S1 E11 - How our relationship with ourselves affects our parenting

This might seem counter intuitive, but the most impactful way to change your relationships with others is by changing your relationship with yourself. Your position on you is determined by a few things… your commitment, your thoughts, and your beliefs. When these things change, your relationship with you changes. When that changes, everything else in your life changes. Do you want a better relationship with someone, the ability to set and achieve goals, and to get more done and truly enjoy your life? Then start building a better relationship with YOU starting right now.

What we talk about today:

• What a relationship is
• How our thoughts about us affect our relationship
• Self-belief and the difference between confidence and self-confidence
• How we can change our thoughts and beliefs and create new relationships with us

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I would be honored to be your coach and help you get the changes you want to see in your life. I have come so far, completely turned around my life and my relationships with my children, I know what it takes and how to make it happen. You can use the links below to get more of my content and learn about my monthly program By Design, where I provide monthly training and live coaching to help you build radical connection in your life.

Link to membership: By Design

Find me on the ‘gram: The.Parenting.Coach

My website: coachcrystal.ca

Episode Transcript

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Hey, I'm Crystal, a certified life coach and mom of four. In this podcast, we combine radical connection and positive parenting theories with the How-To Life Coaching Tools and Mindset Work to completely transform our relationship with our children.

Join me on my journey, unleash your inner parenting expert, and become the mother you've always wanted to be. Make sure you subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast and rate this podcast on Apple, and check out my transformative monthly membership for moms in the show notes.

Episode 11, How our relationship with ourselves affects our parenting.

Parenting through shame and judgment: Episode 10 Recap

Okay, so you probably have already listened to Episode 10, where we talked all about shame and judgment. I'm so glad that we talked about that episode because since, then I've had several more clients bring up this idea of judgment and shame. 

Not that they really call it that; usually, they just say, "I'm disappointed in myself", or "I wish I was doing better", or "I should be doing better, I'm not doing as good as I want to be doing." And all of those thoughts really affect our parenting because as we parent from that space of shame and disappointment and judgment, then we actually parent worse. 

So, one of the ways that we can change this and kind of heal our relationship with ourselves is through actually working on our relationship with ourselves. 

So, last week's episode was the Four Secrets to Help Us Through That Shame and Judgment. 

And today, we're going to talk about three aspects of the self-relationship and how to heal our relationship with ourselves.

Self-love Exercise

So, I want you to first think about somebody that you love dearly – somebody right now, who you just really love – now, after you think about who that is, I want you to think about whether or not that person was you; it's okay if they weren't, but why wasn't it you? 

Why weren't you one of the first people – first or second or third people that comes to mind – when you thought about somebody that you really love? 

Now, I want you to think about how much you do love yourself, how you would rank your relationship with you on a scale from 1 to 10. 10 being Amazing – 'I love myself, I love spending time with myself, I'm awesome.' Number #1, being the opposite of that; I want you to rank that first.

What self-love is, and why it’s important

Now, lots of times when I start talking about this, people think that it's really selfish – that if we loved ourselves too much or focused on ourselves too much, we would become selfish, but that's actually not true. We think that, but that's different than arrogance. 

Self-love is, 'I love me, I love you, I love everybody.' And it actually gives us more opportunity to love and be loved. Arrogance is, 'I'm better than you.' Self-love and arrogance are not the same thing. 

Now, there's a quote that I found online that I love, and I've heard different variations of this. Apparently, it was Buddha who said it, but there's, you know, some debate about whether or not it really was, but it's, "You must love yourself before you love another. By accepting yourself and fully being what you are, your simple presence can make others happy. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection." 

Isn't that lovely? You must love yourself before you love another; that is something I believe to be true. Our capacity to love others – to feel compassion and empathy and kindness towards others – grows the more that we can love ourselves; be compassionate to ourselves, be kind and be empathetic to our own selves. 

So, I want you to help-- I want to help you increase this capacity that you have to love others – to love your friends, your spouses, all the people around you – through helping you love yourself more. 

