Eps 253: Solo Show- Three Ways to Connect to Yourself

Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Hello. Welcome to the joyful courage podcast, a place for inspiration and information on the parenting and humaning journey. I am your host, Casey. I am a positive discipline trainer, parent coach, personal growth junkie, wife and Muhammad to two incredible teenagers that teach me every day, what it means to find grace and humility joyful courage is the integration of positive and conscious parenting tools with the willingness to choose into a personal growth and development practice. I am so happy that you're here. If you're looking for more community and conversation, please consider joining one of my Facebook groups, either live and love with joyful courage or joyful courage for parents of teens, both are a soft landing for support and celebration. Thank you so much for listening. Enjoy the show.

Hello, friends. Hi, welcome. Welcome to today's solo Show coming to you from my home office here in beautiful, very wet and rainy Bellingham, Washington. Want to start off by saying hooray. Today is the opening day of parenting with the season you're in beta group. So thank you to all of you that signed up to go through the program. Give me feedback. Let me know what you think a beta program is simply something that's been created but isn't necessarily in completion. So for me, what that means is I am putting it out there for people to work their way through, because it's not a live program, it's a downloadable program. Work at your own pace and offer me feedback along the way so that I can tweak it and play with it and make sure that it's exactly what parents want, useful, empowering, inspiring. That's what I'm going for. So today, it finally opened up, and a bunch of people got access. The whole month of December. The beta program is available at a very discounted price, $17 I'm charging $17 because it turns out we are much more likely to actually follow through with something when we pay for it. So it's $17 if you would like to go through the beta program, but $17 is too big of a stretch. Will you do me a favor and just email me at Casey, at joyful courage.com and I'm sure that we can work something out. I'm real excited. I'm excited to get the feedback and to be creating content that the community really wants and needs. Speaking of which the next mini Summit is already in the works. You guys, do you want to know what it's called? It's called parenting, for a brave new world, yes, we're moving into 2021, here soon, and oh my gosh, all the things, right? The summit is going to cover all the things. I have a guest on who's going to talk about family finances and what and how we can be thinking about money inside of this world of current uncertainty, I have someone coming on to talk about school, online school, and Our mindset around how to be as supportive as we need to be, should be with our kids. How to back off when we need to what we can trust. Jessica Leahy, who is the author of the Gift of Failure, is going to be my guest for that conversation, and I'm really excited I have someone to talk with us about how to raise social advocates and bringing the conversation of the current social climate into our everyday lives in a way that's inspiring and empowering and curious, even when it might feel like we're not sure exactly What to say or the best way to say things, my guess is really going to help us around that I have someone to come on and talk about the adolescent mental health situation of right now and how the pandemic has really gotten in the way of our kids mental health development, offering us tools and tips and strategies and mindsets on how to best support our kids right now in their mental well being. And finally, I have the beautiful Elena Lipson. Coming on and talking about tending to our parenting soul, which, considering all the layers of right here, right now, right all the layers I've been saying it for the last few weeks, tending to our soul is non negotiable. And I love the conversation I have with Elena. It's really expansive. It's deeper than doing exercise. And, you know, painting our nails like this is soul care, and Alina and I go deep in that conversation. I'm so excited about the mini summit, I know that it's going to be so inspiring and empowering as they all are, I really trust that you are going to feel seen, deeply, seen and heard and appreciated, and there's just going to be tons for you to marinate inside of and and use, right? That's the point. I want to create content that you can use, you can put into practice in your life, right? And even if that means listening to a story like last week's show with Rowan, oh my gosh, you guys. How great was that? By the way, I'm gonna really work on not saying you guys, you all, hey, you all, how powerful was the last week's show with Rowan, oh my gosh. I really didn't have any expectations going into that interview, and she blew my mind. I mean, it was such a gift for me, personally, like I said last week, to listen to her tease apart her experience of her mental health and self discovery journey. It was just amazing. And I mean, oh my gosh, the feedback has just come pouring in from parents who feel so grateful that Rowan and I were willing to show up and be brave and be vulnerable and really share from the heart of our experience. And while there might not have been tips and tools and strategies inside of that conversation, what I hope you heard was just a real, honest share of it's messy, like it's messy, and sometimes there are no perfect answers. Sometimes the perfect answer is to be with it and allow things to unfold and trust our kids. Oh, man. And that can be really hard. Can be really hard. So this episode, I'm talking about three things, and I'm gonna say three things a lot in the next little bit. But this morning, I got to be a part of a Business Mastermind, and one of the facilitators challenged us to come up with, you know, to declare, what are the pillars of your business? What are the pillars of your business? What are the pillars of my business? So I've been thinking about this, and I don't have a perfect answer for it, but it's the perfect time for me to be thinking about this, because just to let you in on the behind the scenes of joyful courage, I am doing a website up level, meaning a website redesign. I'm really excited, and there is going to be some amazing expansion this month and through 2021, and beyond, for joyful courage, I'm really, I've just got so many ideas brewing and really looking forward to casting a wider Net and really impacting ever more families with my work and yeah. So as I think about that, the pillars are really important, right? Those of you that have done did the 2020, summits, you should have gotten an email to invite you into the new platform where we're holding all the summits. It's pretty awesome. I'm really proud and honored to continue to support all of you and to look for better ways of supporting you, right, like that's, I mean, my only agenda is, how can I impact more parents? How can I impact more parents? So what are the pillars of my business? When I think about that, you know three words that capture the essence of my work of joyful courage. So here's a few ideas, Authenticity, Responsibility, connection. Authenticity responsibility, connection, I feel like what I'm inviting you into as you listen to the podcast, as you coach with me, as you do my programs, is an opportunity for you to discover your most authentic way of being, because I think that's where relationship really rocks, is when people show up in a. Authenticity, I invite you into responsibility, being responsible for yourself, how you show up, what your mindset is, what your lens is, right, taking responsibility and ownership of what you're bringing to the party. And connection. It's all about connection, right? Connecting to self, connecting to family, connecting to community. So those are my first three pillars, Authenticity, Responsibility, connection. But then I was thinking more, and I was like, well, it also could be raw, messy and empowering,

