Ep. 123 Taming the Beast: Life Lessons from The Sandlot

[00:00:00] We all know that the Lord can speak to us in a variety of ways through scripture, through billboards, through other people, even through movies. And this summer I have had one of those experiences where as a 40 year old mom, one of my childhood movies, The Sandlot, that my kids now love, has done a great job of adding a new perspective to mindset.

[00:00:30] And mindset work. And as a mindset coach, I thought it would be so much fun to share these lessons from the movie, The Sandlot. So I hope you'll join me and figure out exactly how to tame the beast. Welcome to the Nourished to Bloom podcast where your faith meets your health. I'm your host, Kara Trochta, a registered dietitian and certified Catholic coach. And I'm here to help you cultivate a deeper connection with your body, your spirit,

[00:00:58] and the nourishment that sustains them both. In a world filled with noise and confusion about food, health, and body image, this podcast offers truth and healing from a Christ-centered perspective. Together we'll untangle the deep roots of diet culture and discover what it means to truly care for ourselves through joyful nourishment of mind, body, and soul. We're here to dive into the transformative power of intuitive eating coupled with the rich teachings of

[00:01:25] our Christian faith. With every episode, I'll be cheering you on offering insights, inspiration, and practical tools to help you heal your relationship with food and embrace the beauty of your body as a temple of the Holy Spirit with confidence and courage that can only be found in Christ. Join me as we journey together towards a more holistic approach to wellness, one that honors the wisdom of your body as God's creation, the teachings of our faith,

[00:01:54] and the unique purpose you're called to fulfill. You were made to bloom, to come into full beauty and health in order to bear good fruit for the Lord with your life. So if you're ready to nourish your body, feed your soul, and bloom into the best version of yourself, then you're in the right place and I'm so happy you're here. Welcome to nourish to bloom where every day is a sacred invitation to thrive.

[00:02:22] Hey there. Well, welcome back to the nourish to bloom podcast. It's been a little while friends, since I've put out a true new episode. I hope that you've been enjoying the re-release of some of my summer podcast episodes that I've put out in the last few summers around creating a joy filled summer and around body image. And, um, I just pray that you are having a great summer.

[00:02:49] I know I told y'all, I think it was in May or maybe it was the beginning of June. I can't believe we're already like in July, but that I didn't know if I was going to put new episodes out this summer. I didn't know if I was going to take a break and what that all looked like. And so as every summer is busy in its own way, the summer has just felt a little bit different for us.

[00:03:13] um, in the past, I haven't taken any clients, but last fall I took a job doing some wellness coaching for a Catholic nonprofit. And so I've still had coaching obligations with that, that nonprofit. And so I've had to like keep a work schedule this summer, which has been different. And so I find

[00:03:38] myself like focused on the kids and doing all of the activities and the things that we're doing this summer in the morning. And then my afternoons are spent in coaching. And so it's been a little bit of a struggle to really focus on the podcast and putting new episodes out. um, I, it just, I get to Monday, it's just like, Oh gosh, podcast got to get something out. And so that's really the reason

[00:04:06] for the re-release. And the other thing is just, um, kind of fighting and understanding and discerning, you know, where I am in the podcast and if it's okay to take a break. And I know that sounds funny, but I feel like that's a really honest way to talk about, um, exactly what we're going to talk about on today's episode. um, and just mindset and these beliefs, these beasts, so to speak in our

[00:04:33] minds that, you know, I, I've had, I think about, okay, well, if I take the whole month of July off and don't put a podcast out until the kids go back to school, it makes me feel guilty. Or, you know, just like you hear with social media as an entrepreneur that if you take a break, then you're just going to mess up your algorithm and nobody's going to find you or see your content.

[00:04:59] And really the whole thing about that is right. These thoughts that I have are a hundred percent fear-based and we'll get into that, but I just want to give you a quick recap of what we've been doing this summer and how this all kind of plays together. My middle son who is 10, um, is playing all-star baseball for the third summer in a row. And it can be quite the time commitment. And there's

[00:05:28] a lot of an unknown and uncertainty that comes with that. So you have your, at least in Texas, where we are, where you have your district tournament, and there's so many teams there. And then if you win district, then you play in sectionals. And if you win sectionals, then you play in the state tournament. So we like know that knew the dates of all of these tournaments, but it was obviously undetermined whether or not we would be playing in all of

