Money Mom Podcast
Welcome to The Money Mom Podcast—the ultimate guide for moms who want to take control of their finances, crush debt, and create a life of financial freedom and abundance. Hosted by Rachel Coons, a budgeting expert and mom of three, this podcast is your go-to resource for practical tips, mindset shifts, and empowering strategies to help you manage your money with confidence.
Whether you’re navigating grocery budgets, tackling debt, or dreaming of building wealth for your family, each episode offers bite-sized, actionable advice to make money management simple, stress-free, and even enjoyable. With relatable stories, expert insights, and a dose of mom-to-mom encouragement, you'll learn how to transform your finances—one small step at a time.
Tune in every week to discover how to save more, spend smarter, and feel empowered to create the financial life you deserve. Because when moms thrive financially, families flourish.
Money Mom Podcast
45: Create a Fulfilling Life By Rewiring Your Brain with Brad Bizjack
Can motherhood and success truly coexist, or are they fundamentally at odds? On this episode of the Money Mom Podcast, we sit down with Brad Bizjack, an expert in rewiring minds and breaking free from limiting beliefs, to challenge the narratives that hold mothers back. Brad reveals how deeply ingrained beliefs, often rooted in childhood, can diminish energy, stifle creativity, and disrupt family harmony. Together, we uncover the pivotal role a mother's mental well-being plays in nurturing not just a thriving household, but also a positive marital relationship and children's perspectives on love and attention. Don't miss this chance to liberate yourself from mental barriers and create a more joyful, balanced life.
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xoxo,
Rachel
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Welcome back to another episode of the Money Mom Podcast. I'm here today with a new friend of mine that actually just recently met, introduced and was introduced into his world and am just blown away by what he does, and so I really wanted to bring him onto the podcast to talk specifically to moms and some of the struggles that we have in motherhood. So, brad, say hello, introduce yourself, tell us what you do and how you're going to help us today on this episode.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Well. First of all, thank you so much for having me, Rachel. I'm super excited to add value to this group, and so there's one challenge we should talk about first, and that's the fact that I'm not a mom.
Speaker 1:Get the nail on the coffin. Okay, let's go. This is good.
Speaker 2:But my name is Brad. I really help people to rewire their mind, their limiting beliefs, toxic emotional patterns that get in the way of whatever they define as success. No matter what your goals are, whether that's being an incredible mom, an incredible entrepreneur, whether that's being a great spouse, whatever your objectives are, every single person on earth has beliefs or thoughts or feelings that are either serving them or preventing them from reaching that next level of success and fulfillment in those areas. And I help people really open the hood and take a look at what's the operating system of your mind and your heart right now. What's helping you, what's hurting you? And after doing this with 70,000 people, I've recognized a couple of patterns that's helped people to thrive and help people to, or made people stuck and overwhelmed for years and years and years. And I've recognized, especially in the parenting world. There's so much identity, there's so much guilt, there's so much perfection, shame, fear. That goes on, and I think this can add a tremendous amount of value to the parents listening.
Speaker 1:Yes, and like that's one of the things that I love about what you do, because I think as a mom, because I am a mom, you're a dad, but I'm a mom and that's something that I never really dove into was this idea that I had beliefs on my success and I didn't think that as a mom, I could be like successful, like that was not something that a mom does, right, we just kind of are going through the motions and we're just raising the children and trying to make everybody happy. We don't realize that our thoughts are creating our reality. And it wasn't until I got into this world of entrepreneurship, where I learned about limiting beliefs and I learned about the way that our thoughts process, and I wish I would have had that, not as an entrepreneur, just as a mom. So could you speak a little bit to that and like how this is really impactful for anybody? Just, I mean, even if you're just, I don't even want to say just, that's not right, but if you're a stay at home mom, how could this be helpful?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, well, I think a lot of times you you mentioned something in the beginning of this just about, like I didn't think I could be successful and a mom. But why are those two things different? Like, I think a lot of times people think that being a mom is like a secondary thing, it's like the most beautiful, incredible job in the freaking world, and I think there's so much pressure on us to for all of society to be something more or something like that.
