S07|01 Mindset-Driven Parenting

 

5 years ago, I found myself with a door slammed in my face and a child screaming at me on the other side. Big emotions, big reactions, and not knowing how to respond to all of this “big-ness”. Shifts were slow and happened over time… and it all started with this: MINDSET. I didn’t realize how the way that I was thinking about myself, my parenting and my child was creating the current relationship I had with them- and keeping us stuck in this habitual thinking/feeling/doing pattern that I couldn’t seem to change. Mindset changed it all. Fast-forward 6 years and I have a LOT more stories about how mindset has changed things- resentment in my marriage, my kiddos dealing with anxiety and teens endlessly watching YouTube. It’s one of the quickest and simplest ways to change things in your life, and your kids. 

In this episode you’ll hear: 

• A little glimpse into my life 6 years ago attempting to parent a neurodiverse child with connection and love, but not being able to actually DO it
• How mindset entered my journey “after the fact”, and how it changed so much in our relationship (he changed too!)
• Everything is created in consciousness first- how our mindset shapes our reality
• Mindset and parenting around teens YouTube/screen use and anxiety in kids
• How mindset healed my resentment in marriage and how everything has changed since then
• Thought Dumps daily can help you access your thinking, gain awareness throughout the day and increase your response time during tough challenges that come up during the day

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Coaching has changed my own life, and the lives of my clients. More connection, more healing, more harmony, and peace in our most important relationships. It increases confidence in any parenting challenges and helps you be the guide to teach your children the family values that are important to you- in clear ways. If you feel called to integrate this work in a deeper way and become a parenting expert, that’s what I’m here for. 

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Episode Transcript

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Hi, I'm Crystal The Parenting Coach. Parenting is the thing that some of us just expected to know how to do. It's not like other areas of your life where you go to school and get taught, get on the job training, or have mentors to help you, but now you can get that help here.

I believe that your relationship with your children is one of the most important aspects of your life, and the best way that you can make a positive impact on the world and on the future. I've made parental relationships my life study, and I use life coaching tools, emotional wellness tools, and connection-based parenting to build amazing relationships between parents and their children.

If you want an even better relationship with your child, this podcast will help you. Take my Parenting Quiz, the link is in the show notes. Once we know what your parenting style is, we will send some tips tailored to you and a roadmap to help you get the most out of my podcast.

 

What you'll hear in today's episode;

Five years ago, I found myself with a door slammed in my face and a child screaming at me on the other side. Big emotions, big reactions, and not knowing how to respond to all of this "big-ness". Shifts were slow and happened over time… and it all started with this: MINDSET. I didn’t realize how the way that I was thinking about myself, my parenting and my child was creating the current relationship that I had with them – and keeping us stuck in this habitual thinking/feeling/doing pattern that I couldn’t seem to change. Mindset changed it all. Fast-forward 6 years and I have a LOT more stories about how mindset has changed things – resentment in my marriage, my kids dealing with anxiety, and teens endlessly watching YouTube. It’s one of the quickest and simplest ways to change things in your life, and your kids.

 

Friends, welcome to today's podcast episode, Mindset-Driven Parenting. 

Today, we're going to talk all about mindset; how it's completely changed my parenting, how it can change your parenting, and how it can make things so much easier for you – especially when the challenging situations happen with your kids. 

Before we dig into that, I want to tell you a little bit about Season 7. Can you believe it? We are on Season 7. I am-- I'm excited. I'm excited that the podcast has been around this long, that I've been able to share so much goodness and to have so many fun interviews. 

So, you can expect from Season 7, that we're going to have some pretty amazing interviews. Some of my favorite people that have been on the podcast, previously, are coming back. We're also going to have some new ones. 

And we're going to be talking about not only parenting, but other topics that I feel like really relate to making parenting more simple or making our lives better – making it more fulfilling – just general emotional wellness. Anything that I feel like really relates to that, and I think would really help both me and be beneficial to me and to all of you and to all the listeners. So, thank you for that. 

It also really, really helps if you take just like one second to even just rate or review or subscribe to whatever you're listening – Spotify, Apple, all the things – because it helps more people get the word out. 

And also, if you would share it with a friend – share one of your favorite episodes or share it on social media – and tag me; and I will give you a shout out, and thank you so much for spreading that word. I know so many of you are doing that. I know my friend, Lindy, was just traveling around the world; and she was like, "I told everybody about it as I was traveling." So, thank you, Lindy. Shout out to you! 

