Eps 168: A solo show reviewing 2018 and getting clear on what we want MOST

Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Music. Hey everybody, welcome to the joyful courage podcast, a place for information and inspiration on the conscious parenting journey. Conversations you'll hear on this show are all intended to offer you tools for moving forward, expanding your lens and shifting your narrative to one of possibility, connection and empowerment. When we bring deep, listening, acceptance and courage to our relationships, we are doing our part to evoke it in the world. I am thrilled to partner with you on this path. Hey, I just wanted to check in with you really quick before I start the show. So the holidays are coming up. Do any of you ever have these grand ideas of how the holidays are going to feel? How excited you are about the season of gratitude and love and giving, and then, you know, the actual holidays begin, you feel like, oh my gosh, they're so ungrateful. Everybody's so entitled. This isn't going the way I wanted it to go. Family members maybe show up and are a wee bit judgmental. Kids are bouncing off the walls because of lack of routine and candy and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Does that ever happen to you? Or am I the only one? I have a feeling I'm not the only one. So I've created a webinar for you, a free webinar, Monday December 3, called Creating a connected holiday. We are going to join each other on zoom at 5pm Pacific or 8pm Pacific. So I'm doing two different times in hopes that one of them works for you. I'd love to see you there. Check the show notes for the link to register for the webinar. You're going to want to get registered because there's going to be some perks to registering, and you're going to get a replay of the webinar, in case you can't be there. Live All right, hope to see you there. Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. Today is a solo show. Today is the last episode of 2018 boo, I know I'm taking December off from the podcast because I have so many exciting things happening in January that I kind of need the time, plus the holidays and the kids and the you know, and I'm guessing you might not have that much time to listen to podcasts anyway. So today is the last podcast of the year, and I'm so excited. I'm so excited for this show today, because I really would like to start off by celebrating where we have been this year. I mean, it has been a big year, and I went back and I looked at all the things and was just amazed by how many ways we got together this year. So on the podcast, oh my gosh, the first interview of the year was Dr Tina Bryson. I mean, can we all just do a collective YeeHaw for Tina Bryson? Love her. She came on and talked about the yes brain. Very first interview of 2018 It was so good. I got super feisty and real and a little vulnerable about parenting and politics in February. Remember that after the Florida shooting? Yeah, that was a good episode, and a couple follow up episodes after that, just talking about the action that I would be taking personally in my own community, right? Two of my favorite peaceful parenting experts, Rebecca aines and Genevieve simpering him, were on the podcast in March and April. I love both of those women. Rebecca runs the Positive Parenting Toddlers and beyond page, as well as creative child. Genevieve is the mastermind behind the way of the peaceful parent group. Both of those ladies, I just so so, so appreciate you all. Loved Mary tamborski, wasn't she so great daughter of Jane Nelson coming on and talking about what it was like to be raised with positive discipline. She was on last May, Thanks, Mary. I'm so glad you came on. And listeners, you loved Mary, and as much as I do, because she's really, you know, she's real and authentic, and I just so appreciate that about her. And then in July, I did an interview with Danielle Slaughter from Mama demicks about privilege and how white women can do better. And that was a very powerful conversation. You know, we're all blind to our blindness. We all have our bank of experiences that that we see through, right? And they're different experiences. And so I really appreciate, and I follow Danielle, and I always appreciate any time she puts out a new article or a new blog post, because her perspective is not my perspective, and when I get to when I get the chance to look through her eyes, it is an expansion of my own lens. So that was a great interview last. July, and then August rolled around, and I had Dan Siegel on the podcast. Oh my god. You all know he's on my vision board. Like that was huge. That was so huge and so amazing, right? So much feedback about that episode and how much value you got out of it. I'm still like, even when I think about it right now, I'm a little tingly. That was amazing, right? That was amazing in this fall. It's just continued to be rich with interviews on the topic of teens and energetic connections with our kids and self care and living juicy lives and supporting our partners, not to mention, throughout the year my solo shows, you all send me messages all the time about how much you love the solo shows. And I'm so glad that you do that, because it's really great validation. I mean, it's easy to interview someone and know that they're bringing amazing value. And then when I get on here solo, and I'm like, Yeah, stuff to say, I think that'll be valuable. I'm also on one hand, like, Oh, God, I hope this is valuable. But you show up and you tell me how much you take from the show, and it's so appreciated. The show would not be what