S02 E05 - My Learning Journey

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 5, My Learning Journey.

Remembering My Learning (School) Experience

I'm going to tell you guys a story today, all about my learning journey. And at the end, I'm going to give you a couple of tips about how you can find your love of learning as well. 

So, I want to take you back to a time when I was in elementary school. I woke up early in the morning. I was eager to study each day. I was eager to get ready. I was eager to go to school and learn. I had a keen spirit. I loved being with my teacher. I loved being with my friends. I adored everything about school, really. 

I enjoyed new concepts. I did well at everything new that was thrown at me, and I loved to get "good grades". From the outside looking in, you would have not thought that I was a failure of the system; you would've thought that I was a public-school success story. 

There's several articles that I read on boys not being suited to the public school and it not being really made for them in the way that their brains, most optimally, learn. But for females, a lot of times, it is; it's quite effective, and it does work well.

How My Learning Journey Was Stunted by My Fixed Mindset

So, looking at my story as an outsider, it'd be easy to think that I was one of these success stories; perfect grades, good behavior, immediate entrance into the university of my choice – the program of my choice with the scholarships that I wanted. 

Looking back, at this time in my life now, with a fresh perspective and it being, you know, hindsight, hindsight is 2020, I realized that I was really just eager to please my teachers – I was eager to please my parents. 

I thought that in order to please them, I needed to get good grades. And so, I did it all for the grade. I did enjoy the environment and I did enjoy some of the learning for sure, but I definitely became a product of a Fixed Mindset culture. 

Carol Dweck explains people who have a growth mindset or individuals who believe their talents can be developed through hard work, good strategies input from others; and they tend to achieve more than those who have a fixed mindset. 

And fixed mindset students or people believe that their talents are innate gifts; and so, they can't really change them as much; and they don't put in a lot of energy into learning. This perfectly sums up my thoughts on my learning at the time. 

So, fast-forward several years I was a young mother in university. I was graduating at five-and-a-half months pregnant with a toddler on my hip. Through school, I had eventually found a lot of subjects that were really interesting to me; and I enjoyed a lot of my classes. 

But I was really still entrenched in this Fixed Mindset upbringing; I cared so much about good grades that I would drop out of classes after the first week, if I could tell right away that I couldn't get an 'A' easily enough. 

I didn't go out of my way to learn all that I could, to interact with my teachers kind of outside of class, or do extra internships or Co-Ops or work experiences or really any extra learning. 

I didn't push myself to join classes that did interest me regardless of the difficulty level; I would just decide not to do them because I felt like, 'Well, it's interesting, but you know, but I can't-- I can't do that.' 

I didn't look for mentors that could encourage and inspire me. I didn't really build those relationships with my professors; like I could have or join any extracurricular clubs. 

I asked a few local team girls what they think about learning in their high school right now. And they have a fairly forward-thinking science teacher who was trying to kind of change this Fixed Mindset culture. 

So, he was really focusing on the process on real learning, not trying to give out grades. And he was like, I'm just going to have a no-grade class. But what they said was, "Nobody listens, nobody works, nobody does anything because they're not getting graded on any of it. So, it just doesn't matter." 

So, I thought that was interesting. I was like, "Well, why don't they care?" And it's because of the culture that they've been raised in and that I was raised in. Though now we have more knowledge on mindsets and learning and how it affects our learning, it's something that can't just change overnight – even with one really enthusiastic teacher who's trying to break out of that mold. 

What's needed is a complete cultural mindset shift. So, fast-forward again, I'm a young mother to my wild and rambunctious boys; I didn't have my daughter yet. My days consist of changing poopy diapers, feeding my family, cleaning my house, Googling parenting and healthcare advice, little-to-no sleep during the nighttime hours. 

I loved being a mom, but I felt connected to those mothers who would say that they lost themselves in motherhood. I felt like I had no time to myself. When the reality was that the amount of hours that I put into eating ice cream and binge watching Netflix – all while calling it self-care – was quite astounding. 

So, somewhere along the story, I stumbled upon some great books and some Ted Talks on education. I started learning about learning in other countries. I started learning more about Child Development. 

I decided to homeschool my boys for a few years. Not really because of homeschool and not really because of the public school versus homeschool mentality, honestly, just because I wanted to spend a little bit more time with them because of the positive parenting books that I had been researching. 

So, we kind of just fell into that homeschooling – all while I was still learning about learning itself. I knew no one that homeschooled. I had no community or family or friends at homeschooled. I was jumping off a cliff into the unknown. It was like I was a pioneer, just forging my own way. 

I replicated my son's past school classroom, got a list of education requirements per grade, and shoved as much learning as I could into my children - as fast as I could, thinking that early academics was the way to instill a love of learning. I soon realized that that was not working. 

How I Discovered a Growth Mindset

For years, we would butt heads over my expectations and over how they were doing. And over time, I was actually killing their love of learning in a huge way and not even realizing. 

