S03|09 - Dealing with difficult relationships with Jody Moore

After having her first two kids, Jody Moore struggled with work/life balance, embracing motherhood, and liking herself. As an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she felt guilty for not loving the role of mother and wife and turned to life coaching for help. The transformation she experienced not only helped her at work and at home, it strengthened her testimony of Christ leading her to dive into learning the tools of coaching and to leave her position as a corporate leadership coach to launch her own coaching practice. Jody is certified through The Life Coach School and completed Master Coach Certification in 2018.

Today Jody has helped tens of thousands of people through her top-rated podcast Better Than Happy as well as her coaching membership program Be Bold. She has 4 children ages 6 – 15 and resides in Spokane, Washington with them, her husband, and their French bulldog Finn and cat Oscar.

What we discuss on today’s episode:

• Jody’s background and how she got started with Life Coaching
• How to deal with “difficult” people in our lives
• Mirroring neurons and momentum in relationships
• Setting clear boundaries with people we love
• Dropping judgement and replacing it with compassion and curiosity

Connect with Jody here: https://jodymoore.com
Listen to her podcast: Better Than Happy 
Find her on IG here: @jodymoorecoaching

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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. The tools that I talk about in my podcast and use in my coaching have 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 to learn what we do in my program By Design. I love helping women tap into their inner expert and build radical connection in their relationships with their children.

Link to membership: By Design
Find me on the ‘gram: The.Parenting.Coach
My website: coachcrystal.ca
Work with me 1:1 HERE

 

 

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.

 

Jody’s background and how she got started with Life Coaching

Hello, I am so excited to bring you this podcast episode, Dealing with difficult relationships with Jody Moore. 

After having her first two kids, Jody Moore struggled with work/life balance, embracing motherhood, and liking herself. As an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she felt guilty for not loving the role of mother and wife, and turned to life coaching for help. 

The transformation she experienced not only helped her at work and at home, it strengthened her testimony of Christ leading her to dive into learning the tools of coaching and to leave her position as a corporate leadership coach to launch her own coaching practice. Jody is certified through The Life Coach School, and completed Master Coach Certification in 2018.

Today Jody has helped tens of thousands of people through her top-rated podcast – Better Than Happy – as well as her coaching membership program, Be Bold. She has 4 children ages 6 – 15 and resides in Spokane, Washington with them, her husband, and their French bulldog, Finn, and cat, Oscar.

All right. Hi, and welcome. I'm so excited to have you on the show today. 

 

Jody Moore: Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: All right, so I always ask this to people in the beginning because I love to hear about people's backgrounds; it's just so fascinating. 

And so, I would love to know how you got to do-- Well, I guess for our listeners who don't know who you are, tell us a little bit about you and then also kind of how you got here – what made you so passionate, and kind of drove you to where you are now? 

 

Jody Moore: Alright. So, I am a life coach; and I work with mostly women and a few brave men, I always say, a lot of members of my church. I like bringing in my faith into the tools of mental and emotional health. 

And I work with women in mostly group settings right now, just to minimize overwhelm, solve problems, and achieve goals; and also, do a little business coaching, as well. 

How did I get to where I am? You know, we're always our own client, I guess – first, anyway. So, I'm a mom of four kids myself. And when I first started having kids, I had my first two really close together, like 15 months apart – not on purpose. 

And, once I had those two little kids, I was just so overwhelmed and frustrated. I just felt grumpy all the time. And I didn't used to be like that; I was always such a happy person. And I'd always wanted to be a mom; and I wanted to have these kids. 

And so, I was really confused, like, 'Why am I so unhappy and what's wrong with me? And I should be grateful because I do want this life and this family, but why am I so unhappy and why do I not feel like myself?' 

So, I just sort of went through this kind of weird phase of guilt and overwhelm and, you know, a lot of self-loathing. And so, it wasn't like I needed a therapist necessarily at that point; I just didn't know how to help myself. And so, later on I found coaching. 

I actually found it through my corporate job; I was a leadership coach in corporate, and was introduced to coaching and the model that you and I both use today – and I just fell in love with it. 

And one of my mentors there at my job was a certified coach through The Life Coach School. So, she's the one who introduced me to it; and we became close friends, so we would use it at work, but she would kind of subtly help me use it in my personal life as well. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: That is awesome. I didn't know that that's how you got into it; that's so interesting. 