Speaker 2:When we feel that we're not doing enough, that bleeds into every other area of our life. Right, If we think I'm not enough, I'm not successful enough, I'm not doing enough, I have to be perfect. Nothing's good enough, then think about what happens to your level of energy, your level of creativity, your level of excitement of each day. And then, when you're in a lower level of that, how do you show up with your kids? Do you show up from a place of super excited, creative presence, or are you focused on all the things that you didn't yet do? And so then think about the consequences of that. If you are consistently stressed and overwhelmed around your kids which is normal, and there's ways out of that and maybe you're not present. Well, think about when you were a kid.
Speaker 2:What might be some of the stories that an impressionable young child or any age child might come up with about what their mom believes about them, even though it's not true. What might be those stories that they come up with in their own mind Maybe my mom doesn't care, or my mom is too busy for me, or whatever it is and how does that impact the rest of their life? How does that impact the happiness in the household? In addition, how does that impact your marriage, your relationship? Are you present there? And so it's, and I fully believe that if things are not okay at home, they're not going to be okay in any other area, because how you do everything, how you do anything, is how you do everything, and so if you're feeling tons of stress here, it's going to impact other areas, and so it's one of the most important things to focus on. In addition, when this area is going well and you have beliefs that are serving you and you're no longer living in perfection or fear or doubt, and you're fully present, think about what that does.
Speaker 2:Think about the. When mom is happy, everyone is happy. When mom is not happy, nobody's having a good time, and so think about how it brings so much more joy and happiness to the household. I know, as a husband and a father, when my wife is having a harder time, I know that I feel like I'm failing in some way, I feel like I'm doing something wrong, and so, doing whatever my wife doing whatever she can to protect her own mental energy, to make sure she is being the best she can possibly be, it brings a happiness in every other area. So there's so much at stake with this, and it's generation after generation that gets to benefit or hurt from however we decide to live our lives. Okay, I'm sold.
Speaker 1:I'm in, I believe it, I believe that this is so important. So when you say that there are some of these limiting beliefs that moms tend to carry, can you speak to what those are? So, as a listener who's listening to this, maybe we don't know what we don't know, right. So can you call out some of the things that you see most often?
Speaker 2:Yeah, when some of the most the most common one that I see is I have to be perfect. Another one is I need to control everything. Another thing is I'm not doing enough. Another thing is I don't feel beautiful. Another is that I'm not appreciated enough. Those are some of the most common things that come up.
Speaker 2:And this is so important because if you think about the outcome you're looking for in, let's say, the parent area of your life parenting you probably want happy, fulfilled, loving, independent kids that grow up to be contributing members of society, right? Well, if you have any one of those beliefs, right, beliefs are invisible forces that run our entire life. So think about this All of life is run by invisible forces, right? If you think about gravity if you have too much gravity, you are crushed. If you have too little, you float away. Love is an invisible force. Wars have been started over love. But a belief is also an invisible force that runs our lives and it reinforces itself. So if you have a belief that says I have to be perfect or I'm not enough, it lowers the amount of potential that you tap into. Your creativity is much, much lower and especially as a mom, creativity is so incredibly important. And if that's lower, what level of action do you take? You take the same actions you've always taken. You do the same things rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. There becomes a boredom, and so what results end up happening in life? You don't have the control. You feel like it's everything's kind of out of whack, and what does that do with the limiting belief that you already had? It reinforces it. So a great way to think about this is and you talk about money a lot, rachel. So we'll use this example for a real-time example.
Speaker 2:If someone has a belief that says money is hard to make, right, let's just say that's what the belief is. Just to illustrate an example. And the potential they're tapping into is going to be well like. I don't think I have the confidence to change anything. This is exactly how it's going to be. So the actions that this person takes are the exact same actions. They go through the same exact spending habits. They don't change anything about their financial situation, so the results they get are the same exact dollars and cents in the bank account, and with the same dollars and cents in the bank account, what does that do to the limiting belief that money is hard to make, it reinforces it. So, whatever you believe, whatever you believe, compounds and compounds, and compounds.