And thank you to all my friends and family and listeners who spread that word so that we can start really making a huge change and a huge shift. I think they all start small – right? – in the parenting world. 

And if you're listening to this podcast, you probably see that vision for yourself and for your family and for your community and for the world that I see, where homes are more secure and more safe – and where we have better, healthier attachments – and where our children are raised in homes where they can naturally be learning the skills that we want them to learn of empathy and compassion, emotional regulation, emotional resilience, emotional intelligence. 

And that they will be able to get that from us; they'll be able to learn that from us, and they'll be so much better suited for their own future and more successful in their own future. 

Lately, I've been doing some Public Speaking. I've been doing some corporate events and some other personal events; and one of the topics that keeps coming up is Emotional Intelligence, that's what I've been talking about a lot. 

And there's so much research and studies out there saying that EQ is over IQ. So, the success of your future, greatly depends on your Emotional Intelligence Quotient so much more than your academic intelligence. I could go into all the research and all the details – but really, it's just so, so important. 

So, thank you for being here. Thank you for help spreading this world word, and thank you for seeing this future that I see also and being a little part of it with me. So, keep those messages and emails coming. If there's anything you have a question about or if you want to chat about anything – or if you're like, "I really want an episode on this" – send me an email at [email protected].

If you haven't already signed up for my Feelings Wheel make sure you go to coachcrystal.ca/wheel to download that wheel, and get started on identifying and noticing the feelings in your own body – and being able to teach that to your kids as well.

 

So, today, we're going to be digging into Mindset and Parenting. This episode came from me thinking what is like the, most simple thing that I could teach people in today's episode that would be like the most effective? 

And obviously, there was a couple things that came to mind – and I'm sure there's a lot of things that could be really effective – but I thought "Mindset is really what got me started in this journey". Like, mindset was my story. 

If you go back and listen to Episodes 1, 2, and 3, you can hear all about my story with my kiddo that I was really struggling with – and things were getting pretty intense. 

And what really changed there was my own brain. What really changed there was what I was thinking about myself and about him, and my parenting and our relationship and the situation. 

And sometimes, we can kind of gloss over mindset and work on other areas of healing. There's so many amazing healing modalities out there, but mindset was huge for me – and it was such a big part of my journey that I don't think I talk about often enough. 

So, I'm going to talk about it today; and I'm going to share some examples and some stories with you from my own personal parenting life and what shifted, shifted there. 

And then I'm also going to show you kind of the mindset patterns that created my initial reaction there because you're probably going to relate to them, they're mindset patterns that I see come up with my friends and family and clients all the time; we all have them. 

And then, I'm going to give you a tool to help with that as well because, you know, I'm all about the tools because I feel like they're so helpful. 

 

A little glimpse into my life 6 years ago attempting to parent a neurodiverse child with connection and love, but not being able to actually DO it

So, let's get started, Mindset-Driven Parenting. So, the first example that I'm going to give you about mindset-- Actually, I'm going to give you another one before this one, I wrote three down, but I'm going to share a different one. 

Like I was saying that story, that example back in the very beginning – Episodes 1, 2, and 3 that I share about one of my kids. I've had very similar stories happen again with two of my other kids now. So, now it's kind of happened three times – but at some point, they really started to-- this child specifically really started to get more and more and more dysregulated. 

So, this would look like really big meltdowns that would last for a long time, and be really intense and sometimes violent and sometimes pretty scary; and I was like, "I don't even know what to do here".

And the same thing has happened with a next child, and then also a next child. And very similar situations, in that the child was very dysregulated in the moment; and the dysregulation would last for hours. 

And it seemed to stem from something pretty small that I didn't think was that big of a deal – but obviously, they did – and would happen pretty frequently. This usually happens sometime around the age of like six-ish. 

And for us, it was going up until about like 10 or 11. So, like 6 to 11. Now, this has happened with three out of my four kiddos. My one kiddo didn't have this as much, for sure, when he was a toddler – but not so much after six. So, in this one situation, I'm thinking of, we're living across-- we're living across the country, we're by ourselves, and I am really just feeling like I'm at rock-bottom where I don't know what to do.

And I remember standing in the hallway after he'd slammed the door, and I was kind of just stunned and I didn't know what to do. And this was my thinking, my thinking was like, 'This is a really big deal, this needs to be dealt with right now, I have no idea what to do.' 

