As a multiple state champion coach, a type one diabetic, and one of the most loving and kind women on the planet, Renae shares the importance of building others and ourselves.
Welcome to Lovin My Daughter-in-law Podcast. I’m relationship expert and master certified coach LeAnn Austin. I’ll help you create more connection and fun with others, especially your daughter-in-law.
Hey y’all, welcome to Lovin My Daughter-in-law, episode #128: Building and Ourselves with Renae Kinghorn
I love observing and connecting with other humans, especially noting how they feel and implement love into their lives and their relationships.
We have the amazing Renae sharing some beautiful love and relationship insights with us today. All right Renae, tell us a little bit about you.
Hi LeAnn, I’m a big fan girl. You have such a great platform. What a good idea to just share about loving your daughter-in-law. That’s such a good thing. Anyway my name is Renae Kinghorn. I am from Peachtree city, Georgia. I’ve known LeAnn for what 20 years? Is that about right? That sounds about right, yeah, that’s awesome. I feel like you were my sister’s young women’s leaders, but I think I was almost graduated when you guys were there. But anyway, so almost 20 years. So anyway, just grateful and honored to be asked to speak. Thanks for having me. My pleasure, Renae epitomizes love and has blessed my life and my boy’s life, and I’m so grateful that she is sharing her insights with us today.
So tell us, how do you incorporate love into your business and life, and how does that impact your relationships?
Oh man, that’s such a good question. You know, I used to teach PE and I learned from one of my fellow teachers that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. And I remember that. And I was 22 and he’d been teaching forever and he was this just kind of, I don’t know, he was a football coach and just seemed a little gruff, but I learned a lot from that and I learned a lot from him.
He really motivated with love and the thing is that we taught a class called advanced conditioning together, and you have to get kids to work very, very hard. We, our job was to train the. varsity male athletes and some female athletes in the school. So the class was really, really physically demanding, extremely, and trying to get kids to work really hard for you is so, so difficult. And especially being a 21 year old, 22 year old teacher, and some of these kids are 18. Like, why do they want to work hard for me? So I learned really quickly that you motivate with love and you just like build people, just absolutely build people, compliment, just gas them up. Recognize what they’re doing, and then they want to work so hard to impress you. They just would run some of my kids, I thought, gosh, if I asked them to run through a brick wall, I think they would, because they just were so, they just loved the validation that I offered. And I’m really, I think I’m good at it. I just learned a lot.
I think that nobody cares about what you know, they just care about how you make somebody feel. And I’ve just used that with a lot of my endeavors in my life. And now I don’t teach school anymore, but I do teach like lessons and I teach tennis and tennis is very humbling. It’s extremely humbling to learn how to play tennis. It’s a hard game and you’re really bad at it for a good little bit. But if you can tell people it’s okay to be bad, like it’s all right. Like you’re supposed to be bad at this.
It’s a very difficult thing and just kind of, you know, lay the groundwork of positivity and just help and just celebrate the small things. It really helps you motivate them to then work harder to do more difficult things and more advanced things. So yeah, love is everything. It really is.
I love that it’s everything to you and you incorporate it in everything you do. That’s awesome. Thank you. All right, so what is something that you love about you and why?
Well gosh, I really like that. I’m competitive, but not against other people necessarily. I don’t mind, I’m not like, ooh if I’m playing a board game, I just have to beat everybody. But I’m competitive with myself, I want to be the best that I can be personally. And, you know, if somebody will beat me in tennis or something, I’ve never mad at that person. I always think like, okay, how could I have done better?
And actually as a type one diabetic, I’ve learned that I have to be competitive with myself. Like I check all of my, I’m on a Dexcom, which reads my blood sugars every five minutes and then tells me how long I was in range. And anyway, I just look at all of my numbers at the end of the day and just get competitive with myself and think, okay, how could I have been better here? It looks like there was an issue here. What caused that and I just want to be, I honestly want to be better and it. It has served me well because I’m a mom and being a mom as a type one diabetic or being pregnant as a type one diabetic is really, really difficult and not always advised, but I don’t want anything to limit my growth or my capacity to have children or to love other people. So anyway, I like that I’m competitive and it’s helped me.
I love that so much too. And I like that it’s not against others, it’s all about you. It’s just competitive with yourself. Awesome. Oh, so good. All right, so I love talking about connection with others and ourselves, and I think the daughter-in-law relationship is packed full of endless examples to learn from. So any thoughts about either being a daughter-in-law or having future daughters-in-law?
So many thoughts LeAnn. Oh my gosh, so many thoughts. When I started following your account and just recognizing well, first of all, being grateful for my incredible mother-in-law. She is, I just have to brag on her, she’s the most lovely, wonderful, kind person I have ever, ever, ever met. And she is so respectful and positive. And I don’t struggle in my relationship with her at all because it’s impossible to, she’s just so gracious and kind and I love her so much, but I have noticed how can I be a better daughter-in-law to her?
Because what I’ve always feared for my future, because I’ve got two boys, what if they marry a girl that is not, doesn’t want a relationship with me, or doesn’t want them to have a relationship with me? It is a huge fear.
But I’ve always been like, oh Robert, have you called your mom this week? Or how’s your mom doing? And then the other day he said, you know, you could call her. And I was like, duh, like I need a relationship. It’s not just me promoting the relationship between he and his mother that I find important. And you know, it’s easy for men to forget to keep those connections with their moms. But I was remembering you’re right. Like I need that connection with her still too. Like it’s not just their relationship. I need that relationship with her.