because we like to keep it real in the joyful courage community, right? We don't sugarcoat things. We are real. It is flippin messy. I think that this comes up in almost every coaching call and every response I make on social media is that the parenting journey is messy, and that's not an indication that you're bad at it or doing something wrong. It's just messy and empowering. I want you to feel empowered. I don't want to, like, create a big pit for all of us to sit in and feel like there's nothing we can do about what's going on right now. I want you and myself and my people to feel empowered, so raw, messy, empowered. But

then I was thinking more, and I was like, Well, what about imperfect? Well, actually, I used imperfection, surrender and relationship as three pillars. Imperfection. I mean, Hello, we are imperfect, as are our kids, as is our parenting, as is the life journey. Let's celebrate it, embrace it, not resist it. Surrender to it, right? I love the word surrender. Surrender. Be with what is meet people where they're at, let go of attachment. Surrender means those things to me, and then relationship, which I kind of cover with the word connection to relationship. It's all about the relationship we have with ourself, with our family, with the world, right? Imperfection, surrender, relationship. I'm not really. I love those words. I'm not so sold on those three. And then, of course, there's breath, body balcony. Breath, body balcony. Three pillars, I guess, no, I don't know if that's those are accurate for the pillars of my business. And then I thought about a good friend of mine whose work I have studied and been mentored in my friend Krista petty Ramer, she talks about the I, the we, and the all I, we, all, I, we, all. There's some powerful pillars. Are they business pillars? I don't know, tending to the eye, recognizing I am having a personal experience, an internal experience. I am the only place where something new and different can occur. Lives inside of me, and we are in relationship, right? How I move and respond to the world ripples and affects and influences the we, and even bigger than that, the all the community, the space around us. I We all, I don't know. I would love some help around this. What are the three pillars that you think of when you think of joyful courage as a business? I think that authenticity, responsibility and connection might be the winner. Winner. Chicken dinner. We'll see. We'll see. So I have some other three things that I want to talk to you about today. And the reason I'm talking about three things is something else came up in the mastermind I was in this morning, and that was somebody said that we are wired to learn three things. Like our brain loves it when we talk about three things. So that's why I'm like, You know what? I'm gonna take the three things and I'm gonna run with the three things. So here's some more, three things, three things that raising teenagers teaches us. One, flexibility is imperative, right? There's big highs and there's big lows and there's a lot of fear and worry, there's a lot of celebration, there's a lot of moments that feel so deeply connected and loving, and a lot of moments that feel disconnected and painful. So one thing that we all get to learn inside of the raising teens experience. Is finding flexibility, finding the ability to bounce back, right? Second thing, things are temporary. Things are temporary. Now, this took a while for me to learn, because when it got dark, it got dark, and I thought, This is it. And I know some of you are listening, thinking the same thing, this is it. This is where we'll be. We're here forever. Our relationship is over, and, man, I do not believe that. Trust that things are temporary. Things will feel different later, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, right? That was something that really has been so apparent in the unfolding of the show that I did with Rowan, like, wow, even she was surprised. You hear it in her voice when she shares like, things