 

Jody Moore: Yeah, she just, sort of, tricked me a little bit, to be honest. Like, I would be complaining to her about something and she'd go, 'Oh, so it's their fault, huh?' She'd just say little things like that. 

And anyway, long story short, I got like go from that corporate job after 15 years and ended up at The Life Coach School – just feeling sort of like, kind of following what I was interested in, and curious about, and what had helped me. 

I honestly didn't even plan to become a coach in terms of starting my own business. I was just going because I loved the tools, and I wanted to learn more. But, by the last day of training when I learned a little bit about the business side, I actually really loved that too.

And so, here we are eight years later, and that was a good move for me. It worked out really well.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: That was good. I love that. I love how you kind of got into it. And also, I remember listening to one of your podcast episodes where you're talking about how you just were so delighted with your business. You were just like, 'It's so fun.' 

 

Jody Moore: Yes.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: And I think part of that is because you didn't have those expectations. 

 

Jody Moore: That’s right.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: You weren't like, 'I'm going to make all this money, and do all this stuff, and work all this time.' It was just like, 'Oh, this'll be fun.' And so, it kind of just opened it up to being really fun, which is what it is now. 

 

Jody Moore: That's exactly right. Yeah. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Love that. 

 

Jody Moore: Yeah. 

 

How to deal with "difficult" people in our lives

Crystal The Parenting Coach: So, okay. So, you are one of my favorite Mindset gurus; I love listening to you, listening to your podcast, listening to in your program. 

I would love for you to tell us-- On my podcast here, we talk a lot about parenting, and a lot of things that come up are relationship issues – not even just with parenting, but with, you know, difficult mother-in-laws or partners or whatever that is. 

And, I love how you talk about relationships. So, I'd love to talk about, kind of some mindset shifts or tools that you feel help people in just any difficult relationship. 

 

Jody Moore: Yeah. That is, no matter what a coach's specialty is – I think relationships come up. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Always.

 

Jody Moore: They're just like such a dominant part of our lives, especially for women. So yeah, I love talking about this topic. I will say I'm doing some work on my own self right now, so we can share that as well because--

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Sounds good.

 

Jody Moore: One of the tools I love that I teach is this idea of mirroring one another because I've noticed – and there's actually science behind it now, and psychologists talk about, they actually call them mirroring neurons – but there is this tendency that we have as human beings to take on the behaviors and the mood of people around us. 

So, in other words, if I have a husband who comes home and he is really grumpy, it's very easy for me to become grumpy, but then blame him for it. Like, "He needs to stop being so grumpy, he needs to be more positive," we say in a negative grumpy tone, right? 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. 

 

Jody Moore: At least, in our heads. And so, that is natural human behavior. And they say that the person with the strongest momentum behind their mood is the one that gets taken on. 

Like, if my husband comes home grumpy, but I know that we just won the lottery and he doesn't know yet, my positive momentum might be stronger than his negative. 

So, even though he's really grumpy, I might be able to maintain the positive and actually even bring him over to my positive energy. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I love that.

 

Mirroring neurons and momentum in relationships

Jody Moore: But negative emotion builds momentum so quickly, that's why we tend to go that way. So anyway, I love just-- It's really just giving people awareness of that that can break the automatic cycle. So, when you become aware--   

 

Example 1

And like I said, I'm doing this work myself, so I'll just share an example; this morning I took my son to get on the bus at school – he's in second grade and he still just cries getting on the bus; he's just afraid of the routine of the bus. 

And in my mind, I'm like, 'He should be over this by now – he's in second.' Granted, last year was different, but I just-- He's so anxious and part of me feels like if he would just change his thought, he would just choose to think, 'I can figure this out.' He totally could. He's a smart kid, he'll be fine. 

And so, I was walking home from the bus stop noticing I'm so grumpy about his grumpiness. I'm so, like-- I'm kind of anxious about his anxiety. And I realized, okay, so I can be--  

It's okay not, this isn't to say that you should judge yourself for it, but I could also decide, 'All right, he's going to be unhappy or scared or anxious or whatever – I don't have to be unhappy about his unhappiness.' Like, that's on me; that's not his to manage. 

And to try to talk him out of it so I can feel better does not work, because I've been trying that, last couple days. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. I think it actually helps, like when we talk about holding space, I think it's like holding space for their emotions as well. Like when we hold space for that emotion for them, then they can rest in that, right? 