it is without you the listeners. What else happened this year. So I loved leading the joyful courage 10 twice. So all of you that went through the joyful courage 10 with me. Yay. For those of you that don't know what the joyful courage 10, it's basically a 10 day challenge, and it's a 1010, day deep dive into our own internal experience. And we got, we get deep, right? Really big shifts of mindset occur, new openings for seeing the world and being in response to your life. I love the joyful courage 10. And this year, the joyful courage 10 then filtered into the joyful courage Academy. And like any online course, the academy really allowed me to be in deeper relationship with those of you that chose in and that is so special to me, that is so fun when I get to run a program to get to know the people that say yes, the people that take the content really apply it, ask questions and celebrate. It's just so so beautiful. Yes, and then live classes. I met a lot of you at the Pacific Northwest parent more love less not less hate. More Love, less rage. Talk that I gave last year, I went all the way to Newport Beach, California and did a mother's journey. I went all the way to Baltimore and did a mother's journey. It was so awesome to get to travel and see you. Oh my gosh. When was that? Was it March or April? I got to go to Tempe, where eight of the moms who had gone through an entire year membership program with me in 2017 we all came together in Tempe and stayed in a house together and did some positive discipline training. Super highlight. Yeah, so there's a lot of stuff going on, my friends, there's a lot of stuff going on, and next year is huge too. Be on the lookout for more joyful courage 10s more joyful courage academies. I'm gonna make sure that they're out there available to you. Stay tuned in for the launch of my first book. Whoa, in the spring. It's supposed to launch late February, early March, march, yes, and that's super exciting. It's been through proofreading, and I'm working with my team on marketing, and it's like kind of crazy. I I plan on the Patreon community being on fire this next coming year. So you've heard me talk about it. My goal is to create a really easy stepping stone into working with me through Patreon. So it's kind of like the membership, but less expensive, and yeah, and you get access. So the Patreon community is going to be very exciting this year. And in January I am,

I am offering an audio Summit. That's I'm gonna I'm gonna talk more about that later in the show, but that's happening in January too. So straight out the door, man, we are we are getting there. We are on fire. We are gonna have some good times here in 2019 I am so so honored to serve you. I'm so honored to serve you. So thanks for that little 2018 recap. Thanks for sticking with me as I recapped it. Right? I think it's really important to do, do you do that end of the year? What do people call it? End of the year? Review. You know. No, and maybe it's your kids. Maybe it's milestones. I think it's really useful, especially considering what I want to talk about today. I think it's really useful to to pause here at the end of the year and take some time and really see where you've been, what you've done, what you've created, where your kids have been, kind of looking back on what, where was there a really hard time. Where did you come out the other side? Where have you grown? Where are they places for growth? I think it's really powerful to, you know, be on the other side of a year and kind of take in everything that showed up for you. Because, holy cow, there's, you know, it feels like we're really in the weeds and you that's kind of what they say about that's what I say about parenting kids under five, parenting kids under three, even more, where it's just, you know, you never think your life is going to be different, right? It just feels so intense all the time. Yeah,

yeah, and, and. And the one thing you can count on is things will change. Things will always change, right? Year to year, things change when we're inside of challenging times. It feels very difficult to imagine anything being different, right? But when we can do a year long review, or a year year end review and really see, oh, yeah, you know what that? That was a big problem for me a year ago, and now we've gotten to the other side of it, because I know. I know about self doubt, worry. I know about feeling like you're face down in the mud and oh my god, you know what's going to happen, what's going to happen to me, what's going to happen to my child. We let our heads spin out of control, right? And then everybody's dead in a ditch at the end of the spin out. And we always get to the other side, right? We always get to the other side. And I think it's so important to have a community that you can talk to, right. So important that you can have a community that you can talk to and I think that the early years are really well covered. There are a lot of parenting communities that focus on the early years. Parents are talking a lot when their kids are young. They're asking for help, they're celebrating milestones, they're talking a lot, and you might be in the live in love with joyful courage community, feeling supported there, and that's great. Then, as your kids get older, you might notice that you feel like you age out of some of these parenting groups, right? It feels like the challenges that you have as your kids get older and move into adolescence start to feel really scary, right? Really, like, oh my gosh, life or death, and it feels it's really challenging to have. It's like, you