I was also thinking a lot of thoughts about him; this is his problem, he needs to change. There's something wrong with him. Why is he like this? Why can't he listen to me more? Why does he freak out over such small things? 

There was also thoughts about myself that I think were maybe not so consciously on the surface, but a little bit more deep down of like; maybe I'm ruining him, maybe I'm doing something wrong here, maybe I don't know what I'm doing. And kind of, probably, rooted in the I'm not enoughness within my motherhood and parenting. 

So, that's one little story that I'll share. I'm going to share another story before I get into the pattern that I had really similar thoughts about. 

So, in that moment, one of my main thoughts, for sure, was, 'I have no idea how to handle this, I can't handle this, I don't know what to do.' That is what I kind of identify as one of my rock-bottom moments in our relationship. 

So, fast forward so many years-- I don't remember what year that was. That was so long ago, probably 2017. So, fast-forward a lot of years, I feel like I know a lot more about parenting, I have a lot more tools – but my mindset is still there. 

When we have these habitual patterns, it's so easy to go back to these same thought patterns that we have over and over and over again. So, I have this one kiddo that really struggles with like big group settings, especially when it's something like structure. 

So, most of my kids are homeschooled, but this one was trying out public school. So, I go to drop them off at school; and we were like maybe seven minutes late, like the bell had rung like seven minutes earlier. 

So, I'm like going to get them in their classroom and get them all settled, and like nobody's in the classroom. So, I go to the gym and I see that everybody's kind of filing into the auditorium – or into the gym for a whatever you call it, an assembly. And so, I was like, "Okay, we'll just go in there." 

And they just like freaked out, they just lost it. They were like, "No, I'm late, I don't want to go in there…there's a lot of people, they're all going to look at me." But like skyrocketed from just like a teeny amount of anxiety to like a crazy ton of anxiety in just like a minute. 

And there was no convincing this child to go in at all. We argued a lot in the foyer. We argued outside in the car. We got back out to the building again into the building again, back out from the building again; and it was just this constant back-and-forth of really like, I could feel the pull. 

Like, I don't want to say fight because we weren't like screaming and yelling at each other or anything. Well, there was probably some screaming on their end, but there was definitely a pull of like, "I want you to do this and you don't want to do this". 

And I could just feel this like energy, back-and-forth. So, this is my thought. Well, I have quite a few thoughts. One was; this is not a big deal. Another one was; I have to go to work – I have things to do today, I don't have time for this. Another one was; I don't want to deal with this. Like why do I have to deal with this? Why can't you just be easy? Why can't you just be like the other kids that are all just filing in? This is taking too long. 

And I think my overarching thought was like, I don't know what to do or I can't deal with this. So, again, very similar to 2017 years ago, those same thought patterns happening. 

 

How mindset entered my journey “after the fact”, and how it changed so much in our relationship

Now, I'm going to give you a little example of how mindset changes things. In both of these situations, I wasn't able to change my mindset right in that moment. 

And I think that this is pretty common for us. I think that when we're feeling really strong emotions, it's not necessarily possible for us to do mindset shifts that I'm going to talk about today. 

And this is why; when our emotional brain is high, our logical brain is low. It's like a teeter-totter. So, the normal tools – skills, communication patterns that we might have when we have access to our logical brain – we don't have anymore, when our emotional brain is triggered.

So, in both of these situations, I was feeling pretty strong emotions and my kids were feeling really strong emotions; and I don't feel like my access to my logical tools were necessarily there. 

And so, in this moment, it wasn't one where I could change my mindset right then – in neither of these situations was able to change my mindset right then. So, in a situation like this, what I typically do is; I take some time, I breathe, I go somewhere else…I just do something else.

So, with my child that wouldn't go to school, we chatted with the teacher and we ended up just going home. And with the other child – with the other issue with the other child – it took me like a few days…well, probably more than a few days, a few weeks…of really like mulling it over and changing my thinking. 

And so, what my thinking-- What I think the pattern here was that was really blocking me from being able to use the tools that I naturally have to parent these children and to use that relationship were this whole story that I had in my brain about, "I don't know what to do here, I can't handle this." 

As soon as I tell my brain that, my brain shuts down. It's like, "Oh, okay…we can't handle this, we won't handle it – oh, we don't know what to do here, we'll stop trying to create solutions."

So, I know you've heard me say this, if you've been listening to my podcast, but the kind of coaching that I first got into was very mindset-based. And it was based around CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

And the theory behind that is that our thoughts come first. We have a thought, that thought creates an emotion in our body, and then emotion fuels our behavior. 