They're comfortable, they feel more at ease; and we're actually able to help them so much more and support them so much more because we're just okay with it. We're like, 'Yeah, sometimes it does suck getting on the bus early in the morning. I mean, that sounds terrible to me; I wouldn't want to do that,' right? 

 

Jody Moore: Right? That's right. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: We can empathize with them more. 

 

Jody Moore: Totally. And I'm sure you have a lot of listeners who are like, 'Okay, that's great for your second-grade son, but my mother-in-law, like, judges me,' or whatever. 

But it really is the same, right? As soon as we start judging mother-in-law for judging us, we're just, that's the reason we're unhappy. And we see this in the world today; we've got people that are like super mad – whatever your stance is on vaccines, like we got people super mad on both sides. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Oh yeah. Everyone's mad. 

 

Jody Moore: Yeah. And it, and it's like, 'Okay, we're all just taking on the same negative emotions,' and it's challenge-- I don't know if it’s challenging, but it requires a level of awareness, I should say, to interrupt. 

 

Example 2

I saw this video the other day where it was like a kind of a comedian who was interviewing people at an anti-vax rally. But because he knew like he was making this video; and he kind of wanted to keep it light and funny, other people were mad and, you know, whatever in their case, and he was--  

I was like, look, he's not mirroring them. Like he was not getting defensive, and he is not trying to argue his case back; he's just kind of light and having fun with it. And he has a lot of momentum for himself around that because he knows, 'I'm making this video. 

And so, that's what it looks like. And not that we have to make fun of people, that's not what I'm saying. But if you just going into going, 'Okay, my mother-in-law, she's going to say all the stuff she says,' or 'My husband, he's going to complain about his day.' 

 

How pre-coaching yourself ahead of meeting difficult people safeguards your positive energy

Jody Moore: Like people that are "difficult", are very predictable. So, if you just know, 'That's what's going to happen, probably when I see them, they're going to be themselves – now, how do I want to feel? Who do I want to be?' 

You choose that ahead of time. I call it pre-coaching – like pre-medicating, like when you take Advil before you go skiing, you know? 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes. Yes. 

 

Jody Moore: Pre-coach yourself, 'Okay, this is going to require me to think it's okay for her to be upset – you know, what she thinks is totally fine, and I don't need to control it.' Whatever the thoughts are, you got to have them going into the situation.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Oh, I love that. This reminds me of, I was going through a situation like that with somebody that was related to me; and I remember going in beforehand and thinking, 'I'm just going to forgive them ahead of time. So, what do they usually say? What do they usually do that gets me so upset? And, I'm going to just think about all those things.' 

And I thought about even reasons why I could be compassionate, difficulties that they had and kind of why they were the way they were. And I went into it just knowing all of that, 'I'm just going to love them no matter what.' 

And I don't even remember anything, negative or difficult, that happened the whole time we were together. And at the end of it I thought, 'Oh wow, that was interesting. I don't even know if they said anything mean or that bothered me because-- I mean, maybe they did and it just didn't bother me.' 

But doing that work ahead of time was so powerful. 

 

Stop judging yourself and others

Jody Moore: Yes. It really is. Like, you just go into it. I remember doing the same thing when I first started life coach training and a bunch of people in my life were like, 'What are you doing? That's weird and silly.' And, 'Oh that's cute.' 

Like, they had a bunch of judgment; and part of me wanted them to all buy in, but I just told myself, 'They don't have to understand it because I do – they don't have to know the power of it, I know the power of it – they don't need to know how awesome it is, I know how awesome it is.' 

And I would just go into the social setting with those thoughts. And you're right, all of a sudden, you're like, 'That's fine.' 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. I love that idea of like helping us build our own momentum before – like when you were talking about, 'If we have more momentum then we're going to be kind of not more dominant in that situation, but less easily--'  

 

Jody Moore: Pulled over. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: -pulled over to their side. So, I think just whatever tools we can use and whatever shifts we can use in our mind that are really useful for us because then at the end of the day, we've showed up in a way that feels aligned to us where we can go to sleep and be like, 'Oh yeah, I liked-- I liked how I showed up in that way.' 

And not go to bed thinking, 'Okay, I said some unkind things,' because that's usually what happens when we get really worked up and then we say things that aren't as nice as well. 

