Bonus Lesson #5 - How To Feel Good First & Parent From There
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Transcript of Bonus Lesson #5 Below:
Whenever we are talking about an issue we have with our child, we are always talking about two separate topics – you and your response and them and theirs.
How you feel about their behaviour or how you feel at the time you are dealing with their behaviour, is always going to influence how you respond to it and how well you respond to it.
Have you ever had a time when you were in a really, good mood?
Maybe you got some good news or things were going to plan, and then suddenly your child throws a tantrum, has a meltdown, or doesn’t sleep when you expected them too, or they just became difficult to deal with.
But it hardly bothered you because you were in such a good mood.
Have you ever experienced that before?
It was so much easier to handle it from an emotional place of well-being, wasn’t it?
The behaviour was still there, but your approach to it was completely different.
You see, one of the things that trips parents up the most is needing their child to behave first before they can feel good.
I say it needs to be the other way around.
Feel good first and you’ll often see an improvement in your child’s behaviour.
And even if you don’t see an improvement, you’ll more likely notice that you are more solution focussed about helping your child with their behaviour because you’re not responding to it from survival mode (ie the stress response that shuts down your ability to think logically).
When we are in our own state of well-being, we start to more naturally accept the reality of their behaviour in that moment, and we can either see a natural pathway to helping them change that behaviour, or we have the clarity of mind to go researching for how to deal with that behaviour.
When you’re feeling good you aren’t personalising their behaviour, you’re not needing to control it, you’re not needing them to behave.
You accept where they are at in that moment.
When you’re in an emotional state of well-being you’re not feeling worth-less because of their behaviour.
You’re recognising that they are learning about the cause and effect of the world.
You’re accepting that you don’t know everything and that there are going to be times when you don’t know how to do something or that some of your approaches aren’t working and you need a different strategy and you’re okay with that.
You recognise that this event doesn’t mean anything about you.
But when you get stuck in feeling out of control, judge yourself as useless because you can’t control, or feeling helpless, or worrying that they are going to be ‘damaged’ children or stacking loads of events that didn’t go to plan on top of one another and draw negative conclusions about yourself and your parenting abilities, it keeps you stuck in a mindset that cannot focus on solutions.
I’m going to teach you how to start feeling good first and parenting from that place, because essentially that’s exactly what we’re wanting when we’re trying to get our child to behave.
In this week’s video, I introduce you to my 5 step Mind TRACK to Happiness process.
We look at how we often get caught up in our thoughts, which we discussed in week one. We move you up the ladder to thinking in alignment with Reality (step two of the track process), which we worked on in week two
The third step on the TRACK process is looking at your Aim – what you want and the goals you’re looking to pursue to improve your life.
However, often the problem with setting goals, is that we keep attaching our self-worth to them. We keep needing them to go to plan before we can feel good or feel good enough.
But if your reality is unpredictable and often things don’t go to plan, it can sometimes feel like you’re waiting forever for the circumstances to be right enough for you to feel good.
Do you realise that the only reason why you set goals or want things in the first place is because you think you will feel good when you receive what you want?
Why do you have to wait? Why not just learn how to feel good now?
So that’s what this lesson is about.
I want to help you to focus on feeling good NOW, not only when life goes to plan or the kids are co-operating. So let’s say you are experiencing something unwanted and you are rolling around in that ‘pit of shit’ we keep talking about – you know, those four stressful thinking lenses.
Perhaps you woke up in your pit of shit. You stacked until you cracked open and crawled into your it. Or you’ve just been rolling around in it for some time.
When I tell you to feel good you are likely to look at THAT unwanted situation and say,
“How can I feel good about something that’s so unwanted? How can I feel good when this is happening or that is happening and something else is happening on top of it all, and there’s nothing I can do about it? It’s too painful and frustrating to even look at that thing I do not want, let alone feel good about it!” And you know what? You’re absolutely right!
You can’t get to feel good from that intense place of feeling bad.
There’s way too much momentum that’s going on.
Your mind has looked at that situation, judged it with your beliefs, referenced it with other unwanted things, rolled it up into a nice neat little ball ready to throw at the next person who pisses you off or triggers you and you can’t just switch that off.
It’s way too difficult to ask your mind to do that either. it will just make you feel worse because now you’ll think you’ve failed at trying to feel good!
So, how do you feel good then?
What you need to do, is go general with your focus.
Don’t start with the thing you’re feeling bad about.
Find something you can easily feel good about and milk that feeling first.
Ride that wave until you lift and shift how you’re feeling in this present moment.
Use anything at all that will help you roll around in a focus point that kick starts a new momentum that easily leads you to feeling good.
It can be anything at all.
It doesn’t have to be relevant to the unwanted thing happening in front of you.
As you begin to focus on just one thing and roll around in how good that one thing is, the brain will start to latch onto another, and then another, and then another.
You will start to gain momentum, finding all the things you can easily love about that aspect of life. Then find another aspect of life that you love and ride that wave. Talk about things that you’ve achieved already, or experiences and memories from the past that made you feel good.
Talk about things that you want to experience that would make you feel good.