changed. I'm not riddled with anxiety. She didn't think that would ever happen, that she would be on the other side of it. And the third thing that we learn is they know what they want. They know what they want. And I hesitate to say this because, you know, the next little thought in my head is, well, maybe they don't all know what they want, but I think they do. And I think when we can create an environment of safety and respect, mutual respect, and trust and connection. They can share what they want from a really authentic place. And then there isn't this layer of tension between parent and child. There isn't this barrier of expectation and not wanting to disappoint. Yeah, I'm learning raising teens that my kids know what they want, and I'm gonna let them run with it and trust them. Okay, three things, three things that caregiving my husband, through cancer has taught me, is teaching me, and I know I'm not the only caregiver, because you've reached out and shared your stories with me, I'm learning that caregiving is always in motion. Sometimes it's holding on really tight, sometimes it's letting go, always it is an intention of being curious about what it is that the other person needs, and really deeply listening to them, and not assuming, even as I say, that I realize, Wow, I could be better at that. Which leads me to the second thing that caregiving my man through his cancer journey is teaching me, which is, I'm not a perfect caregiver. You know, I've been keeping this Caring Bridge blog about our experience, and every couple weeks I write and, you know, I share on social, and I feel like I try to keep it super real, and sometimes I think it comes across as really, like super Zen through all of this, and I'm not. I don't always set boundaries, and then I get resentful for all I have to do. And sometimes I'm kind of a huge bitch, and sometimes I am in deep, deep love with the process that perfect is something I am not. And the third thing that keeps all of that in check, keeps me from really burning out, although, honestly, I'm pretty close to burnout right now. You all just gonna be authentic and transparent. Burnout is right on the edge in this moment, which is why taking care of myself is non negotiable. I mentioned Elena's interview for the Brave New World Summit. I recorded it yesterday, and I it was the perfect time for me to record it and to have that conversation, because I got to get to reflect on how it is that I'm currently taking care of myself. And I gotta tell you, I'm kind of burning what is it? Burning the candle on both ends in this moment. So taking care of myself, being aware, taking care of myself, yeah, and then kind of connected to that, you know, considering my man is kind of out of commish, three things that finding myself as the family breadwinner is teaching me, one of which is I get to believe in the worth of my work, meaning I get to believe that my work is worthy of the energetic exchange i. Or with my audience. In this case, it's a financial exchange, right? I get to be paid for what I do. I get to be paid. I think a lot of us in the parent education industry, we put out a lot. There's blogs and podcasts and social media posts and, you know, admining our groups showing up a lot for free. And I don't ever not want to be in contribution to my community. I don't ever want anyone to feel like they can't access what I have to offer because of financial constraints, and it's a lot of work all of this, right? So I get to really do my own discovery around money, and asking for money and charging for things and being okay with, I don't know, the pushback, the judgment, I guess I don't know. This is something I am learning in the process. I'm in process of learning this, and it's super messy. I'm also learning that I have some issues with putting myself out there and promoting what I'm doing. You know, I funny thing in my email server. You know, every week when I write my new broadcast, which, by the way, you can join my list at joyful courage.com/join