 

Jody Moore: We're judging them, then we're judging ourselves; and it is just all a big judgment cloud – out of it by going, 'We're all just a bunch of humans doing the best we can. Sometimes our best is terrible. It's okay. I don't need to control all of them, I just control me.' 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. I loved when you taught us-- I was in a class with Jody, for anyone that is listening to this a while ago; and she was talking to us about judgment being like a fog. 

And I use that analogy all of the time now because I've noticed, since you said that, that every single time that there's ever judgment, anytime, I'm always like, 'Okay, well, what do you think about you?' 

And they're always judging themselves; they're judging the situation, like everyone in it. And so, it's just dropping that judgment. 

I think you had an episode on that recently too, about dropping that judgment either for us first or for them first, but just finding a way to kind of release judgment can be super helpful in our relationships as well. 

 

Jody Moore: Yeah. Just like positive emotion – if I'm loving, it doesn't matter what the object of my love is; I can love you, I can love my house, I can love myself, and I still feel the love of that. 

And so, and judgement the same way; we just start projecting it on everything and ourselves, and we feel the negative effect of it. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah, exactly. They might not even notice, and we're just sitting here in our negative feeling. 

 

Jody Moore: That's right. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. I would love to talk about partners, for a second, because that's definitely a situation that comes up a lot for my clients and for pretty much everybody in the world that are going to have some difficulties with their partner. 

And so, it seems a little bit easier to kind of build this momentum when you're hanging out with a difficult neighbor or mother-in-law, every once in a while, but when you have somebody that lives with you all of the time, what advice would you have for that kind of a situation to kind of, tools or shifts that would help in a situation where you are dealing with them regularly? 

 

Jody Moore: Yeah. Well, I think that, first of all, it's important that we clarify that-- The way I know, Crystal, you and I both have been trained is that we love everyone in the story. 

I've been thinking about this lately, how that's like such a gift that we're given when we go through coach training, that we're taught how to love everyone in the story. 

So, it's natural for when we're not coaching anyway, or for people that aren't trained that way to want to have good guys and bad guys – victims and villains, 'Who's right and who's wrong? Who needs to change here?' Right? 

So, when we're coaching, a client starts telling us about their spouse, let's say, or their partner, what have you, and what they wish they would do differently. And we love the person telling us the story – we love the client and we love their spouse, immediately as they start telling us the story. 

That's how we trained our brains to be like, 'This person talking to me is so lovable, the person they're talking about is so lovable – everybody's lovable in the story.' 

And I start with that because if you have a partner that you see daily or regularly that is mistreating you and you got to decide what that even means – what is mistreatment to you – you got to love you as well, as love your partner. 

And so, if you love you and you love them, it sort of sounds in your head like, 'Okay, I love me – and I'm good, and I got me, and I'll take care of me. And he or she must be really struggling right now to be acting that way or talking that way or whatever. And they're lovable too. But, now what?' 

So, is it, 'Oh you know what? I'm sorry. I just don't really like being spoken to that way. And, do you need to remove yourself? Do you need to have a boundary? Do you need to be more compassionate? Is this--'   

It's a tough question because we have a whole spectrum of issues that people probably bring to you. 

So, there's all the way up to abuse and then there's all the way on the other end of the little thing like, 'I just don't like the way you load the dishwasher' – and, you know, 'That's not how you're supposed to bathe the children,' and 'That's not how you make pancakes'. These are all real things I've coached on. 

So, on the one end of the spectrum, it's like, 'Oh, I need to let go of thinking I'm right, and trying to change that person into someone else that they're not.' And on the other end of the spectrum though, there is definitely a need to say, "I'm sorry, that's not okay" – and if necessary, remove yourself from the situation or the relationship. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah, exactly. I think that lots of times, people think relationship work and even life coaching is like thinking positively and happy all the time, and just us doing all of the work so that we can just stay in all those relationships and friendships and everything. 

 

Setting clear boundaries with people we love

But, I love talking about boundaries because those clear and firm boundaries are the things which in a parent-child relationship help our children to stay safe, to feel safe, to feel accepted, and secure around us; and same within these other relationships, it's giving them those clear and delineated boundaries. 

So, I think this is a really good segue into my next question, which was going to be about boundaries. I remember listening to an episode you did about Boundaries, a little while ago. 

And I loved the way that you talked about it because I think oftentimes, we focus a lot on what the boundary is, and not a lot around like the mindset part of it. And I think you said 80 or 90% of the work or something was like, let's work on our mindset first and then let's figure out the boundary. 

