📍 Hey friend. Welcome back to No Silver Spoons. I'm your host, Sarah Beth Herman, and today I wanna talk bravery. Bravery to walk away, bravery to protect your peace, bravery to lead from a place of wholeness and not hustle. As someone who mentors, leaders, and speaks at events across the country, I've seen this truth show up everywhere.

The people who grow the fastest are the ones willing to release what weighs them down. So today I wanna help you shed the guilt, release the resentment, and stop explaining yourself for doing what is absolutely necessary for your own sanity. Let me start strong I mean this with love.

You do not owe an explanation for protecting your peace, period. This isn't about being rude, it's about being rooted. A study published this year in the International Journal of Mental Clarity and Cognitive Processing found that individuals who disengaged from toxic relationships experienced a 28% increase in mental clarity and a 22% increase in decision making accuracy within 30 days.

You can't build a future while staying emotionally loyal to what broke you. There's a story of a man carrying a backpack full of bricks up a mountain. Each brick represents an unresolved conversation, a toxic relationship, a missed opportunity. He doesn't realize how heavy it has become until someone asks why he's carrying bricks from a house he no longer lives in.

Stop carrying bricks from battles that are over. Your peace isn't dramatic, it's divine., And I wanna say this loud for the people in the back. Your intuition is not being dramatic

in fact, the University of Toronto released new findings this year showing that individuals who actively trust their gut when evaluating interpersonal interactions were 34% more accurate in avoiding emotionally draining connections than those who ignored that instinct. Another story to go with that. A shepherd doesn't need to see the wolf to know that danger is near.

He listens to the shift in the wind, the silence of the flock, the change in the air. Trusting your inner alert system is wisdom. It's not weakness. You don't need to give it one more chance when your spirit already knows it's time to go.

I know resentment is heavy, and the thing is, it just doesn't start heavy. It starts subtle. You get overlooked in a meeting or in a friend group. You pour into someone. They don't say thank you, but they use your ideas. You get ghosted by a friend or a potential client, A family member tells you, another family member said blank.

You see someone winning who you know hasn't put in half the work you have, and you think, okay, I'll just ignore that, but you don't, and it lingers and slowly it becomes your filter for everything. Resentment is tricky because it feels like you're protecting yourself, but really, it's blocking the very things that you're asking for.

You're saying you want clarity. But you're still looking through the lens of a past disappointment. You're saying you want growth, but your energy is wrapped up in what someone didn't do. Let me tell you this, the people who hurt you are not thinking about it near as much as you are. You are the one losing sleep.

You are the one mentally replaying it over and over and over, and for what you deserve, your own peace more than you deserves revenge or closure or a redo. My take is that closure is overrated, but peace is not. Choose peace even when it comes without some sort of explanation.

 There are things people give you in this life and this took me embarrassingly too long to fully understand, but now I live by it. People give you gifts. And not all gifts are wrapped pretty, but they are gifts, nonetheless. Some people will give you memories that make you smile on your hardest day, and some people will give you lessons so you never repeat the same mistake.

And others, if you're really, really lucky, will give you joy just by being who they are. And when I look back at the people who disappointed me, I've worked really hard not to carry bitterness anymore. I. I simply carry what I call awareness. I have learned who I can count on. I have learned how much I have grown.

I have learned how to listen to my spirit instead of people's words. You get to take what served you and leave the rest. If someone gave you nothing but confusion, doubt, or pain. That is still a gift. It is the gift of redirection, a gift that reminds you that you deserve better and you don't owe them any explanation for that.

These are your choices. I've stopped going to restaurants because I know certain people that frequent there, and I don't wanna chance that I would run into them, and they would tarnish my mental health. So, for my own sanity, I removed myself from that situation. Friend groups or associates that I know still interact with people that have lost my trust.

I've chosen to not keep those people in my circle, and I'm completely okay with that. Those were seasons of my life where things mattered in a different way, and I needed those people during that season, but I don't need them forever, and it's okay to recognize that.

Peace is a business plan for me, and I know that many of you listening are business owners, entrepreneurs, leaders, or you're building something from the ground up. Let me say this clearly for you. Peace is not just emotional work. Peace is strategic work. You cannot run a sustainable business when you are constantly emotionally distracted.

You cannot be creative when your nervous system is in survival mode. You cannot write offers, pitch ideas, mentor your team, or speak with passion if you are constantly on the edge of burnout or emotional chaos. When I work with clients or I mentor other leaders, I can often tell within the first few minutes of our call if they have been emotionally hijacked, and it always shows up in their numbers.

Sales are stalled, team energy is low, content is inconsistent, boundaries are being crossed. And the problem isn't their business model. The problem is their emotional bandwidth. Your ability to scale will always be limited by your capacity to protect your inner world. So yes, we talk about funnels and automation and hiring and strategy, but first we talk about you.