Talk about things that are currently making you feel good.
Bring all of it into a ‘love rant’ and watch yourself move into a place of feeling good, and THEN gravitate over to the experience you are being challenged by. For example, as I write this, my two boys are fighting on the trampoline and have been chasing each other around the house annoying each other.
In turn, this has triggered annoyance in me and is the perfect time for me to illustrate to you how to shift yourself out of a feel bad place into a feel-good place. So here goes: I love that I have the flexibility to work from home. It’s something that I’ve always wanted to do.
I wanted to be there for my kids. I wanted to go to their sports carnivals and their concerts.
I wanted to be able to drop them off at school and pick them up.
I am so grateful that I get this flexibility.
I am grateful that I get to do something that I’m passionate about in my work.
I am proud of my achievements and my persistence.
I feel so grateful that parents trust me with their stories, and I love the supportive environments that have been created for people to learn and share in my FB Groups.
I love to feel that I’m making a difference to families.
I love thinking about the things that I enjoy about life.
I love that the better it gets, the better it gets.
I love that feeling of momentum that starts to flow when you really latch onto an idea that fills you up with joy.
I love so many aspects of my life right now.
I love being able to do what I love.
I love the age the boys are at.
I love watching them play with their friends.
I love seeing the smiles on their faces. It is one of the most pleasurable things to experience as a parent – to watch your children smile and laugh.
I am picturing that smile on Cody’s face right now and how snuggly Ryan gets.
It’s so sweet all of the ‘rules’ Ryan has when he cuddles.
These are the times that fill me with joy and make me feel so good.
I love the closeness that we have together and how we have learnt to talk things out when we are struggling to get along.
I love that we don’t personalise each other’s behaviour.
I love the memories I have of when they were younger, and we went travelling.
I remember them playing happily in the dirt at 2 and 3 years old, getting muddy and loving the outdoors.
I love seeing my kids outdoors and living life.
I love remembering those cute things they used to do and the innocent things that made me laugh.
I love looking at photos of how young they were and how cute they were.
I love when they used to cup my face in their hands and give me a kiss or say something sweet.
I love their genuine empathy and care.
I love that Ryan got me a drink of water yesterday and how he’s always staying back with me when we go for walks and making sure that I’m okay.
I love how Cody likes to cuddle me, like ALL THE TIME, lol.
I love how he sweetly gives me cuddles before school because he doesn’t want to give me a hug at school drop off but doesn’t want to miss out on his ‘morning cuddles’.
I love that they love me and that I love them.
I love that Steve and I have such amazing children.
I am so grateful for having my breakdown so that I could learn how to be happy, handle my emotions and teach the kids the same.
I love knowing that there can be really good things that come out of the bad.
I love that I get to experience the contrast of life and that I’m here, learning and growing and experiencing different things.
I love new ideas.
I love new ventures.
I love knowing that things can change, and ideas can come to fruition at any time.
I love that I could be just one new thought away from amazing new and successful ventures in my business.
I love that I am healthy and physically able to run and jump and play with my kids.
I love that there are so many things to love about my life right now that I could literally keep writing about this for hours.
I love how the mind jumps from one thing to the other to the other when you get on this rant and how easy it is to feel good about things when you start to focus on more and more good things.
I love that doing this exercise is completely in my control and that I can choose at any moment to feel good and I do not need my children to stop fighting before I can reach this place.
I so love knowing that I am the leader of my emotions.
I get to decide who I want to be and what I want to do.
It feels so good knowing that.
No one can take away my freedom to feel good.
Ever.
Joy is always just a few thoughts away and it’s so exciting to be able to latch onto the thoughts and ride the wave back to the joy I am feeling right now.
I feel so blessed and I feel so good. Can you see how the momentum just kept getting stronger and stronger as I began to rant about all the things that I loved?
This can happen for you too, at any time and is such a great tool to lift you out of your pit of shit. So often when we are trying to find our joy, or trying to feel happier in life, we’re only looking for evidence of succeeding at our big goals or our lifestyle expectations before we can feel good about it.
But haven’t you every felt interested in something that made you feel good?
Doesn’t it feel good to contemplate change and to be thinking about your desires?
Haven’t you ever felt proud of your kids?
Haven’t you ever enjoyed a hug or watched your kids laugh, play or say something sweet?
Haven’t you ever enjoyed making love to your partner?
Haven’t you ever appreciated or marveled at your child’s uniqueness or quirkiness?
Haven’t you ever laughed at something your kids have said?
Haven’t you ever enjoyed a conversation with a friend?
Haven’t you ever done something for someone that felt good?
Haven’t you ever celebrated a small win that other parents take for granted, but you got super excited about?
That’s joy right there.
That’s happiness.
All those little moments combined together.
Instead of stack until you crack, this exercise gets you to stack until you RELAX!
Don’t get caught up in the ‘jumping around like you’ve just won gold lotto’ feeling and mistake that for being the only way to experience joy.
There is always something to be joyful about, you just have to make yourself find it.
Sometimes you have to start a new momentum from a place that’s easy to feel good about and ride that wave until you’re bursting, like I feel I am right now.