And she’s, every time I reach out at all, she’s just so happy and grateful. And she just is so reciprocating. What’s the word? She reciprocates that love very, very easily and, and just is wonderful.
So I do have that fear of being a mother-in-law to daughters-in-law, and I really hope that we can have a good relationship. I love that so much. And that’s such a good reminder and advice to not only promote husbands reaching out to their moms, but for us as daughters-in-law or as mothers-in-law to reach out to the opposite. I love that so much. That’s a great reminder, beautiful.
All right, is there anything else that you’d like to share? I’d like to share that I well, this is a funny little story. One time I was talking to my father-in-law and it was early in our marriage and I was just like, you know, thank you so much for raising such a wonderful son. I love your son so much. Yada, yada, yada. He’s a great guy.
And my father-in-law stopped and said, Renae, thank you. But I have to tell you, how he is really has nothing to do with me. He just came how he came. And so whenever you’re happy with him, don’t associate that with me. And whenever you’re mad at him, don’t associate that. I chuckled in the moment, but it served us well through our marriage where it’s like, you know, we all have our own agency and our parents can raise us to be one way or another, try their best, but our agency and how we behave really is our own and the only person that could change any of that or help any of that is our Savior and just to staying close to our Savior and trying to be like him is helpful in any relationship. And I am grateful for that reminder.
I love that. I love that so much, so good. You also forgot to mention, Hey I’m a teacher, but you didn’t say like, I’m a coach who took people to the national champion. Could we explore that just a tiny bit more? Tell me what you’ve done, you were like a rock star.
Oh, you give me too much credit. You really do. I played softball all growing up, loved it, played tennis too, but I ended up making the BYU softball team and that was just a huge goal of mine growing up. I just really wanted to play softball at BYU because they don’t play on Sunday and I wanted to keep the Sabbath day holy.
Anyway, I got to that goal. I was one of the first walk-ons ever to be accepted at BYU. And I thought, oh my gosh, yes. This is what the Lord has like blessed me with, and I’m so grateful. And I learned quickly that it wasn’t the best experience. It was a hard, hard, hard experience.
So even sometimes when your dreams come true, it’s not all you thought it would be. And anyway, I just remember feeling like, gosh, this is really hard. I’m not getting the playing time I was hoping for. Anyway, I just am grateful for the chance to play at BYU because it opened other doors for me where I was able to get a job at Salem Hills High School right out of college in 2008, when getting a job in 2008 was hard for anybody and teachers especially.
And anyway because I played softball at BYU, they thought oh, maybe she’d be a pretty good coach. And so I coached their softball team and we had a very good pitcher. She was fantastic. And I have to say, not to get too deep into this story, but there was another coach before I was there who the girls didn’t perform well for, let’s just put it that way. We just had different coaching styles. And she left the program and then they hired me and I really wanted the girls to just like relax and play the game that they knew how to play. Their bodies knew how to play without the fear of getting in trouble if they made a mistake.
So my whole mantra going into teaching this team was, love each other, fight for each other. If you don’t want to work hard for yourself, work hard for the person next to you. Our goal was to, you know, do well in state, but our theme for the year was one. And it reminded me of the people of, I can’t remember, they’re of one heart and one mind and they dwelt in Zion.
And I just was like, if we’ve got this common goal and we work hard together and we can accomplish so much, let’s just do that. So anyway, long story short, a new coaching style with a really really really good pitcher and we took state a couple times and then took second once and just had a really fun career.
It was wonderful. It was really, really great. Would I go back and do it right now? No, too much time. I was single at the time and didn’t have any kids, so I could pour a lot of myself into it, but now I could never do it. If you have children who have coaches, just go give them a big hug and say thank you, because it’s a hard job and doesn’t pay very well. So, but I was so grateful to have had the opportunity. It was wonderful.
That is so cool and you are an amazing coach. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you. That’s so nice. Alright, so last question. What is your favorite quote about love, and how have you used it for yourself and in your relationships?
Oh my gosh, I love the scripture, 2 Timothy 1:7 “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind.” And I just love that so much because anytime you do something new or anytime this fear just creeps in and wants to like stop you from progressing or doing something that maybe feels a little vulnerable or scary, I just have to be reminded that, you know, that feeling doesn’t come from a person who is on our side. That feeling comes from somebody who doesn’t want us to succeed. And so that competitive part of me likes to think, okay, this fear, I’m not going to let this fear beat me. Because when I feel power and when I feel love and when I feel confidence with a sound mind, I know that that comes from our Savior and that is motivating. And I’m able to look at challenges and rather than shrink in fear, I can grow in power and love because I know that I’ve got the Lord on my side, and what can you not accomplish with him? So I love that. I love that scripture. And I thank you for that question. I love that question.
Ah, power and love and a sound mind. Hmm, something to think about. Thank Renae, for sharing your love insights with us. Have a good one y’all, and here’s to building others and ourselves, connection and love.
If you enjoyed this podcast, take a look at my Connection Crew Program and One-on-One Coaching options by checking out the show notes. In those programs, I teach and coach a variety of ways to have more fun and connection in your relationships. I also share how I have created a beautiful relationship with my daughters-in-law.
And if you want one easy question you can keep in your back pocket and use to increase the love you feel for your daughter-in-law today, go to leannaustin.com and get the one question.
