Navigating Parenthood and Personal Healing: Line of Sight

 In this episode of Leading Victory, host Amanda Nicole reflects on the emotional transition of her daughter turning 13 and the broader implications of parenting. She delves into the importance of understanding our habits of thinking, especially how they influence our children. Amanda discusses the significance of integrity, learning from past mistakes, and choosing courage over comfort in our lives. She shares insights gained from personal experiences and references to Brene Brown's work on vulnerability and trust. Amanda encourages listeners to invest in self-awareness, embrace new challenges, and prioritize integrity for the sake of future generations. 

To watch Brene Browns Anatomy of Trust Video --> Click Here <--

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Transcript

Amanda: 0:06

You're listening to leading victory, a podcast where we ask what makes you come alive and infuse you with the inspiration and courage to take action, living your victories, both big and small I'm your host, Amanda Nicole. Let's jump in and enjoy the show. Happy Monday to you. Welcome back team. What a unique weekend. My oldest daughter turned 13 yesterday and on Friday heading into the weekend, it just hit me. There's no other age that has hit me. I was a single mom for the majority of her life. A lot of parents, when they drop their kids off at kindergarten, they'll get pretty emotional about it or transition into middle school, emotional about it. None of those things hit me the way that 13 did. And maybe it's because she's officially a teenager. And I think back on my teenage years, and I certainly was not as emotionally intelligent as she is, what hit me wasn't just That she was becoming a teenager, which she had hoped to be for so long. What hit me was that I've really only got her in my house. A chance to really feed into her for another five years before she's considered an adult and leaves the nest and that the majority of my parenting is over, right? I've done the majority of my parenting for her up to this point. I'm so proud of who she is. And isn't that what we want for our children. We want them to. Look at the world and be kind and confident and courageous bold and willing to embrace obstacles and do hard things. For us, I desire her to have hope and faith, because there are things that happen in the world that are just bigger than us that my goodness, I would not have gotten through my whole story without having faith. So I think back on the emotion of the weekend and the fun that we had I am so excited to be, a mom and to be a mom again. It struck me that as parents. It's not the easiest thing. If we think about our own habits of thinking, those are the things when we, if we don't take hold of them, or if we don't explore them, if we don't understand the ways that we talk to ourself and how it influences our actions. Then it's possible for us to create an influence over our children that will impact their lifelong habits of thinking. I realized very early on in my daughter's life. That she didn't necessarily belong to me. I am a steward of her. I am a steward of her. I'm borrowing her from her maker and I am here to help guide her to what she's made to do. But I can only do that if I embrace and walk in what I believe that I'm made to do. When your main goal, your main aspiration, your main life giving purpose, your main joy the be all end all we'll say is motherhood, not the fact that motherhood gives you joy, but that your only thriving purpose is being a mother. If, and when that transitions for you or is taken from you or changes it can cause some upheaval in identity. I think it's so important to examine what it is that makes us come alive. And we begin to implement those things. in our unique ways. If it is mothering, that gives you joy, being a mom to your children, what are the elements aspects of that, that seem natural and easy and fun for you. And in what ways does that help you feel like you come alive? I love being a mom, maybe even more than I thought I would. It is something that comes pretty naturally for me because I really enjoy my humans. I enjoy my tiny human and my teenage human they're a lot of fun. What is even more humbling is to see and think they came from me. Maybe I'm just in baby awe about this because my youngest is six months but they came from me. They're a part of me. If that doesn't both terrify and inspire us to get to the heart of what has created some damage in our lives I don't know what will, right? My oldest was my big motivator and moving forward and healing. I wanted to heal so that she could be the best version of her. And it meant learning from My past mistakes I want to talk about this idea of past mistakes and learning from them. What is so interesting about learning from mistakes is I am a stubborn learner. We're going to put it that way because it sounds more positive than I have repeated many mistakes. I am a stubborn learner. And I think that this is something in me that some people would call an independent streak. And I don't know if you are an independent person as well, or if you struggle to ask for help, and maybe that's what you call independence. But sometimes We also know how to ask for help, but we don't know how to implement or receive it. So stubborn learner. Let's, dive in on a vulnerable level here, because if we're going to talk about learning from our mistakes and learning how to shift our habits of thinking is they come to our mistakes, then that means I to, I get to share some stories with you. I think it's beautiful that I was raised to be fiercely independent but it also meant that in many ways, if I asked for help, I was encouraged to figure it out myself. That's not, there's nothing wrong in that, right? It's a you go do it versus a let's do it together type of mentality. As a child, the story I told myself was that asking for help was an inconvenience. asking for help or trying to have conversation would mean that I'd be trying to figure it out on my own anyway. I learned at a young age that asking for help meant. ultimately figuring it out on your own. And there's something that I talk about with my clients and habits of thinking when it comes to the way they think about themselves and how they interact with the greater whole. We'll call that systemic thinking, the kind of all or nothing black or white type of thinking. One of the things that we know is the. greatest source of disappointment in life is unmet expectations. The greatest source of disappointment in life is unmet expectations. But what happens when