102: Mastermind Kid’s Edition: Stage-Fright or Sheeple-Phobia?

0 (0s):
You’re listening to the Mastermind Parenting Podcast with Randi Rubenstein episode one Oh two.

1 (5s):
Yeah, my name’s Randi Rubenstein and welcome to the Mastermind Parenting Podcast where we believe when your thoughts grow the conversations in your home flood.

0 (21s):
Hi guys, today I have a special kids Edition and this is the first kid’s edition that I’m doing here on the podcast. And really all it means is that I’m just sharing a story about a kid and I thought other kids might be interested in hearing it. So if you think that this is something that your kids would be interested, feel free to play it for him. And you can guys can just listen to each other as a family in the car. I’m doing whatever you do. I’m okay. So hi kids. Hi, I call you all Mastermind mascots, which just means that your kids that go out into the world and you show up kind and confidence and awesome, and like your best selves and Mastermind mascots are people who solve problems are people who don’t add to drama, who don’t make other people feel crummy about themselves, who just like do the right thing.

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And I meet many Mastermind mascots in my life. And I think most kids are actually Mastermind mascots. The problem is, is that so many kids I think are misunderstood by the adults in their lives. And, and the adults don’t mean to misunderstand you guys, the adult’s just don’t know how to do it differently. So that’s really where I come in is I help adults understand kids better. See your perspectives, get really like, curious about what’s going on when you guys are like in a bad mood or upset or whatever. So I want to share a story about a little friend that I have, and she is a very a caller, my friend, because everybody in our we’re we’re a family that people of different ages can be friends.

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So, so my kids, friends, I feel like they can come to me. And, and I talked directly to my kids, friends, and we have just regular old conversations in everybody is everybody seems to get along because if you’re my kid’s friends and I think my kids are pretty awesome. So if my kid likes you and you’re their friend, I’m like, you must be pretty cool person. Like I like you to automatically. So this little friend of mine is one of my son. Corey’s best, best friends. And, and I’m actually friends with her parents. I’ve known her for a long time.

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She has a very special friend to our family and she, you know, thinks of me probably as a pretty special friend to, and she feels she can tell me about any thing. So she’s overhanging out with Cory just last weekend. And M and Cory was being kinda sluggish. He was laying on a couch. She had a sleep over the night before with someone else. And she was like, let’s go ride bikes, let’s get it. They like to go goof around in the neighborhood. And I’m, and Corey was just like totally being lazy and being a slug. So she comes in, I’m not going to use her name because I don’t want to embarrass her in any way. If this were to ever get back to her, I don’t think it would, but I’ll tell her about it, but I’m just not going to use her name for privacy reasons.

0 (3m 42s):
So she comes over to me, I’m in the kitchen and she’s she, and she looks up at me and she said, can I ask you something Randi? And I said, sure. She said, how do you get over Stage Fright? And I said, Hm Stage Fright tell me more. And she said, well, I just practiced my bat mitzvah speech for one person. And at that moment, her eyes got kinda teary. And she looked out at me and she said, and I just, I couldn’t stop crying. And I know it’s because I think I’ve Stage Fright and how am I going to get up and do my bat mitzvah speech in front of you?

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You know, all of those people, if I can even do it in front of one person, what am I going to do? And I said, all right, okay. First of all, this is the conversation I had the first of all, let me tell you something. You are not the only person that has Stage Fright in fact, there have been like researchers who have found out that people actually are more scared of speaking or getting on a stage in front of other people, then dying Stage fight is the number one thing. People are afraid of their, or afraid to get up in front of other people. Literally people would rather die than Get up in front of the people.

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So just saying that you are not alone, lots of people share this fear, but let’s get curious about this. Okay. Tell me a little bit more about what feels so scary. And she’s like, it’s just so scary. She is having trouble, like, even really like, she, her heart’s starts to race. I can tell. And she’s like, kind of like it. I just, I can’t stop crying, even thinking about it. And I said, all right. All right. All right. So let’s say, you know, so let’s talk about it a little bit more. And so I explained to her, and I said, your body, when it feels scared of something, your body is feeling something that your brain is telling it to feel.

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So your brain is telling your body to feel like, Oh my gosh, this is a really scary situation. I said, the interesting thing is, is that the same feelings and, and chemicals that go through your body when you’re excited about something are the same chemicals that go through your body when you’re scared about something. So if you feel as though what happens is when you start to feel the Stage Fright she said, my heart starts pounding. I was like, okay, your heart starts pounding. I said, does your mouth get dry? She’s like, yes, my mouth gets dry. And then my eyes just welled up with tears. I say, okay. So all your body is saying is I feel a lot of chemicals going through it right now.

0 (6m 39s):
You must be scared. Okay. You must be scared. This doesn’t feel good. We need to release those feelings of being scared. And one of the ways the body lowers and releases all of those, those chemicals that are come from stress of being scared and feeling like you’re under attack. I said, those get released when you do something like the tears, the tears help those chemicals to go down and not feel as strong. So the tiers and the heart racing in the heart racing his. So if you were in a scary situation, you could run fast and, and the dry mouth is because your body is working on overdrive in all of like the blood from your head is rushing to like your arms and legs.

