Ready to BUILD BETTER BOUNDARIES, Stepmom? Boundaries - Simplified #191

>>Do you long to feel like you have purpose in your stepfamily? 

>>Do you want to feel like you really do belong and that one day you could actually have a more normal family? 

>>Do you find yourself huddled under the blankets as you go to bed at night? Suppressing the urge to scream because no one understands how hard, lonely and confusing it is to be a stepmom? 

>>Are you struggling to understand how you can create connection with your kids, especially when they're teenagers?

Then it is time to take your power back so you can BUILD BETTER BOUNDARIES, Stepmama! I've created the perfect gift for you to help you do just that! Be sure to sign up and get the hope and answers you need right now.

xooxx
Jen

Take Your Power Back & Reclaim Your Joy, FAST! www.stepfamilypodcast.com/WorkWithJen
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Step 1: Join the Empowered Community bit.ly/joyfulwithjen
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Be strong, and let your heart be courageous, all you who put your hope in the Lord.
Psalm 31:24

Transcript

#191 \\ Ready to BUILD BETTER BOUNDARIES, Stepmom?
buildbetterboundaries.com

(AI special nuances for free!)

Do you remember that kid's game? Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar? It goes like this. Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar? 

And then somebody answers, “Jen stole the cookies from the cookie jar!”

Of course, I would say "who me?" 

And you would say, “Yes, you!” 

And then I would say, “Not me!” Wait. I would say, "Couldn't be!” And you would say, “Then who?”. 

And I would pick one of you and I would say, “Susie stole the cookies from the cookie jar.”

Susie would say, “Who me?”

“Yes, you!”

“Couldn't be!”

“Then who?”

“Lemon stole the cookies from the cookie jar!” 

And Lemon, I know you're listening. God bless you, sweet friend! Lemon, you would say, “Who me?”

And we would say, “Yes, you!”

And you would say, “Couldn't be!”

And we would say, “Then who?”. 

And this game would go on endlessly. 

Do you play this game right now I want to know! Send me an email friends@stepfamilypodcast.com and let me know if you're still playing who stole the cookies from the cookie jar game!

