S10|14 - How to Raise Awesome Kids

You have an awesome kid!! Truly. Once you see that and fully believe it, it’ll change everything. If we want to raise kids who are emotionally intelligent, self-trusting and resilient… one thing is clear: we can’t just show them how to distract themselves from discomfort, which is what we see so often in the world. We must teach them how to be with their discomfort, deeply… and learn and grow from it. 

In today’s episode: 

• The first step: believing that your kid is awesome
• The purpose of discomfort, and how and why we want to increase our tolerance of it (in our kids and us) 
• Intuition on the other side of discomfort
• “Be the change you want to see”, how to embody the skills that we want to teach our kids 

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Connect with Crystal:
Intuitive Journaling Prompts HERE and a somatic meditation (Move through frustration in 15 minutes or less) HERE, The Art of Non-Attachment Workshop HERE
Get started on this work with daily practice in a journal, Burn This Book (a great intro to mental and emotional wellness) HERE|
Work with Crystal 1:1: www.coachcrystal.ca/miracle or in group: www.coachcrystal.ca/creationroom
Grab your copy of Crystal’s feelings wheel here: www.coachcrystal.ca/wheel
Find your parenting personality (and get tips specific to it) by taking the quiz HERE

Full Transcript

This transcript has been created to provide a text-based version of the podcast episode for accessibility and convenience. While effort has been made to ensure its accuracy, it may contain errors or omissions. Please note that the exact words and intended meaning of the speaker(s) are best understood by listening to the original audio recording.

To experience the full conversation in its authentic form, please listen to the episode directly on your preferred podcast platform.

Introduction

Crystal: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Parenting Coach Podcast with Crystal. Over seven years ago, I felt like I was stuck in this cycle of yelling and reactivity in my parenting that I did not want to be in, but I didn't know how to get out of, I knew how I wanted to parent pretty much exactly, and I'd spent hours reading books, but not finding a way to show up how I wanted to.

That's when I started to turn inwards. My own inward journey was what my family needed. As I changed everything around me, changed my kids' meltdowns, decreased by 90% or more with no medications or therapy. I stopped yelling. Sibling fighting became almost entirely nonexistent, and I found that this change flowed into other areas of my life too.

My intuition increased. I started to run my life in business in a very different way. If this sounds like something you want, Sue, I can help. Join me each week as I share my journey, including the laughter, fun, hard times, and tears. Tune in for support, guidance, and fun conversations. With my favorite experts and really anything else that interests me too.

Hello everybody. Welcome to the podcast. If you are [00:01:00] listening into this episode and you haven't listened to any in a little while, you might have missed my announcement that I'm ending this podcast, that this is the last season. So we're gonna have 20 episodes here and then it will be complete, it will retire.

I've had a few questions about that, and one question was, what's gonna happen to these episodes and guests? They'll still be available. We're going to still continue to pay for the hosting so that you can listen on all of the things that you listen to regularly on. I really love the episodes we've done around connection based parenting.

I love the episodes we've done around intuition. Some of the most downloaded episodes are on emotions, helping your kids with emotions, helping yourself with emotions, emotional regulation. We've had some fantastic guest speakers and I do not want to delete any of those. They're all awesome. So yes, it will be available.

Yes, you can keep downloading and listening to it. You can keep sharing it. I presume you'll still be able to like, review and write things. I don't know. If you have not yet done that, please go do that now 'cause that is helpful for people to be able to find it within the algorithm. [00:02:00] It'll come up more readily with those. 

So if this is something you've been listening to and you have been appreciating regularly, I would love it as like a last little parting gift If you would little leave a little review or rating or whatever it is that you do on your platform that you listen to, that would be really helpful.

So today is how to raise awesome kids. And you're probably like, okay, you already talk a lot about parenting kids. You've already talked about a lot of things and I definitely have, there's a lot of different things that go into raising an awesome kid. I would say number one is believing that your kid is awesome.

And so if you haven't listened to my episodes on Breathing Belief into your kids, go listen to those. I think there's a part one and part two. I can't remember if it was this season or last season, but those ones were really good. That is definitely part of it. Emotional regulation is definitely part of it, but lately I've been thinking about the topic of discomfort. 

And if you follow me on Instagram, I've been sharing a lot about discomfort recently, especially discomfort in our kids and in ourselves. And I think that this is a huge key [00:03:00] ingredient that is really missing when it comes to raising our kids. I'll also mention raising critical thinkers. So go listen to that episode with Julie Bogart that we did a few weeks ago too, because that was fantastic.