[00:05:56] them because you have to win to keep playing. Now we won our district tournament, which was very exciting for this group of boys who were just awesome boys, not even talking about talent level, but just a really awesome group of boys to be around awesome group of parents to be around. So it was really exciting. They won district and then we played in our sectional tournament and we ended up losing that tournament. So we did not make it to state. And so now I have this whole week where

[00:06:26] we don't have anything planned for the summer because there was a chance we were going to be playing in the state baseball tournament. So there's just been like this structure of needing to keep work hours, but then also this uncertainty and unknown of what baseball was going to look like this summer. So it's just kind of, again, this beautiful chaos of summer. And so one of the things that summer includes is camps. And so my son, the one that we were talking about, my middle one,

[00:06:54] my middle child, my oldest son, he went to this baseball camp and we had a friend tell us about it. And what really drew me into it was yes, they worked on skills, but the real drawl of it was that they worked a lot on mindset. And that was really the motivation that I had for sending him to this

[00:07:15] camp because he has always been the one that has had some challenges with his mindset challenges, you know, emotionally and has a lot of perfectionist tendencies and, you know, not, not just in baseball, but in school and some other things. But, you know, in, in baseball, it would show

[00:07:40] up as, um, frustration after making mistake or, or misfielding a ball. It would lead to tears on the pitcher's mound. If he threw too many balls or if somebody got a hit off of him, right? We had these perfectionist tendencies and his confidence was a hundred percent depending on his performance. And that's not, that wasn't the way I wanted to set him up for life, right? Like how many times

[00:08:10] have we done that, right? That our worth, our confidence, all of this depends on our performance. And after, you know, being victim to that for so much of my life, I did not want him to operate that way. And so that's why I sent him to this baseball camp. And so I went to pick him up and his friend one day and each afternoon they would have kind of an ending huddle to talk about

[00:08:36] whatever the lesson was that day. And the day that I happened to be there, they were talking about the Sandlot. Now, if you've never seen the movie, the Sandlot, it's a story about a group of boys who get together and play baseball. And they're kind of just a rag tag team. It kind of goes through different adventures they got into that summer. Um, and it, you know, centered on this one kid who had

[00:09:04] really never played baseball before. And, um, in order to fit into this crowd after they, after one of the players hit the ball over the fence into somebody's backyard where the beast lived in order to fit into the crowd, this one player goes and, um, takes a baseball from

[00:09:29] his stepdad's collection and they play with this ball. And again, somebody hits it over the fence into the beast yard. And lo and behold, this baseball that this kid stole happened to be autographed by Babe Ruth. So it started this whole thing about needing to get the ball from the beast. And so they plan this sleepover and they go through the story of the beast and they talk about how the

[00:09:54] beast was just this monster and, um, eight baseballs and, um, had to be chained up and on and on and on. And so it kind of goes through the story of the beast and them trying to get the ball back and kind of all the things. Well, as it turns out in the movie, the beast was actually just a

[00:10:20] very, very, very big dog. And had they just gone and knocked on the person's door, they would have found that it all would have turned out. Okay. That the beast wasn't not in fact a monster, that the beast was not this oversized thing, but really just a big dog. And so at this baseball camp, they're

[00:10:42] talking about the sandlot and they're talking about the beast and the movie, you know, these kids are convinced as this enormous monster, nobody wants to go near their fence. They're telling all these crazy stories. They imagine these worst case scenarios. They build it into something that's mythical and larger in life. And then when they finally face it, it's just this dog, a very big dog. And what they were

[00:11:09] trying at this baseball camp to tell the boys is that when they have these fears of striking out, when they have these fears of needing to make the perfect play, when they make a mistake in their heart on their self, this is the beast in their mind. And the beast in their mind is nothing but fear, fear that they have turned into worst case scenarios, fear that they have made bigger than life.

[00:11:38] And they're fearing something that is not real. And as I sat there, you know, on this aluminum bench, listening to this, I said, you know, thought that what an awesome way to put this for, you know, nine, 10, 11, 12 year old boys to understand at that age, the impact of mindset and the impact that fear has on their life. Because to be honest, it took me until my thirties

[00:12:07] to understand any of this. And I probably would have saved myself a lot of heartache and a lot of frustration if I didn't know that then at a younger age, right? If I would have recognized the beast in my mind. And so it's just been on my mind and I can't stop thinking about how we as grown women do the exact same thing.

