119. Happy Birthday to My Mom

“Knowing what you don't want is just as important as knowing what you do want.” 

      -My Mom

It's my mom's birthday today and I thought I would share 12 of the truisms she taught me growing up and how many of them are backed by science.

Transcript

“Knowing what you don't want is just as important as knowing what you do want.” This quote from my mother starts us off today. 

Welcome in to the modern creative woman. I am so glad you are here on this audio creativity journey. I'm Doctor Amy Bakos, your hostess, and today is my mom's birthday in honor of her birthday. I thought I would share with you some of her best advice, her strongest wisdom, and you can let me know if these are things that your mother told you when you were growing up. I have 11 more truisms to share with you all about how to have a productive, enjoyable, satisfying life. Let's get into it. I usually share with you what the research says in psychology and in art, what the philosophers are talking about, or what the art therapy research says. And as a therapist, I'm not doing anything different. I'm not teaching people. My mother, my grandmother taught me. But in honor of her birthday, I started thinking of all the things I heard on repeat as a child that actually do turn out to be pretty good advice, pretty sound in terms of being psychologically savvy. So the first one is all about being present and in the moment. I heard my mother say this a lot. I would much rather hang out with you kids than pick up your socks. And part of that was asking us to, you know, chip in around the house, but mostly it was her saying she wanted to be with us and be present and not be distracted. And I thought, that's pretty good advice. Number two, she gave me this advice every time I was struggling with someone. If I had, somebody gave me a hard time at school or I was struggling with a teacher, she said, you can start with this change strategy later. She would say, you can kill them with kindness and to be my authentic self, be who I wanted to be, which is a kind person. And to just start there, and I might just really upset them if I maintain my composure when someone's giving me a hard time. It might bother them, but that's not the goal. The goal is to stay myself, as she definitely fired me up when I needed to stand up for myself, for sure. But the idea of kill them with kindness is about just staying who I am and who I want to be, and allowing that to lead. And I can strategize from there. She also taught me to be of service. Both of my parents were teachers. They volunteered a lot politically in the community at the art Museum. In a lot of ways, they contributed service. My mom spent a lot of time helping people neighbors, friends, her kids, of course, but she really was out there volunteering and participating formally and informally in the world. And that word service became my motto. I want to be of service in the world, and how can I do that? And that guides me when I'm out in the world, and it informs how I speak to strangers on the street. I can be of service by being kind or at least being neutral in a stressful situation. She gave me wonderful advice about thinking long term. She said, the person you love at 16 might not be the person you love at 18, and that might not be the person you love at 20 or 22. I thought that was pretty good advice. To be able to hold the long picture, but also go ahead and fall in love. She gave me the advice to be careful who you have children with. Choose wisely. And I think I did a pretty good job at that. I chose someone to have a child with. That is pretty awesome, she said. Always keep yourself stylish, keep up on changing styles. And this was about feeling good. Isn't that about looking trendy? It was about the idea of kind of always being prepared for opportunities and looking your best is one of those ways that allows us to feel comfortable, comfortable answering the door, or bumping into a friend at the grocery store or bumping into a potential work contact in the future when you're out and about in the world. But the other part is just feeling you're worth it. You're worthwhile. That you deserve to spend money on your lingerie, your clothes, your shoes, and your hair. And my mother is not. Vain at all. These were just practical bits of advice for good living. I think I got a little tripped up when I got older in wanting to look nice and worrying that it was about vanity, but give yourself a day or two in your pajamas and you realize you don't feel so good. You just feel much better when you're dressed every day. The next one use manners to both feel comfortable and help others feel comfortable. And I think of manners for that purpose. It communicates respect to another person. She would remind me that pointing out bad manners is bad manners. So we don't respond to bad manners. With more bad manners, we maintain our composure. There's no need to get anybody to do anything different is just us doing what we find important for ourselves. We don't judge if someone has different manners than us or a different approach to interacting, but we consider how can we make them feel comfortable and us feel comfortable? It's really the definition