Speaker 2:And then you activate the reticular activating system in your brain. Now, for those of you here that are not science nerds, have you ever bought a car? The minute you decide what type of car you want to buy, you see it everywhere Every parking lot, every stop sign, every street corner, everywhere, right, because why your reticular activating system is being used? You're filtering out everything else that you're not deeming important. So if you have a belief that's running your life that says I have to be perfect, well then your brain is going to look everywhere for things that are not perfect, and you're going to take that to mean that you're failing. Everything's going to feel like it's held together by a tiny little thread and it just feels like you're going to want to escape.
Speaker 2:And so what ends up happening and I see this all the time I have thousands of clients that are moms. What ends up happening is the moms that I work with want to go to Target and walk around, or they will want to take a bubble bath. I just need 20. You've seen that Bluey episode where the mom just needs 20 minutes, right, and so it's like I have a kid, I got a four-year-old, and it's like it becomes an escape instead of a recharge, and when life needs to be escaped instead of just intentionally recharging your batteries. That is a sign that our beliefs, our subconscious mind, is not serving us in the best way to be the best parent we can possibly be, or successful in any other area of our lives.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so powerful. Um, when you were talking about some of the beliefs that you know people have and this idea that what would a money like? I can't make enough money, or whatever, the big belief that I actually see is I'm not good with money, right.
Speaker 1:I can't control my money, I and, and that shows up in every area of their life. They they feel like they're not good with money, so then they're not good with money, and it's just like this cyclical pattern. But recently I was on a you were on a presentation in a meeting that I was in and you talked about how to bust limiting beliefs. So I think this is one of the most powerful things we can do with rewriting beliefs, and you've already pointed out some right this idea to be perfection, this idea that I'm not good at controlling money or how you show up with your spouse and those kinds of things. So if someone notices that they have this belief, walk us through the process of how to bust that belief.
Speaker 2:Ah, yes, great question, we're getting into the nitty gritty, now Brad. Well, the first step to any of it is identifying what the belief is. And if you're like, well, I don't have any limiting beliefs, well, that's a limiting belief, so start there.
Speaker 1:Every single person has limiting beliefs. Every single person.
Speaker 2:And out. Okay, every single person has limiting beliefs, every single person, and so I want you to think about, when no one else is around, what are the constant thoughts that play in your brain? Right? All this needs to be done. This needs to be checked off, and if it's not, therefore I right. If it's not done this way, therefore I am.
Speaker 2:What does it say about you? I'm a failure. I'm not controlling this, I'm not doing it well, I'm not good enough. And so if you ever have a fear or a worry in your life, and that worry consistently shows up, let's say that that worry came to fruition. What are you making that mean about you? That's one of the greatest ways to identify what some of your beliefs are. Therefore, I am not good enough. Therefore, I am a failure. That's number one. Another thing to think about is, like the big categories of life. Let's say how would you complete this sentence? Money is, and most people say, stressful or overwhelming. Those are some ways to identify beliefs, and I know you answered how you asked how do you break them? But if we're going to break them, we need to know what they are right.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So you can speak in terms of larger generalities, like money is, or success is, or parenting is, or marriage is, or if these fears come true.
Speaker 2:Therefore, I, and how you complete those sentences, will show you what you're currently believing about life, about those different areas.
Speaker 2:Now, what most people make the mistake of doing is they're not honest with themselves, and so they answer aspirationally because they're trying so hard to control their life or change their life that they aren't willing to be honest about what they're experiencing right now. And so what I would ask you is when you're dealing like we've all had the dark night of the soul, right when it feels like it's all going wrong all at the same time, and when you're in those fears or those states, what do you believe about yourself? Because if you're believing it, then chances are that's still operating in the subconscious mind all the time, even if it's just really, really quiet in the background. So once you identify what those beliefs are, I asked myself well, is there a belief behind that belief? Is there something that came from way, way, way back when? That is causing me to create this story and a great way to start to evaluate this, and this is going to get really deep, really quick, so brace yourself.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm here for it. Okay, let's go.
