S04|07 - Peaceful Parenting Through Conscious Thinking

Conscious thinking is at the core of a healthy relationship with ourselves. If our inner self-talk is negative, it will skew all our other relationships, parenting included. If we want to change the way we parent, naturally, it starts with changing our relationship with us first.

On the podcast today:

• How to teach through connection and inspiration
• Modelling self-confidence and self-love to our kids
• What does a healthy relationship with me look like?
• Tools to use daily to build your relationship with yourself through conscious thinking

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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.

Welcome to today's episode, Peaceful Parenting Through Conscious Thinking.

The importance of boosting self-confidence and self-love in ourselves, as parents, & our kids

Today's episode and the following episodes - and the next couple of ones – we're going to be talking about how to build a good relationship with us, ways that we can do that. 

And the reason that we're doing this is because our thinking, thinking more consciously and more intentionally has everything to do with our relationship with ourselves; and our relationship with ourselves has everything to do with the way that we parent. 

So, on Instagram, a little while ago, I was asked by a parent who, he was struggling with his child – and he was wanting to know how he could teach his children kind of social skills more or less, but he was more focused on what other people were thinking about his kids; 'How do I get it so that other people don't bully them so much, so that they get along with other people, so that other people like them,' that kind of a thing.

And I said, "Wouldn't it be better to instead switch that focus to teach our children to love themselves, to feel compassion for themselves, to feel confident in themselves than worry about what other people are thinking about them?" And he was like, 'Yeah, yeah, that would be awesome.' 

And so, I brought this up in my Instagram stories and I said, you know, "We need to worry less about other people's thoughts about our kids, and we need to worry more about; how do we instill the principles that we want them to have, learn the values we want them to learn – like self-confidence and self-love? 

And everyone was like, 'Yeah, that sounds awesome – that's great - well, how do we teach that?' And I was like, 'Well, we teach it like anything else that we teach, we teach it through role modeling the behavior that we want to see.' 

So, like other things that we teach, we have to become that ourselves, right? We need to have that love and that confidence ourselves in order to model it to them. 

Dr. Gordon Neufeld said, "Children learn best when they like their teacher and they think their teacher likes them". So, connection always comes first; and we're going to dig into that in later episodes, I talk about that often. And we'll give some tips on what to do if you're struggling with that connection piece.

How to teach through connection and inspiration

But today we're going to dig all into the role modeling part. So, how do we role model that? 

First, I want you to think about; who inspires you, and why they inspire you. Maybe it's a teacher you had when you were younger. Maybe it's an author. Maybe it's somebody that you don't even really know personally. Maybe it is a current mentor teacher that you have. 

Why is it that you want to learn from them? How is it that they are encouraging you or inspiring you to learn? Is it because they're forcing you? Is it because they give you timeouts if you don't listen to them, is it because they spank you or they yell at you? Likely, that's not how that teaching relationship is happening. 

Most of the people that we feel inspired to learn by, we feel connected to first. Right? We have some sort of a connection or relationship to, and then also we see them model that behavior. 

We see them model what it is that we want to be like. We're like, 'Yeah, that's awesome.' They create that environment so that learning can happen naturally for us. It is who they are, right? They model that because they live it – because that's who they are.

For example, I had this teacher in high school; he was a science teacher, and he loved Science. He would bring all these fun experiments to class, and we would do all this hands-on stuff. And because he loved it so much, we loved it so much. He made it so fun that he made it easy to learn. 

It was one of the only times that I remember actually really loving Science. Science was never something that I had really loved in the past. And I honestly think it had a lot to do with my teaching. I feel like this teacher just loved it; he loved it so much that we all loved it, we enjoyed being in his class. 

He was one of our favorite teachers, if not our favorite teacher that year. And it was because he taught us through that inspiration, right? He loved it so much that he was modeling that to us, so we wanted to learn.

My dad was a high school Social Studies teacher, and he did the same thing. People loved him as a teacher. They would talk about how much he was their favorite teacher all the time; this always happened. 

And it was because he taught History, he taught Social Studies; and he loved it so much. He loved it even when he wasn't teaching, he was learning about it and reading about it because he had that passion for it. 

And he brought that passion to the school classroom, and so other people cut onto that – that passion, right, to that fire so that they wanted to learn as well. 

Even current mentors that I can think of now, anytime that I've decided to join a program and to learn something new or to read a new book or to learn a new skill, it was often because I was inspired by somebody else. 

I was like, 'Oh, I love that they're doing this – I love this skill that they've learned, I want to be more like this. They created that environment for me to be encouraged and to be led and to be guided by, which has made all the difference in my journey. 

So, what we're really doing in parenting is teaching. And if we want to be that inspiring and that encouraging teacher for our children, we need to become whatever it is that we want to teach them first.

Modelling self-confidence and self-love to our kids

So, let's talk about those skills that we hope our children will learn. Maybe it's empathy or compassion, self-love, self-confidence, responsibility, hard work, respect. 