How our thoughts about us affect our relationship

So, first of all, we're going to talk about what is a relationship, because we all have a relationship with ourselves: just like we do with our neighbor, with our mother-in-law, with our cousin, with our best friend. Those are all relationships, and we have a relationship with us as well. 

Our relationship is our thoughts. Our relationship sounds like it's more than that; like, it's what people say and what they do, but it's really what we think about what they say and what they do that affects our relationship with them. 

Three micro factors of our relationship

So, our relationship goes into three different, kind of, micro factors.

1. What we think about them.
2. What we think they're thinking about us.
3. What we think about the dynamic of the relationship.

One is what we think about them. Another is what we think they're thinking about us. And the third is what we think about the dynamic of the relationship; so maybe we think it's a great relationship or maybe we think it's not, how we think about that relationship dynamic also affects our relationship. 

So, all of those really boil down to our own thoughts, which is why we have the power to change our relationship. Doesn't matter what somebody else does or says, we can decide what kind of a relationship we want to have with them because our relationship is in our thoughts. 

It's also why you could be estranged from someone or divorced from someone or live on the other side of the globe, and still have a relationship with them because you're still going to be thinking about them. 

You're still going to be thinking about the relationship dynamic. You'll probably still think about what they're thinking about you. So, just like working on any other relationship, the power to change is to work on our thoughts about us. 

Three aspects of our relationship that we can work on

And I'm going to talk about three different aspects of our relationship that we can work on.

1 Our thoughts about us.

2. Our commitment to us.
3. Our belief in us.

One is our thoughts about us. One is our commitment to us. And one is our belief in us. I love a quote by Brené Brown that says, “Compassion is not a virtue—it is a commitment. It's not something we have or don't have—it's something we choose to practice.” 

I would argue that you could put in a lot of other words in place of compassion; growth mindset, self-compassion, empathy, love, self-love – those are all commitments. We aren't necessarily born with just this innate sense of loving ourselves and loving others, and being empathetic and compassionate. 

Maybe some people have more of that than others, but it is definitely a commitment and something that we have to work at; it might not just come intrinsically to us. 

1. Our thoughts about us

So, first of all, if we're working on, #1, our thoughts about us, I want you to write down your thoughts about you. So, think back to what your number was when I asked you to rank yourself about your relationship with yourself. Maybe it was 10; if so, awesome – you're doing great. 

If it was anything but 10, I want you to write down why that was. Why is it not a 10? This might look like things like, "Well, I still yell at my kids", "My face looks a little bit funny" or "I don't like the way that I look" or "I'm not a very kind person" or "I'm kind of judgmental", whatever, all of those things are that you think about yourself, just lay it all out.

It's like doing a thought dump – like we've talked about before – but this one's going to be specific to why you didn't rake yourself a Number 10. 

Then we're going to start to sift through those thoughts. So, just like we do in a regular Thought Dump, "Is this true? Is this useful? Is this a thought or a fact? Is there any evidence I can see of maybe why it's not true? Would everybody agree with me? What would my best friend say about this? What would my partner say about this?" 

Just start to poke little holes in those beliefs that seem really believable and seem really true, but we just want to loosen them up just a little bit. While we're – loosen them up – loosening them up, we also want to try to create some new thoughts and beliefs about ourselves. 

So, if we were at a 10 out of 10 in our relationship with ourselves, what are some thoughts and beliefs that we would have about us? Maybe it would be, 'I'm worthy of love and belonging.' Maybe it would simply be, 'I love myself, I'm doing my best - I'm a human and humans make mistakes, I'm learning, I'm growing, I'm trying.' 

I don't know what it would be for you, but I want you just to think about, what are just a couple of beliefs I would have at a 10/10? Then we're going to use a little trick called a Bridging Thought. 

Bridging Thought

So, a bridging thought helps us bridge from what we believe right now, to what we want to believe in the future, but we don't quite believe yet. 

So, I'm going to use the example, 'I love myself'; that's going to be a new belief that I want to have about myself. Now, if I'm not totally there yet – and by 'totally there yet', I mean sometimes I can believe things logically, but I don't emotionally believe them. 