Speaker 2:Until this work is done, a lot of us don't recognize that our beliefs are controlled by people that aren't even us. So, for example, I used to have this belief that said money is so hard to make. Once you have it it disappears. And if you don't have a lot of it you can't be happy. And that would manifest in my life over and over and over again. I would be in the corporate world, I'd get a pay raise and the money would still disappear. There was always too much month at the end of the money and I didn't know why. And I started evaluating what my belief systems are and I wrote that down just kind of out of the blue, like money's hard to make. And I was like when did I decide that? When did I? I never signed on the dotted line that money was hard to make. And I had this epiphany, this aha moment. I go, holy crap, that's my dad's belief. Like my dad believed that. And when we come into this world we're a blank slate and the people that take care of us we trust and believe that they're doing like that. They are the end. All be all right.
Speaker 2:And don't get me wrong, the people that raised you probably doing the best they can with what they knew at the time, but they had beliefs and models of the world that were then projected onto you, and most people don't recognize that they are being controlled. Their entire life is being controlled by those people accidentally. So what I always ask clients is when you were a child, whose love did you crave? Mom or dad, not. Whose love did you get? Whose love did you crave? And when you can find who that person is, then you ask yourself the question who did I need to be in order to receive that love? Who did I need to be? And once you can identify who you needed to be to receive that love, you'll find one of the most strongly held limiting beliefs of your entire life. And then, in addition, if you ask yourself, who could I never be to receive that love, you will find again one of the strongest held beliefs of your entire life. And so most people don't recognize that they carry this all the way through into adulthood. They don't realize and recognize that there's these beliefs from when they were kids and they dealt with trauma or pain that are literally running how they parent their kids, how they run their life, how they deal with money, all of these things. And so what we need to do then is, once you identify what those are, we then need to break the belief, we need to shift it and focus on what can we do differently, how can we change this belief? And so there's actually a few ways to successfully change a belief, and I'll share those with you from a very high level. Number one the first way to change a belief. Let me actually ask you this first, as kind of a pre-frame to all of it To change a belief, the first thing that you need to do is introduce doubt.
Speaker 2:So my question for you is is the sky blue? And most people would say yes, the sky is blue, but is that true? Is it actually blue or is that just a story you've told yourself? Because if the sky was truly blue, then what would happen during a rainstorm? It wouldn't be gray or green. At nighttime, it wouldn't be black and full of stars. You could also have the scientific answer that it's not any color, it's just light being reflected, and so the sky is not actually blue, it's just a belief that we have created over time, and so we need to first recognize that.
Speaker 2:When you bring doubt to a belief. That is when it starts to shift. So I think of a belief like a tabletop that I eat dinner at every night with my family, and let's say that the belief is. Let's use money example again, just because it's measurable and easy to understand. Let's say that the belief is. Let's say that the belief is that money is hard. So, for example, when I was growing up, I saw my dad work a hundred hour weeks to barely get by, right, and so that was kind of a reference point of my past that showed me that money was hard to make. And then, in addition, I saw my mom talk about how people with money are greedy, and so that was another table leg. And then I would see that my college savings account was drained by people that I knew and trusted to pay for other expenses, and so all of that happened, all of that existed, and then, when all that happened like, that formed the belief. So if I'm to break a belief, I need to break the table legs right.
Speaker 2:And so I started asking myself is it actually true that money is hard to make? What's some other evidence in my life that that's not the case? Well, some other evidence in my life that's not the case is. Well, look at this guy over here. This guy over here seems to be doing really, really well, and he's not working all day, every day. Think about this If money were truly hard to make, if it took working harder to make money, then anybody that worked hard would have success.
Speaker 2:But that's not the case, and there are people out there that truly don't have to work hard all day, every day, that are making a lot of money right, and so it's really important to understand that when you create doubt behind a belief, when you create doubt behind a belief, that's when things really start to shift. So you take a sledgehammer to that table leg. The second one if I have that reference point that supports that money is hard to make, and it's mom saying that people with money are greedy. Well, is that actually true, that people with money are greedy, or is that just a story? My mom told me, because, if I take a look around at the people that I know that have money, they're the most generous, loving people that I've ever met, and so, all this being said, the first way to break that belief is to take a sledgehammer to each of those reference points supporting the table legs of that belief, and if you break enough of those table legs, the table will fall down.