when I send it out, I can see like, Okay, this many people have joined your list. This many people have unsubscribed. And it's really hard to see those unsubscribe numbers, even though I know that's okay. I sign up for things all the time and then unsubscribe. It's not anything I need to take personally, and there's some work for me to do there. And the third thing I'm learning is that I truly trust and believe that my work can support my family, it can pay the mortgage, it can buy the groceries, it can take care of all of our needs. I believe that I trust that I'm sitting inside of that, and I'm bringing that into 2021 so think about the people that you follow, that you love, and think about all the content that they offer you, and think about ways that you can be in exchange for that content. You know, I have a Patreon community. I'm actually gonna start, I'm going to open it up for one time donations, so it doesn't have to be a monthly donation. You can make one donation done, but it's a great way to support the work of the podcast. Because I pay for editing. My show sounds awesome because I have an amazing editor, Chris Mann at pod shaper, Chris, I love you. Dude, super grateful for you. He picks out the music. He lines everything up so it sounds good in your ears. I love his work. I'm super grateful, and I pay him for it, right? I have a operations. Person, Tay, many of you have been able to be in contact with Tay through the summits. She is a genius, a master of systems. I am super dependent on her. I pay Rowan. Rowan writes all my show notes and puts together the podcast and gets it published every week. I pay her to do that so that I can be busy creating content. It costs money to run a business, and I trust my community, and I trust my audience, and I trust my work, that the value of my work can generate and bring in the income to support my family. Bah, feels kind of weird saying all that sent all of you. Finally, three things that 2020 has taught me surrender again and again and again and again and again. Oh my gosh, you guys don't even know. I mean, I'm pretty public with a lot of the things that I've been invited to surrender to this year, and there's things that I haven't shared. So Whoa, again and again and again and again, coming back to that surrender, coming back to the second thing, which is trusting the unfolding. I mean, I don't know why things are happening the way they're happening. I don't know why. I don't know why I don't have to know the why I can trust that on some energetic level. Life is happening for us. There are lessons, there is opportunity. It is blowing up possibility, and maybe I just can't see it in this moment. Maybe we just can't see it in this moment. So we get to trust and find. Only the third thing that 2020 is teaching us all is to be with what comes up, you know, and you feel mad, feel mad when you feel sad, feel sad when you feel overwhelmed, feel overwhelmed. Let it move through you be with it, allow it so that you can get to the other side of it and see what's there and learn what you can handle. Yeah, three things, my friends, three things. What do you think about those three things I share because I know that what lives inside of the person lives inside of the collective. What lives inside of the individual? I should say, lives inside of the collective. Another little tidbit of wisdom I got from my friend Krista, so I know you're learning a ton through all of the things that have played out for you over this last year, the things that are playing out due to the season of life, the season of parenting. You know, the season of the season, the season you're in. I know that things are unfolding for you as well, and we get to decide if we want to react to it, or if we want to respond to it, if we want to learn and grow from it, or if we want to, you know, cave in and create some suffering from it. I realize that it's might be hard to hear that, because, like, Screw you, Casey. You don't know what I'm going through. And maybe I don't. Maybe I do. I know I'm going through my own stuff over here, and it's big and scary, and I'm choosing to be with it. I'm choosing to trust it. I'm choosing to surrender to it, to learn and to grow and to believe that there are amazing things out there on the horizon. I don't know if the horizon is going to show up. January 1, probably not. Maybe

Speaker 1 27:07
April 1, April Fool's Day. Maybe

Casey O'Roarty 27:11
this summer, we'll be dancing in the grass and celebrating and listening to live music again. Or maybe it'll be a little longer. But whatever the unfolding is, we get to be with it. We get to be intentional with how we be with it, and we get to take care of ourselves through it, so that when it gets really dark, we are able to get to the other side and come back to the light. So that's what's on my mind today and tonight. Actually, it's night time, and I wanted to share it with you.

I hope that you found value. If you did, will you do me a favor and head over to Apple podcasts and leave a review. This is so special and a great way to be in the exchange of energy. Head over to Apple podcasts, leave a review. Let people know what it is about this show that keeps you listening, what you like, what's useful. That would be awesome. If you have any questions or feedback, you can email me at KC, at joyful courage.com and if you're still excited and interested in being a part of the parenting for the season you're in beta group, you can find out more and register at joyful courage.com/seasons All right, my friends, thank you for listening.

Yay. Thank you for listening. Friend. If you have any questions or feedback, reach out. Let me know what you need. At Casey, at joyful courage, I read each and every email that I get. If you are needing more support, consider signing up for one of my courses or one on one coaching. Head to www.joyfulcurch.com and dig around to find out the best fit for you. I will be back next week with an interview with my 15 year old son I know so cool. Can't wait till then find your breath. Ride it into your body, release the tension that you find there, hmm, lift up and into the balcony seat and trust that everything is going to be okay. Bye