I loved that interview. It may go down in history as my favorite interview that I've done on this podcast, so if you have not listened to that one, go listen to that too. But, going back to discomfort, I actually think that discomfort is this huge ingredient that we're missing when we talk about raising our kids and we talk about what we want for them, and it's something that we don't really understand.

And so lately what I've been doing is seeking to understand it a little bit more, and I think that sometimes understanding can come from books and can come from reading and can come from learning, but I think a lot of our understanding actually comes from just sitting. A problem just sitting with an idea, just sitting in stillness, just pondering, just allowing ourselves to think and then writing things down.

And, that is where a lot of my ideas around [00:04:00] discomfort have come. Not so much from reading other people's works or words so directly, but really from just. Pondering and listening to my own inner self. And so these are thoughts that I wanna share with you about how to help our kids seek discomfort, why discomfort is necessary in raising an awesome kid.

The importance of discomfort

And that discomfort is really kind of the goal of life. That is what we want more of out of life. I imagine it being like the little video game character, right? It's like Mario on Super Mario Bros. And you have to go and like hit your head against those squares and then you get coins. Those coins are discomfort and the more coins that we get, the better off we are.

So if you want to really raise an awesome human, first of all, believing that your kid is an awesome human is. Absolutely number one. If you do not have that belief, then the rest of the stuff is gonna kind of fall apart. but we really need to teach our children how to be more tolerant of discomfort.

We need to teach them how [00:05:00] to increase their capacity to sit with and hold discomfort. I think this will be a different take on this than maybe you've heard before. because I think we, we get this wrong sometimes. We don't really understand what tolerance is and we don't really understand what discomfort is.

So we're gonna talk about all of that today. starting with a little story. We live in this tiny little town. We were passing this restaurant and, the front sign, like, I don't even know if it had a name, maybe it did have a name by then, but, it had this big huge sign, like glowing sign that said, seek discomfort.

And I was like, that's strange. I mean, like, I mean, I agree with it, but also like, I don't know if I necessarily want that for a restaurant when I go to a restaurant. I just wanna sit and be comfortable. but it got me thinking about discomfort and about seeking discomfort. So maybe it did its role.

Maybe that's what it was meant to do, is just to jog your own thinking. and I was thinking about how we avoid discomfort whenever I'm sitting around. [00:06:00] I kind of people watch, I do read books often, but I try not to be just sitting on my phone all of the time unless I have work to do. But, I try to kind of just watch and be observant of my surroundings and kind of sit and listen to people interact and watch people interact with others.

Because a lot of what I do hear is helping people, relate to other human beings, right? It's human behavior. It's like, why do we do what we do? And if we want to change the way that we're doing what we do, how do we do that? And I think that's one of the questions that we're answering here. So, as I was sitting and watching some kids, I don't even remember where I was.

I just remember that the mom, just gave her like, slid back her kids an iPad because they were so like frustrated and whatever. She was just like, here you go. And they immediately quieted. And I also heard this, I can't remember if I heard on a podcast or somebody was sharing with me, but a similar story or idea where this mom, like her kids were like freaking out in the car and she like turns around and passes them an iPad and they ended up crashing the car because [00:07:00] the mom wasn't paying attention to the road.

The tendency of parents to quell discomfort

Anyways, I’m not saying these stories to shame or guilt moms. I think we have a lot on us and we don't need more shame and more guilt. But I am showing the point that, in our modern society, I think it's very common for us to quell our children's fear discomfort, uncomfort, yeah, frustration with distractions.

It doesn't matter if that distraction is an iPad or a phone or whatever. We're just like, here's a distraction. so that you don't have to sit and feel this discomfort. And also so I don't have to sit and feel the discomfort of you sitting and feeling your discomfort. Right. A lot of the times this comes with frustration.

It's like our kids are super frustrated. We're like, here, let's give them a phone or an iPad. Now, it can be all sorts of different kinds of tech, right? They come and bother us about things and we're like, just go watch a movie. Just go play a video game. it's not just tech though. This isn't a,\ this isn't a tech episode.

This is an avoiding discomfort episode. And there's lots of ways that we avoid discomfort, not just through [00:08:00] tech. Another one is just telling them to be happy. They come up and they're frustrated about something and we're like, oh, it's not that big of a deal. Or, oh, look at the bright side, or imagine how this other person feels, or whatever.