Hey there. This is Jen Rogers and you are listening to the Empowered Stepmom podcast! In today's episode, Number 191, we're going to talk about what happened to those cookies in the cookie jar! Stay with me! I'll be right back to answer that question!

~~~~~~

Do you long to feel like you have purpose in your stepfamily? 

Do you want to feel like you really do belong and that one day you could actually have a more normal family? 

Do you find yourself huddled under the blankets as you go to bed at night? Suppressing the urge to scream because no one understands how hard, lonely and confusing it is to be a stepmom? 

Are you struggling to understand how you can create connection with your kids, especially when they're teenagers? 

Listen, if you are muffling your tears and fears in your pillow late at night, it is way past time for you to take back your power and not only take back your power, but to reclaim your joy. Hey, there I'm Jen, I'm a Stepmama just like you and I am a high achiever willing to invest in finding the right tools for the job so I can excel, not only in my stepmom role, but in every single thing that I do. 

I want you to excel too. Over the last two months, I have been in what I'm going to call the bat cave, creating this free resource for you to help you understand the importance and the methodology behind taking your power back. 

All too often, we give our power away by how we speak over ourselves, by what we allow others to speak over us or by what we ignore or avoid. That ends today. That ends right now. How does it end? Head on over to buildbetterboundaries.com to find out!

Super easy. B U I L D. Better. B E T T E R. Boundaries, B O U N D A R I E S dot com. buildbetterboundaries.com 

What makes boundaries so important? Well, in July and August, we spent two months on the podcast talking about boundaries and taking specific stepfamily examples and putting them into that four C framework.

The four parts of the framework are calm, clear, consistent, and in Christ. Just because July and August have passed away does not mean that we discontinue practicing what we have learned. We are all about being equipped here in the empowered stepmom community. One of the best ways to get equipped is to continue to practice what you are learning and you cannot practice what you are learning if you are not learning something. 

So head on over to buildbetterboundaries.com . And download your free stepmom handbook. I promise you. I know, I absolutely know, without a shadow of a doubt that this resource will help you gain clarity on the steps that you need to take to begin to take your power back, head on over to build better boundaries.com and sign up for the free step-mom handbook. All right. Let's get to today's episode. And let me remind you that you are listening to the Empowered Stepmom podcast!

All right, let's go back to that cookie jar. 

Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar? 

Here's the answer. 

The answer is: it doesn't matter who stole the cookies from the cookie jar! 

When we spend so much time focusing on who did what to whom we lose sight of what's important to us. We focus on who we want to blame. We focus on an alternate explanation that really gives our power away instead of taking control of the situation or taking charge or asking powerful. What and how questions. We're focused on who did that thing. Who is doing that thing right now to you? That is hurting you. You've probably spent a lot of time thinking about it and truth be told I I'm in the same boat as you are. 

This takes a lot of practice to capture that thought and say, I am not going to spend my time focusing on who did this thing instead, I'm going to focus on capturing that thought, according to Romans 12:1-2 so I can understand what God has for me in this. I'm going to sacrifice my right to be right. Although I really do like to be right!

But I'm going to sacrifice my right to be right. And instead, I'm going to focus on what is the real issue here? What is it that I want to solve? 

As I was thinking about this, I also thought of another song that take me out to the ball game. Buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks. I don't care if I ever come back. Well, I did go do a few ball games growing up and I did have plenty of cracker jacks boxes. However, I did want to come back from the ball game. When you think about going to a ball game, what kind of things do you wear? 

For me, I think about the baseball cap. And the baseball cap is important to our cookie jar story today. How? This is how: it's an acronym, C A P. 

Whenever we are experiencing those things that challenge us. Use the acronym of cap. CAP, the C stands for: adopt a spirit of curiosity. Now, if you have downloaded the top 10 tips (to prevent Stepmom Burnout), you are well aware of how much we promote curiosity here at the empowered stepmom. It's still a very important reminder!

When we give ourselves permission to be curious, we are stepping out of judgment, and we are asking ourselves powerful questions. 

·      How do I want to respond in this situation? 

·      What obstacle is there that I'm having difficulty overcoming? 

·      What one thing could I do right now to build into this relationship?

·      How can I stop the overwhelm? 

When you are feeling overwhelmed, what can you do? What one small thing could you do? Listen. The easiest thing to do is to extract yourself from the situation. If that means taking a few minutes and going outside and taking a walk or going locking yourself in the closet, going petting the dog. Whatever it is, extracting yourself from that situation to give yourself permission, just to breathe and to process. 

It's so powerful! When we give ourselves time to actually think about what's going on. When we adopt the spirit of curiosity. Okay. That's a C in the baseball cap C also stands for cookies. But we don't really care who still those cookies are in the cookie jar. We are concerned about what are we going to do about it? Are we going to go bake more cookies? Are we going to go buy more cookies? Do we even like cookies to begin with? Maybe we don't even care about cookies. 

The point is: Let's ask powerful questions where we can reclaim our power and our joy in the process as well. All right. That's the curiosity. All right. Stepping up to first plate is the letter a, which stands for action. Listen, when you are playing baseball and you hit that ball, you immediately take action. 

You don't focus on what somebody else is doing. You focus on getting yourself to first base, so you immediately take action. When you extract yourself from the overwhelm. That is taking action that is making a decision to reclaim your thoughts. It's very, very important that we take action and action does not need to be this tsunami of events. 

Action steps can be extraordinarily small and there's a lot of power. Think about atomic habits. I love the book atomic habits because one small change can make this huge difference. So adopt a spirit of curiosity and take action. All right. That takes us to second base, I suppose, in our baseball analogy. Perhaps some cookies are in second base. What do we do with the letter P?

What does the letter P represent? I bet you probably guessed that. It stands for prayer. Now, there are so many different ways to pray. 

And when you are struggling in praying, it's okay to sit there and say to God. I'm struggling in praying right now. I'm not really sure what to pray. I have adopted a spirit of curiosity. I'm willing to take action. I'm coming to you, Lord Jesus, because I don't know what to do. 

I'm hurt. I'm experiencing a lot of frustration. I'm feeling disconnected with my husband because we're not seeing eye to eye. I don't like how he treats my kids. I don't like how I feel about his kids. I don't like the house that we're living in because it's not big enough for all of us. I'm so frustrated with an ex who is taking us back to court again. God. I really, really, really, really want to stop spending money fighting over these kids. 

That's a prayer! Now that may not sound like a typical prayer, but it is the prayer from your heart. Where you are trusting God to pour all of it out to say, God, here it is. And in our prayer time. As we sit there with all of that, it's important that we hand it over. And if you're willing, I invite you to picture yourself holding it in your hands and laying it at the foot of the cross. And asking Jesus to give you discernment over what to do next. And even if you don't sense an answer right away, it's okay. The action to take in your prayer is to trust that God knows. And God's got this.

When we pray, it's so easy to go and ask for all the things we want. I want to remind you about the power of praising God and thanking him for who he is. And we have 150 Psalms that we can choose from. 

I always encourage women to go to the book of Psalms when they don't know what to pray. Because there's so much goodness in there about declaring the goodness of God and reminding ourselves about who we are in Christ. Because it's easy to forget when our cookies are stolen. It's just not cool when they're stolen. 

And we want to get back at the who and that's not cool either. The cool thing is, is that we do serve a creator who loves us and who can supply us with all that we could ever ask or all that we could ever imagine, even when we're struggling. This is what sanctification is. And there was no other role that I have experienced where the sanctification journey is so revealing than in the stepmom world. I realize that there's so much of Jen inside of Jen. That there's so much that I want and that I think I'm, I should have. And yet, there's so much more than just what God has for me. There's what God has for everyone in my family. 

I want to encourage you today to practice the cap. Method get curious, take really teeny tiny atomic action steps! And pray to your heavenly father who loves you immensely.

If you are ready to transform your life, not only with the cap method of curiosity action and prayer, you can indeed transform your life fast by implementing boundaries. That essentially give you your power back. And when you feel more powerful, you automatically have more joy. And I don't know about you, but. I actually, I do know about you. You want that! And I want that too. So, if you are ready to take back your power and reclaim your joy in your relationships and at home, it all starts with building better boundaries And you will find that inside the step-mom handbook, head on over to build better boundaries.com and sign up to get started. so you can begin to experience victory and have that influential impact in your own home!

It's time to say goodbye, distress and hello to the confident woman who knows her power comes from fulfilling her purpose, God's way. Check out the stepmom handbook at buildbetterboundaries.com so you can boundary build like a boss, implement mindset hacks that work, create intimate family connections, get empowering support through the bonus gifts that I give you once you sign up and learn how to navigate those challenging co-parenting conversations and disagreements, all with a biblical worldview.

Head on over to buildbetterboundaries.com. Sign up for the Stepmom Handbook and you'll find me inside your email box!

All right that's going to do it for today's episode number 191. God bless you and I will catch you next week!