0 (7m 31s):
So there’s not a lot left in your, and so that’s where the dry mouth comes from. Cause there’s all kinds of chemicals that are causing your mouth to get dry. So that’s normal. And when you change what you’re thinking about it, it starts to, it starts to, you know, have all of those things sort of slow down and chill out. Just like, like what I was like, well, you know how to do a yoga breath, right? She was like, yeah. I said, so number one, when you take a deep breath in and you hold it, and then you let it out,

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I

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Can also think of it as sniffing the flowers and blowing out the birthday candles, Slow that breathing actually helps your heart to stop racing so much. Did you notice? And she said, yeah, I notice so you guys, if you will practice that sniffing in the poll flowers and blowing out the birthday candles, Like notice if your body feels calm after you do that. And I said, so when you do that and you tell your brain, you’re not scared.

0 (8m 49s):
You’re just excited. I said, this is your bat mitzvah. People who have been talking about like your whole life, its sort of feels a big deal. We know. And she’s like, Oh no, it does. I was like, right. So your brain is going to this place of, Oh my God, this is such a big deal with it. If you cry in front of everyone, when, if you can’t give your speech and it starts spinning out, I said, what if instead you tell you, you take those deep breaths and you tell your brain, this is sort of a big deal because it’s so exciting. I’ve waited my whole life for this. This is really excited, exciting. I said, and I even use a term sometimes. Cause my brain is like, no, I’m freaking out. I’m scared. I said, I even use a term. I’ll tell my brain know.

0 (9m 30s):
You’re just scared sited. It’s okay. It’s okay. Your scared side of it. It’s okay to be scared and excited at all. Have the same time. And I think a lot of times of all the times I’ve been scared and push through something. And then how, how proud of myself I felt, which is amazing. And then I start thinking about how good I’m going to feel afterwards and how proud I’m going to be of myself. She’s like, okay, okay. I was like, is that helpful at all? She’s like, no, it’s helpful. I said, what else would be helpful? And she said, well maybe if I practice the speech with you and I said, absolutely let’s do it. Okay. So she’s like, okay.

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So we take a walk, we go over to her new house. She gets with the speech. We go over to a little place close by. She really didn’t want to be at her house practicing because I think she didn’t want like, you know, she just wanted to be alone with no pressure. So I said, perfect, okay, we’ll go. We’ll go to this separate place and, and we’ll practice it. And it was funny because she, I was thinking maybe she would want to be alone with me, but Corey was around and she was totally cool with Corey there. She was fine. So which tell me, which made me feel good because I’m like, Oh, well she trusts Corey. She trusts the core. That’s what I liked to call Corey the core. So we go and we start practicing. And, and first I said, okay, do you want me to read it first?

0 (10m 53s):
So you can hear how it sounds before you do it. And she said, sure. So I start reading it. And there’s a lot of parts of it. Like the speech. Wasn’t very good. You guys at all. It is. And I know her really well. It didn’t sound like her. It was not like, it just, wasn’t a great speech at all. So I’m like, wait, what, what is this par say? She’s like, I know she’s like the rabbi. Like I sat with the rabbi and he put all of these things in it and I didn’t like it, but I didn’t know what to say. And so then the more we kind of go through when she keeps finding all of these parts that she’s like, yeah, I know, no, I hate that part.

0 (11m 33s):
I don’t think anyone’s going to want, know what that means. And he wanted me to put a joke in, but it was sort of his joke. And I didn’t even think it was funny and I would never use this word and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, I said, okay, this is interesting. Does this speech not feel like You? She was like, no, no, not at all. And I was like, okay, maybe you think you have stage fright, but you actually have Sheeple Phobia and she kind of looked at me and Sheeple is what I call people who just never questioned anything and just follow along like good little sheep.

0 (12m 13s):
And, and I said, you’re a pretty strong little chick with a big voice and opinions. And she is a small person. I said, and even though there’s this small package thing going on, you know, you’ve always been kind of a Yorkie. Kid, that’s what I call small children. Cause I have a little small dogs. That’s a Yorkie and she is the cutest thing in the entire world. And she can, and she looks at me. I go, even though you’ve been like, like a Yorkie type package over here, you’ve got a big voice and you’ve got things to say. And she was like, ah, I was like in this spot mitzvah, which has a big deal, which has been waiting for your whole life.

0 (12m 54s):
Like tell me where I’m wrong on this. It seems like you want to get up on that. On that pulpit in front of all of the people who have come to see you and you want to be, you, you don’t want to be some little sheep that the rabbi wrote your speech or told you what jokes to put in, tell me where I’m wrong. She was like, no, your a hundred percent, right? You were a hundred percent. Right? I say, Hm. It seemed like Stage Fright but it was really Sheeple Phobia and that’s a good thing. I said, that’s a good thing. I said, you don’t have Stage Fright you have leadership energy.