So, I think of it as the little easiest simple kind of wording that I use is; think, feel, do – my thoughts create my feelings, my feelings fuel my actions. 

And so, from this thought of "I don't know what to do", and maybe you can think of something similar to…when you just think that thought in your brain and you're believing it in, you're like in that moment, how does it feel in your body? I don't know what to do.

For me; it felt hopeless, it felt powerless, felt like the end. And when I felt hopeless, my brain stopped; like, it just shuts down. It's like, there's no way to handle this. I feel a lot of strong feelings, I have a lot of thoughts – but none of them are productive thoughts, they don't create any solutions that are helpful at all. 

I think a lot about the other person and what they're doing wrong, and how I want them to change; and not a lot about me and my own actions. It's very like pushing outwards, not me. I'm way more short in my tone. I'm not really listening to or understanding them. I'm, for sure, not empathetic.

There is no empathy, there is no connection, and there is no understanding happening from that energy. It's just entirely shut down. So, if I feel like I can't handle this or I don't know what to do, and that's my thought and it's leading to this feeling of being hopeless or powerless…those are my actions. 

And so, the result that I'm creating, ultimately, is that I don't know what to do. I don't create a solution, and I don't handle it well. If I don't feel like I can handle it, I don't handle it.

 

Everything is created in consciousness first- how our mindset shapes our reality

I kind of think, think, feel, do is like a self-fulfilling prophecy; whatever I think, I create. I've heard this several times but, "We create everything in consciousness first". Have you heard of that quote? Everything is created in consciousness first. So, it always happens in our brain, and then it manifests in reality. 

Albert Einstein said, "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it". So, if I stay in that same level of consciousness, if I stay in that same energy, then I'm not going to be able to solve that problem. And I didn't, either of these times. 

I did, eventually, for sure, but for both of these situations, it took a lot of mindset shifting over the course of a while – hours, days, weeks – for me to be able to shift that. 

Mindset is so powerful. Marcus Aurelius said, "You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength." And this has been so true for me. 

Sometimes I'm not able to make mindset shifts in the moment. And I wanted to use these two examples because I was not able to find mindset shifts in those moments, and it took me a while in both of these situations to get there. 

So, we're not always going to be able to do it in the moment, but I think it's just as important to do it after the fact. So, after this has happened and I haven't handled it well and I didn't show up in the way that I wanted to, like I already know what kind of a parent I want to be, right? Most of us kind of do. 

Like if we think about it, we're like, 'I kind of want to be like this and like that…and kind of want to feel this way, and I want to have a good relationship with my kids that's warm and safe and comforting for them – and I want to have a strong relationship with a secure attachment,' and all of these things. 

I already know what that looks like. I can visualize all of that – but it's the actual doing of it that the stuckness comes in, that it really find…that I find it difficult. And you're probably feeling the same way, right? You're like, 'Yeah, it's easier said than done.' Right? 

And I felt this way for years of like, why is parenting such a struggle? And mindset was my first shift in understanding why it was such a struggle because I was not aware of my thinking. 

I almost think of it like a spiritual awakening of like consciousness where I didn't ever think about my thoughts; I didn't notice that I had control over my thoughts, I had no idea that they were like driving all of my behavior all day long, that they were literally creating my reality. I didn't even know what I was thinking. 

And it kind of feels like my before-life and my afterlife because it's been such a huge difference in my life. 

So, I'm going to give you a couple mindset shifts for these ones. So, instead of, 'I don't know what to do', I want you to think about how these thoughts feel in your body energetically. So, when you think these thoughts, how much more open and hopeful and expansive do they feel? 

'I can figure this out; I don't need to figure it out right now, the solution will come.' 

'What if I do know what to do here? What would my best friend say to me right now? Or what would my favorite mentor, what would my coach say what to do right now?'

As soon as we can start to shift out of like the immediate thought story that we're having right now, our brain starts to see things differently. 

Another way that I love to do mindset shifts is I love to think about the other person in a different way. And those thoughts can look something like, what's really going on behind this behavior? What's really happening for them? What really spurred this on? Like, why is this even happening? 

I kind of imagine like I'm in their brain and like, what's going on for them? And that immediately starts to switch me to the understanding and the empathy and the compassion. 

