135: ⅓ Rule with Amy Pearson Part 1

0 (2s):
My name’s Randi Rubenstein and welcome to the Mastermind. Parenting Podcast where we believe when your thoughts grow the conversations in your home flow,

1 (15s):
The name to the Mastermind Parenting Podcast with Randi Rubenstein episode one 35. Well, hi guys. I have some news for you. So I’m going to be changing the format of the podcast just a little bit, and we are going to start a professional series where I’m having conversations with other professionals that support women, support moms, support children. I’m just a whole plethora, different coaches, therapists, doctors. Just want to bring you some different perspectives to the, to the conversation and just give you guys a little, I don’t know.

1 (1m 0s):
I think there, I, I, I like to change things up, so I think that it will open up some good conversations and ’em, and possibly even bring perspectives from traditional experts that you weren’t, you know, you weren’t necessarily privy to hear what they really thought, you know, as, as on, on a personal note about different things that involve kids, especially strong-willed kids. So I think, you know, it’s one thing when you’re in the office or in, in, in whatever professional’s office, and you’re asking certain questions on behalf of your family, your child, but when you, when you have a conversation with that professional, lets say, if you ran into them and your personal life, or you were friends with them, you might hear things that you’re not necessarily hearing within the confines of their office when they’ve got their jacket on or in their professional hat on.

1 (1m 59s):
So I thought this will be kind of cool because behind the scenes, I have these conversations with different professionals all the time and I hear what they really think about things, but, you know, I don’t know. I don’t always feel like I didn’t feel as a mom when I was a mom in a pediatrician’s office or in a different therapist’s office. I didn’t necessarily hear the things that I hear now when I’m chatting it up with people that are my colleagues or my friend’s in my personal life. So that’s what I was thinking. I was thinking I would have loved to have known this stuff when I was going through it with a little kid or a medium-sized kid who was giving it to me and acting super defiant.

1 (2m 44s):
And I was trying to, or just in a bad mood, just, I was just trying to figure things out. And so that’s what we’re going to start. I’m going to be releasing two episodes a month. So the Mastermind Parenting Podcast is not going to drop every week anymore. Its going to drop to times a month, the second and the fourth weeks of the month. And yeah, so this month is going to be a part one and a part to, with my friend and fellow Coach colleague Amy Pearson. And the reason I invited Amy on the podcast is because years ago I learned what she calls her one-third Rule from her.

1 (3m 32s):
And she, she is where she called it as a former Approval addict. And that’s kind of her niche in her specialty. And I have noticed that’s like a pretty common thread with a lot of my mom’s that I work with is that people pleasing Approval addiction. It all kind of runs together. And so when I learned for one third Rule years ago, I have repeated it many times and I found it really helpful. And I have found that it’s helpful for a lot of people. And I think it’s a, I think it’s a great tool to learn, especially if you struggle with ever feeling like you just can’t say no or You there’s you don’t want to disappoint.

1 (4m 16s):
It’s so uncomfortable in your parents or upset with you are your kids are upset with you. And the bat setting boundaries is so hard and here you’re just going to that coffee or that dinner because you know, you just, it’s just part of the protocol, but you are like, everything in your body tells you, you don’t want to, or sometimes you feel like a martyr. You are just so sick of doing everything for everyone. Like all of those, all of those pieces of the equation really lend us to believe that you are an Approval addict. And maybe you’ve never thought about this before. So I wanted to have Amy on because she says it like it is.

1 (4m 59s):
And, and I just wanted to get her to teach her. I wanted her to teach her Rule too. You guys versus me teaching it. And I just also wanting to introduce you guys to it. So this week Part one will be Amy and I are having a conversation talking about lots of things and mostly talking about the one third role and then next not roll, but Rule, I’m like, what’s it going on? And next week, not next week, Part two of the Amy Pearson podcast. We’ll be in two weeks. And that’s when we’ll go into the one third that you could consider your To quote, Taylor Swift, your haters.

1 (5m 49s):
And so that’s what we’ll talk about on part two. So for this week, you’re going to learn all about the one-third rule. I think you’ll enjoy being a fly on the wall of mine and Amy’s conversation because we are friends and, and we just have that, that friend chemistry going. So its, you know, it’s a, it’s a, it’s an easy conversation and, and I really think she’s just such a smart mind and wanted you guys to get a taste of her. So enjoy it. Amy Pearson founder of being Amy is a master life coach, coach, mentor, and instructor for Martha Beck’s life, coach training. She’s a teacher, coach writer and speaker a formal, a former Approval addict with the occasional relapse.