And we try to do it in a way that like we're claiming positivity. We're trying to like, get them to like, go to the positive, happy side of things, but we're trying to get them to hop over the discomfort that they feel right now to get there. And again, often because it's uncomfortable for us to be sitting there in their discomfort.

So we're like, here, just go right to the happy part. Let me tell you how everything's gonna be better and you can just feel better right now. We also solve their problems, right? They come with something that they're feeling frustrated or upset about, and we're just like, here, let's solve that for you really quick.

Let's like, let's figure this out so that you don't have to do it so that you don't have to feel uncomfortable so that I don't have to feel uncomfortable. So much of this comes back to us as well, and so we have, I think, been raised in a society for a long time where we avoid things even before tech. We try to avoid discomfort.[00:09:00]

Tech just makes it easier. It's way easier to sit and scroll on social media and avoid uncomfortable things in our life. So yes, distraction is sometimes needed. Like sometimes we're out and about and something's happening and we just need our kids to get in the car, or we just need them to follow along the grocery store or whatever.

And like distraction is like a tool that we're gonna use in that moment. And I must, not saying like never use the tool of distraction, but I am saying that from what I see, that is the tool that's being employed the most beyond all other parenting tactics and techniques. I mean, I guess besides fear that one, the fear and coercion, we're still using a lot, but we use distractions so often, especially as people who want to parent in a connection based way, in a gentle way, in a conscious way.

We love to parent in that way, right? If you listen to these podcast episodes, if you've been a listener for a while, you're probably already on board with that. but then it goes to, well, how do I do this? And I think that sometimes we resort to distraction [00:10:00] because it feels like a gentle approach, right?

I'm not using fear or coercion, so I guess that's good. but also there's probably something inside you that feels like it's a little bit incongruent. Like that it's not maybe the best way to handle the situation. And again, I'm not saying you have to handle it perfectly all the time. We don't, we, don't handle things perfectly all the time.

Being radically honest with ourselves

And I think there's beauty in that. I think there's reasons for that. I think that we need to have failures and learn from them and also show our kids how we fail. So I'm not, I'm saying that we have to be perfect all the time, but I just want you to kind of do a self-audit. And whenever I do a self-audit, I like to be radically honest with myself and sometimes we're radically dishonest with ourselves in one way. We sometimes kind of push it down and we're just like, no, I don't ever do that. And we don't really think about it. We kind of ignore it. But on the other hand, sometimes we amplify all of the things that we're doing wrong that's also radically dishonest when we're really shaming ourselves and guilting ourselves in a way that like is like much more than what we actually do.

That is also radically dishonest. So I want [00:11:00] you to think about, how can I be radically honest about this? And one way to do it would be to kind of look at it from an outsider's perspective. Like if I was auditing your like day, your week, your year, your parenting versus if you were, because I'm probably gonna be a little more accepting or open or something about it.

'Cause sometimes we're harder on ourselves than everybody else is. So I want you just to think about it in this kind of outsider observer perspective way and just be like, okay, how often do I resort to distraction of my kids' discomfort of them sitting in uncomfortable feelings. I would say it's pretty often.

I definitely feel this way. I felt this way in the past. I think I still resort to it often right now. I'm not giving you this episode 'cause I'm like, I've figured it all out. But these are just things that I've noticed and things I've noticed within myself, within my own family, things I've noticed with my own, within my own community and society.

The Cycle of Futility

And then I'm working on shifting as well. So I want you to think about how often you think you resort to [00:12:00] distraction as a way to move your kids from frustration or any other discomfort that they're feeling. and that's what we're gonna talk about today. Dr. Gordon Neufeld coins the cycle of futility, the cycle of futility, and the cycle of frustration is you bump up against something that you don't want to be right.

I want this and I can't have it. I want life to be like this and it's not. And you move through the cycle of frustration and oftentimes you can get stuck in that cycle of frustration where you're like in this circle that you can't get out of. You're looping and looping and the key to moving out of the cycle of frustration is to butt up against the futility and be like, yeah, I know this is something that I can't change and that I can't have.

And that is really sad. That is really hard. That is really uncomfortable. That is really angering. Whatever those emotions are that you're feeling, and to move through that sadness, to find those sad tears, to find those sad emotions of not being able to change the thing that you want to change. [00:13:00] So this is often what I think about when I think of discomfort, right?