know, when you have a baby or a toddler and your friends who don't have any kids say, why don't you just do this? And you want to give them the big old middle finger? Well, the same is kind of true when you have adolescent slash teenagers. And your friends whose kids are a lot younger than yours say, Well, you ought to just XYZ, same kind of thing, right? It's like you don't even know what's coming. Sorry, but you don't. Right? You don't. And so that's why those of you that are listening with older kids and don't realize this, that's why I actually started a new group, and I'm gonna find it. Where is it? The joyful courage for parents of teens group. I've, I've, I promote it in the live and love group, but I wanted to make sure that you all know that we've got a place now for parents of teenagers to talk really candidly and openly about what is showing up and feeling supported, right? Feeling supported because, oh my gosh, there is a continuum of behavior, and what I find is missing often. And I would guess that, you know, there, you know, there's gaps in a lot of of the parenting resources. There's this myth that if you just do it this way, or you just say these things, or you create this agreement or use this routine, that that's going to lead to easy peasy, lovely parenting experiences, right? And the bottom line is, this shit is messy. Sorry if you're listening with your kids, this is messy. Like they are not robots, they are human beings, and they're making sense of the world. And, you know, I can't tell you how many times I have clients who say, Well, I did that and it didn't work, right? It didn't work. So I. Yeah, here's the first thing I want to say, like the goal. And I talked about this my last solo show about how important relationship is right. Relationship is super important, even even more. Well, I won't say even more, but alongside relationship is the mindset that your kids are doing the best they can with the tools that they have, and they are going to make mistakes. They're going to do stupid things. They're that are going to embarrass you. They are going to do things that maybe even make you feel some guilt and shame. You know, all the things are going to show up for you. It however it looks for you, right? And whatever flavor it comes for you. It's not going to look the same as my experience or your neighbor's experience, but we are all going to go through periods of embarrassment and feeling deep fear that's just going to show up and so mindset shifting, our mindset into okay, what are the skills my child needs? How can I respond in a way that leaves my child knowing that I love them unconditionally and helps them in developing the skills that they need, the skills that they were lacking as they navigated that situation that they're going to need for next time, right? So it's really and it doesn't matter if we're talking teenagers or toddlers, we have to hold the mindset that they're doing the best they can with the tools that they have. They're navigating the world from their you know, continuously developing brain, and they want to know they're connected, and they want to know that they matter, right? So there is this continuum of behavior, and really, when we're talking about teenagers, it doesn't feel like that. And I know I've talked about this on the podcast, it feels like either teens are doing all the right things or they're going to rehab, right? It doesn't like there's a lot between those two ends of the spectrum that doesn't get talked about a lot because it's messy. There's no solid answers. I was in a talk one time about screens and teens, and one of the gals in the audience says, Well, if we raise our kids with positive discipline, we just don't have these kind of challenges. And I nearly leaped out of my seat because I was like, Oh no, no, no. I hope that you're not spreading that around, because it's a crapshoot. Right with there's this myth that, well, if we just do everything right, and, and, and, like I said, before we do all the right things, say all the right things that somehow there's not going to be any challenges. And please don't fool yourself into thinking that that's right, because it's not. Teenagers do weird things. Some of them don't right. Some of them don't most of them fall in the in the bell in the middle of the bell curve. Most of them fall in the middle of the bell curve. Right? There's the outliers. Most of them fall in the middle of the bell curve. So it's really our job to trust our gut, to trust our intuition, to take deep breaths, right? Take deep breaths to and really try, like when I talk about or when anyone talks about being more aware. I do have Sarah Harvey Yao is going to be my first guest in in January, and she's coming on to talk about naming emotions and all this juicy stuff. But you know, we talked a lot about, you know, the point is to be aware, right? Like, and you've heard me talk about the emotional freight train. This is what my book's all about. Like, knowing that you're on the train when you're on the train, knowing when you are being driven by fear, knowing when you're being driven by anger or embarrassment or shame, right? Learning how to pause in the moment and trust everybody's going to be okay. Okay. There's no like, don't pause, or it's only going to get worse. Like, please pause, or it's going to get worse, right? Because when we don't pause, when we don't recognize where we're at, when we're there, we tend to fly off the handle, say and do things that aren't helpful, and then we've got an even bigger mess to clean up later. So learning how to be