S07|02 - Creating Space

Creating space is the first step. You can’t pour more water into a cup that is already overflowing. What are you spending your time on? What are you choosing to do with “your one precious life?” Are you happy with how you spend your time? If you want new growth and change, that hasn’t happened before- creating space comes first. Tune in as we talk about why this is a struggle for us and how we can start small. 

In this episode: 

• How my life was go-go-go and didn’t leave space for anything new, like healing and change
• How stopping the fast pace of my life felt like running a marathon 
• How to do a time audit, and start creating change in how we spend our time 
• How our own childhood, and past traumas affect us now
• Creating time and space for stillness is integral to healing 

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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.

 

In today's episode, you will hear about the first step to healing; creating space. You can’t pour more water into a cup that is already overflowing. What are you spending your time on? What are you choosing to do with "your one precious life"? Are you happy with how you spend your time? If you want new growth and change, that hasn’t happened before, creating space comes first. Tune in as we talk about why this is a struggle for us and how we can start small.

Hello, welcome to today's podcast episode, the art of simplifying, carving out space for a fulfilling life. Thanks for being here. I am super excited to talk about today's topic because over the summer, I was kind of thinking-- I was actually creating a new course; it's called Faith-Based Parenting, check it out in the show notes.

 

How my life was go-go-go and didn’t leave space for anything new, like healing and change

And as I was creating this course, I was thinking; how can I give people this transformation, and this goal that I have for them of changing their relationship with God and changing their relationship with kids – their kids – and kind of taking the shame out of it? 

And like, it's a pretty lofty thing that I had in mind for people. And the same-- The same shift happened in me also. And so, I was just kind of going back through and trying to figure out, what are like the most helpful tools that I can give them where they can get this transformation in the shortest amount of time possible? 

And the thought that came to me was, you can't change unless you're in a certain headspace. Like, you just can't. 

And I want you to think about this kind of a head space; I want you to imagine you're working and, maybe, your partner's working – and maybe your kids are in hockey and maybe they're in soccer and maybe they're in swimming lessons and maybe they're in guitar lessons and maybe they're going to summer school; and everybody is always go, go, go, running, running, running all of the time. Right? 

Like fill in like groceries and bills and cleaning the house and all just the regular housekeeping management stuff too. And life is just constantly crazy busy. I have definitely been in seasons of my life where this was what it was like. In fact, I think a lot of my life it was. 

And I don't know if I just added all the busy in to make up for what I feel like was lacking deep down inside and I didn't even know. Or maybe if I was running so fast that I didn't have time to pause; I couldn't actually reflect on how unfulfilled I really did feel in my life and how unsuccessful I felt like things were. I don't know. 

But I was constantly go, go, go, go, go all the time. I also just love parties and doing stuff; so, I probably just added more stuff than I really needed to. 

But now, my life is so different; and it's so different because I had time and space to create that difference. And when I was thinking about this mindset space that you need to be in in order to really make these changes, it made me think of like, you can't overfill a cup, right? 

If you have this big container and it's completely full to the brim of water, and you're like, 'I know, I have this new idea…I'm going to try to like change my parenting, or I'm going to try to do some like inner child healing, or I'm going to learn this new modality of whatever it is.' 

And you're like pouring into this cup, something's going to spill out over top, right? You can't-- You can't actually physically put more in because it is already overflowing. It's already to the top. 

And so, the thought that came into me, first, was, 'You need to help them create space.' It's like a blank canvas. You have to have a blank canvas before you can paint some beautiful piece of art on the canvas. 

You can't just start with all these crazy things happening on the canvas and hope that it's going to turn out well; once you decide to paint like your watercolor painting on top of it, everything else is going to show through. You have to really create the space first. 

And what I've learned in my life-- I don't know if you know much about Enneagrams. I'm an Enneagram 7, I'm also an extrovert. I'm also like – I don't know – semi, maybe ADHD, or something. And I'm pretty like, go, go, go, go, go regularly. And so, this was kind of my mode for so long. 

 

How stopping the fast pace of my life felt like running a marathon

And so, it was really hard for me to slow down. It was like the hardest thing I could imagine to like pause and reflect and be still…and just like sit with myself and create more stillness and presence in my life. It was really hard. 

And in those moments when I was working on this, I'm like, 'I can't imagine something that's like harder than this.' Like it felt like choosing to run a marathon or something, like it was so difficult because it was just so foreign to me just being still and just being present and being with myself without doing anything, right? 

Like, how often do you actually have that space? And I mean 'space', where; you're not talking to somebody, you are not listening to a podcast, you are not listening to an audiobook, you're not watching TV, you're not scrolling social media. It's actually like complete stillness and complete aloneness with yourself. 