Speaker 2:And that's the first way, and that one is helpful from a logical perspective, but logic typically doesn't solve an emotional problem. And so the second way to break a belief is through pain. And this is actually really interesting because we don't want to experience pain. Everything we do in life is driven by the need to either avoid pain or gain pleasure. Everything. And so, like showing up to do this podcast with Rachel, it was either to avoid pain or to gain pleasure. This was to gain pleasure because we're starting a great project.
Speaker 2:I'm not avoiding pain by this, but, anyways, everything we do is driven by the need to avoid pain or gain pleasure. What you wear today, if you're listening to this episode, and what we don't recognize is we can use pain and pleasure instead of pain and pleasure using us. And so if you've ever seen the movie A Christmas Carol, right Scrooge, he's a total butthead. And then one night, three neuro-associative conditioning specialists showed up at his house.
Speaker 1:The ghost, of Christmas past present and future.
Speaker 2:And what did they do? They linked up unbearable amounts of pain to the way that he was living in the past, the way that he's living now and what his life will look like if he doesn't change. He keeps living that way, and when you're closed in from the left, from the right, from the back, guess what you move. And so what I started doing is I started asking myself what is this belief costing me? Who is this hurting? And I started picturing my daughter and I. Really and this is really important If you're going to break a belief, you can't just do it from a oh yeah, you know, I let my family down.
Speaker 2:You need to do it from a place of leverage Leverage being like if you've ever seen like a furniture dolly, you can lift a whole refrigerator with barely any effort. Right, because a lever is something you can use to move a lot of weight with effort. So you need something that's actually going to cause you pain if you keep the belief. And so I, literally, if I didn't change this belief, I literally saw my daughter growing up, looking in the mirror and not loving what she sees, and that was so painful to me. I was like you know what. No more I am done. Forget that Right. And so, when we can create pain by asking how has this hurt me physically, financially, emotionally, spiritually? How is this hurting me now? What will my life look like in six months, two years, five years, 10 years? If I don't change, who will I let down? And we're honest with ourself about that, for keeping this belief we'll create enough leverage to change.
Speaker 2:That's the second way to break a belief and that's probably the most powerful. And the third way is through vision. That's the pleasure side, right? What is the ideal life you really want, with your family Painting a picture of that, and will this belief supporting me in getting there? So if you identify the belief and you go super deep by going all the way back to childhood and seeing who did I need to be to get that person's love, like we had talked about, and you identify those beliefs with the different questions of money is, or parenting is or, therefore I all that stuff and you start introducing doubt, pain and vision to this belief. That's like taking a sledgehammer to that tabletop of a belief that we talked about for a metaphor and breaking it. So hope that makes sense, my friend.
Speaker 1:Oh, that is so good. Yeah, and I guess that was my. That was like a follow-up question. That I was going to say is yeah, once you've broken down a belief, how do we rebuild with correct beliefs? So if someone breaks down this belief of like I can't control money, they realize that that's the limiting belief. They are trying to rewrite that. How do we bring in the correct belief?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. So think of it like a CD player in a car. Right, if you're playing a CD, what most people try to do is they just try to think positive. And thinking positive is one of the biggest wastes of time. And let me explain what I mean, because I'm a very positive person, like I used to teach people like to, just, you know, look on the bright side and things like that. But if you look on the bright side and there's a fire burning your house down, like that's not actually going, look on the bright side and there's a fire burning your house down, like that's not actually going to help you solve the problem. So most people go out to their garden and they go. There are no weeds here and they expect to manifest no weeds. That's not how it works. So optimism is looking at the challenge and actually bringing a beautiful approach to solving it.