So, let me ask you, are you okay? Are you distracted? Are you holding on to something that's stealing the clarity that you need to move forward? This is where your shift begins. And my advice for you is don't just schedule time to work on your business. Schedule. Time to check in with yourself because how you lead yourself is how you lead everything else.

I wanna speak to the part of you that's tired, cause I've been there too, and sometimes I still get there because even though I've learned all of these things, I am still human. And sometimes habitual patterns from my past. They creep up, they show up where I didn't even know they were anymore, and then all of a sudden, I'm like, wait, wait, wait.

Where did I go? How did I get here? I know that you've been there too. You've been trying really, really hard. You've been praying, you've been journaling, you've applied, you've invested, and you're wondering why hasn't it happened yet? But my honest truth for you is that sometimes. What you're waiting for isn't showing up because you're trying to settle for something that's so small and God loves you too much to let you settle.

You were created with a vision, not for the temporary high of being liked or applauded, but for legacy, for longevity, for joy that isn't performative. So, if you're in a season where doors keep closing or things just aren't fitting right, maybe it's not rejection, maybe it's realignment. I've had jobs fall through that I thought were dream opportunities.

I've had clients that I just knew should have been mine, but they didn't happen. And I've had friends who I thought would be mine forever, and they weren't. I've had moments where I was so certain of one thing only to realize months later that the dream was still ahead of me, the friend I was supposed to have, I hadn't met yet.

It was all part of the journey, and I needed to meet those other things, people and experiences to get me where I'm going in the future. I've had people exit my life suddenly and found out later that I was being protected from things I didn't even see. If it fell apart, maybe it needed to. And if what you're building now needs to be there, it's gonna last because you're building it on wholeness, not on wounds.

Your energy is your edge. You ever met someone and instantly felt calm around them, like they're grounded, they're unshaken that that's a person I need in my world. That's leadership energy and you don't get that by accident. You get that by choosing daily not to carry what you were never meant to hold.

And that's how I show up when I speak, when I mentor, when I coach, when I lead my team, people don't just hear what I say. They feel what I say because I've done the work to make sure my piece is not performative. It's real. Oftentimes I'll get asked to speak at an event and someone say, will you give me what you're prepared to speak on?

Or will you research X, Y, Z so that you fit into what we're gonna talk about? And I glance over, but I really just glance over because I do best when I'm not scripted. I'm best when I'm able to take a minute look at it and think about my true world, what I've actually been through, what I've actually learned.

I love learning. I love reading. I love investigating. I love reading stories. I love talking to people. The most important thing for me is to come from my heart, and what I have to teach you right now is that even though you might be jealous of someone who maybe feels light years away from where you are right now, do you know the research time, energy, and effort that it took to get there?

A quick chat. GPT search isn't going to give you the validity you're looking for, for someone to accept you in their circle.

When you show up with that kind of peace, it becomes your edge. Your confidence grows, your posture shifts, your leadership rises. Peace becomes your proof. You're no longer available for chaos. You don't owe anyone your peace to make them comfortable in their chaos. Let's close this episode the way we always do with something for you to carry into your weak.

Here's what I want you to hold onto. You don't need to explain the peace that you fought to protect. You are not weak for wanting calm. You are wise for creating it. Everyone in your life gave you something. Take the gift and leave the guilt. Peace is not passive. It is powerful. It is the foundation of your next level.

You are not behind. You are being aligned and what's coming. You'll see why you had to wait. I wanna say this from my whole heart. You are not meant to live in chaos. You are not meant to second guess your worth. You are not meant to stay small, just to keep the peace with people who benefit from your silence.

So, this week, take back your peace, speak up, walk away, choose clarity and show up in your business, your family, your leadership, and your faith. As someone who knows, I am not settling, you are becoming, and that's beautiful. This last week, my husband and I were dealing with something so stressful. This is the last story I'm gonna leave you with today.

We were really overwhelmed, and we were in the middle of this decision that we needed to make. And oftentimes when something is so complicated, so unbearable, so much, we go negative, right? We, we think of all of the negative things that are going on. But about 15 minutes into this very in-depth conversation, we were having to make about this situation, I noticed that there was ultimately a shift, and the shift went from all of the negative we were talking about to problem solving.

And that shift, I immediately saw it happen. I was literally talking to my husband, and I said, we're, we're making a shift right now. Our emotional intelligence is super high because instead of us going down the rabbit hole of how terrible this might be, how this might not work out, how this might not be for us, we're problem solving.

We're making sure that it's for us by seeing through every issue that could present itself and what the resolution is, this is helping us make an educated decision on to move forward or not to move forward. Where are you at right now? Are you spiraling? Are you looking forward making the best decisions for you?

Are you leaving behind what never should be in your world? Anymore, ever again? Thank you for tuning in today. I'm Sarah Beth Herman, and this is No Silver Spoons.  📍 I'll catch you guys on the next episode.