Eventually, I did; but, how could I change it? I was like, 'I have no idea. Did I even really love learning? Had I even learned to love learning?' What I had really learned was, at that time, was I wanted them to have a deep love of lifelong learning; and to find their own unique passions, and the joy that it brings. 

And it took me a long time to kind of come to that learning, that idea on my own; it took me several years to get to that point. I found the work of Oliver and Rachel DeMille, and their philosophy on Leadership Education. 

And I read about their theories of the phases of learning; and around the same time, was when I was reading a lot about Gordon Neufeld’s attachment-based developmental model. And I was reading about the stages of attachment, and the ages that children typically move through at them. 

And I started to focus on encouraging my children and connecting with them, and loving them where they were at. So, encouraging kind of their own ideas and what they were interested in; instead of trying to shove all of these requirements down their throat. 

I started reading myself again. I started remembering what things I’d loved to learn about in the past, and what things ignited my passion and my own drive for learning, because what had happened over the time was that I didn't take any time to invest in my own learning – I’d lost that passion. 

And even when I was younger and had somewhat of the passion, I still cared so much more about the outcome than the actual passion or love for what I was learning. 

I started reading all of the non-fiction books that I could on psychology, relationships, parenting education, anything that I found that was interesting. My brain heard a lot at first; it didn't really remember how to learn. 

I had a really hard time focusing on words on a paper or writing things down. It took a long time, for sure; but eventually, I remembered again – I remembered how much I enjoyed it. I got opinions on new subjects and ideas, and I would start to write my own book reports on what I was reading. 

So, I would read, you know, a great new book by Brené Brown or some psychology book or self-help book, and then I would kind of write up a report to help my mind remember what it was that I was learning. 

And there was definitely times throughout my childhood where I did enjoy learning; but overall, learning for me, wasn't a joy. Learning for me was trying to get the desired outcome, which was a "good grade". 

So, this time was different. This time, there was no grades, there was no outcomes; I was just doing it for my own passion and for my own love. Over time, I got a small side gig writing historical biographies for an online homeschooling school; and it furthered my passion for learning because I was inspired by the people that I was reading about. 

I read about Gandhi, Rachel Carson, Mary Anning; individuals that found their passion and were enthusiastic learners. I read Carol Dweck’s Mindset, psychology book. 

I noticed patterns in my past mindset, and how they were shifting. As all of this is happening, my children were more inspired to learn things that interested them. So, instead of shoving and pushing and forcing all these requirements and all of this curriculum, I helped ignite that passion through my own passion being ignited. 

So, they would start finding their passions as I'm finding my passion; and it really helped me to be able to better facilitate their learning. So, fast-forward to – probably, has it been a year – a year and a half ago, I found and enrolled in The Life Coach School's certification program. 

Now, the reason that I did was because this learning was going so well that I wanted more; I wanted more than I had at that time, and I knew that the next step was a next level of some sort of education. 

So, I actually started looking into Master's programs. I'd always planned on eventually becoming a psychologist or a therapist of some sort. So, I had looked into all these different programs; they were all fairly expensive. 

They were all hard to do, you know, far away from where I was living; I didn't want to move my entire family. A lot of them didn't offer part-time or if they did offer part-time, it just wasn't the greatest layout or format. 

So, I didn't find anything that I just really loved or really spoke to me as I was looking for Master's programs. And, at the same time, somebody invited me to an evening that was put on by a Life Coach School coach, that was awesome. 

And I was like, 'Wait a second. Like maybe I've always been thinking about Life Coaching, maybe this is just something that I didn't really know existed that is really going to fulfill that passion and desire that I have to help people.' 

So, sure enough, I enrolled in The Life Coach School program, it was awesome, it was exactly what I was looking for. I would, during that program, different from when I was in university would be that I would try to do as much extra learning as I could. 

I would read and reread the textbook material for that week. I would watch and re-watch the videos for that week. I would reach out to my colleagues or people that had been in the past program and learn from them. I would practice as much as I could. I would read extra books as much as I could. 

I loved learning, and I put so much time and effort into it. And I would think about all of the ideas and all of the topics often. I think about-- I would think about how it would connect with other facets of learning and make connections between other books and studies that I'd read and what I was learning then. 

And I was on fire with this passion of learning, and really truly showing my children how much learning can be enjoyable. We started reading these great books together. We would travel. We would go to museums. We would study new subjects together, and we would find so much joy through learning. 

And it really changed the entire environment in our home from a Fixed Mindset journey to a Growth Mindset journey. 

And what's interesting is that you can be so fixed mindset even at home. Homeschool is not a cure for, you know, magically, everybody's just going to love learning because, like I said, in the beginning of my journey was that I was really pushing it; and we really didn't enjoy the journey. 

There wasn't a lot of love for any learning happening for the first few years of our homeschool. It was a journey and a process for us as well. So, that's a little bit about my story through learning; and it really was, you know, if it weren't for homeschooling, I probably wouldn't have learned about so much about learning. 

I probably wouldn't have invested so much time to figure out like, 'Wait, how do I actually get my children to learn? How do we do this?' 