There's probably a lot of things that you're hoping to teach them, emotional regulation. The key is to be this first; show them through how we act, that we love ourselves – that we feel confident in us first. 

That is how the teaching happens, and that is where the work is. So, going back to my Instagram stories, when I first mentioned this; I said, "Okay, yeah, what the goal really is to actually teach this through role modeling this behavior – so we need to build love and confidence in ourselves." 

And then I did put a poll on; and I said, "How do you guys feel about this? Do you feel like you teach this? Well, do you feel like you love yourself – you're compassionate to yourself, you feel confident in yourself?" 

And almost everybody was like, 'No, this is something I struggle with.' Very few of them said that this was something that they didn't struggle with. So, they said, "How do we-- like, what is it that we do?"

And so, I shared a few things on Instagram; and I'm going to share a few things here. But really, this is where the work is; in the next couple of episodes, we're going to dig into just things that might help you build your relationship with yourself. 

So, we all have a relationship with ourselves, just like we do with our neighbors, with our coworkers, with our friends, with our family, with people who've passed on - maybe we believe in God or divine or the universe; all of that has to do with our relationship with them, right? 

We have a relationship with all of those people, even if they're not physically present in our life, because our relationship is all about our thoughts. They're about the thoughts that we have about us, the thoughts that we have about the other person involved or what we think they might be thinking, the thoughts about the dynamic of that relationship. So, if we want to improve any relationship, it all starts with our thinking.

So, this is how we can improve our relationship with ourselves. I want you to take out a pen and paper or you can just answer this question in your head; how loving and compassionate are you to yourself? On a scale of 1 to 10, I just want you to think of a number. So, 10 would be you're very loving and very compassionate to yourself. 

The next one, how confident in yourself are you? And by confidence, I don't mean arrogance, like I'm better than you; I mean self-confidence. A deep belief in myself doesn't mean that I have to be talented in every area, but that I can accomplish things that I put my mind to – that I believe in myself. That would be a 10. So, on a scale of 1 to 10, what number would you be there? 

The next, how well do you take care of yourself, right? In ways that truly nourish you, what does your self-care look like? So, this is again, 1 to 10, how well you take care of yourself. 

If you want to work on yourself so that you can more easily and naturally model it to your kids, you must start here. This is the thought work that I give almost all of my clients at some point; typically, right at the beginning of our working together. 

At the end of every day, I ask them to write down their thoughts about themselves; 'How you feel about how you showed up that day, how you feel about you? Do you like you, do you like spending time with you?' Write whatever comes up. 

Two things I want to mention here; if you're struggling to think about what your thoughts are about you, you can do the 1 to 10 scale again. You can do-- You can mark yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, what is my relationship with me? 

And then, whatever number you come up with, let's just imagine it's a 7; you're going to ask yourself, why is it not a 10? And then your brain will start to answer. Then you'll be able to start pulling out those thoughts that are sometimes subconscious – that might be a little bit deeper, that might be a little bit harder to access. 

Why is it not a 10? "Why do I not have a 10 out of 10 relationship with myself," brain? And listen to your brain. Listen to the answers that come.

How thought-dumps helps us have a better relationship with ourselves

I'm doing a training through Brené Brown right now. I've talked about it on the podcast before, I've been doing it for a while. 

And one of the things she talks about writing down these stories that we have about ourselves or others or situations is; 'Is it honest? Is it vulnerable? And, is it potentially that you would never want anybody else to see it?' Like is it those deep of thoughts that you're like, 'Ugh, I don't think I'd ever want to share this with anybody?' I think she calls it potentially unshareable. 

Almost every one of my thought-dumps are potentially unshareable. Afterwards, I'm like, 'Let's just rip that up and throw it away.' Though, that way you know that you're getting into those deep thoughts. You want it to feel that way. You do not have to share this with anyone. This is just a self-work experience, experiment. 

So, the reason that we're doing this – that we're bringing up our thoughts about ourselves – is so that we can notice them and become more aware of what they even are. I had a client, one time, who said that she felt like she had a pretty good relationship with herself. I don't even remember what the number was, maybe seven or eight. 

And then we started working together, doing this work for a couple of weeks, and she was like, 'Oh my goodness, nevermind – I think it's a one or two.' Because she didn't recognize how she was speaking to herself during the day, until she started to become more aware and she was like, 'Wait, I actually have a lot of negative thoughts about myself throughout the day.' 

The reason that we do these thought-dumps – at the end of every day… or at the beginning of every day, if you'd like – is because we want to become more aware, not of only our thinking during that time, but also throughout the day. 

You'll likely just start to notice that you'll be more aware of your thinking throughout the day as you start to do these daily thought-dumps. 

What if, instead of that thinking, I mean, there might be some positives that come out, but there's probably going to be a lot of negative thoughts that might sound like you're not doing good enough or you should be doing better, or you shouldn't yell so much – or, why can't you figure this out? 

What if it was a conversation you were having with your best friend – and whatever you just wrote down, is what your best friend just told you? They were like, 'I'm really struggling – my house is never clean, it should be cleaner – I am just not on top of things, I feel like I'm failing, I feel like I'm ruining my kids… like, what they're going through is my fault.' 