Where there's feelings that are swirling around inside of us. And we're kind of just ignoring them and shutting them down instead of allowing ourselves to like move through that cycle and actually feel the futility of it, feel the frustration in that cycle of frustration. and I think that is the key, allowing our kids to go through their own cycles of sadness, of futility, of anger, of frustration, whatever their emotions are, allowing them to sit in those uncomfortable emotions. Sometimes I would say more often than sometimes letting them feel that way. What I think that tolerance really is, is like awareness of self. Julie Bogart talked about this in her book, raising Critical Thinkers, but she's like, it's not really tolerance.

Like what tolerance is, like being aware of myself and what's happening within me, and my experience. Of the world as something else is happening. And so [00:14:00] I think when I think of tolerance, I'm like, yeah, it's this, it's like this self-awareness piece of what's happening within. What does it like lead to?

The benefits of sitting with discomfort

Like if I am able to tolerate discomfort more, sit with and notice my discomfort more, why is that helpful? Like what could I possibly gain from that? One is it's feelings work. It's the ability to sit with your feelings, to process through your feelings. Feelings or messages. And we ignore those messages when we distract.

We have to sit with them. We have to face the message that feeling is bringing to us as we sit with our feelings. It's also emotional regulation work, right? As we're able to sit with our feelings, we're going to start to understand them more, listen to the message that they have for us more, and be able to move through them more fully.

So I think it's nervous system work also. I think that also as we build this tolerance for discomfort, that we'll be more understanding of others. We'll have more empathy. We'll understand things from a different point of [00:15:00] view. We'll be able to sit with, different ID ideologies, different opinions, different beliefs.

People that have a totally different worldview than us. We'll be able to sit and not just tolerate as in like, yes, I will sit here with you, but actually understand them. Actually seek to listen and understand their perspectives. Everything we talked about of raising critical thinkers as we're able to tolerate discomfort.

Our understanding of others and the world will start to change. I also think that this is where all learning and growth comes in, don't you? Like we came down to earth, we're given all of this discomfort, and that is how we learn and grow. If it wasn't that, if there was no resistance, if there was no discomfort, it was, there was nothing, there was no friction, nothing pushing back on you, would you ever learn. 

I think that is where the growth comes from, right? We start to learn a new language and it's really uncomfortable and it's hard, and we eventually push through it and we sit with it and then we learn a language. I remember the very first time that I was learning to drive a car, I thought like, there is absolutely no way I'm ever going to learn how to drive a car.

There's way [00:16:00] too many things to think about. I felt super overwhelmed by all of the pieces that I was supposed to be remembering at the same time, and if I had not. Learned to tolerate that uncomfortable situation of feeling like overwhelmed and feeling like there was way too many things to think about.

I would've never have learned to drive a car. Right? I went to driver's training classes and my teacher taught me, and I'm sure she was overwhelmed with teaching me because I felt very unprepared as a driver and the whole thing was uncomfortable for everybody involved, but eventually we figured it out.

That is where learning and growth comes from. It comes from not knowing. It comes from, sitting with the discomfort of not knowing. I remember reading, I think it was this post that was going around from Dr. Becky at Good Inside and she said, frustration, it comes from learning. It's like this not knowing how to do something and then knowing how to do something on two sides of the, of a spectrum and in between is this like up and down? It was like this graph that she shared and it was like up and down and up and down and up and down. And she's like, that is like frustration. Like if we don't [00:17:00] know how to do something and we want to be able to know how to do it, we have to move through those ups and downs and ups and downs to get to the other side of actually knowing.

And so, are we allowing our kids to move through that frustration? Right? Frustration is uncomfortable. Not knowing is uncomfortable. That is what creates learning and growth. That is what creates emotional intelligence, emotional resilience, emotional regulation. I'm also gonna offer that it creates acceptance.

Increasing our capacity to tolerate discomfort, increases acceptance, of things that we can't change. Acceptance of the fact that there's a lot less certainty in life than we think that there is. Our brains crave certainty. They want certainty. They try to make this mirage that there is certainty when there really isn't, and accepting that. Accepting that we actually are a little more powerless than we think that we are when it comes to those things that we want certainty around. But I also [00:18:00] think, life is full of paradoxes and as I accept this one side of, there's a lot of things that I don't have control over and there's a lot of things that are uncertain in life, I also accept this other side of like my own inner power, that there is so much internally that I do have power over and power in. And as I am able to tap into that power, I can influence and create the life that I want. but it's a very different energy than like from control. On the one hand, you have like control and certainty and like seeking that, that external power.