aware, learning how to come back to what you want most, right? What you want most versus what you want right now? Does that make sense? So I love that in the context of like losing weight or changing your diet, what do I want most versus what I want now, which is a chocolate candy bar. Right? I want most is to lose 10 pounds. What I want now is that bag of chips. Okay? What I want most for my children is for them to feel belonging and significance, for them to be thoughtful, for them to work through the consequences of their actions, right? That's what I want most. Sometimes. What I want now is I want to nip this in the bud, right? Like I want to show this kid who's boss. I want to I want them to feel the pain, right? And so those two things cannot exist together, right? Because instead of thinking about their consequences of their actions, they're thinking about how mad they are at me,

right? So really, being aware of where you're at doesn't mean that we don't talk consequences with our kids. We just don't talk consequences when we are full of rage or fear or embarrassment or whatever, we wait, get ourself together, and then we go to our kids. So being aware of how we're feeling and taking care of ourselves so that we can come into a conversation with our child in a way that's helpful and not hurtful and forwarding for them. But man, it sure does get ugly, right? The humanness shows up. And I think, as our kids get older and they're challenged and their behavior is, is, is difficult, right? We start to isolate ourselves. What we talked about with all of our toddlers, oh, my toddler's a biter, or potty training is really hard, or they're not sleeping through the night. The things that are challenging when they're really little that we talk to everybody about, you know, as they get older, there's this assumption that I don't know what challenges shouldn't be there, and so we don't talk about the hard stuff as much, especially in the social media world that we live in right now, where everybody is has curated this life of accomplishment and accolades, and look at how amazing my children are, right? And then I have a child who's having a hard time, where does that fit? Where does that fit? And so, yeah, so we start to feel really isolated. Perhaps we might feel some shame. I want to just take a moment right now at a plug episode 87 I had my colleague and friend Lisa fuller on. She's a positive discipline trainer. She's amazing. She came on episode 87 and talked about shame, super popular podcast. If you haven't listened to it, check the show notes and go back and listen to it, because it was really a powerful show, talking about how important it is for us to speak into what is happening for us, even if it's just one other person that we have to talk to. I know last year when my daughter was having such a hard time in ninth grade, and I was like, Oh my God, what's happening right now? I had, you know, two or three friends that were on the list of of sharing what was happening with my daughter, because I knew that they also had teenagers. I knew that they were in the arena, as Brene Brown says, with me, and that's who I wanted to talk to and it was such a release, right? It was such a release for me to share about my fear and my worry and my self doubt and the fact that I felt like a fraud, and all the things with these girlfriends of mine who could say, Yeah, me too. I get you. I see you. I I'm

having a similar experience. So we've got to, you know, we kind of the shame disintegrates when we have a safe place to speak about what's happening currently in our parenting and in our lives. And this is why. Okay, so back to the whole being aware thing. This is why I love meditation, yoga and journaling and being in nature, really those four things, self care practices that really allow us to be in the expansion of our mindset, right tools that let us that encourage us to really reflect on what's real and what's alive, and then to decide is this? Is this what I want to be driving me my favorite meditation app is Insight Timer. You can get it at your app store. That's not they do not sponsor the podcast, unfortunately, I wish they did, but there are tons of meditations on there. If you're like, Okay, meditation. I don't even know what that means. Okay, great. Right? You don't have to. It's so easy. It's not about nothing in your mind. It's just about being still and acknowledging what is there, and then letting it go and coming back to your breath. Having a home base. It's like, home base. It's like, how do you want to feel? Right? Like, right now. How do you want your body to feel? So maybe change the way you're sitting or walking or standing and find find the posture, find the relaxation, notice the tension, let it go. How do you want to physically feel in your body? Right? What do you want your face to feel like? How are those muscles right now on your face or your jaw. Right in this moment, I want you to actively relax the muscles on your face and the muscles in your jaw and like, it's like finding neutral. You know, finding neutral, this is home base. This is home base. And if we can practice through meditation. I think journaling supports this. Yoga definitely nature, being out in nature like that's us at home base. And if, the more we get familiar with home base, the easier it becomes, over time, when we're super flipped out, to decide, okay, oh, I'm being driven by anger right now. I'm going to find my home base so that I can preserve relationship and really do what's most helpful to my child and myself, right? And it's a tightrope walk. It's a