And you know what's so fascinating with the second story that I told you? I had a kind of like traumatic experience when I was little that had to do with getting locked out of a classroom and not being able to get in and being scared and being left there by myself, and then walking all the way home when I was way too little to walk home; and it's like stuck in my memory forever. 

I have very few memories of childhood before the age of like, I don't know, 10 hours – maybe even later; and this is one of them. And I was probably five, and ever since that I hated being late. I hated walking into things late, I just hated it. So, I would try to go as early as possible to things. 

And it's so interesting that my child has, somehow, has this same fear – even though they didn't have any similar experience like this or anything, that it's just kind of passed down.

I don't know if you've ever heard of epigenetics, but it's like things actually passed down through your DNA; and it's pretty fascinating to read about. I'm not even try to explain it because I do not know it well enough myself, but it is pretty miraculous. 

So, think about those mindset shifts and how different, energetically, those different thoughts that I just mentioned feel – and then, how you would show up differently if that was your thought. 

Now, in that moment I wasn't able to do it, but I was able to do it later, afterwards – once I was calmed down, once I did some emotional regulation myself, when some time had passed…then I was able to be like, 'Okay, what was really bothering me there? What was I thinking about? What were they thinking about? Why didn't that go very well?'

And as I started to assess, then I could do those mindset shifts, for sure – but in that moment, I for sure can't…for sure, couldn't. 

So, I want to just mention, just be gentle with yourself. If you can't just automatically shift a thought in the moment or like even start questioning your thinking or be aware of your thinking, that's fine. It's fine. Just keep practicing, keep doing it over and over again; and eventually, it will get easier.

 

Mindset and parenting around teens YouTube/screen use and anxiety in kids

It has been getting easier and easier and easier for me over the years to change – not only change my mindset but really just look at things in a different way, and really pause and reflect in the moment.

I will share two more examples. So, one more is I have a kiddo – I'm sure that parents are going to relate to this one – who loves watching YouTube. And all day long, they'll be like doing something else and somehow, YouTube is…on doing something else, somehow YouTube is on. Not that we allow YouTube just randomly throughout the day, but somehow it gets on anyways. 

And this was just happening over and over and over again, and I was just feeling so at the end of my rope; and my thoughts were like, 'This child is never going to do anything with their life, this child isn't doing anything with their life.' 

And all of the thoughts that I was having about them in this situation, the overarching story of it, for me, was; this is a big problem and it's urgent, and I need to solve it right now. And that is like literally my worst energy. 

I never parent well from that immediate sense of urgency; and when we're feeling triggered, it often does feel urgent; it feels like something that needs to be dealt with right then, that we need to plan for right then. 

And we're in like our worst creative thinking mode; like, creative solutions do not come from this energy. And so, it's just like a bad combination probably for you and for me and for all the people. 

So, in the moment I was thinking like, 'This is a big problem, I have to deal with this.' Like, whatever…my brain's just spinning. 

When I'm thinking that, I'm feeling stressed out and my brain is spinning; I'm ruminating on a lot of thoughts, I'm really short tempered with everybody in the house and I'm really not focused because I'm just having so many thoughts that I can't focus on anything that is going on throughout that day. 

So, what I decided to do was like, not solve it that day. This was one of the times where I was able to actually start to notice like, 'Hey, I'm really spinning out here.' 

I noticed that my brain and my body was telling me that it was urgent; and I know for sure that's always such a trigger sign for me to be like, 'Wait a second, I shouldn't solve this right now because I'm feeling like it needs to be solved right now.' 

So, I just decided, 'You know what? Tomorrow or in two days or in three days, I'm going to come back to this…I'm not even going to do anything about it right now, I'm going to come back to it.' 

And I gave myself a day or two days and three days; and I did some breathing and I did some mindset work, I did some journaling, I processed through some things. And as I started to do that, then creative solutions started to come. 

Not when I was ruminating in thoughts, solutions never come from that. But when I was stopped, stopping the ruminating from thoughts – and just spending more time and relaxation and peace and calm, then little ideas came in; and it was so interesting because this is how so many of my ideas come in. 

But I think my mindset, instead of it being like, 'This is a big problem and this is urgent,' which is the second thought pattern. So, last time we had that confusion thought pattern, where it just like leads to shut-down or rumination in thoughts and doesn't create the solution. 