And so, I think that all of that really led me further down the road to find my own journey and my own love of learning, which then further led me down the road to become a life coach, and to start my own company and do what I do now. 

And I'm so grateful for the journey and the process that I went on, even though it was, you know, a decade or more long, that I was finally able to get to that point. 

And it has been such a different process to go through school again with so much of a different mindset than what I used to have, and really feeling more of that journey and that process; and failing and not making that failure mean something about me, but making failure mean that I'm learning something. 

And it's not just a magical pill that I swallow and feel all the time, there's definitely times where I still struggle; and I'm sure that everybody does. And where I still kind of go back to that fixed mindset of like, 'No, my children needs to-- You know, they need to do this, and they need to do this,' and kind of fit all of those requirements. 

But whenever I can kind of zoom out again, I look at like, 'Hey, what's most important here?' What's most important is relationship. So, I focus on the relationship again, I calm down again. And then I kind of look at like, 'Okay, how can I help them? How can I inspire them in this area?'

How You Can Find Your Passion Too

So, it doesn't matter if you're public schooled or your homeschooled, you can still inspire your children to learn; wherever they are learning, you can inspire them – and the inspiration happens from starting with you. 

So, what is your learning like? Are you passionate about certain subjects or topics? Do you spend time reading for fun? Do you spend time writing for fun, learning new skills? 

Reading and writing are the only academics, right? There's so much more than that. Do you spend time creating things, listening to music, making music, painting, learning new hobbies and skills? 

I feel so passionate about this now because as I spend time on what I truly love and, on my passion, I feel so much more filled and fulfilled. 

And I'm able to show up in the way that I want as a mom in such a better way than when I ever was before; you know, thinking that I should devote all of my time into attention to my children, but then, you know, really just feeling overwhelmed and stressed out and totally burnt out. So, it's been a journey, for sure. 

So, maybe you feel a little bit lost in your passion. Maybe you can relate to the story of a girl who only tried to please other people; to get good grades, to make everybody else happy. 

An Exercise on How to Find Your Passion

I want you to think about things that used to bring you joy; come up with 3 to 5 things that you love doing or that you love learning about – or even that you used to love when you were younger – start doing those things again. 

Set aside time each week, each day, if you can, to work on this list; try new things, pursue new interests. You can even think about, 'What topics are interesting to me? What opinions do I have on current political events or things happening in the world right now? What are you pulled towards?' 

Sometimes we have a hard time even thinking about these things. Well, I don't know what my opinion is on this because it's been so long that we haven't. And so, just start reading again; just start reading articles and reading books and having discussions with people about their opinions, and start getting used to having an opinion on things – find yourself again. 

And I think that it's easy for us to "lose ourselves" in motherhood, but I also think we can lose ourselves in so many other roles. So, if you're listening to this and you're not a mom, you can lose yourself in the career role that you have. You can lose yourself in any role that you give yourself – can box you in – and you can make it mean something about you and kind of change the way that you are. 

But I think that as we're more true to ourselves, and we focus more on what that truth is, that we're able to actually change the world in such a huge way. We're supposed to, I don't even know if Future's the word, we're able to change and have more of an impact on the world.

An Exercise on How to Find Inspiration to Further Our Learning

So, I want you to also think of somebody that you know, who's an inspiration to you – maybe it's a teacher, a neighbor, a friend, a historical or political figure; what are they doing to further their learning? 

You might not know exactly, but I just want you to imagine, if you did know, what are they doing? Are they reading, writing, discussing their thoughts? Are they pursuing new talents and hobbies? 

What do you think that that inspiring person is feeling that leads them to take those actions? Are they inspired? Are they excited, curious, joyful, passionate? What feeling would you need to feel in your life to start taking those actions? 

One of my current mentors, the leader of The Life Coach School, Brooke Castillo teaches that your thoughts create your feelings; your feelings, create your actions. 

And I want you to think what those inspiring people are thinking, what that thinking is, making them feel, and what those feelings are making them do. What's a thought that would lead to that emotion for you? 

So, write that down, notice the emotion that creates and the actions that you would take, if you truly believed in that, if you truly believed like that inspirational person does. 

So, it doesn't matter if we do know exactly what they're thinking, feeling, and doing, it's just what we believe they're thinking and feeling and doing; and whether or not, we can harness that new belief in our life as well. 

We do have the power to change the next generation of learners, just like that really excited high school science teacher. We can inspire them. We can inspire them in our homes, in our schools, in our communities. 

Inspiration and relationships are the two great keys to building a love of learning for anybody; working on that relationship with our children, working on that relationship in our homes and in our communities and with the people that we work with; and then working on that inspiration. And we do that through becoming that inspiring person, ourselves, to becoming as inspirational as we can. 

"Be the change you want to see in the world", everybody knows that famous Gandhi quote; I have it at like the end of all my emails, because I think it's great. 

But it's true; we all want to change the world, and we look outward thinking other people need to change and other situations need to change – instead of looking inward, and realizing that we are that change already. 

So, go out there, and change the world. 

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.