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You want to be You and you don’t want to be anyone, but you, and you want to be seen for who you are and you want to get up there and give a speech that feels like You that you can be proud of. And she said, yes. And I said, so what are we going to do here? And she kind of looked at me. I said, would it be helpful for me to sit with you and to rewrite this speech so that it actually sounds like you? And she was like, yes, yes. So I said, okay. It just so happens that I write stuff all the time. And we could probably knock this rewrite out in about an hour. And she said really?

0 (14m 21s):
And I said, sure, I’d say, let’s knock it out today. So we go back to my house and we see Corey goes back to laying on the couch or doing his homework. And I say, can we go get my bed? Because all good writing seems to happen in my life, in the bed. And she was like, yes. So we go, we get in the bed. She even gets under the covers. She’s got her little computer out. And it took us exactly, I think 47 minutes to not only rewrite it, but to go through and did like two or three practices where she read it, where we talked about how, you know, how she sh you know, what words she was going to be bold and make it more important in and put her, or, you know, how she was going to deliver her jokes.

0 (15m 7s):
And she practiced it. And at the end, she looked at me, her parting words were, I feel like a huge way has been lifted off my chest. And I said, you do. She said, yeah. I said, what do you think about your speech? She’s like, I think it is awesome. I was like, Oh, it is awesome. And you just nailed it. You do not have stage fright. I say, and when you get up there, you might be a little scared sighted because there’s all these people in the audience. And they’re all looking at you. I said, but now you’ve got a speech that feels like You that you get to get up there and deliver exactly like you.

0 (15m 49s):
And so you’ll take your deep breaths. You’ll say in your head, I’m scared, sighted. This is exciting. I got this. I said, and you’ll deliver it. And you’ll feel so proud of yourself. And she said, she said, will you be sitting like right in the front so that I can look at you and be reminded of this? And I said, yes, of course. And she said, okay, good. So that was it. That was it. And her mom sent me a text and she said, I, you know, thank you so much. I just, she said, I got a much happier, more confident Kid when it comes to the speech, it’s a big deal. And so she walked in it, it was like, Oh, the weight have been lifted.

0 (16m 30s):
She felt so much better. So guys, this is what I want to tell you is when you feel like the world is just crushing down on you. Oh my gosh, that’s my bat mitzvah. You know, this is how our little friend felt its my bat mitzvah. I have to get up there. The rabbi said, what if I cry in that? I looked like a baby and it blah, blah, blah. Well, you know, all those things can, can race through your mind. But what I want to tell you guys is that everything is figureoutable. That was a problem. And it seemed like this giant insurmountable problem. And when she thought about it and thought who is an adult, I can trust that could possibly help me solve this problem.

0 (17m 17s):
And she reached out, I mean, truly she could have reached out to her parents. I know her parents will. And they talk about, you know, lots of things in their household. And so she could have reached out to her parents from her parents would have helped her solve the problem to, and I think it just so happened that she reached out to me because she happened to be at my house and she happened to be bored with Corey was being a slug on the couch. And so she came over to me and she knows that I do some speaking in my life and felt like, you know, I’ll just go ahead and ask Randi and let her know how I’m feeling. So I don’t have to keep all this stuff inside. But that’s what I want to tell you guys is when you feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders and there’s all of these big feelings inside and it seems like there’s no, this is just a huge problem.

0 (18m 2s):
And it’s like, there’s, there’s no, there’s no solution. I’m at a dead end. This is a huge problem. And I have to deal with at all by myself. You never have to deal with at all by yourself. When you go to an adult that you trust and you’re able to say, I’m really scared about something or I’m really upset about something or I’m really nervous about something. And you allow that adult to help you solve the problem. And you guys work together. Like, do you see how it’s like, there are no problems. Everything just becomes a chance to learn something new and learn something about yourself and just to feel better. So that’s what I want to encourage you guys to do is to have that, that courage in to be brave when you feel like your at a dead end and you have to just deal with whatever the problems are all by yourself.

0 (18m 55s):
I want you to find an adult that you trust to help you solve the problems. You don’t have to do this all alone. Okay guys, hope you enjoyed our first multi-generational episode and let me know what you think and I’ll see you guys soon. Bye-bye have a great week.

1 (19m 19s):
Are you ready to start having PRODUCTIVE conversations? Have you been listening to the podcast for a while and you hear me go through my three step PRODUCTIVE conversation process to solve any problem and your thinking, how does she do that? Guess what? I made a really cool resource for you guys, a call it the problem solving one sheet. Okay. It’s one sheet front and back. So, you know, take it with a grain of salt, but it will walk you through how to have productive conversations and your practice. And before you know it, you will be having PRODUCTIVE conversations all day, every day. It really is the solution to solve any problem. So you can download it at Mastermind Parenting dot com forward slash problem solving all one word that’s Mastermind Parenting dot com forward slash problem solving all one word.