85: From Stagnation to Transformation: Creating the Family You Crave

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You’re listening to the Mastermind Parenting Podcast with Randi Rubenstein episode 85.

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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.

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Well, hi guys, how are you today? I have an interesting topic and it’s about the small daily ax, the micro baby steps that we take to make a difference between living a life of Stagnation to living a life of Transformation. So, so often people come to me and they’ll say, I’ll say, you know, how’s it going? And they’ll say like, you know, Fein and all find a means to me is I’m living a life that nobody has cancer. We can pay our bills and we’re, we’re just kind of existing.

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And what I want to say to you guys is, is nobody dreams of that life. Like we all have, or had at some point hopes and dreams, and we want more for ourselves. We want, we, we have this vision. If you really go back to, when you first found out, let’s say you were pregnant and you were going to become a parent, like who, what parent were, are you going to be? You know, who? Maybe there was a parent. I remember this mom that used to drive. We I, we used to be in a carpool and she, her name was Nancy Brown and I loved Nancy Brown. And when I grew up, I want it to be just like Nancy Brown. It just seemed like it was fun and Nancy Brown’s house.

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And so I didn’t think about it consciously, but it came up actually, maybe like a year and a half ago. All of a sudden Nancy Brown came up in my head and I was like, Yes, that was the mom. It just seemed like it was fun being Nancy Brown’s kid. So there is some fantasy somewhere that you dreamt up for yourself and it might be that you want to have, you know, you want to look a certain way, but it’s not really that you just wanna look a certain way. It’s like you’re envisioning who the person you would become. If you look to a certain way. I mean, even I’ve read studies about people who by like fancy sports car or some people have a genuine appreciation for a fancy sports cars, but really it, who do they think they are going to be when they’re driving that fancy sports car?

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Like what version of themselves? So if you really tap into whatever that dream is, whatever those fantasies have been, it’s not a life that is fine. It’s a life that’s fan freaking tastic. It’s a life where you feel like you’re thriving. It’s a life that you feel maybe happiness for the first time for Real or joy, for real. And in most people aren’t living that life. So I want to offer you guys today on the podcast, how you begin to create that life.

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That is way better than fine. How you, how you start to have a life that feels transformational. And you know, it may not be what you think because many of us are like, well, if I had just won the lotto and I didn’t have to worry about paying my mortgage, or if I just got this one thing, or if I could just lose 20 pounds, or if I could just afford to buy that house is like so often we think it’s something so much bigger than it really needs to be. Just to get started, to start feeling better, just to start feeling better, to start living. And Creating that life that is somewhere deep buried within your brain, but you may have forgotten about, but I promise you it’s still there.

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It’s still there. So I want to help you guys just take some practical steps today to get started. So there is a big difference between zero and 1%. Okay. And let me explain what that means. You may think if you, if you increase your salary by 1%, it’s not going to make a big difference. Or you may think that if you lose 1% of the wait that you want to lose or whatever it is that it’s not going to make a difference, big difference. But this is what I want to say. Zero. When you stay at zero, you, you are going to, you’re not doing anything.

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When you stay at zero, you’re saying I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll do it next week. I’ll do it next year. And your, how you have all kinds of reasons, why it makes sense to stay at 0%, because 1% isn’t going to make enough of a difference in your life. And, and so it’s not really worth it. And remember the brain seeks the familiar. So we’re always trying to accidentally S S sabotage ourselves because to do something different, to get started, to be willing, to just go to a 1% of a difference in something is something that, to shift in something different, then you’re doing today.

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And so it’s unfamiliar to the brain and it’s going to, it’s going to expend more calories. So you You, you accidentally talk yourself out of it and sabotage yourself. And you’re like, eh, it’s like, if you have, if all of a sudden, if you were trying to not eat sugar and you, if you were trying not to eat sugar and you eat a cookie, and before, you know, it you’ve eaten a whole sleeve because in your brain, it’s like, well, one cookie, well, I’ve already ruined it. So I might as well just eat an entire sleep. And so you throw it all the way when the truth of the matter is if, even if you eat that one cookie and it was just, you didn’t, you know, totally nail your new eating plan because you eat that cookie, are you ate two cookies.

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And at the end of the day, it was like, well, I blew it. I blew my diet. You know, I blew, I blew the whole thing instead of saying, well, I did 1% or 5% better than I’ve been doing before today. So it was still like a big improvement because I did, I did a little bit, you know, I still eat the cookies. So I’ve had a couple of cookies. And so you don’t celebrate that little bitty improvement. It’s almost like it has to be all or nothing. Does that make sense? And so your brain goes to the place, but if you’ve already blown it, you might as well eat the whole sleeve. But the truth is is that if you just eat in one or two cookies, you could still meet your health goals.