Speaker 2:So the reason I'm sharing this is because when we have a limiting belief, a lot of people like think of a limiting belief. Like a CD that's playing, a lot of people will jam in another CD and just say believe this. Instead, what we just talked about is taking out the previous CD and scratching it so it can't play the same music, like if you ever been to Disneyland or Disney world and you go on the ride it's a small world, after all. You're hearing that all day, every day, for like the next week, and so a belief is like that. That's why we need to create doubt and pain and all that stuff to scratch it so it's not going to play the same song. But once that is out of us, there's an opening, an opportunity to put a new CD in, and most people never do that, and so they're habituated in their life. Most of their life is automatic. So they go back to the same spending patterns in this example, that then recreate the old belief because of neuro associations to those spending patterns, and so when that belief is taken out, we need to put a new belief back in, and so then we go to the vision and we say what would I need to believe, what would I need to feel certain about in order to create this life? Okay, that's what I need to believe. Awesome. What are the differences in behaviors that I would have every day if I truly believed that? But here's what's interesting, and this is really important if you're trying to change a belief.
Speaker 2:How many of you guys listening have ever done I guess, rhetorical question because you can't respond but have you ever done affirmations and your brain calls BS right? Like you say, I am worthy and your brain goes right. There's a reason why that is right. It's because the strongest force in the human personality is the need to stay consistent with who you already think you are, and so, like, your ego will fight like crazy to keep you in the same spot. And I recognize this because I would do these like affirmations, stating these beliefs out loud every day, and nothing changed.
Speaker 2:And then I started asking myself what's thinking? And I recognize that thinking is nothing more than the process of asking and answering questions all day. That's what it is. You're asking yourself questions, answering them. So I was like what if I turned this new belief into a question? Instead of I am worthy, what evidence do I have in my life already that I'm worthy? Instead of I'm doing enough it's. How can I recognize that I've done enough today? Instead of I have a great marriage it's. How can I find another way to fall in love with Janice all over again today, I would ask myself these questions.
Speaker 2:And what's interesting is your brain is a Google search engine, so it will answer whatever you type in. Most people answer why does this always happen to me? Or most people type in why am I so fat? And your brain goes. Because you're a pig, your brain will literally answer to whatever you're asking. But if you ask a question intelligently, the brain will respond differently. That's what thinking is and that's how you reprogram the mind to have a new belief system. And when I started this, I remember I would literally have these written out, these questions written out all over my house. I literally listened to these questions while I slept at night. So it was a whole process, but that's one of the ways to do it.
Speaker 1:I love the idea that I think I've always struggled with affirmations. For that very reason. It just felt like not, it doesn't work for me. But creating a question to it's like taking a train track. Like which train track do you want to go down? And you're taking a train track of like I'm going to prove that this belief is true by the reticular activating system and noticing what is in my life, so that way I can rewrite that. I love that. I've never heard that before and that is super powerful. So it's really awesome. I know you just. You're just full of so many good things.
Speaker 1:Brad, I feel like we could. I could probably ask you questions. You could probably coach me for hours on my own limiting beliefs, and that's that's something that I want to talk about before we wrap up this idea we talked about at the very beginning, but I want to kind of hit on it again at this perfection and how you see perfection show up in motherhood and kind of what are the, what are the ways to work through this, and you could take us on like a real life example, because you just laid out all of the tools, but then give us this like okay, tangible, someone struggles with perfection. How would you work through that?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, first we have to see how perfection tends to manifest. Right and perfection. One of my favorite quotes of all time is from Tony Robbins, and it's perfection is the lowest standard we can ever set for our lives, because it guarantees you'll be in pain. And there's three ways. Number one is you'll never start something new because you don't know how it's going to go. You're craving the certainty, right? So a good example of this would be like I really would love to spend two weeks in Italy with my family, right, but we never plan the trip because we don't know how we're going to be able to afford it. Right? Something like that. And that's a bigger example, right, but just something where we never even start playing the game because we don't have certainty about how it's going to go.