We don't give ourselves a lot of time to do that, and we can't develop all of this new growth and change that we're trying to develop if our life is chock full of stuff. And I've seen this over and over again with my clients and my friends and my family and myself; this just-- it just happens.

We have to have space if we want to bring in something new, if we want those changes to happen. So, this episode is going to be all about creating that space. How do we simplify? How do we create that space? 

I've already talked a lot about physical simplification, so you can go listen to my-- I have two or three episodes on minimalism and mind minimalism and all of that; you can go listen to those if you're interested in simplifying your life and your schedule.

Today, we're going to be talking more about creating that, like, white space in your mind. And I really want you to think about, first; if I told you that for the next week, you had to spend 10 minutes every single day entirely alone – you need to go find somewhere alone, just by yourself. 

And by 'alone', I mean you also can't do anything else; like, you actually just have to sit. You can't write, you can't listen to music or a podcast; you just sit. 

What do you think when I say that? Maybe you are already doing this and maybe you're like, 'Yep, I can do it, it's fine.' Good for you, you're there. 

Maybe you're like me, a little while ago where I was like, 'That does not sound fun', or 'I'm too busy for that'. Or some clients that I've had have been like, 'That sounds like the worst ever actually'. Like, they don't want to be with themself. They don't know how to be with themselves. 

I think especially in this era of information and technology and screens, we're so used to being catered to and having-- Not even just being catered to, but like being mind busy, right? Like, always being stimulated; that's the word I'm thinking of. Like we're constantly used to being stimulated – probably, overstimulated – all of the time. 

And so, to think about just like pausing all of that kind of sounds a little scary. But I really just want to suggest that if we want to create change--  

If you're just new here or maybe if you're not new here and you're like, 'I want to take Season 7, and I want to take all of the amazing goodness that she's going to share and I'm going to completely change my life…I'm going to completely change all of the relationships in my life, I'm going to uplevel all these things, I'm going to set goals and I'm going to achieve them.' 

If that's what you want to do; you don't have to do that. 

'I'm going to rest more, I'm going to take more time for stillness, I'm going to-- I'm going to mindset-journal, I'm going to work on my relationship with my kids or with my partner.' 

Whatever's that you want to do, we first have to create that space. 

So, yes, creating physical space…yes, creating space in your calendar – but I mean like creating space in your mind, which takes intentional time every day in stillness. 

So, I'm going to talk about that again in a minute. But has anybody ever heard of the Holistic Psychologist? I hope that you have because she's amazing. Okay, I had to look up her name because I just always call her the Holistic Psychologist; that's what her Instagram handle is. Okay. It's Dr. Nicole LePera. 

I'm going to just share a little bit about her. As a clinical psychologist, she often found herself frustrated by the limitations of traditional psychotherapy. Wanting more for her patients and for herself, she began a journey to develop a united philosophy of mental, physical, and spiritual health that equips people with the interdisciplinary tools necessary to heal themselves. 

After experiencing the lifechanging herself, she began to share what she learned with others and soon The Holistic Psychologist was born. So, if you don't already follow her, go follow her. 

But what I felt like was so powerful-- there was several things from the book that I'm reading of hers right now, which is called How to Do the Work. So, many things in there that were good. 

One of them was for years and years, she was a therapist and she's doing therapy on her patients or her clients. And she's noticing that they keep coming back with the same things, over and over again, and they're not able to get unstuck. 

They're not able to change the patterns. They can recognize the patterns, they can recognize where they're stuck, and they can't figure out how to change those patterns. 

And year after year after year, they're coming back with the same things; and she's getting frustrated that they're not changing, and they're getting frustrated that they're not changing. 

This is a common story, especially with just basic talk therapy. Basic talk therapy is actually not super effective on its own. And so, I have so many clients, who literally, word-for-word, have told me, "This is more effective than 10 years of meeting with a psychologist, this is more information than I've had in six sessions with a psychologist – of five years of a therapist." Over and over and over. 

And again, I get that because life coaching is just different; and I think the way that I do it is just different also. But I think it's a lot more forward-focused. It's a lot more productive – as in, like, forward-- we give you definitely intentional tools to work on and you see those results a little bit more quickly, I guess. 

But also, I think the other reason that she really hits on here, that the change is because it's not just talking. She said it's like mind, body, soul. Right? And when you're hitting on each of those three things – in whatever healing modality you're doing, it doesn't have to just be life coaching – it's going to be effective. It has to be more than just that.