So, I would love for you to just explain like, how does setting a boundary look like in a kind of a real-life scenario, and what kind of work leads up to setting that boundary? 

 

Jody Moore: Yeah. Well, what I've found to be most successful for myself and my clients is, first of all, just to know that you don't have to be angry to set a boundary.

You might be angry; I'm not saying you shouldn't be, just saying you don't have to be. You don't have to hate the person. You don't have to-- You don't have to be filled with negative emotion. You can--  

It's ideal, actually, to be in a loving, calm place. Ideally, boundaries are, 'Listen, I love you, I care about you, I want our relationship to be even better than it is – and so, just a heads-up, like, I'm not okay with you speaking to me in that way {or whatever the thing is} or with you coming over without asking or whatever the thing is that you're requesting,' right? 

And so, this is the other key part that I think people get confused about boundaries; they think a boundary is telling the other person what to do. And I don't think of it that way because we can't tell other people-- They can do whatever they want. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. Even if we tell them what to do, they're not going to listen, anyways, most of the time. 

 

Jody Moore: Yeah. So, it's a request because it does help to communicate to people what you prefer. Sometimes they're willing to honor your request by just sharing it from a loving place. 

But the important part of the boundary and the part that's hardest is, what am I going to do to protect myself then if they choose otherwise – if they don't honor my request? 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes. 

 

Jody Moore: So, it's not like you have to do this or else that's called melt ultimatum. A boundary is, 'I would really appreciate this, I want you to know this is my preference,' but in the end, the person gets to do whatever they want. 

And so, whether you communicate what you're going to do or not is up to you. Sometimes with some clients I think it's appropriate sometimes not. Like if you have a spouse and let's say you have a habit of fighting, and there's lots of language and you don't want that anymore – it might be like, 'Hey listen, I'm trying not to get mad, I would appreciate you not speaking to me in this way.' 

But if they do, then you just simply go, 'You know what? I'm going to go ahead and leave and go for a walk until you calm down,' or 'I'm going to go for a drive' or 'I'm going to leave for the weekend' or whatever it is. 

Like, 'I just need a little space – you get to act however you want, but I'm going to remove myself from the situation.' 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. It's about what we do, right? 

 

Jody Moore: Yes. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: And it's interesting because whenever we make a relationship change, things shift and change. And so, when we're doing that regularly, our partner – whoever it is – is going to start responding differently as well because, like what you talked about mirroring in the beginning, if we're constantly mirroring, that's what they're used to. 

They're used to this like same dance that we always do; and if we want to change the dance of that relationship, the only power we have is in changing the moves that we're making. 

 

Jody Moore: That’s right.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: And so, doesn't have to be like, you know, out of meanness or anger and being like, 'I'm going to do this because you're doing that,' or like trying to convince them or force them to do something else. 

It's just, what am I going to do to keep myself emotionally and physically safe in this situation? And it can be really powerful. 

 

Jody Moore: Totally powerful. It can actually be really connecting too; sometimes, immediately… and sometimes, maybe later on. So, you know, I think about an example of like if you have a mother-in-law that comes over all the time, and you feel like you want to have a boundary, it could be, 'Listen, you need to call us before you come or text us because we have a lot of things going on.' 

And again, it can be like loving on your end. We don't always know how they're going to receive it, but ideally, you're like, 'Listen, we love you so much. I love that you want to be in our lives; I love that you want to see us and the kids all the time, that's so awesome. We do sometimes need to have some personal time and some family time; and I prefer to have a heads-up when you're going to come. So, I would be great if you could call or text and find out if it's a good time to come.' 

If not-- Again, this is where it gets tough. It may be like, 'We're not going to answer the door if you don't call first. And we love you and that's going to be hard, but that's the way I feel, like our family time matters.'

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. I like it. 

 

Jody Moore: It can be connecting if your mother-in-law can come to realize like, 'Oh, I want to know what you like,' anyway. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. In my situations that is what it has been like. They've been like-- They've been glad and grateful that we are more clear. I'm taking a Brené Brown training right now; and one of the things that she says a lot is, "Clear is kind." Right? Unclear is unkind. 

So, making sure that we're setting those clear boundaries. And another thing she talks about frequently-- I'm doing a Dare to Lead program so it's more about leadership, but she talks about circling back to conversations. 