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You just might need it a little bit, a bit more slowly than you had originally. And then, yeah. Okay. But you’d still be improving. You’d still be taking action. You’d still be making changes in your life. So often we go, so extremists, and I’m the queen of this, like I’m a total extremist. And so learning this concept of it, doesn’t have to be so extreme. I can, if I’m trying to be, to make better food choices, if I don’t make perfect food choices, all of that that’s okay. Right. That’s okay. I don’t have to go to that extreme place in a completely blow it. So in terms of, I want it to kind of compare to talk about this in terms of just like your, your overall life, and then bring it back to Parenting.

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So let’s say you’re a yeller, right? And you swore to yourself that maybe you grew up in a household where there was a lot of yelling. You knew that it felt terrible. You swore you weren’t going to be a yeller. And now you find your kids or pushing, you know, buttons. You had a strong-willed one, you have to, every reason and them in your brain, why you wouldn’t be a yeller. If everybody else would just would just behave according to plan. But unfortunately it doesn’t work that way and you can’t control the people. And so before, you know what you find yourself yelling, because they don’t listen to you the first 20 times when you say it calmly. And so then you resort to yelling and, and when you go to bed at night, you think about, you know, your brain is you can’t turn your thoughts off and see your brain is ruminating in your thinking about just how it just was not a fun day, or it didn’t feel connected to it.

0 (8m 48s):
It didn’t feel joyful. You feel guilty about all the times that you yelled and you can try and justify it. But at the end of the day, your body is your brain is not turning off. And your body’s not letting is not letting you off the hook because you can’t fall asleep because you feel so guilty because, you know, the day didn’t go the way that you wanted it to go. And somewhere subconsciously it’s like that old fantasy of the person that you we’re going to be is creeping in. And there’s all this evidence from the day as to why you’re failing at your job. And you may not be your, you know, we’re not thinking this consciously, but we’re thinking it’s subconsciously. And the subconscious programming in your brain is what runs the show for you 95% of your life.

0 (9m 31s):
So it’s going and it’s ruminating. And so you have insomnia and then you’re going to feel terrible. The next day, I didn’t get enough sleep until it will be on edge. And the buttons we’ll get pushed more. And then you’ll find yourself yelling again. It’s just this vicious cycle. And that vicious cycle keeps you in a place of Stagnation. You’re fine. Everybody’s fed. Rudy is getting their homework done for the most part. And it doesn’t, it doesn’t, it’s not the family you craved. It’s not the family you envision so long ago. And so your body knows that, and it keeps you up at night when everything gets quiet and you can check out on the device, or you can scroll through social media, you can’t do the thing to distract you.

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The thoughts, ruminate and the guilt ruminates, and you stay up and you stay stuck. So what’s the root of it. You know, it’s, what’s at the root of all of that is that you feel deep down, like every time you yell or lose it or, or ignore your kids or choose to not to spend quality time or whatever it is, whatever pressure your, your putting on your self deep down that’s coming up for you. And so what I have found is that no parent says my biggest limiting belief that keeps me stuck in this life of Stagnation is that I’m really worried that I’m failing as a mom or I’m failing as a dad.

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Nobody consciously recognize is that. And yet when I dig and dig and dig, that’s the thought that comes up over and over again. So I want to offer you so the place to start the place between zero and 1%, that will start to make the changes in your life. That’s gonna lead to Transformation and, and help you to escape the life of find in the life of Stagnation. And that is, it is to start with the breath, start with a breath when you want on a yell. Even if you just do it one time today, even if it’s just one time, like I deep, audible, exaggerated breath, literally like you feel like you’re about to lose it.

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Your heart’s racing, your kid’s whining. They’re pushing your button. You’ve asked them something a million times, and you’re just about to lose it. And you catch, and you just do a

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<inaudible>,

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Which will cause pause in your kids. And especially if they’re a little older, like who’s the freak show and where’s my mom, like, what are you doing? What is that? It’s a start. And I promise you if they say any of those things too, you just, you just put your finger up and you just kind of like take a minute for yourself to calm yourself down. And you’re just like, it’s just a breath. It’s just a breath. It’s just a breath. And you just to calm yourself down and you take a breath and you put your finger up. And when they’re like, what are you doing? What’s wrong with you. If you have an older child, a little child might just look at you and you can just put words to it and say, I’m feeling like I want to yell right now.

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And I’m just trying to calm myself back down. I’m really frustrated. I’m S I’m, I’m starting to feel angry and frustrated and annoyed. And I just want to call him my body down. If you start there, you guys just their, a breadth. And if your kids questioned you on it, you just explained that your taking a breath so that you don’t yell and you explain whatever the emotion is that you are feeling in your body that is causing you to feel high levels of stress that you’re trying to calm yourself down. If you put words to that emotion and you model that for your kids, you have now just modeled one of the most critical life skills for your children.