This thought pattern I call like the urgency, like the problem; it's a problem, it has to be handled. Now, this is a thought pattern that comes up for a lot of us often. When I was able to calm down and think about things in a different way, my mindset sounded more like this, "This doesn't need to be solved right now, this is not life or death, this isn't actually that big of a deal, we will figure this out…I'm sure something will come to me."

And there were just like slight subtle mindset shifts differences; it wasn't like I had this crazy huge answer. And like most of my answers, this answer was also very collaborative. It was like, 'Well, why don't you ask this child about it?'

So, I went and sat down and talked to this child, and just said, "What do you think about this? What do you think about the time that you spend there? How do you feel after you spend time on there? What do you feel about the amount of schooling that you're getting done when you're doing this? What do you-- what do you want to do in the future? What are your goals? Like, what do you hope to achieve for yourself?" 

This is a teenager so it might be a little bit different if you're dealing with like a 5- or 10-year-old. And how do you feel like it's going to go if this is what your days look like? Like, are your actions creating the result that you want in the future of this school that you have for yourself and what you want to become?

And so, we had some really great conversations; and it was a lot less of me talking, and a lot more of me asking questions and pausing and waiting for them – and helping them to understand what was going on in their body and in their mind. 

And anyways, I think this is-- I think that's crucial when you're teaching screen regulation, is helping them to understand how they feel. So, that's another big mindset shift and story that I wanted to share. 

 

How mindset healed my resentment in marriage and how everything has changed since then

One last quick one that I'm going to talk about. This one doesn't have to do with parenting, but I think it's so relatable that I really wanted to add it in here. I think so many people are going to relate to this. 

So, years ago, I felt a lot of resentment towards my husband, towards my spouse. I feel like I did all the cooking, I did all the cleaning – in my mind, I did all the taking care of the children…all of the like, anything housekeeping that needed to be done. Right? Like if they needed doctor's appointments or dentist appointments or paperwork filled out or homeschooling, like all of that was on me. 

And probably deep-down, I felt like I wasn't doing a very good job also. But I definitely had a lot of resentment about all the things that I was doing. And I think one of my thoughts there was probably around something along the lines of like, "I have to do everything, everything's on me and I have too much to do." 

And it was interesting because it's not like my spouse was saying things like, "You have to do these," or "You have to get this done," but I was doing it all. And now that thought pattern of resentment, resentment is like an emotion that always has a message for us. 

I find so interesting now…anytime that I'm feeling a strong emotion, I always like to sit and just ask like, "What are you trying to say to me, resentment?" Like, what is the story here? 

Resentment usually is some sort of like a need that's being unmet or how I'm showing up in the world in that moment, how I'm treating myself or how I'm treating the people around me. It actually doesn't have anything to do with the person that I'm being resentful towards; it's all like messages about me for me. 

And so, when I take a moment to pause, and I'm like, "Hey wait a second, what's the message behind this and what's really going on here?", then I could really start to shift things. 

Defensiveness is another good one too. If you're ever feeling defensiveness to ask yourself a question like, what's really bothering me here? What's really going on behind the scenes here? What's actually at the root of all of this? 

So, for me, resentment in that moment was that I was taking too much on, was that I was doing too much, and I was putting his face on it; I was putting his face on all these like telling me to do all these things. But like he wasn't sitting there like a task master telling me to do all those things; like, he just wasn't. It was me doing all the things. 

So, my mindset shift really started to happen when I started to think about, 'Wait, who is making me do this?' 

It was questioning like, who's putting this on me? Does it really need to be done? Is it actually important? Do I even really care about it? Like, what is my purpose behind doing it? 

If I'm cleaning my house that I have a beautiful and meticulous house because I love the way that it feels and I love the way it makes me feel and I love to just sit and like admire it, that's really different than if I'm doing it because I want other people to see what I'm doing because I want to be able to take beautiful pictures and post on my Instagram; and have other people be like, 'Wow, what a beautiful house you have.' 

Or because I don't want to open the door when other people come in because I feel so much shame around how messy my house is. Like, there can be really different driving messages behind why it is that you're keeping your house clean. Right?

So, for me, I just started thinking about; who is it that's telling me that I have to do this? And, I really have to do this? And, what's the purpose behind doing this? 

And so, as I started to make those shifts, my mindset started to sound more like this; I don't have to do it all…also, who told me that I had to do all these things, nobody told me – I'm telling me, what do I actually choose to do? If I don't have to do any of these things, what do I want to do?