the expectations That we have are actually core needs. What I'm talking about when I mentioned core needs is we all have a human need to be known, seen, and loved in a way that is Vulnerable and real and raw. this is the kind of work that Brene Brown talks about. She's a shame researcher. Amazing. If you haven't checked out Brene Brown's work, I highly recommend it. I am not naive enough to think that some of my listeners have been taught that to have core needs, to have a need to be known, seen, and loved. Is somehow irrelevant, wrong, inconvenient, if you have been taught somehow that having a core need to be known, seen, or loved falls in the realm of something that inconveniences others. I want you to know that I'm sorry. That was something you were taught. And I want to encourage you that unlearning that is worth it. It's worth it. I was on a client call this week, and I asked this client, if I talk to you the way your habits of thinking talk to you, would we still be friends? And they said, no, probably not. One of the areas. As humans, as parents, as future parents, as grandparents, wherever you fall in the mix of things, we can learn or relearn or unlearn is how we talk to ourselves and coming from last week, how we see ourselves, what is going to make that road worth it for you? Our brains protect us to be incredibly comfortable. to get uncomfortable, it's really got to be worth it. The pain of going through the healing process needs to be greater than the pain of staying in discomfort. It's pretty incredible. Our bodies and our brains adapt. Very quickly to stress and stressful situations when that stress becomes the norm. It can shift the chemistry in our bodies. It can shift our dopamine levels, serotonin levels, our cortisol, if you don't know what those are, I'm just going to say it shifts all the things that help you feel healthy, happy, and joyful. It shifts all the things that keep you from depression, keep you from ADHD, keep you from anxiety. And yet, we can endure long term stress very well. In fact, we do it every single day. Every single day, you are under a degree of stress. Our coping mechanisms also reflect our habits of thinking. What do we believe we're worth? Do we believe we're worth investing in therapy? Do we believe that we're in worth investing in a coach? A gym membership or a new pair of running shoes? Or do you even believe that we're worth investing in margin? What allows you to even believe that you're worth investing time into? To give yourself enough margin, downtime, to transition from point A to point B. It's absolutely incredible. I would say the gift of margin. Especially when we are constantly running and busy, busy, busy. And that is the token. I would encourage you to take even 90 seconds a day to just breathe and see what that does in your nervous system. 90 seconds a day to slow down and be with yourself. it is an acquired taste to spend time with yourself. when we choose to take on the challenge of mastering our habits of thinking that drive behavior, spending time with yourself will be key because there can be a lot of stories that pop up in our head when we start to slow down and we spend time with ourselves and we begin to hear ourselves and see ourselves. I want to loop back to this idea of what Brene Brown says about, the anatomy of trust. The anatomy of trust, when somebody says to you, I don't trust you, or you've broken my trust. That's really hard to gauge because a lot of people have a different definition of what trust is. And so Brene Brown and the anatomy of trust breaks down trust in an acronym called braving. And each one of those defines an element of trust that somebody can break or cross a line in. And it allows for, as she describes, kind of the rumble that goes on. It can be used as a rumble tool, a conversation guide. And braving stands for boundaries, reliability, accountability, vault, integrity, nonjudgment, and generosity. And the one I want to talk about today when it comes to learning from our past and being willing to shift, not just for our future, but for the investment of our children's futures, habits of thinking, we get to deal with our own integrity. And choosing courage over comfort. Choosing what's right over what's fun, fast and easy and practicing your values, not just professing them. Choosing courage over comfort. Choosing what's right over what's fun, fast and easy and practicing your values, not just professing them. What does it take to really choose courage over comfort? Remember, our brains are hardwired to keep us comfortable, to keep us safe, to not really help us to have that courage, right? Anytime that you attempt something new, you want to make sure you're giving yourself enough time for it to integrate. So that your brain can begin to make that shift of, Oh, this is new. I don't have to freak out. I don't have to go back to my comfort zone. I can feel. scared, but I'm not being chased by a saber tooth tiger, right? I can feel scared in the sense of whenever you try something new, there's so much chemistry that goes on in your brain. And this can be a new way of talking to yourself, a new way of learning a new way of showing up in the morning. My best encouragement to you when you are choosing courage over comfort is to take it slow. Last week, Amy talked about that. She talked about this idea of going slow with our transitions, making sure that we don't rush that for ourselves, because oftentimes when we rush something, if we go too fast, we can miss something and the likelihood of needing to repeat that lesson is high. I went through a very long season. of choosing just enough courage to hop to the next level. I wouldn't say that I chose enough courage to totally move away from comfort but I did take baby steps forward. Again, this idea of our biggest disappointments in life are unmet expectations. And one of the things that I know about habits of thinking that was a big aha for me was when we become impatient with how long something's going to take, it can really rob us of the joy of experiencing that growth and that journey. And so you have this. Interesting dynamic of on one hand, how do we muster enough courage to jostle ourselves out of comfort and manage our expectations enough to keep going so that we're not disappointed by not getting there faster. And I would say, It's about slowing down and really learning to celebrate every little part of the journey. I have a semicolon tattoo that's shaped like a wave on my forearm with the wording, love the journey, It took me a long time to fall in love with my journey, somehow the journey and my