And on the other hand, you have this internal. Power of when I accept that I don't have that control of those things, then I actually have more power. I actually have more influence. So like all things, we got to the point now where be the change you wanna see in the world. I don't know if you know this, but this is my email signature and it's been my email signature for like 10 years.

Be the change you want to see in the world

I [00:19:00] was reading about, Mahatma Gandhi. Okay. Maybe it was. Eight years. I was reading about Mahatma Gandhi back in like 2016 and 2017, and I came across this quote and I loved it and decided to adopt it as my email signature. At that time, I had never really thought deeply about it. I just thought that's a cool quote, and I put it on my email signature and then it's like a hassle to change your email signature.

So I've never done that and over the years I've come to realize that like this is actually my entire life mantra. Be the change you want to see in your family. Be the change you want to see in your community, be the actual change you want to see in the world. If I want to see more peace and more understanding and more tolerance and more love and more kindness in the world, it starts with me in my home.

It starts with me influencing the people in my community and influencing the people in my charge. And, so. Now we get to this part. I think it's kind of ironic now that this is still my email signature. 'cause now I really do deeply understand it and, believe in it. And it has become my life mantra without me even really meaning it to be, I guess somewhere subconsciously my [00:20:00] mind, always knew that.

But so this is my work too. This is what I'm here for too, right? So if I believe that, our, we need our kids to tolerate more discomfort, then we have to tolerate more discomfort ourselves. And if I'm telling that to you, then I'm also telling that to me. Am I willing to tolerate discomfort and it can be like physical discomfort.

I'm not really an exercise movie person and I've, we've always had a life that was kind of like movement based, I guess, but we've never really done things like working out regularly. And that's something that I've been doing now since December. I. And it's really uncomfortable. I did my first like leg day and I felt like I was gonna die and I was never gonna be able to use my legs again.

I like wobbled down the stairs. There was a couple times where I thought I might just like fall down the stairs the day after because I was so sore. I had a hard time sleeping 'cause my body was sore. Like it was really uncomfortable. And if I had decided like, okay, nevermind. I don't want that discomfort anymore.

I'm going to just give up and I'm not gonna do this anymore, then I wouldn't gain the health and the strength that I'm looking to gain And. [00:21:00] Sticking through that discomfort has been what's been building my muscles, in the same way it has when it comes to food. I've been doing intuitive eating and I've been tapping into my body and asking it like what kinds of foods fuel it, what kinds of foods don't, and there's been some interesting answers coming in there.

And, I actually just recently decided to go off sugar for the month. and that came from, intuitively tapping into my body. And I know that, again, that's gonna be uncomfortable. There's gonna be an uncomfortable period of time where I'm like not eating the same thing that people around me are eating.

And if I allow myself to feel physical discomfort, then I'm going to get the physical gains from that. In fact, I think everything physical is spiritual also. So I feel like spiritually and emotionally, I'm also gonna get the gains from that. And I think the same is true in our emotional life, right?

The discomfort of sitting with yourself

So if I'm allowing myself to sit with my own discomfort, that is how I'm going to allow my kids to do it more. How can I possibly expect or ask them of something that I never give myself? So again, that self-audit. How willing am I [00:22:00] to sit with my own discomfort? Do I let myself be alone? Just by myself with nothing.

No books, no music, no podcast, no social media. Do I let myself just sit with myself? How uncomfortable is that? If something is highly uncomfortable, do I just give it up? So often people tell me like, oh, that's so cool that you meditate, but like, I could never do that. I'm just not a meditating person. I read a quote recently that said The more resistant you are to meditation, the more that you need it.

And I think that's absolutely true. I wanted like shake those people and tell them like. I feel exactly that same way. I feel like there is no way that I could sit here still, like, this feels like running a marathon for me. This does not come easily to me. Like, it's so mind boggling when people tell me that.

'Cause I'm like, no, it is hard. Like it's really hard. That is it's purpose. It is hard to sit in stillness with yourself. To face yourself, to face your own thoughts, it's [00:23:00] highly uncomfortable. but are you willing to sit in that discomfort? And I'm not saying you have to go and just decide to meditate today, but what is the thing for you that you feel resistant to?