1 (6m 34s):
She is now addicted to success. Her mission is nothing short of world peace by empowering every woman on a mission to magnify their people and make an Epic impact, doing their own unique thing in the world. Based on years of research into what she calls Approval addiction, she created a personality assessment called The Approval Quiz and we will include a link to The Approval Quiz in the show notes for any of you guys who you think that you might be an Approval addict as well. You can take The Approval Quiz and I highly encourage you guys to do that and to get on Amy’s newsletter list because she sends out, I think some of the most thought provoking and just easy to read quick articles that I think my, all of my listeners are going to completely connect with.

1 (7m 23s):
So thanks for being here. Thank you. You’re so you’re so kind and generous and I feel like I’m getting a big boost just in this first minute. No, because I love you because you all, Amy was one of the Amy didn’t know me. She was one of the instructors when I did my coach training, I don’t know, seven years ago. And, and so there was, there were several Coach instructors at the time, but whenever it was an Amy call or an Amy replay, I was definitely listening because you’re in an extremely gifted coach. You really are.

1 (8m 4s):
And I think what you bring to the table and the reason why I like your writing so much is that you really you’re just honest. Like all I crave in life are honest conversations. And just like, let me look through the curtains of your home. Yeah. And, and no, like what’s really going on there. I want to look through the curtains of your life and you know, I have a hate small talk and I, I hate cocktail parties. And so anytime I’m like, Mmm, I just, I just sensed that. It’s like something intuitively inside of me when I’m around somebody who speaks their truth.

1 (8m 44s):
I trust you. I believe you. I don’t want more of you. And so, so you, and you know, and it was like when we started becoming friends, which is pretty recently, I’m like, you don’t bring any ego to the table or you really work hard not to. And you speak your truth. Like even me saying, Oh, I loved you when you were one of the Coach instructors. I think I could tell for you, there wasn’t any, they just didn’t seem to, you were like, Oh thanks. You know, it was just like, great. And it didn’t feel like you were like, Oh gosh, now I have to prove that I’m really, as together as she thought, I wasn’t like, I feel like, I feel like you’re doing your work of the Approval addict because you didn’t bring any EO afterwards.

1 (9m 30s):
We had a total honest conversation and I was kind of worried. I was like, I wonder if talking to Amy is going to be like her constantly putting on her coaching hat and being like, well, you know, let’s, let’s unpack that. Like, you know, you never know, like it’s just been girlfriend’s real talk and, and honesty. So,

2 (9m 52s):
Well, thank you. I mean, definitely working on trying to get, you know, trying not to have so much ego all the time, but definitely the path that I’ve been on with, with what I call Approval addiction and the many layers of that. Right. Cause it’s like an onion and I’m actually uncovering a new layer, but yeah, that has really turned everything around for me because, and the, you know, in the past it was really all about my ego and either protecting that or reinforcing it or validating it. And that’s, I think just that’s how that’s part of being a human.

2 (10m 34s):
I mean, we struggle with that, but I feel I’ve felt so much freedom on the other side of that work. And that’s really what this path is. It’s really about this. You know, I, I use a lot of humor in my work and I’m pretty irreverent about things, but the, but I mean, but the work I do is, is very deep and it really is about being able to source what you need from inside, whether that’s confidence worth, you know, your ability to make choices. And that’s been my path, but I realized last night, Oh my gosh, Oh, here we go. You know, here’s another way that this manifests is that, you know, there’s a person you trust who has achieved really amazing things.

2 (11m 16s):
And you set aside your own wisdom to, you know, do what she recommended. And so I just, you know, I notice that that happened in and it’s OK. And I’ve, I, I still learned a lot. In fact, I, that was an important lesson for me. It’s, it’s a pattern and clearly I still haven’t been, that’s one of the player, but then I still am working on it. I’m so, you know, it’s, it’s just a process. So I have a quiz as a personality assessment that I created before I became a coach. I was, I was someone who worked in research methods, so I can do, I can put together a pre pretty good Quiz. I was very impressed with this, but anyway, there are different ways that being someone who is addicted to Approval, there are different ways that it manifests.

2 (12m 6s):
And so there’s different types. And, and so, you know, I would say an obliger is, is maybe someone who, I don’t know, I would say, I don’t know, I’m not sure what category to put that in, but my category is I call it, call myself a performer. And so a performer is someone who seeks validation by through achievement. And so they, they seek to, to kind of shape the way other people view them, or also to avoid quote unquote rejection or criticism or judgment, which is the other side of all of this. They do it through performance, whether that’s, you know, actually on stage or whether that’s through gold stars and just achievement.