 

How our own childhood, and past traumas affect us now

Another really interesting thing that stood out to me was she said if somebody had asked her if she has trauma from childhood, she, like…'No, my childhood was just great, it was fine.' But she noticed that as she was meeting with these clients that had high ACEs scores – ACEs is A-C-E (Adverse Childhood Experiences). 

And that's kind of how they rate; like if you had really bad experiences in life, then in the end – like, when you're older – you, have a higher chances of drug addiction and chronic pain and-- I don't-- I can't even list all of them. There's a whole bunch of them. 

And so, higher ACEs scores usually mean you have a more difficult time in life, more difficult mental health stuff happening. 

And so, she just noticed that even though she didn't have a high ACEs score – this ACEs score – that she was noticing the same patterns and tendencies and habits that her clients had, she also had. 

And she was like, 'Well, that's weird because like these big huge things that they're talking about didn't happen to me.' 

So, she started learning about what trauma really is and kind of where it comes from and how really all of us have trauma; and all of us are going to have trauma, all of us. We can't go through life unscathed. And that even though you might not have had something really huge and crazy happen to you as a child, you still probably have trauma. 

And she talks a lot about how it comes from the parent-child relationship. And so, if your parents shut down and emotionally withdrew from you every time that they were upset or if they constantly looked towards you to meet their needs – if they were constantly like asking you to kind of be the adult in the relationship – that's going to affect your attachment. 

And then also your attachments now, like as an adult, what happened in our childhood affects us. And so, she talks a lot more in detail about what this looks like, and you can read her book to learn more about that. 

But that was really all fascinating to me because what I've seen with clients, over and over and over again, is this; is that we don't have to have something crazy awful that happened in our childhood. 

We all have experiences that happened, especially in that parent-child attachment relationship that are affecting subconsciously these habits and these patterns that we have now that we find ourselves in, in all of our relationships. 

And unless we can kind of dig back into that and do the healing that's necessary in that, they're going to keep coming back up. These same habits, these same patterns are going to keep coming back up again and keeping us stuck, especially when it comes to our relationships in life. 

One of my favorite quotes that she had on her page is, "I wish more people knew healing the nervous system is about being still; laying in the sun, being present while you eat your food, listening to the sound of nature, letting your imagination run wild. Instead of more routine, the body needs less." 

Isn't that awesome? The body needs less; the body does not need more. I talked all about that stuff and trauma and attachment and whatever so you would know…okay, yes, you need healing. We all need healing, but healing your nervous system actually looks like doing less, not more. 

If you are feeling overwhelmed or stressed out – or even if you're like, things are going pretty good but you want to make changes – stillness, creating more space, doing less is already going to start making that shift in a huge way. That's why an entire module of my new program is about creating space, is about creating stillness because this is what we need so badly.

 

How to do a time audit, and start creating change in how we spend our time

So, I'm going to talk a little bit more about stillness and space, and how we can create that in our lives. 

First of all, a time audit. So, this is going to be a little bit weird if you haven't done this before, but I want you to imagine the last 24 hours or any kind of regular 24-hour day, and get out a piece of paper and a pen. And you can finish this after I explain it too; you probably won't be able to do it all right now, but I want you to write down what you did with your time. 

So, this is just like if you were doing a money audit; and you were like, 'This is where I spent this dollar, this is where I spent this $5, this is where I spent this $1000 or this $200.' 

This is the same thing, but in your time; this is where I spent these five minutes, this one minute, this 20 minute. 

So, I want you to write it down; and maybe you can't do it minute by minute, but be like, 'Okay, I woke up in the morning…and then I did this, this, this, this and this.' 

And write down all of the things that you're doing with your time; you have to be really radically honest about this with yourself. What I found myself is when I try to do some healing or some change, and I'm kind of like kind of honest with myself, I'm like, 'Yeah, I'm pretty good at that.' Like, that's okay. 

And I'm not really like…wait a second, what's really happening inside of myself? If I was super honest with myself about this, how am I really doing in this area? What's really happening here? 

And as soon as I could get really honest with myself, then I could really allow myself to start that healing process, when I really dug down to what's happening here. So, be really honest during this process. 

And honesty, also, looks like noticing – awareness. So, maybe you didn't notice that when you went to go check something on Instagram, you were on it for two-and-a-half hours; and you were like, 'Oh, it was probably 20 minutes.' 

No, actually check your screen report. Like, write down; how much time did I spend on each app? How much time did I spend watching TV or reading a book or going on a walk – whatever it was that you did?

You're going to do this time audit for 24 hours or for like an average 24-hour time period. And then you're going to go back and ask yourself some questions; do I like how I'm spending my time? Am I happy with this? 