There's obviously going to be things you're going to still pick back up because you actually want to do them. And for me, it was equally as important to have a clean house as it was to not spend very much time cleaning; like those were two values that seemed very important to me, that in the moment seemed really conflicting. 

And when I learned about minimalism, it felt like this answer to both of those – that I didn't want to spend hours and hours every day cleaning. But it was important to me to have at least a straightened house because I feel better in it and my kids feel better in it and we all just enjoy it more. 

And that was just something that was important to me; it might not be for you, and that's fine – but it was for me. 

And so, minimalism was the solution to that. But the solutions only started to come when I started to ask myself questions and shift things; and I really started to change over time – it was small little bits over time, again.

But as my mindset started to shift and as I started to ask myself more of these questions, I stopped doing the things I didn't want to do; I spent more time resting, I went to bed earlier…instead of blaming my husband for making me stay up late because he was staying up late, I was like, 'I'm just going to go to bed.' 

And I started eating healthier. I started not caring so much about dinners; like, they didn't have to be like this crazy-- I used to do these like meal plans, and then I'd make grocery lists around the meal plans – and then the meals wouldn't be like the same every day…so that I was like changing them up, and I would try to make sure that they were like healthy and had this and that in them. 

And I kind of just dropped all of that. Not that I'm just like not feeding my kids anymore – but it's just not as important to me to spend so much time grocery shopping, meal planning, and making meals…and everybody still gets fed and everything's fine. But I just don't make that be such a huge priority. 

I also often buy food box subscriptions. So, shout out to good food boxing Canada because I love them. But even in times when I'm not doing that, I just treat it differently; I just do it differently. 

I also did minimalism; and so, I really started shifting that. And I would get emails with like paperwork or whatever that needed to be filled out for kids or for insurance or for whatever, and I would just forward them to my husband. 

I mean, I didn't do this all the time, but I definitely started shifting those things that I felt like were my responsibility and being like, 'Wait, maybe I don't have to do all of this, maybe it's not all on me.'

And so, I would forward him things and be like, 'Hey, can you fill this out? Hey, the kids need this dropped off. Hey this kid needs to be picked up here.' Because when you're feeling that resentment, you do take it all on and you don't ask for support. 

And so, I wasn't meeting my own needs and I wasn't even telling myself that I had needs and I wasn't telling myself that it was too much until I really started to question like, 'Okay, what can I do and what's important and what do I want to let go of?' 

So, I hope all of that made sense in why mindset is so important – not just only in parenting, but in life…in every single relationship that you have in life. 

If there is something that's really bothering you right now, I would say number one; start to notice your mindset. Start to write down the thoughts that you're having and start to question them. Did you notice that in every single one of these stories, even if it was after the fact or if it was during it, I noticed my thoughts and then I started to ask myself questions. 

 

Thought Dumps daily can help you access your thinking, gain awareness throughout the day and increase your response time during tough challenges that come up during the day

So, before I shifted my mindset, questions were an integral part there; and that is a tool I'm going to leave you with today, it's called a thought-dump. I've talked about it before in the podcast, and you might've heard it. It is so crucial. 

And the more times that I do Thought Dumps – even if I only do them for like a minute or two in the morning – I notice more awareness around my thoughts throughout the day while things are just happening – and more control over asking myself questions and changing my thinking and pausing before I react. It's pretty fascinating how such a short, small little thing can help so much.

 

Three steps of a Thought Dump

So, here's a Thought Dump, really quick. Three steps. 

 

1. Dump out all of your thoughts on paper

Number one; dump out all of your thoughts on paper. It can be focused, so you can write down a person's name or a situation at the top. You're going to going to write down all of your thoughts. You're not going to judge yourself…you're not going to pause; you're just going to write down everything. It does not matter how like mean or horrible your thoughts sound; it's more horrible to keep them inside your brain where they're just going to keep building and building and building. We want to dump them all out. 

 

2. Sort out your thoughts from the facts

Number two is to sort. So, just like your room gets messier before it gets cleaner when you're sorting out your closet – right? – you dump everything out into your bedroom and you're like, 'Wow, this looks terrible,' that's kind of what a thought dump is going to look like in the beginning. 

So, then secondly, you're going to sort it out, your thoughts versus your facts. Facts are something that everyone can agree on. They're like the tangibles, right? The things that are like texted or said or seen. Everything else is a thought. 

So, even the thought of like, "I can't handle this" or "This is hard" or "This child shouldn't be doing this", or almost everything that you're going to write down is a thought. 