So, I think in my heart and my mind, am my 100% believing that? And if I'm not, then I can use a bridging thought. 

So, a bridge to this would be – maybe it's possible that I love myself, it's equally possible that I love myself, I'm learning that I love myself, I'm seeing that I love myself – something to bridge us to that. You could write it down. You can put it, you know, on your mirror and a sticky note on your car, wherever you want. 

You can say it, you can chant it out loud in the morning, however you want to do it – but you're going to practice that new belief while, at the same time, you're kind of shaking up those old beliefs that you have that maybe don't totally serve you. 

So, number #1 was our thoughts about us. 

2. Our commitment to us

Number #2 is our commitment to us. 

So, I'm going to tell you a little story. I was told this story a couple times in my membership. I was getting coached one time, and I had decided in my mind – I had this belief that may or may not be true – that successful people are morning-people; that everyone who's really successful in the world wakes up early in the morning, and like, you know, I don't know, does yoga, meditation, stretches, exercising, like all those crazy things. 

They wake up early, and they just get stuff done in the morning; and that is what makes them successful. So, I felt like, 'Well, if I'm really going to be successful, I also have to do that.' So, I decided that I was going to wake up early. I don't remember what it was – like maybe 7:00 or 7:30 or something, which probably doesn't even seem early to you, but I am not a morning person.

So, I would wake up, and I would press 'Snooze' on my alarm – then I'd wake up and then I'd press 'Snooze' on my alarm. And this happened over and over and over and over again. So, I'm getting coached and I'm like, "I just can't not press 'Snooze'." 

And she was like, "Well, is it more important that you wake up early in the morning and that you keep this reason of like, well, I'm going to be a successful person and that's how I get success – or is it more important that you keep your commitment to you, and you work on your relationship with you?" 

And, you know what? Relationship with me is more important; it's more important than anything else, I love that reason. So, I decided I'm just going to push my alarm back a little bit, 7:45 or 8:00 AM. And after that, I started waking up every day that my alarm went off. 

Now I wake up every day when my alarm goes off, and I don't make it dramatic – I don't make it mean anything about me or my success in life – but I do what I say I'm going to do. If I told you, "Hey, go meet me downtown at the restaurant at 10:00 AM," and then I didn't show up. 

And the next day I said the same thing, "Hey, come meet me at the restaurant 10:00 AM," and then I didn't show up – maybe I was late, maybe I didn't come at all, maybe I didn't even tell you I wasn't going to come. Over time, you're not really going to trust me; you're not going to rely on me, and your relationship with me is probably not going to be the greatest. 

Well, this is just like our relationship with us: we say we're going to do things, we don't do them; we say we're going to do things, we don't do them – over and over and over again. Over time, we break our trust with ourselves. We come to believe this story, that like, we can never do what we say we're going to do. We can commit ourselves to other people, but not to ourselves. 

This is our commitment to ourselves. 

So, first of all, I want you to notice, not to put so much on your plate. So, for me, maybe I had two unrealistic expectations for it. Maybe it was just like, like not a time in my life where I could wake up early. 

Maybe it was that I just put too many things on my plate to do that day – I want to do this and this and this, clean my house and hang out with my kids – and you know, do crafts, and bake some stuff, and prepare meals, and all of these things.

And I say I'm going to do all these things, and I don't get them done because my ideas are so unrealistic. So, I want you to kind of lower those ideals because you'll actually get more done – you'll actually be more efficient when you focus on just one or two things, instead of trying to focus on so many things. 

So, don't put so many things on your plate; and the things that you do decide to put on your plate, put them there intentionally – like your reasons for them. So, I didn't totally love my reasons for waking up early. 

Honestly, my only reason was because I felt like successful people wake up early. And when I started to question that belief, I was like, 'That might not be true at all, I don't even know where that came from or why I think that, and I don't want to keep it anymore. I don't love that reason.' 

So, whatever you're deciding to be committed to, for yourself, like your reasons for it – notice your reasons for it, and then stick to it and do what you say you're going to do. 

Now, that was the second; commitment to us. The first was our thoughts about us. 