[00:12:32] It just sounds a little different in our minds, right? Because the beast in our mind says, well, what if I fail? What if they judge me? What if I mess up? What if my kids struggle? What if I never change? What if I don't do enough? What if I don't have enough? What if I'm not enough? And this beast in our mind, it gets bigger every time we feed it. Every time the enemy whispers,

[00:13:01] every time we believe what the beast is saying, when we avoid it, when we replay it, when we imagine these worst case scenarios. And suddenly this beast in our mind feels impossible. It keeps us stuck and it keeps us frozen. So how do we tackle the beast as Christian women?

[00:13:29] The perfect place to start is with scripture. I have three of them for you. 2 Timothy 1, verse 7, for God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. Isaiah 41, 10, do not fear. I am with you. Or Psalm 56, when I am afraid, I put my trust in you.

[00:13:55] This beast that lives in our minds, that lives in our kids' minds, that lives in our minds, this is the epitome of that spiritual warfare, right? The enemy rarely needs to stop us. He only has to convince us not to start, that if we never do this, we'll never make a mistake. He only has to convince us the obstacle is bigger than God's presence.

[00:14:24] This fear that we operate from, it exaggerates, it magnifies, whereas faith clarifies, and God gives us the perspective to tame that beast, to help us rationally see that we're not dealing with this monster. It's just maybe a dog, right? And so that's where these mindset skills are

[00:14:51] so important, to be able to understand how our thoughts and our beliefs impact our emotions, and they impact our actions and our behaviors and how we're showing up. And I'm so grateful that my son was learning these lessons at this age. And y'all, it showed up this summer. It showed up in all-stars. It showed up when his coach was telling us, man, he was a solid

[00:15:20] presence in the dugout when things got tough. It showed up when we had another kid on a team just have a complete shutdown after misfeeling the ball and just could not function, could not get it together. And my son was able to step up and shift and move to where the coach needed him to be, right? And so in this camp, these mindset skills they talk about are just keep showing up, breathe,

[00:15:51] focus on the next pitch. The big one, control what you can control. That confidence comes from preparation, not how you perform. And isn't this exactly what God teaches us? One step, one day, one action, right? And so I just want to challenge you to think about it this week.

[00:16:18] What is your beast? What is the thing that has been magnified into something that's larger than life in your mind? What story have you believed, right? And I think it's just so beautiful because I love how God puts all of these lessons in some of the most obscure places that we would never even imagine.

[00:16:49] And I love that, you know, my son learned this, but I learned this too. It was able to bring something so abstract sometimes as mindset into something, into a way that was so practical. Because really the biggest battle isn't on the baseball field for anyone. It's between our ears. The enemy just wants us to not even step into the batter's box. And Jesus just keeps inviting us to walk toward it, to swing for the fences.

[00:17:20] Because most of the time, the beast isn't nearly as big as fear has made it seem. And in the end of the sandlot, the beautiful thing is that the dog didn't disappear. The dog was still there. The difference was the perspective that these kids were able to see the truth. Fear had distorted their reality and the truth restored it.

[00:17:48] And maybe you're in a place where your circumstances won't immediately change. Maybe there's still a hard doctor's appointment coming. Maybe there's still a hard conversation that needs to happen. Maybe your child will still struggle. And maybe you're still going to be waiting. But when we stop listening to the beast or that fear in our minds and start listening to the voice of our shepherd, the beast begins to shrink back to its proper size.

[00:18:16] The shepherd is there guarding us. God has always been bigger than this. So if you happen to learn something from this sandlot episode, I encourage you to share it with another woman who's facing her own beast. And if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, but you haven't left a review, please do so. Those reviews really do help more women discover this show. I don't know what next week holds.

[00:18:46] Don't know if I'll be back with a new episode. I don't know if I will be taking a break for July. If I happen to be taking a break, I pray that you will all find your way back come August. I found, you know, just those who tune in and listen are such a blessing and such an encouragement. When I have my own beasts that get in my way of telling me, you know, why are you still doing this? And then it never fails.

[00:19:14] Somebody leaves a review or somebody sends a message talking about how the podcast has had such a positive impact on their life, whether through encouragement or, you know, healing their relationship with food or their body, or being able to take an action on being the woman that God called them to be. So I thank you each and every one of you who tune into the podcast. I pray you have a beautiful and blessed week. Remember beauty held as a seed. Beauty shared is the flower. It is your time to bloom.

[00:19:43] Take care and God bless. Bye.