Speaker 2:Perfection is an overvaluation of certainty. The second way it guarantees pain is that you're trying not to fail instead of playing the game to win, right? So you're trying not to lose instead of trying to win. And so a good example of this is, instead of creating your own family values that you want to live by, you're just looking at all the other families that you don't want to be like and making sure that you're not like them. That would be an example.
Speaker 2:And the third way it guarantees pain is that nothing you do is ever going to feel like enough. You'll literally check all the boxes, live from to-do lists all day long. You will complete everything. You'll complete the laundry, the kids' homework, the lunches, all of it. You'll get to the end of the day and you'll just feel exhausted instead of proud. Nothing will feel like enough, and what follows perfection is always guilt, because and this, by the way, is called a crazy eight the human nervous system cannot take being in a sympathetic or fight or flight state for that long, and so what we do is we live in perfection of these incredibly, ridiculously impossible standards for our lives. All the kids need to listen, all of them need to behave perfectly, my spouse needs to appreciate me. All of this needs to get done. I need to make sure that I have at least an hour to myself every single day where no one touches me and no one gets in my way. Right, and all these impossible standards to live by. And we think that once those things are checked off, then I'll be happy.
Speaker 2:But so you're in this state of fight or flight, which is either going to be anxiety or anger. Anxiety is run from the threat, anger is attack the the threat. And when those two things are not allowing you to succeed, what ends up happening is you go into a dorsal state, which is depression, and you'll just fall down and do nothing right. And so what we end up doing we live in perfection and have all these checklists of things that need to happen, but the nervous system can't take that. So we'll go into a dorsal response, which is where you interrupt it with a limiting pattern. That might be Netflix binges, overeating going and spending a bunch of money that is financially irresponsible or whatever it is. There's this limiting pattern that gets you out of perfection.
Speaker 2:But what follows that when you get reactivated is an immense sense of guilt. And, by the way, mom, guilt comes up all the time in our communities. Well, let's define guilt. Guilt just means that you violated a personal standard. That's all guilt means. And so if your standard is, I have to be perfect or it's all going to fall apart, then you are always violating a personal standard, which means you're always feeling guilty, and it doesn't make any sense, right? So you're literally causing it yourself, and I say that with so much respect and so much love to all the moms in the room. I have so much love. I believe it's the hardest job in the freaking world, but there's all this guilt there that doesn't need to be there. When your standard becomes I'm going to really love my kids today and that's the standard, instead of I have to be the perfect mom, then all of a sudden guilt disappears because your standard is different. But when you live in guilt consistently, that's another sympathetic state. So what happens is you interrupt that pattern and then you go, oh my gosh, none of that got done, I'm so behind. And then you go right back into perfection and it goes perfection followed by guilt, followed by perfection, followed by guilt. And then, if we want to break that, we just go right back into the patterns that we talked about about doubt, pain and vision and you can start to shift that.
Speaker 2:But it has consequences and what I have seen in the thousands of moms that I've worked with is that and this is just any parent, like most parents, would do more for their kids than they ever would themselves. Right, they care so much and it's a beautiful thing because you want a better life for your kids, but most parents are so in the short term that they're not thinking about the true long-term consequences. Your kids do not listen to what you say. They listen to what you do, and if mom is having a really hard time, consistently, you could put on a face around your kids and pretend everything's fine. But they will know, they will feel it and it will start to form their little models of the world and that's going to change how they live their life. It's going to change how they get married. It's going to change everything. So if we will really do more for our kids than we ever will for ourselves, let's do it from a long-term perspective instead of a short-term perspective.
Speaker 2:How do I want to help my kids long-term? The best way to do that is to take care of myself first, and I see so many moms become martyrs. I'm doing all this for my kids, all this for my kids. I'm not getting any recognition doing all of it.
Speaker 2:But when you are, this is a cliche for a reason. When you are pouring from an empty cup, you're accidentally taking because you're giving a lower version of yourself to the people you love the most. That's what they're receiving and that's why it feels like it's not appreciated when you're pouring your heart and soul into them, but they don't feel it. It's because you're doing it from an empty place. And so, if you really want to take care of your kids long-term, you got to put yourself before your kids and, if I can just share a belief system of mine, you got to put your marriage before your kids, self taking care of you, your health, your vitality, your emotions. Marriage, then kids, because that's seeing a great marriage is the ultimate form of safety and confidence for kids. So, anyways, I can go on and on and maybe do a whole hour on that, but that is just such a important, crucial part of being a long-term focused parent and getting out of perfection.