So, if I knew-- Have you ever heard of that a budget is a spending plan? It's not like what not to buy and what to buy; it's like how I am choosing to spend my money. I love that idea of it; how I choose to spend the money that I have, that's what a budget is. 

This is exactly the same with your time; how I'm choosing to spend my money, how I'm choosing to spend my time. Am I happy with how I'm choosing to spend my time? Do I feel like it's where I want it to be or is it not? 

And then write down some things that come up if you're like, 'No, I really don't want to be doing it so much on this or this,' just write down some of those questions, those thoughts that come up. 

Another question you can ask yourself is; spending my time this way, will it help me to get where I want to go? 

So, if I'm working on changing a relationship in my life or maybe I'm working on a business goal – or at a life goal – is the spending my time in this way going to help me get where I want to go?

Another one is if you're feeling like you have lots and lots of things that you wrote down that you're doing, you can also ask yourself; am I tying my self-worth to productivity? Am I feeling like I have to get a lot done to believe that I'm enough? 

We do this a lot as humans – but I think it's even more, especially as women; we tie our results to our self-worth. And especially productivity, right? Getting more done, checking off more boxes, having more on our to-do list makes us feel better about ourselves. 

Another question is, how much time did you put in there for rest? How much time did you spend in stillness? How much time did you spend doing things that were just for you? Something that you just wanted to do just for fun, just for you. Something that you like. 

You can ask yourself a lot of these questions; I'm sure there's more helpful questions to ask. And as you're doing this time audit, I'm sure you'll come up with those questions too. But there are a few to get you started. 

If you want to really start making these big changes, it starts with small changes. And those small changes start with stillness – and start with creating this space, especially in our mind.

 

Creating time and space for stillness is integral to healing

I love Sue Monk Kidd; she's one of my favorite mentors. I hope one day that I'll just get to meet her in real life because I just love her that much. She said, "Be still and know that I am God" – that verse in the scriptures, I don't remember where it is…somewhere in the Bible – and she says that, it's through the stillness that we know God. 

She said, "Be still and know I am God". We get to that knowing through stillness. And if God doesn't resonate with you – whatever…universe, higher power, creator…whatever your belief system is – your ability to connect with that source happens through the times of stillness. It happens in nature. It happens in quiet, peaceful moments. It only comes at stillness. 

It doesn't come when it's like crazy busy…and you're just like running here and there and here and there. If you want to make changes, creating stillness and creating space is going to be crucial in doing this. 

If we want to work on healing our trauma, which we all have – healing our past, healing our attachments, healing our habitual patterns – if we want to do the work…just like she says in her book, How To Do The Work – the work is noticing these patterns and noticing these habits, and starting to make these changes a little bit more intentionally.

It's really that entire quote that I read from her. That is what healing is; it's just that. Healing is; remembering our enoughness, remembering how loved we are, remembering our value. And it takes time and stillness and quiet to remember that again, and just being with yourself. 

So, here's my little challenge for you. I used to think that meditation was being still and being super quiet and having absolutely no thoughts in your mind. And I met a lady one time – while I didn't meet her, she was speaking on stage – and she said that she meditated for 20 minutes every day. 

And I was like, what? How does she clear her mind for 20 minutes? I can't even do it for 20-- not even 20 seconds, 0.2 seconds.

But then one of my mentors right now, Sadie Jane, I'm in a program with her called Sacred Rebels, an elemental life coaching program that's been really fun. But she says that meditation is not, not thinking; it's not the absence of thinking, it's just allowing them to flow in-and-out. 

So, I heard her say this years ago, and it really shifted my perspective on meditation; and that's when I really started meditating because I was like, 'Oh, okay, so I don't have to completely clear my mind when a thought comes in…I just let it gently slide out.' 

So, I think of either waves or clouds or breath; and I just imagine my breath kind of going in and out, and I'm focusing on that breath. And when a thought comes in, I imagine it going out like a wave or out like a cloud; it comes in and it goes out. 

There's no problem that the thought's there, there's no attachment to that thought; I'm not making that thought mean anything about me and my ability to meditate, I just have it go in and have it go out. 

Sometime it can be-- Sometimes it can be helpful to have some soft music on in the background when you're first starting out. But I really like it to be complete stillness; like, no sounds at all. 

I will use music every once in a while, but when I first started this, it was really important for me to just have stillness. 

So, that's one way that you can start to create stillness; is just slow, deep cyclical breathing as you're meditating.

Another way is just to go on a walk on your own during the day – or even on a drive during the day – but where you're not listening to the radio or a podcast or anything else. You can pause my podcast, stop listening to it if you're driving, and just chill for a while – not doing anything. 