Now, would you go to your best friend and be like, 'Yep, that's true – you are just really messing up life right now, you're doing a terrible job'? We would never do that. I hope that we would not do that to our best friends, right? 

Our best friends usually would say things like, "I love you, you're doing a great job; has anybody ever told you that parenting's actually super hard? It's fine to make mistakes. You're human, you're good, everything is going to be okay." Right? That's how they would speak to you. 

So, the reason that we're trying to come up with what our thinking is right now is because we want to become our own inner best friend; we want that to change. What would change if we spoke to ourselves like our best friend speaks to us? 

Another example that I like to give is like going to the gym. So, you get a gym membership, and maybe it's your first time going, and you walk up the stairs and you go to the gym – and it's like beautiful there, but you don't really know how to use the machines… they're all kind of new. 

And you go over a machine that has like a lot of ropes and a lot of like weights’ and you're just like, 'Wow, I have no idea what to do here.' And you're, like, looking and you're trying to read the instructions. You're kind of like moving your arms in the ways that they say to, and maybe you're not totally doing it right. 

And somebody who works at the gym comes, walks up to you and says, "You're not doing that right, you should have figured that out. Did you not read the sign? Like, can you not?' You know, they just start kind of like railing on you; like, 'Ugh, why have you not come to the gym before? Why did it take you this long? Like, why are you not already building these muscles?' 

And they just start speaking so negatively and so unkindly to you; you probably wouldn't go back to the gym – at least, to that gym – and you definitely wouldn't start growing your muscles very well. It wouldn't be an encouraging place to be. 

Well, our brain is like that gym; and we have this inner critic that is like that worker in the gym – that's pointing out all of the things we're doing wrong, why we should have done it differently, why we're not doing it right right now, that we should have figured this out before, that we should be farther ahead. 

And then we're wondering why we have a hard time feeling loving thoughts towards ourself or feeling confident. It's because we have this negative inner critic, this gym worker, yelling at us all the time. 

It's very apparent that that would not teach us any of the skills that we'd need to be effective at the gym to build those muscles that we want. And the same thing works for us; it's not going to effectively build self-confidence and self-love if we're yelling at ourselves in our head all of the time. 

Why else does this matter? Going back to think, feel, do; the way that we think creates how we feel and fuels what we do. If we can change the way that we think, we will naturally change the way that we feel, and we will do things differently. 

Our kids will notice; we'll model what we want to see in them, and it will all come so naturally. They'll learn it naturally without us having even to say words or do much at all. And if we do feel like we need to say or do something, it'll come from that natural space of us believing in it first; of us loving ourselves and feeling confident in ourselves first.

What does a healthy relationship with me look like?

I want you to listen to a couple of words that a client said to me after she had been working on her relationship with herself for just a few weeks; she was very new to this. 

She said that she's able to say sorry after she makes mistakes so much more easily – she doesn't feel like she needs to stay in a bad mood… you know, when you sometimes get in that bad mood, and you're just stuck in it for a day or for several days, she just moves on pretty easily instead of feeling like she can't get out of it… she's way less hurtful in the way that she talks, not only to herself, but to other people… her yelling is down 90%. 

She said that something that she wasn't expecting that happened was that she had confidence – she wasn't even really starting to work on this, but she noticed that she would say 'hi' to more people… or smile at them or connect with them or just feel confident in groups of people. And she also noticed huge differences in her kids as well, that they would come to her more and they would listen to her more. 

And so, these changes in her kids and herself came all because she started building her relationship with herself. And only in just a matter of weeks, becoming your own best friend is the number one thing you can do to shift your parenting now and forever. 

This client said, "It feels like a weight has been lifted off"; that is exactly how I felt. I felt like I no longer have to like push or resist myself to not yell – even though I'm like holding it in – I like have all that energy in there, I just don't feel that way. I don't feel the need to yell. I don't feel the need to be so reactive. I naturally feel more confident because I've built a healthy relationship with myself.

So, as you start to take care of yourself more – and notice your thinking about you more – and spend time getting to know yourself just like you would if you were meeting a new friend, because you are kind of meeting a new friend, right? 

What you didn't notice at that gym was that there was somebody else at the gym too; it wasn't just that one gym worker – there was another gym worker there who was like, 'You got this, you're doing a great job, keep at it, you're going to succeed, I love you, it's okay to make mistakes.'

They were just speaking a little bit more quietly; it was a little bit harder for you to hear them, maybe they were a little farther away. So, what we're trying to do right now is to get less focus, less loud with that inner critic voice – and to start listening to that other voice that's there… getting to know them, getting to know you again.

Be gentle with yourself. As you start doing this – taking care of yourself, noticing your thoughts more, being gentle with yourself – you'll notice it'll become much easier to be gentle with your kids too. Peaceful parenting comes naturally from a healthy relationship with self.

Crystal The Parenting Coach: 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.