2 (12m 48s):
So I think what it was for me is that, you know, and this is also part of, you know, if we’re going to talk about assessments, we have to talk about strengths finders. And so one of my strengths is that I am someone who achievement is a really high on my strengths. And so I’m someone who is motivated by through achievement, its it has its positives and it has its negatives. So this is when someone that I admire because another one of my personality Approval so you can, personality, tendencies is hero worshiping. So if someone I admire is challenging me to achieve, then you know, it’s just like, you know, I go into that autopilot sort of thing and I’m like, let’s go let’s I want to be able to step up and you know, achieve.

2 (13m 31s):
And, and I respect this person’s perspective. So if they say it’s going to be helpful for me than I will, you know, all embrace it. But again, you know, there’s shadow and there’s light to everyone, everything. And so I think for me, I just didn’t listen to my own intuition.

1 (13m 48s):
It’s so interesting. I love all these assessments because more than anything, I know I’m in an assessment junkie, but I think more than anything, what is it helps us do or is it helps us to change the autopilot narrative that we have going on in our own brain, which is usually what beat us down, keeps us stuck, makes us feel unworthy because we created those beliefs about ourselves when we were much younger and where we didn’t really fully understand the big picture. So I think a lot of times when we do these assessments, I, I use a collection of assessments with people that I work with and I call it a zone of genius to help uncover, you know, what is your zone of genius?

1 (14m 38s):
Who were you actually born to be before society and everyone that shaped you possibly, they, they shaped you in ways, but they never intended, but your little tiny Amy or you’re a little tiny Randi you are a little self took in those messages and then created this narrative that constantly beats you down. Andy is not helpful in helping you grow into achieving the life that you wanna live. That feels like freedom, right? So I think a lot of times these assessments, it can start to undo that old story and it feels incredibly healing and powerful.

1 (15m 19s):
And I think it’s also like that. It’s, it’s interesting to study ourselves. I think so often we spend many of us spend our lives, not wanting to face ourselves. We numb, like I think both you and I have that in common where in the past we kind of, when, when it got uncomfortable, w our go-to strategy to cope with those feelings of discomfort leftover from yesteryear we’re to numb and deflect and not to, not to face ourselves. So I think when we do these assessments and all of a sudden, it’s like, we’re embracing, facing ourselves. And we’re like, Oh, well, I always thought I was a procrastinator, but actually I just work well when I have a fire under me and there’s immediacy on a deadline.

1 (16m 8s):
And that’s when I pull out my best work. I don’t know. I’m not flawed. I’m just meant to work on projects two days before, not two weeks before. Right. And so I’m, and so changing the, you know, just wiggling those stories, I think can feel so freeing for people. Right. And, and one of the things like, and that’s why I really, what I really wanted to bring you on to talk about. Cause I’ve quoted you so many times and I love your one third Rule I think the one-third rule and every time I’ve shared it with someone, I think it has felt so good for them. And so empowering for them, because I think so many women struggle with Approval addiction, people pleasing the conditioning we have in our culture that we’re not even consciously thinking about it, but as females, we were conditioned to put everyone before us.

1 (17m 8s):
Yeah. That if, if we’re not, if we’re last on our list, like that’s normal and I’m not saying like, we need to be first homeless every single second, because if your, one of your kids comes in right now, bleeding, you’re going to be like God to go. Podcast, episode’s going to have to wait. Like I’d have to, I need to stop the bleeding. So it’s not like we’re never going to put other people that we care for before us. However, we also deserve to get to be at the top of our list sometimes. And I think our culture conditions us as females not to do that. And so, so I love any of these tools that helps to recondition us in that we understand like, no, we are worthy.

1 (17m 53s):
We don’t have to always be last on the list. And it is not our job to people please, or help everyone. We love never feel discomfort. Like that is not our role. And that is not our job. And, and I think that also ties into how much it can hurt us when other people, when, when sometimes other people just don’t like us. Right. And, and so your one-third rule, I think I want you to explain it. I wanted to come from the creator’s mouth on what the one third rule is because I, I have found that it has been really helpful for me and really helpful for other people, especially when you are faced with haters in your life, as we all are, especially when we have opinions and we speak up about it and we have honest conversations and we put ourselves out there, the haters are gonna come forth and tell us what you have to say about that and the way that

2 (18m 52s):
Well. So if you, if you divide the entire known universe into thirds, there are, are going to be three groups. And the, the first group is what I would call the haters. And the important thing to keep in mind about the haters is that no matter what you do, no matter how hard you work and no matter how much you thought and time and care, or you put in to it, there is nothing you can do to change that. I remember my mom, when I was little, she used to say, Amy, no matter what you do, they’re always going to be people who don’t like you.