Speaker 1:Love that and I talk about this on the podcast last week the episode last week about mom guilt, and you summed it up perfectly. But I do want to share my own personal experience that I've actually had with this. What you're just talking about in my marriage and I've shared a little bit on social media of, like Brad and I and going through marriage and having our own difficulties and one of the struggles that we had was me feeling appreciated and him feeling appreciated Like we. We were in this cycle of not feeling appreciated and it wasn't until I learned about my own needs and how I wasn't fixing my own nervous system and taking care of what I needed. Until we could completely break that cycle.
Speaker 1:It wasn't my children that were taking from me, it was myself. I was grinding myself into the ground and that was hindering our marriage. It wasn't until I was able to step back and say I'm going to take care of myself so that I can show up as the best partner. It changed everything and even Brad and I. Now we'll look at each other and be like do you remember how this felt last year and how it feels so different now Because we both feel so appreciated and so seen because we broke that cycle. So it is such a powerful, such a powerful tool.
Speaker 2:That's incredible. I could do a whole other hour on marriage. We'll have you back on.
Speaker 1:If you guys love this episode, if you love hearing from Brad, let me know and I'll bring it back on again. We can do another episode I need to have. I actually need to have you come into my the Money Mom Club and do a class.
Speaker 1:That's what we need to do, because I think we could talk a lot about. In fact, in March we're focusing all on money mindset, so maybe I'll bring you in and we can do like a money mindset call with limiting beliefs. That would be awesome. I would love that and I'm sure my members would love that as well. So, brad, this was so good, I got so much and I already know, like, what you do and I still got so much from it. So if someone's listening and they want to jump in more into your world, maybe, um, work more with you closely to fix these limited beliefs that they have, where could somebody go to find you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's, there's two places really. The first is the Graham jam Instagram um, just at Brad Bizjack, um. But uh, if you really want to start to identify and, uh, find what, how your mind's currently wired, right, if you want to go on a road trip, you need to know your starting point. Well, like I mentioned at the beginning, I've had the privilege of serving and training 70,000 people in our programs, and from doing that, I could be a total idiot at this stage and still recognize patterns, right. And so I've seen patterns of belief systems and I've recognized, really boiled down to five core patterns I call them archetypes, and these archetypes are your model of the world, your belief systems, how you are currently trying to create, your definition of success.
Speaker 2:And so I started to think about how can I put this together in a very easy, simple, digestible way for people to find out what is their archetype, what are they going through, how are they actually experiencing life and what their belief systems are, so they can know what to change for a better quality of life. And so I put together a totally free quiz. It takes 60 seconds, but it will help you start to see how your mind is currently wired and what would need to shift, and so I'll. Rachel, I'll get you the link to the show notes and all that stuff. I've taken your quiz. I know my archetype. Can you guess what my archetype is?
Speaker 1:I'm going to go with Hmm, you're stopping me. I'm going to go with ACPX. That's the X, that's the like. Achiever. Yep, ding, ding, ding, ding ding, you got it. But that quiz, that quiz was like I like answered a couple questions and then it, like you know, pulls up your results and then you explain the results and I'm like, oh my gosh, I didn't know he took the quiz, how did he know me? How did he know me so well? So yeah, go take the quiz, because brad will literally get into your brain and tell you all the things that he does, like voodoo magic, in that quiz.
Speaker 2:It means that you're good at what you do.
Speaker 1:Brad. That's all it means. It's good, it's a good sign. Thank you so much. We'll put his Instagram handle and that quiz and you have a podcast as well, right?
Speaker 2:Yep the Rewire your Mind podcast.
Speaker 1:Okay, so go binge his podcast. Let us know what you think um, and thank you so much, brad thank you for having me, my friend.