3. Our belief in us

And, the third is our belief in us.

Self-Confidence Vs. Confidence

So, for a minute, I'm going to talk about the difference between self-confidence and confidence. 

Confidence is, I'll use an example for this; maybe I decide that I'm very confident in public speaking. Now, I probably decided that because I did public speaking a few times and maybe I won an award, or maybe somebody said you did a great job. 

And maybe I felt like I did a good job and maybe I didn't mess up. Maybe I said all the words right, and I didn't forget anything. So, I've decided, 'Okay, I'm a confident public speaker.' That could happen, right? That's confidence. 

But the problem with confidence is it can also be taken away; I could completely forget what I was saying, I could like trip and fall on stage, somebody else could say I'm a terrible public speaker. And over and over again, these things might break down my confidence; maybe over time, maybe over a short time - and my confidence is gone. 

Well, the difference between confidence and self-confidence is that confidence is extrinsic; self-confidence is intrinsic – it's not something that somebody can just reach inside you and pull out. 

Self-confidence is all just a belief in yourself; it's just self-belief. Self-belief would mean, you know, 'I love myself, I believe in myself, I can do anything – I can handle anything, I can even handle the things that I can't handle.' Right? 

Even, 'Well, I feel like I'm not okay, and I'm not handling things well – that's okay too, that I'm going to have my own back about that, that I'm still going to love myself through it.'

So, really self-confidence is just an inner belief in us; that's it. So, it's not something that can be taken away, and it's not something that we consciously kind of build. 

Confidence can build self-confidence over time; that can happen. 

But we also want to be working on self-confidence just like we're working on confidence. So, working on self-confidence could be changing your self-belief. What do I believe about myself? 'Do I believe I can handle anything, that I can accomplish anything I put my mind to – or do I not?' 

That might bring up some thoughts that then you can do a Thought Dump on, you can use some bridging thoughts like we talked about before; and those things can start to shift and change for you. 

Self-confidence is something that I have been working on for a long time, and I can see it grow; it's like a muscle – "I'm going to the gym-- I'm going to this gym of my mind, and I'm working on it – over and over and over again. I'm doing Thought Dumps. I'm creating new beliefs. I'm using Bridging Thoughts. I'm trying new things. I'm putting myself out there. I have my own back when I fail; I don't make failure mean something about me. I don't go into that judgment and shame space very often; and when I do, I don't stay there – I notice it, and I can kind of move on from that."

This doesn't happen overnight. This isn't an immediate shift, but as you build your self-confidence in you, as you build your commitment to you, and as you work on your thoughts about you; your relationship with you can be changed 180 degrees – okay, maybe 360 degrees – it will be completely transformed.

The importance of self-relationship

I want you to think about, what would be different for you from this new space? What would change for you if you had a great relationship with yourself? 

A good example, the other day, about the difference that this makes in life is I was teaching this child, a class. And he came in the class and said that he wasn't talented; we were talking about talents and abilities and whatnot. 

And I said, "Okay, well, how does that make you feel?" He's like, "Well, I don't know. I just don't really think about it, don't really do anything about it." 

I'm like, "Okay, great. I just want you to imagine for a second, that your story is instead – and I want you to believe this story – that you're actually super talented, the most talented person on the planet." 

And he kind of laughed, and I'm like, "Okay, what would be different? What would you do?" He's like, "Well, I guess I would try new things. I guess I would go out there – and look for kind of new talents and new abilities, and I would work at them; and I would just keep trying until I excelled at them." 

And I was like, "Yeah, that is so true. Not because you are talented or you aren't talented, but because you believe that you are talented versus believing that you aren't talented." It is literally just the belief that changed. It might not have even been true, but because he believed it to be true, it was completely different. 

So, go out there and work on these three things: work on your thoughts about you, your commitment to you, and your belief in you; and see how your parenting changes – see how everything in your life changes. It affects your relationships, your business, your goals, your health, your lifestyle – everything can change when your relationship with you changes first. 

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Make sure that you give it Five Stars on Apple, and check out my monthly membership for moms in the show notes.