journey. I wasn't equating the same hugely optimistic person, always looking for silver lining, looking for God's hand and things and those, the miracles and kingdom work and all of that. And yet it took me some time to love my journey. maybe that's because I was guilty of wanting things to go at a faster pace than they were. that can create some, disappointment around unmet expectations. Oftentimes those were the expectations of myself, right? So choosing courage over comfort, choosing what's right over what's fun, fast and easy and practicing your values, not just professing them. There's a word that stands out here that says choosing what's right. I wouldn't say that fun, fast, and easy is wrong However, what's fun, fast, or easy is often what's comfortable. What's fun, fast, and easy doesn't always require courage. What's fun, fast, and easy may push us outside of what we profess to be our values. What's fun, fast, and easy may not take you across the finish line. And what's fun, fast, and easy may be the thing that's keeping you in disappointment around unmet expectations. Isn't it fun when you go to do something that feels really scary and you get to the other side of it and think. Oh my goodness. I just did that. Right. Can you recall a time for yourself that you did something hard? You did the hard thing when you got to the other side and what you found by going through that season of life with courage, one step at a time, building one millimeter at a day, you were choosing courage over comfort. You were practicing your values, not just professing them. You were standing in integrity, which allows for you to trust yourself. And I imagine that there was some self talk that goes on in that timeframe. I think there's something that shifts in our self talk when we're doing the hard thing, when we're choosing courage over comfort. Comfort is like Linus's blanket at times. It's good. It's cozy, but sometimes it stinks, and we know it stinks. And courage takes heart. It's really scary to put down our blanket that gives us comfort and expose our heart, isn't it? When it comes to our heart, we don't choose what's fun, fast, or easy, or when we choose what's fun, fast, or easy, we are bound to get hurt. That's one piece of integrity. By standing in integrity for your own life, by being willing to push through and learn from our past mistakes, learn from those around us. Learn from our past in ways that didn't serve us as well as the ways that did. I believe that we. Begin down this road of generating integrity that can be built upon that somehow we have a line of sight to a destination we know that each step we lay down, those that follow in our footsteps, as we lead the way to victory in our own lives out of victimhood, that that is a road of integrity. I really want to encourage you to think about taking that road. If not for your sake, then for the sake of our future generation and for your children, you deserve something that has valid integrity in the same way that when you buy a car, you wouldn't want to buy one that falls apart because that doesn't have integrity, right? That's might be comfortable, but if it falls apart, then it's not really safe in the same way. Choose integrity over your life. Over your thoughts, allow yourself to choose courage over comfort. Allow yourself to move in that vulnerability and lay down steps of integrity by choosing what is alignment with your values versus what's fun, fast and easy. So as you go into this week, my challenge to you is to look at the areas of your life that feel unstable, the areas that feel like they're about to crack, or maybe they already have a crack in them and you're on thin ice in that area. How can you examine the integrity of that area of your life? How have you been choosing what's fun, fast, or easy in that area of your life? what is it that you truly desire that area of your life to look like so that it has integrity for you to move forward in? And what are you willing to let go of? What's the comfort blankie, the stinky one that has been keeping you back from building the integrity under that area of your life? I see it as like a bridge, And that bridge carries you. Right now, crossing that bridge feels like shame. Feels like judgment. It feels like at any moment it's going to crack. And it's all going to come crumbling down. The only way to get across that bridge is by going in, doing the work, and reinforcing the structure of that bridge, of that area of your life. And if it is so demolished, it means that the whole thing comes down and be willing to start over, be willing to rebuild, be willing to know that you're worth the work. It's not just about doing the work. I hope you know that it's not always just about doing the work. You can do the work and not reinforce the structure of areas that are dicey in your life. Believe that you are worth that work and expect resistance to pop up. Because you're testing new areas of your brain and you're creating new pathways and you're thinking and your brain is going to freak out because you're taking away its blankie. But I'm telling you, there's gold on the other side of that structure. There's gold on the other side of that integrity across the bridge that you've called shame. Once it's reinforced, it's called freedom. Because if you took away shame from this area of your life that feels so unstable, what would be on the other side of it? Who would you be on the other side of it? And if you're really honest with yourself. what prevents you from crossing that bridge or doing the work to get the stability to choose courage over comfort and move away from what you're used to, to lay the foundation of integrity for yourself and your future and your future children or lives that you invest in. I imagine this might have brought up some thoughts for you. And I want to encourage you to reach out to me, send me a message if what you've heard today is hitting home. Because the one thing that I know about myself is that if I hit a deep topic, I don't want you to feel like you're floundering. I want you to feel like you can connect and not be alone with those habits of thinking. If something that I've said today is rattling you, please shoot me a message let's chat you deserve to be known, seen, and loved. And I hope that you rattle your brain this week by doing something new. I hope that you see that you're worth creating margin and that you give yourself even 90 seconds to breathe and slow down and see what comes up for you. I hope you go out, have fun, laugh, enjoy the day lead this day in victory, capturing what makes you come alive have a great day.