What is the thing that feels like really uncomfortable that you are kind of trying to avoid, what are the times when you mostly go to your phone and scroll social media instead, right? What, are we, avoiding there? What emotion are we avoiding there? there's lots of ways that we avoid discomfort at as adults, right?

I think this is what leads to a lot of things that can lead to over drinking and overeating and pornography and social media and Netflix. And, there's, even like even healthy, seemingly healthy things, like I know some people who really over serve. They go and help everybody else all of the time.

Everything is about their kids. Everything is about their friends. Everything is about serving in community. But nothing is about like them. Like they're constantly busy. They're constantly overworking through service, and I think we overwork through work too, right? That is totally another way that we numb our discomfort.

We're like, we'll just keep [00:24:00] continuously working and thinking about work and then we don't have to, That we don't have to sit in like the silence of just being with ourselves. So there's lots of different ways that we do this as adults as well. I think it can be uncomfortable with being with ourselves.

In fact, one of the things I've noticed is when people first start this work, sometimes people come to me and they've already done a lot of coaching. They've already done a lot of therapy, so they're not necessarily in this space. But, for people that are really new into like self awake work, into what people call self-help. I don't love that word so much, but this like awakeness work, this healing work that we do here, that often what I see is that it's very uncomfortable to be with themselves at the beginning of the journey. That they don't want to just sit and be with themselves.

They don't want to know what their thoughts are about themselves in the world. They just kind of wanna kind of wanna ignore that part. And so sitting with that can be really uncomfortable. my, one of my mentors, Simone Soul, shared this in an email the other day. [00:25:00] She said, and you will embody the wisdom that your wounds aren't defects to overcome, but portals to your deepest mastery and artistry, exactly the parts of you that the world most needs.

I think that is beautiful. I think that we can't be the changes we want to see until we dig into those parts of us that we don't wanna see. Those parts of us, that we like to hide, that we like to imagine aren't there, that we like to perfectionism our way out of, those are the pieces where the learning is, where the growth is, where the expansion is, where the artistry, where the creation is.

Those are the parts of yourself that the world most needs. So as you dig into your discomfort, you are healing the world. You are bringing a different, energy to the world. And I think that it's really beautiful. I was reading Alcatraz versus The Evil, evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson. [00:26:00] he's also one of our favorite authors, and this is in Bastille versus Evil Librarians, which is the last book in the series.

Sitting with all the parts of us

And he says this, I'm not always a good person, but I'm not just a coward either. Sometimes I'm heroic, sometimes I'm selfish. I'm all those things at once. I'm a human being like you. I often make mistakes and sometimes I repeat them. Sometimes the curse you see is your biggest flaw can somehow also be your greatest advantage.

So those parts of us that we feel uncomfortable about. When we come to see them, when we come to know them, when we come to sit with them, those are the parts that help the world. Those are the parts that become our greatest advantage. And if you don't see that now, take some time to sit with discomfort and see what happens.

See what changes. See what insights come from you. Discomfort is facing. Our shadows facing those hidden parts. That is [00:27:00] growth. And like I've mentioned in past episodes, I've talked about how we do this and how we do this is sitting with two things. One is sitting with the message that's coming from the feeling that we feel inside, listening to the words that come there that can be uncomfortable.

The power of imagination

And the other piece is sitting with the actual feeling like the physiological sensation, like how it feels to feel, the feeling that we're feeling getting out of our head and into our body and sitting with that actual emotion. I can't remember who said this. I think it was in my interview with Maren, she was talking about imagination, how we kind of tap out of imagination, right?

We go through life and we're told like. Be more realistic and like you don't have time for daydreaming anymore. and she said like part of this work for her has been tapping back into imagination and, in the work that she does. And I think that's true for all of us. I think that as we tap into the physical feeling in the body, we can do it in a way that's very like loose and open and kind of imaginary.[00:28:00]

We don't have to know exactly how to name the feeling in order to shift our energy. We really don't. We don't have to know exactly what's happening or why or where it came from, or what exact belief is leading to this feeling. I think that we can just drop right into our body and we can feel the feeling and we can use those imaginary powers that we have to kind of just be flowy with it.