If it's the other way around, you're probably just not doing it right. So, just go back and question like, 'Wait a second, would the other person in this situation also have thought the same thing?' Maybe this isn't a fact; maybe this is a thought. Okay, number two was sort.

 

3. Going back and questioning all of them

Number three is then you're going to question, and this is my favorite part of it. Did you notice the questions that I asked myself during those stories that I was like, 'Okay, wait a second…what's really happening here? What's really happening with them? What's going on behind this behavior for them?' 

Or with myself, what's really bothering me here? Who's telling me that I have to do this? Why do I think I have to take this on? 

So, many of those questions can be so powerful. If you don't already have Burn This Book, my Mindset Journal for Parents, I talk all about this in more detail with QR codes that you can scan that link to videos that describe how to do these things and they give you kind of like a daily mindset work to do. 

So, you can also check out that at coachcrystal.ca/shop. Just roll down to the bottom and you can download the PDF version right now, or you can get a printed-out version sent to you. 

So, that's mindset-driven parenting. Mindset-driven parenting is being conscious, being aware, being awake – noticing that I'm having thoughts, noticing how they're feeling, noticing how they're driving my actions, noticing how they're creating and shaping my reality consistently. 

Mindset-driven parenting is also making an intentional decision to have a mindset practice where I'm going to be changing it…where I'm not going to just be like, 'Okay, I guess this is my mindset, I can't do anything about it.' 

Notice how different thoughts create different feelings in your body, and ask yourself some really powerful questions so you can shift that mindset. 

Another great way that I did not mention is bridging beliefs. So, if I like have this thought of like…I really, this is-- I'll go back to my child because I have these thoughts often, like, "This is their fault, they just need to change." 

And I want to change to maybe a thought of like, "I love this child no matter what", and it feels like too much of a stretch in that moment…you can do like a bridging thought of like, maybe this isn't about me, or maybe this isn't a me-problem, or maybe it's possible that I can love them no matter what. 

Something that kind of is like a halfway belief. Do you see where I kind of went there? Like you're on the one side of the spectrum and you want to go all the way to the other side of the spectrum; and you're like, that does not feel believable right now. What's something that does feel believable, that feels a little bit less bad – even just like a tiny little bit less bad, just a tiny little mindset shift? 

And then you can do it again in like another few minutes or in an hour where you're like, "Hey, wait a second. Now, what can I think about this?" And then, just keep inching your way over to the other side of the spectrum. 

If you have questions about mindset and parenting, for sure, let me know. I'm super excited about this season. I'm excited to bring you all the topics that I'm going to be bringing you. 

I also am going to mention that I am going to be traveling around the world for this school year, which is amazing, and also is related to mindset because I have wanted to do this ever since I was a little girl. 

It's a weird dream to have when you're little and you've always lived in the same house, in the same town forever, and nobody ever moves or travels, and whatever. I don't even know how that came in. I feel like so many of our desires that are inside of us are just like, it's almost like we're born with them, right? 

And I just have had this desire and this dream to travel the world for so long. And when I started having a family, I wanted to do it even more, but I wanted to do it with my family. 

And we've done a lot of traveling and a lot of adventures, but I really wanted to do like a giant world globe trip; and we're finally doing it. We kind of decided like it's now or never. Our kids are getting older; my oldest only has a year or two home now. And so, we're like, 'You know what? Let's do it now. Let's make it happen.' 

And mindset is related to that because I think that is how our dreams happen, right? We can have this thought, and then we can just let it kind of slide out and not think about it again. Or we can have this thought and be like, 'Wait a second, how could that be possible? How can I make that a reality in my life? Is there a way for that to happen?' 

And because I was consistently thinking about this, and I was consistently speaking to my spouse about this and we had conversations about this, it obviously took a while to figure out our lives and our lifestyle – but, over time, we were able to make the shifts-- to make this happen. 

Mindset also creates your dreams, right? If everything is created in consciousness first, what do you want to create? You can create an amazing relationship with your children, but you can also create anything else that you want to create; and I believe that for me and for you.

So, thank you for listening. I will see you next week, and share this episode far and wide with all your friends. Tell everybody it's Season 7, and get them to come on and hang out with us; and I will see you next week.

Thanks for listening. If you'd like to help spread this work to the world, share this episode on social media and tag me – send it to a friend, or leave a quick rating and review below so more people can find me. If you'd like more guidance on your own parenting journey, reach out.