of healthy boundaries. Number eight. She said. Smile. It makes people wonder what you're up to and the idea that we're responsible for our happiness and we don't have to smile for anybody else. We don't have to smile because someone tells us to. Yet smiling is something that's good for our brain. It's good for our mind. There's a lot of research on this. I've talked about the Duchenne smiles that I learned from Doctor Amy Crozier. You can listen to her interview on a previous podcast, and I will link that in the show notes. Paying attention to your own happiness and smiling is really important. It makes a huge difference in if you're gonna feel good or not. If you wake up and smile. Makes a big difference. Are you smiling now? I hope so. Number nine. She said this every time I left the house as a teenager. Once I learned to drive, this became her mantra, which she'd say goodbye. Be safe. Be kind. Have fun. Good advice. Right? Number ten, she would say, I trust you. It's all the other people out there that I wonder about. She really made a point to let my brother, and I know that she cared deeply about us both my parents did this, that they respected us. They trusted us, and they understood. As teenagers, we were susceptible to influence from other people. And so she would remind me, I trust you to make good decisions. I trust you to not just do what everyone else is doing. If you don't think it's right and number 11, write it down. She would say, write it down, keep a journal. And I've had a journal since I was maybe 11 or 12. This turns out to be more important than I knew at the time. Of course, journaling is an incredible way to understand yourself, to solve problems, to visualize your future, to daydream. And then in my neuropsychology classes, in my doctoral program, my professor Michael Drexler told us the difference between looking like we're losing our mind and losing our mind is writing it down. And I thought that was a really strange way of telling us to write things down. But he phrased it in a way that hooked our mind so we would remember it. And he was constantly telling us things in a peculiar way so that it would stick in her head. And it sure did. Here's the research. Writing things down helps you remember it, and an efficient brain does not remember trivia. An efficient brain doesn't remember the grocery list. So we write it down. We don't want to just wander into the grocery store and grab some things. An efficient mind will rely on these external tools, like the notes in your phone, to write down the things that you need to do. It relies on a calendar or a planner. Furthermore, there are really great research studies out there about when people have particular goals when they graduate from college, do they have a goal of how much money they want to make and what they want to accomplish? And researchers have followed up over time and found that people who had a particular job, they wanted a particular dream and a particular salary that they wrote down were like 85% more likely to have achieved it within five years. The people that had a vague idea but didn't write it down. They didn't do so well, and the people who had no idea who were unable to articulate those visions for the future, they were making significantly less money than the people who wrote down their dream career and income on a piece of paper. The power of the word is incredible. If you're a person who has struggled with writing things down and keeping a journal, there are ways around this. There's bullet journaling where you just write a few words down about your day. There's a gratitude journal where you write down three things you're grateful for at the end of every day. And if you want a little inspiration, I have the 21 day Gratitude journal that I created for exactly this purpose. It makes it easy to write. It's just a worksheet that you fill out every day to both be thankful for what you have, and start to think about the future and what is possible for you. Writing does not have to be a 20 minute or a two hour process every day. You can do one line a day. You can find those journals that are a line a day. Just gives you a little space to write one sentence. However you end up doing your journal is going to be great. That concludes my total of 12 truisms from my mom, and how it relates to the psychology of acceptance and commitment therapy, and being a creative person. Did you hear particular truisms from your mom that years later, you discovered our good advice, or that you're passing along to your kids? I would love, love, love to hear them. You can message me in the show notes here. You can find me on Instagram at Doctor Amy Bakos, and we can celebrate our moms just a little bit. Now that you know that some of these truisms are really anchored And supported by a psychology research. What will you pass on to someone else? I would love it if you would subscribe to the show. Just click the subscribe button and it helps me tally where people are. We are in this incredible space of being all over the world, and when you hit subscribe, it gives me a little more access to statistics on that information. Have a wonderful rest of your day and I will tell my mom that you said Happy birthday.