We can allow ourselves to just imagine what we think it's feeling like and sit with it. I think that on the other side of sitting with discomfort for both us and for our kids, comes, intuition comes that space of, openness, those ideas that flow into us. It comes magic, it comes miracle. I think it's the infinite possibility space.

The metaphor of two rooms

I think that certainty isn't as real as we like to think that it is, and magic is much more real than we give it credit for. I have this philosophy, and sorry if I've already shared this with you, 'cause I've been [00:29:00] talking a lot about it lately, but in my mind came this like metaphor, this image of two rooms.

And these rooms are side by side and there's an adjoining door and that door can be open and that door can be closed. And then the left hand room, we have worry, fear, doubt, shame, anxiety. Guilt, all of those feelings. And when we are feeling anything within that energy space, there's only two solutions to the problem that we face.

We face a problem, we're feeling this way, and our solutions are control and apathy. Control being, I will make this work. I will figure this out. I will figure out a solution, and apathy being like, I'm just gonna give up and do nothing. When on the right hand side room, we have trust, we have peace, we have groundedness, we have intuition, and there is infinite possibilities on that side.

There's ideas that come to us out of nowhere. There's actual miracles that happen that there's no way that we could have solved that problem in that way. That drops in the right hand side room. [00:30:00] So when you feel yourself facing a problem or feeling in that energy of the left hand side room, the goal isn't to just be like, oh, I'm in the wrong room.

Dang it, like I should already be in the right hand side room. The goal isn't to stay in control and apathy. The goal is to sit with the feeling that you're feeling. In a way, such a way that it feels deeply accepted, that it feels powerly accepted. That is how it releases. The more presence you can give it, the more awareness you can bring it, the more love you can hold it with.

Is how it releases, and you will find yourself shifted into the other door, of actual miracles of things, ideas, creativity, connections, relationships, love, abundance, wealth that comes in that doesn't feel realistic. And I love living on the side of non-real. I think it's true. I mean, it's almost like the non-realistic is more realistic.

I love living on that side of things, and [00:31:00] so I don't feel bad that we have this left hand side room. I'm like, oh, I wish that room was gone. I don't, I know that's where the growth is. I know that growth comes from sitting in that room for long enough listening to that room for long enough, being in stillness with that feeling for long enough that eventually it feels seen.

It feels loved, it feels known, and I'm able to just naturally, that energy just naturally shifts and I go into the right hand side room where there's a lot of beauty and a lot of miracles that come. So. I hope that this was helpful for you to not only learn to teach your children how to tolerate discomfort, but that the teaching comes through showing.

The more that I accept and tolerate my own discomfort, the more I'll allow them to, right? Think back to that very first story about giving our kids iPads because they're frustrated and we just wanna distract them. If I was able to sit with my own uncomfortable feelings, my frustration. My emotional activation, the triggers that are coming up for me because my kids are frustrated, [00:32:00] then I'm more willing to sit with them in their discomfort in that moment, and I don't have to use distraction all of the time.

Yes, you're right. I'm not saying don't ever use distraction, but that my go-to instead can be, I can tolerate discomfort within me. And so I'm okay with you sitting with your discomfort knowing that is actually going to be so much better for you long-term and going to teach you the skills that you can't just teach from a book, from a story, from explaining it from words.

Summary and conclusion

You can't teach it consciously. It's something that they have to sit with and to feel with also. So again, remembering how to raise awesome kids first, you have to believe that they're awesome, but your kids are awesome. I believe that for you, wherever you are, whoever your kids are, I believe that for you.

And secondly, it's the skills that we're going to learn ourselves and sit with ourselves that then we'll be able to teach them. So be the change you want to see in the world. Go out there and start to like that restaurant sign [00:33:00] said, seek discomfort. And, See what changes happen and see what insights come to you.

Maybe get a discomfort journal and start writing down your experiences of sitting with and being with discomfort and what comes to you. And maybe share that with your kids or with your partner, with your husband, with your friends, and over time and, see, how you feel inside. I feel like an entirely different person was birthed over the years as I've tolerated, increased my capacity to tolerate discomfort, and I think the same will be true for you.

If you enjoyed this episode as much as I did, I would love for you to help spread the word by getting this message of support and guidance out to as many people as possible. So text it to your best friend or tag me on Instagram and share it. Leave a review, rate it, subscribe it, or follow on your favorite platform.

Send me a DM on IG letting me know which parts have impacted you or what you'd like to see on future episodes. We'll see you next [00:34:00] week.