She's talking about it in a business setting, but I always think about it in a relationship setting. And she's like, 'If I'm, you know, emotional and feeling some pretty strong things, then I'm going to just say, okay, let's circle back to this later and then we're going to have a conversation when we're both feeling a little bit more logical and clear about it.' 

And, that has helped in every situation with my husband when I'm like, 'Okay, wait, let's just circle back,' because usually it's me that gets a little bit strong in my emotions. 

And when I have had time to kind of calm back down again and think about it in a more logical way and circle back to it, I remember hearing like that little idiom about like, make sure you don't go to bed angry, blah blah blah. 

And I was like, 'Oh, I love going to bed angry because then I wake up and I'm feeling way better, I'm not tired and cranky – and then, we can circle back to that conversation at that point, and it's so much more useful.' 

 

Jody Moore: Yes. I love that too. It sort of speaks to what we were talking about earlier too, even with just like not mirroring and interrupting the momentum. 

So, when you're angry and you have lots of negative emotion, you've got a momentum built there. Right? And one of the things that going to sleep does, is it interrupts it. 

Now, sometimes we wake up in the morning and our thoughts start coming back online and we're like, 'What's today? Oh yeah. And what am-- Oh yeah, I was mad about something. What was it? Oh yeah.' 

And so, we might recall it pretty quickly, that can happen. But notice when you wake up in the morning, you don't feel that anger until you start having the thoughts. So, just to interrupt – so that you don't have this momentum of negative emotion, I think is so powerful; I'm totally with you. I'm like, 'No, go to bed angry.' 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah, I always go to bed when I’m angry.

 

Jody Moore: Talk about it in the morning when you're fresh. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Exactly. I leave a little journal by my nightstand; and my best journaling, my thought journaling, I call them Thought Dumps, but my best Thought Dumps are always in the morning when I can just wake up. 

And I can see it a little bit more clearly, and I can write all of that down and get it all out, and then circle back to that conversation, and then we can actually come up with some creative solutions to whatever it is that's going on. But creative solutions never come from a space of like angst and upset and intense emotions. 

 

Jody Moore: Well, and if you think about the evening that is when things tend to be the most challenging in your relationships for your kids. My kids are much more emotional at night – that's when we get scared, that's when we start – because we're tired. 

We've had a full day with our brains, and now we're losing the leverage on our brains. So, it's like, 'Just go to sleep and in the morning, you'll have fresh energy to choose your thoughts a little bit better.' 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes, it's so true. I talk to so many moms who are just like, 'My thoughts are going crazy and I don't know what to do here and blah blah blah.' And I talk to them about, 'Okay, well, how is your sleep?' A lot of them are like, you know, moms with lots of kids and aren't sleeping well. And I'm like, 'Really? You just need to take a nap or get more sleep at night.' 

 

Jody Moore: Yes. That's right. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Your thought work is so much easier to do when you're getting enough sleep. 

 

Jody Moore: That's 100% true. And I know it's challenging when you got babies and stuff, so that's the time to just be really patient with yourself, 'Okay, I'm a little grumpy right now and I'm not my best, but this isn't going to last forever either.' 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Exactly. Maybe I'm going to be grumpy for the next few years, that's cool, like just get through that phase. 

 

Jody Moore: I was.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I totally was. And now that I'm on the other end, our kids are actually exactly the same age. We both have the same spread. 

 

Jody Moore: Right. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: But it is-- I feel like we're in like the prime time. I'm like, 'It's so nice. Like, there's no more potty-training. Everyone's in these perfect ages; I get a full night's sleep, most of the time.' 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes. 

 

Jody Moore: You'll get there, moms You'll get there. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah, you'll get there. Okay. 

 

Replacing judgement with compassion and curiosity

Crystal The Parenting Coach: So, one last question is, what's one kind of bit of advice or tip that you would leave us with today? Can be about relationships or anything, your favorite thing. 

 

Jody Moore: My kind of soapbox I'm on right now – it changes all the time – but right now, my soapbox is really about having compassion and grace for yourself and for others, of course. But I notice, again, I work with a lot of women – like you – and we tend to be so tough on ourselves. 

And we take things that are helpful like great parenting tips and tools, or our religion, maybe – or coaching tools, mental health tools. We take these great things that are supposed to be helpful tools, then we use them against ourselves like, 'See, I'm supposed to think differently about this – I'm supposed to not, I'm not supposed to be mad when I set a boundary,' or we just use them to beat ourselves up. 

