still don't know for sure how the image was made. There's...

Myers-Briggs Type Preferences (MBTI®) test is familiar to most of us. Do you remember if you are a Perceiver or a Judger? The MBTI measures certain metaprograms that you use. A metaprogram is your default style of responding to what is happening around you. If you want to get things done, to have influence, to be impactful, then you need to deal effectively with other people. You need to know how...

Metaprograms are high-level patterns we run in certain situations. Introverts and extrovert are examples of different metaprograms. Sensing vs. Intuiting. Big picture vs details! There are many many metaprograms. We discuss several of them and it's helpful to realize when you are interacting with someone who's on the opposite page as you are. There's an even bigger takeaway, however: we tend to ju...

How about a little affirmation? It might be easy to forget to tell people in your life what you like about them or what they are doing well. It's so easy to focus on the negative! Or to be self-absorbed. Or simply to lose sight of pointing out what's good. Compliments are great and telling somebody how much you love or appreciate them has an important place in the relationship. The kinds of affirm...

Empowered listening will build your relationships. Any and all relationships are better with better listening. You can take the initiative to make this happen: you are empowered to listen well. There's a few habits to practice and cultivate to become a great listener. Here's one hint: build habits that set the stage for a pure and simply curiosity to cultivate your conversations.    Contact Info T...

Have you ever been talking to someone and realized that they aren't listening to what you have to say, or they don't care what you say because they just want to tell YOU something? Instead of THAT, what if every conversation you had brought a positive and deeper connection to the person you spoke to? This episode provides a critical skill for having a better conversation, a conversation that promo...

Happy Ash Wednesday! Woo-hoo, right? Let's keep talking about hope because the POINT of Lent is to prepare us for EASTER. St. Paul did some talking to the folks in Corinth in his letter to the Corinithians. In chapter 15, he's talking about being resurrected. Apparently, Paul is getting questions from those early Christians, something like: How does this resurrection thing work? What does it look...

Let's keep talking about hope! Karen works on your imagination by sharing multiple images of what the kingdom of heaven looks like. These are all images used by Paul in scripture. Marriage. Brides and bridegrooms. Citizens, like Roman citizens. Birth. There's hope to be had when you enter into the kingdom mindset that is central to the New Testament.    Contact Info Text us: The Empowered Catholic...

Romans chapter 8 compares being in this present age to the pangs of labor. Men comparing something to giving birth is risky but we'll give St. Paul a pass this time. It's as if the present age is giving birth to the new creation. It's one of the themes we mentioned in Episode 115 on hope. We've been talking about our personal hope, you, my hope for me, myself, and my loved one. Yet we are invited...

The "hope" in St. Padre Pio's famous proverb "Pray, hope, and don't worry" is an active verb. When I try to skip from "pray" to "don't worry," I can't "do" the "don't worry."  That's because I need to EXERCISE my hope. I need to lean on my trust in God. The letter to the Hebews chapter 6 says our Christian hope is like an anchor. And not just any anchor. It's an anchor that's firmly fixed in the p...

St. Padre Pio was known for saying this simple phrase to anyone who came to him with a troubled heart: "Pray, hope, and don't worry." He then went on to say, "Worry is useless. God is merciful and will hear your prayer. Have courage and do not fear the assaults of the devil." How well do you live this proverb? How true do you think it is? Is it OK to set worry aside? How POSSIBLE is it to stop wor...

The Four Easy things to do to be Empowerment are… Wait, we don't know four easy things that will "make" you be empowered. We DO offer four pillars that will take you very far, and indeed very far, on your own peculiar path to empowerment. As you place yourself "at cause," think about implementing these practices. A first pillar is being fearless. Of course we mean something more specific than not...

What are we supposed to be doing, anyway? What are we called to now? What we are called to now is an exciting collaboration with God. It's like the opposite of God ordering us around. Don't let God become the One Who Orders Me To Do Stuff and I Gotta Do It. Of course, there's stuff I Gotta Do, yet the point is to be in an active collaborative relationship with God. And guess what? When you are col...

Live like this; be at cause. We can easily act as if "things happen to me" and I am more or less at the mercy of what's happening to me. I am impacted by events, by my past, by accidents, by circumstance, and there's not much to be done about that. This idea of being at the mercy of my circumstances is what we call being "at effect" because the (poor) idea is that there are causes Out There that i...

Your brain is sitting inside a closet (your skull)  and has zero idea what's going on around it, except that it has your bodily senses feeding it signals. Those signals, like photons and vibrations in the air, mean almost nothing to the brain EXCEPT that your brain has past experience about what those mean. Everything you experience, everything you know, all that you think - these are all reconstr...

Do you find yourself often thinking in terms of getting cooperation from your unconscious mind? Or learning how to give it great instructions so it can support you easily? We have all had the experience of "deciding" to do something (like a New Year's resolution, hmmm?) and then, a few weeks, or days, later - it has fizzled out. You had decided to do the Thing. But you didn't. You consciously want...

Christmas! Perplexingly, we were inspired to talk about those genealogies that are part of the Christmas story, like in Matthew where there's a list of Jesus' ancestry. t It turns out that reflecting on what it means to be part of a lineage means a lot. We are part of the nativity story because God has brought us into the lineage of Jesus and Abraham, and the entire story of God and His Creation....