2 (19m 34s):
And I was a kid, but even as a kid, I knew this was bad news. This was not pleasant news, but something about that felt like relief to me. And so, so anyway, the haters, no matter what you do, they’re always, they’re just always not going to like you. I mean, I had this encounter this morning with a strange woman when I walk my dog and I said, good morning to her the other day. And she didn’t respond to me. And so I repeated myself and she just, anyway, this morning, she actually took a picture of me on her phone, like randomly. And I just like, okay.

2 (20m 14s):
Yeah. So that would be a great example. For some reason, she does not like me. And you know, it happens in business. You know, these are the people who unsubscribe or send you some nasty. I’ve been getting a lot of nasty emails. I think people are really stressed out right now. So if you don’t deal with your shit, that trauma, then you, you, you, sometimes you lash that out on, on other people as a hater. But anyway, so, you know, that can manifest in different ways. But the, the key is that there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s another group and those are the neutrals. So the neutrals, no matter what you do, same deal. It’s like, there’s nothing you can do to control it. And this was a difficult one for me.

2 (20m 54s):
I would say this was the most difficult for me because I always wanted my family to pay attention to me in a certain way and kind of support me and be interested in my work and what I wanted. And my family was always, you know, and still they’re really neutral about, you know, what I do in terms of my work and my message. And I used to drive me crazy that they wouldn’t ask about my work or are they wouldn’t, you know, spend a lot of time. I don’t know if it was asking me or supporting me or building me up, you know, and I used to try to get them to change. And there isn’t, there was in it, it was just kind of an exercise and continuous frustration.

2 (21m 40s):
And so then there’s this other group. Now this other group I’ve been calling them your tribe. I have to find a better word for that. I would just say your people, and these are your people. And when I mean by that, is that the more that you can be yourself, unapologetically, uncensored, the more these people. So they are like, Randi, I would say you are just such a wonderful example. I mean, we are each other’s people because the more you can be yourself, the more you can speak your truth, the more you can be you’re, you know, then there they are wanting more of that. They are supporting you. There are sharing your information on the podcast.

2 (22m 21s):
You know, they are just, they are just loving it and it’s, and it’s helping them. And it’s, it’s helping them in some way. And they’re the ones, if you’re in business and you’re an entrepreneur, I always say, these are the ones who pay you great money for you to do what feels natural to you. And the problem. The biggest problem is that the majority of us spend our time thinking about ways that we can win over two-thirds of the entire known universe, who will never change. And in the process of that, we become invisible to our people so that our people, the ones who support us, the ones who provide us with that sense of belonging that we need as a fundamental human need, they can’t even find us.

2 (23m 9s):
They can’t even recognize us because we have become invisible to them. So that’s the, that’s the one third rule.

1 (23m 18s):
And, you know, I mean, I love to say what, what we focused on growth, what we focus on expands. They talk about that in yoga a lot. I can’t remember. Maybe you remember it. They talk about like where your energy, where your, where your something goes, your energy flows. If there’s like a million different ways to say, but, and I’ve talked about this on the podcast. And I think I even talked about it recently. Like if I’m saying, I don’t think about a red car, like, you’re good

2 (23m 43s):
Thinking about the red car. And so when we’re on it,

1 (23m 46s):
Because the other pieces, when we were focused on the two thirds, that will never be our one-third. And so our one-third, it’s almost like we’re taking our, one-third the people who are a super fans in our cheerleaders and, and are real people. We’re taking them for granted. We were like, yeah, I already got you. I’m going to focus on the hard to get, you know, the, the, the hard to get boy, I want the hard to get boy to like me. And so when we focus on the people that aren’t our people, and they’re never going to be our people, it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with us. It doesn’t mean that will forever be destined to be Approval junkies.

1 (24m 29s):
It really, I think it’s the negativity bias that we have as humans. We’re, we’re constantly scanning our environment for things that feel dangerous or unsafe. And I think it feels emotionally unsafe for us when people don’t like us. And so we hyper fixate and focus on that lack of safety, and we want to transform them. We want them, we need them to like us to make us feel safe. And, but since we are actually evolved humans and we have access to our conscious brains and we can, we can work and do practices to take that primitive thinking offline.