And I have never found anyone have long-term real change from hating themselves. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah, exactly. It's just like going on a diet. People are like, 'Go on these diets and hate yourself the whole time that you're doing it, and then somehow’ you'll get thin.' 

And we do that. I see that happening in parenting all the time because what I teach is positive or intentional parenting. And so, I talk about connection, and I talk about holding space for your kids and their emotions. 

And we don't do that all the time. Like yesterday, I was grumpy for almost the whole day; and at the end of the day, my husband was like, 'So, what you could have done was this, this, and this,' and just gave me exactly the tips that I give moms. I'm like, 'Well, I know that I could have done that, obviously.' 

 

Jody Moore: Right. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: But I think that just having that compassion for like, 'I'm human too; and I teach this stuff and I self-coach every day and I have my own coaches, and I still have a hard time with it because we're all human; and the more compassion we can feel for us, it's just naturally easier to feel for other people.' 

 

Jody Moore: That's right. And I've found that a really easy place for myself and my clients to get to when you're in judgment is just shift to curiosity. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes. 

 

Jody Moore: Can't get all the way to love and compassion, just be a little curious. Like, 'Oh, that's interesting. Why was I-- I wonder why I was so grumpy all day?' But you have to stay in curiosity, don't go to like, 'Yeah, I shouldn't be,' and trying to fix it and change it right away. 

Just like, 'That's interesting. There's something going on. I want to understand that better; and at some point, I hope I will.' And, you just kind of hold space for it. 

Curiosity is much kinder than judgment. You can be curious about other people too. Like, 'I wonder why he's so scared or so fired up about this or feels so strongly about this – I wonder what it must be like.' 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. It's kind of like getting into their model a little bit. You're like, 'I wonder what their model is like, what are-- what's going on in their mind to make them be like this right now?' 

And curiosity is so much easier to get to when we like talk to someone who's really upset or when I'm really upset and I'm like trying to move to compassion and empathy and I'm like, 'Oh, it's not happening,' like somewhere in the center space is like curiosity. 

I don't have to jump all the way from one end of the spectrum to the other. I can just try to move to curiosity for now because it's an easier go to, and it will really help lean towards compassion in the future. 

 

Jody Moore: And a version of curiosity is also fascination, which leaves us not having to find the answer. So, sometimes I just, like, I'll notice somebody or I'll notice myself, you know, not at my best, and I just think, 'People are fascinating – like I'm fascinating, my brain is fascinating, and people really are.' 

And it's also a good way to kind of, you know, when there's gossip and drama about these people and those people and, did you hear what she said and what he did? And you just go, 'People are so fascinating, aren't they?' 

It's just a lot kinder than the judgment and it, sort of, still feels real, I think. 

 

How to connect with Jody Moore

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. That is-- I really like that. Okay. I love your last tip that you left us with. I also, I'm going to have these in the show notes, but I would love for you to tell us where our listeners can connect with you. 

 

Jody Moore: I am on Instagram a lot, Jody Moore Coaching; and Facebook, same, same, handle, is that what we call it a handle? 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes, a handle. 

 

Jody Moore: Listen to me, I’m like a young person. Jody Moore Coaching, and also my podcast, Better Than Happy – those are the best. I mean, you can go to my website, jodymoore.com, but much more fun things happening probably on the social media and on my podcast. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes, and the podcasts are super interesting. I actually just recently coached someone who said that they love listening to your podcast, and they weren't even spiritual at all. 

She was like, 'I just find that everything that she says resonates with me even though I'm not religious, but it's still so awesome.' And so, if you're listening to this and you're thinking, 'oh, well, she only coaches religious people,' she totally doesn't, she coaches everyone – and her podcast is great for everybody. 

 

Jody Moore: That’s right.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: So, go check it out. 

 

Jody Moore: Love it. Thank you. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Thanks for being here. 

 

Jody Moore: Thanks for having me, Crystal.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Hey friends, if you listened to this episode or any of my other podcast episodes also, if you're looking for a great one, listen to Episode 4, Season 1. 

If you are looking for some parenting support, if you feel like you are really struggling with your parenting; the good news is that your kids are not the problem, the bad news is that your kids are not the problem. 

The most effective way to raise emotionally intelligent children is to switch the focus from them to us. I am now accepting one-on-one clients, so if you're looking for some one-on-one coaching, either you or you and your partner, then reach out to me on Instagram or click on the link and learn more about it. 

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.