tightrope when they're little, as they get older, it's definitely a tightrope walk. We read and hear all about teen, risky teen behavior. Some kids don't really engage in it. Most of them do, right? Most of them do. So how to and then, you know, if you're like me, and you've raised your kids with positive discipline, and they talk to you about everything they're telling you about their risky behavior. And so, man, do I ever need to be in neutral to be in conversation about my kids risky choices and to support them and be curious and and let go? Right doesn't mean permissive. Doesn't mean do whatever you want. Does mean I'm here to listen. I'm concerned. Let's talk about it. I'm not okay with it, right? But having that conversation from a from a neutral place versus a triggered place, is a totally different experience. I love the conversation I had with Kimberly Minch episode 158 this last fall about teen behavior. She's so wise. I love you, Kim. But it's a it is a pendulum swing, right? It's a pendulum swing, whether they're toddlers or school agers or teenagers, you know, things feel really good and smooth and till they don't, and then they're off over on the other side of the behavior in their tantrum and their meltdown and their moodiness, and then they can make it back to a place of connection. So just like being in the weeds, we forget pendulums always swing back the other way, right? They always swing back the other way. And we get to practice trust and surrender over and over and over and over and over and over again, like you heard me talk last week with Stacy Davison. I hope you all listened to that. That was a great conversation. I love what she's putting out in the world's personal pep talk. I actually she's got tattoos, which you should check out Christmas, Christmas presents. I actually had the word surrender tattooed to my body. I had the bracelet that was cool, but really it means so much to me. It's such a deep practice for me that I just needed it to be tattooed onto my wrist, because I am being called into it daily, right? Every day. And that doesn't mean that life is really hard. There are so many ups and the ebb and the flow. There's so much love right now, and it's hard and it's hard, right? We get to live in the both and as parents, the love and the challenge, the joy and the non joy, and ultimately remembering that it's their journey, right? It's their journey. We are guides and mentors, and we love them, and it's their journey. Yeah, yeah, Ooh, good stuff, my friends. So I want to say again, just as I wrap up today that the audio summit that's happening in January is for parents of teenagers. It is going to be over the course of one. Week, it'll be one week of real conversations about raising teens. I'm getting loads of I'm getting lots of feedback from the joyful courage parents of teens community about what they want to hear. It's all my guests are positive discipline trainers who have either are raising teenagers or have raised teenagers, so I was explicit in that ask to make sure that the people that were on had been through the trenches or were in it with us, right? Everybody's welcome to listen. Be ready. Starting January 1, I will be launching that audio Summit, and you'll be able to register, then you'll want to get registered. I'm also looking for some people to to join my team, my launch team for that audio Summit. And there'll be some incentives for you to help me spread the word in the first couple weeks of January, so that we get a nice big number of registrations, people that are listening, because this is really important stuff, right? This is valuable. So if you are interested in being on the launch team for the audio Summit, will you just please send me an email Casey at joyful courage.com saying I'm in for the launch team, and I can get you more information. I'm going to post about that in the parents of teens group as well. Well, I'm recording on Tuesday the 20th. So Thanksgiving here in the States is happening on Thursday, but actually the show is going to come out next Tuesday. So I hope that you had a great Thanksgiving. I hope family time was easy and that your long weekend was restful. I so love you, all of you. So appreciate you. Thank you for all the feedback. I always love getting emails from you telling me that you have you know that the content is landing for you, that you appreciate the show. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Can't wait to be back in January. Huge love, huge, huge, huge love to all of you. And yeah, happy holidays. Joyful courage community, you are amazing. Big thanks and love to my team, including producer Chris Mann at pod shaper. Please be sure to join in the discussion over at the live and love with joyful courage Facebook group as well as the joyful courage business page on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to the show through Apple podcast, Spotify, Google Play, iHeartRadio, or really anywhere you find your favorite podcasts, you can view the current joyful courage programs and my coaching offers over at the webpage. Simply head to www.joyfulcourage.com to find more support for your conscious parenting journey. If you want to give back to the show, and I really hope you do become a patron, click donate on the website to give back to the show that gives you so much any comments or feedback about this episode, or any others can be sent to [email protected] I personally read and respond to all the emails that come my way. Reach out, take a breath, drop into your body, find the balcony seat and trust that everything is going to be okay.