1 (25m 10s):
What we can remind ourselves constantly is, Oh, those two thirds, there are not your people. And it’s actually not personal. It’s, you know, you just represent something for them and not everyone is going to be everyone’s people. So those two thirds that you’re super focused on fast, just because you’re a human, not just because the negativity bias, however, there’s all these people in this one, third that they want more of You they want your attention. So what can we do to speak directly to those people and strength strengthen that group of people, because ultimately that strengthens me as well.

2 (25m 52s):
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, if you look at Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs and talks about, you know, how on the top of that, there’s this triangle on, on the top, there’s the self actualization, which, you know, so many of us, we want to work towards being actualized humans, but the reality is that we can’t move on. Do you define that for a minute? Self-actualization I mean, I think I don’t, you know, it’s really, I think just being someone who is at peace with themselves, who is in the world growing and is expanding and being of service in their own way, using the gifts that they came in with.

2 (26m 32s):
But the, you know, in this house, in this triangle is the very bottom, his, you know, just our human need, first of all, for water, right? And, and, but then, you know, safety, our need for safety. And you talked about negativity bias and the way we scan our environment for a threat. But I think one of the, umm, I think one of the keys to resilience is to be able to recognize that where are we seek safety is really inside of ourselves because when we were looking for approval, when we’re stuck in some sort of those Approval, so you can patterns and they looked different for everyone, which is why I created that Quiz is that what we were really afraid of is we’re afraid of are the, all the way that it’s, it’s our shame, its the shame that we carried that we inherited throughout the years from the messages that we received and the treatment where you have received an experiences that we had in the, and in the sort of decisions that we made about that, that germinations and judgment we made about that.

2 (27m 38s):
It’s like we’ve, we’ve internalized these ideas that there are a part of that are not fit for human consumption. And so when we were talking about safety, a lot of times we think safety, you know, we need to, we need to scan our environment and be vigilant and to protect ourselves when really what’s happening is we’re looking for Approval to validate our sense of self and we’re avoiding rejection or judgment or criticism because we don’t want to trigger that part of ourselves that carries Shane. So it’s like, we think it’s from, we think these attacks are coming from outside of ourselves. And obviously I’m talking about eternal stuff, but this is really the attacks that we are.

2 (28m 20s):
It’s the shame that we carry inside. And so when we talk about being a whole human being, when we talk about resilience, it really comes from being willing to allow yourself to be a whole human being who has the shadow and the light, whether that’s, you know, and who makes mistakes and who has failures and who, you know, has misguided decisions and you know, it falls down. I mean all of those things are a part of the human experience, but I think so many of us go around based on the experiences that we’ve had or a younger thinking that somehow we need to be walking this earth as super human and that’s just not realistic and it’s not possible.

2 (29m 2s):
And we don’t have, we haven’t learned the ability to support ourselves, to provide ourselves with compassion, to provide ourselves, to be the compassionate witness to ourselves. And so I really, that is the, been the work that I have done the most recently. And it is. And what that does is it provides you with so much safety and provide you with so much resilience because if you can accept yourself and if you can be that for yourself, then you’re in touch with,

0 (29m 36s):
Well, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Amy Pearson and she awesome. Don’t worry, going to be a part to that. It was only part one. And if you are a long time podcast listener, or even a new podcast listener, and you just know you’re a part of my one third, like it feels like I’m talking to you, we’re each other’s people and you know that you need some extra accountability because you’re a human in terms of making the changes in your home and, and affecting your child’s life. And the way that you’re hoping, you know, I know you want the best for them. I know that you want the best for your family. Then it might make sense for you to come and join our Mastermind.

0 (30m 20s):
We have a way of enrolling people in an a, on an ongoing basis. We it’s called VIP enrollment and it’s a hybrid approach to what we typically do. You get the benefit of having the group coaching and the community, but you also get a whole bunch of one-on-one and we really cater the program to meet your family’s specific needs. And so you’d get a lot of one-on-one private coaching and attention and, and access to us and handholding and, and it’s really an amazing experience. So if that’s you, if I’m speaking to you, so I want you to hop on our calendar and talk to us about what’s going on in your household to find out what the program’s right for.

0 (31m 3s):
You just go to a mastermind Parenting dot com forward slash call that’s Mastermind Parenting dot com forward slash call with love to have you in the mastermind. If you feel like you’re one of our one-third.