My radio broke down a few years ago in my car, and I don't think my like disc thingy worked either; and it was just too much of a hassle to like connect and hook things up, and it was older and didn't have Bluetooth. 

And anyways, ended up that we just couldn't do anything, ever. And so, it actually-- I ended up loving it. I ended up loving the time that I spent in the car and traffic that was so still and so quiet. 

And so, when we got a new vehicle and we could actually do all those things, I love spending time in just quiet-- just stillness. Sometimes I talk to myself, sometimes I do some Thought Dumps or some mindset work out loud. Sometimes I listen to soft music – but, lots of times, I just don't do anything; I'm just still. 

And same with my walks too; I used to love to listen to things because I kind of felt like it was more productive, like, 'Oh, I'm going to listen to these podcasts,' or 'Get this course done while I'm on a walk'. 

But now I'm like, just going to walk…just going to notice the smells and the sights and how things feel and how I'm feeling. So, just do more of that. Don't do any of the other mindset work we've talked about, we talked about last week. 

Just take a week to just pause and just to create stillness, and then you can go back and institute some more of the thought work also. But you will notice it will be much more effective if you are making space and stillness and pause a really crucial part of your day. 

And if you are allowing yourself to do less to simplify your life. Some of the questions I asked myself too when I was looking at like my kids' schedule was like; why do I feel like I need to be this busy? Why do I have them in all these things? Like what's really going on behind this? Do I want them to be like a famous Olympian or something? And, why do I want that dream, if that's the dream that I have? 

And like, maybe you want to keep that. You can keep whatever you want to keep, but questioning your purpose behind things and your reasoning for things will really help you to determine what's actually important to you – and keeping what's important and letting everything else go. 

And I think that it's a possible for all of us to create more stillness, more space, and do less. And I think this is a huge key to mental and emotional health – if not the biggest key – is not just spending our day being entertained and being stimulated by the world around us, like screens and TV and busyness. 

And that is such a huge thing that I want to teach my kids, but I know it's something that I needed to figure out myself first. 

And I'm not perfect at it, by any means, but it's a work-in-progress. And I've been doing it now for a couple of years and it's made huge changes; and I really don't think I would've been able to be where I'm at with my mindset and how I've been able to change it – and also with my nervous system and how that's been going, if I hadn't had time to heal through creating more space and creating more stillness.

 

So, that's all I have for you. I also want to quickly mention, because I completely forgot to talk about this on last week's episode that I'm only having one more retreat. I've talked about my Rest Play, Grow retreats in the past. It's about building our relationship with ourselves; giving ourselves rest, giving ourselves time to grow and time to play. 

And there's yoga, there's CBT-based coaching, there is guided meditations, there might be a little bit of hypnotherapy, there's definitely going to be some art therapy. Usually, my mom who's a therapist comes and has a few spots available – first come, first serve for one-on-one therapy as well. It's just really an intense three-day emotional wellness journey. 

And you will leave it feeling so much better prepared for stillness and better suited to be your own best friend and to make your decisions for more intentional space. You'll just feel like a giant warm hug enveloped you with like the light of the sun and in like sparkly goodness and magic; like, I don't even know how to explain it…it just feels so good. 

And if you're like nervous to come because you don't know anybody, there was people that felt that way last time and it just ended up being such an amazing experience for them, connecting with the women. 

And the women are all coming; and we're all on the same page and all on the same journey, and it's just amazing to be with powerful women in that space. So, come join us. It's for all women; you do not have to be a mom, and there is no age limit – either minimum or maximum. You can come, all the people can come.

It's $2,000 Canadian, which I think is about $1500 American; it includes everything but travel. So, there's foods, snacks. The foods are always-- The food's always delicious. It's at Charmed Resorts, which is Fairytale Playhouse cabins in the Crowsnest Pass. 

It's just under two hours from the two closest airports, if you're driving – or, I mean if you're flying in. Some people chose to carpool the last couple of times that we're flying in…so if you want to connect with me about that, then I can get you connected. 

And this is the last one I'm doing because if you heard my announcement last week, we're going to go travel the world for the school year; and we have no idea where we're going to be next year at all. So, maybe I will do these again, but I really don't know. So, for now, I'm just planning on this being the last one. 

So, if you've been thinking about coming and been interested in coming, come and join us. If you have any questions, I would love to chat with you about it; feel free to send me a message on either Instagram or Facebook, and I can answer all your questions.

There's also an FAQ at the bottom of the page. If you go to www.coachcrystal.ca/the-retreat, (the-retreat…R-E-T-R-E-A-T). All right, thank you for joining me; and I'll 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.