0 (13m 21s):
Because if they see if they grow up with mom or dad taking a deep audible breath to calm your body down, when you feel annoyed, frustrated, or whatever, that negative emotion is like, you are teaching them. I think one of the best life tools you can teach them. So start there is start with that 1% shift. Even if you only do it one time and all the rest of the time, you lose it in you, you know, and you scream your head off one time, just start there because it’s a start. It’s a start. And what you’ll see is that when you start, you start to notice that it’s going to be easier to do that a second time and a third time and a fourth time.

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And before you know it, you’ll be taking deep audible breaths. Anytime you start to feel stressed out, rather than losing your shit. And your kids might say like, what’s wrong. What’s going on? My kids used to be like, look at me in there. Like is like, as if someone was in trouble and I’d be like, no, I’m just so stressed out about something else. I’m just, I was just trying to calm myself down. That’s okay. That’s okay. It teaches them something so impactful. So when you’re laying down, let’s say you take a deep breath in and you do it one time, but you still lose it. However many other times, you need to do a whole host of other things that you’re laying in bed. And you’re laying awake.

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Your is so tired, but your brain won’t shut off. And you have that rumination going through your brain, the spinning thoughts, your feeling guilty, that you know, you can’t sleep. Your, your brain is not letting your body to sleep. I want you to start by celebrating one thing you feel proud of today, a fix that you took the breath instead of yelling, then you celebrate that. You’re laying there. Your thoughts are spending, and you’re literally gonna say to yourself, like, what’s the one thing I feel proud of today. Maybe the one thing is that you’re the kind of parent that listens to a Parenting.

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Podcast like you could be bingeing, Netflix or something. Probably a lot more entertaining and fun then this right now. But you’re the kind of parent who chooses to put information in your ears to help you begin living that life. That is way better than fine. You care about your family enough to be here, listening to this. That’s something to be celebrated. I think that that you’re, it’s completely worthwhile. So you’re laying there and your brain is ruminating about all the things you did wrong, and you say, stop it stop you like in your head, you’re saying stop it. What’s one thing that you can celebrate. You know, what’s one thing you did well today.

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What’s one thing you can feel proud of today because that’s the only thing you really have control over is your thoughts. We don’t control our kids’. We don’t control other people with if only they would stop pushing your buttons or do this, or do that life will be so much easier. That the only thing we really have control over are the thoughts going through our head. So why not take the opportunity starting now? Just 1% of the time and choose more useful or helpful thoughts because what you focus on grows. So if you choose to take that one breath, if you choose, when you’re laying in bed to find one thing you feel proud of, of yourself and you celebrate that, what’s going to come next.

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Like, don’t you think you deserve to be celebrated? Like, what about that? What if you just started celebrating yourself? Because when you start to celebrate yourself, even in little, tiny ways, and nobody needs to know about it, nobody’s going to, it is in your head with you. You can celebrate whatever the thing is. Maybe you wanted to have a more productive day and you chose to get up and, and, and do a guided meditation and take a walk and listen to a Parenting Podcast and, and an exercise.

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Like what about celebrating that I’m doing something healthy for me. And it would have been much easier To to just do what I normally do, but I chose to make a difference today. I’m the kind of person that takes action. I did that today. Did I go and workout for an hour and a half with heavyweights and do it? No, but I took a walk and got my heart rate up. I was outside. It felt good. That’s something I’m going to celebrate that. When you start to celebrate yourself, guess what will happen. You’ll search to celebrate your kids more. And I want you to think about who we’ll. We all grow into becoming when we all feel celebrated, like, isn’t it time?

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Isn’t it time for you to feel celebrated? Isn’t it time? Don’t you want your kids to feel celebrated? Like what happens when people feel celebrated? For just, just taking action. Just getting started. Just having today, be a little different than yesterday. It will be this positive, contagious domino effect. And I want y’all to think about perfect when we try to be perfect. I want to be the perfect parent, the perfect wife for the perfect sister, the perfect friend, or the perfect woman or the perfect man, right?

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There is no such thing as perfect. That’s what keeps us in the 0% because when we can’t be perfect, we procrastinate and we just decide to get started tomorrow, next week, or next year never. That’s where we stay at. Zero. What if we decided it was okay to show up just as humans and just to make a little tiny shift today, just a micro baby step. Perfect. Imperfect, imperfect action. We just took an imperfect action. Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction.

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1% is a whole life of difference than 0%. This is how you begin to build a life that is truly way better than fine. This is how you go from a life of Stagnation to one of Transformation and limitless possibility. Have a great week, guys. Bye bye.

1 (20m 19s):
Hey guys, if you want to close the gap between the parent that you currently are, when the kids are pushing your buttons at the new year, and that you always attended to be that calm, cool, and collect a parent, no matter what’s going on around you. I have my recipe up for you. I wrote about it in my book, the parent gap, and I’d love to give you a free audio version. So all you have to do is text the number four for two to two that’s four, four, two, two, two, and put the message in Mastermind Parenting Podcast all one word, all caps Mastermind Parenting to For for 2022. And we will send you over a free copy of my audio book.

3 (21m 2s):
Yeah.