Hey mama. Welcome to the Inside Out Mamas podcast. I'm Brittany Turley, mom of six, and I know what it's like to feel stuck and overwhelmed trying to be the perfect mom, but everything changed for me when I learned that small changes on the inside can bring big results on the outside. Each week I will share simple, yet powerful inside shifts or outside tips that can transform your approach to mothering, helping you thrive from the inside out. Ready to ditch the mom guilt and enjoy this season of life. You are in the right place.

I am back, and as you can tell, we've had another bout of sickness here at our house and last week my voice sounded too terrible to even try to record anything for the entire week. I know I don't sound great now, so I'll try and keep this one shorter. But let me give a a hypothetical example to start us off, let's say. That your family has been sick for months on end and never have you had a break from the sickness, and you are just finishing up being sick, starting to finally feel better, and all of your kids start feeling ill again. Many of them have come to you throughout the day and said, my throat hurts, or my nose is getting stuffy, or I don't feel good. So you decide that everyone is going to go to bed one hour before their bedtime tonight because all of your other attempts to get people to bed on time are early, have not worked. So we're gonna go for one hour and see if we can get everyone a good night's sleep and finally be over sickness and. Getting them to bed an hour before bedtime. Mostly works, except that three of them come out multiple times and two of'em you find playing around in their room an hour and a half after they were supposedly going to bed. And one of them ends up going to bed an hour after their bedtime and you're really feeling frustrated and your thoughts might go to, my kids are frustrating me. So yes, this hypothetical example is what we experienced here at our house, and I was feeling very frustrated. On top of being still sick and a little bit delusional myself, I was quite frustrated. I can't remember if I said out loud to my kids, you're frustrating me, but I definitely thought it. Now sentences like this, like my kids are frustrating me, or my kids are making me so upset, or My kids are making me lose my temper. Give our kids. All of the power, and they're actually false statements. Our kids do not have the power to do those things to us. Now, when I first heard this concept, I was super skeptical. I thought, um, yeah, they can frustrate me. They, they frustrate me often. It's very easy actually. But then the more I learned about it and the more thought I put into it, my mind was blown because this is just kind of a part of the way we. We tend to speak, we give other people the power for how we're feeling, but the reality is, is my kids were not the ones frustrating me. It was my thoughts about what they were doing that was frustrating me. We know this because my kids could have done all the things that they did, and if I was never the wiser of it. I wouldn't have been frustrated. They could have come out, they could have gone back to bed. They could have been playing in their rooms, and if I had never known about it. I wouldn't have been frustrated at all, but because I knew about it, then my brain starts having thoughts, thoughts like, great, now they will all be sick, or, my kids never do what I ask, or Now we will never get better. Those were some of the thoughts that I was definitely thinking. And those are very frustrating thoughts. Almost all of them have a never in them or ever, when logically I know it's not true. If they do these things, maybe they will get sick and. Maybe we won't ever get better, but probably not. It's seeming like that right now because we just haven't gotten better and it's been over two months. But I know that spring is coming and we haven't had a year yet where we've been sick all year and we have had some good sick winter. So I know that we will get better eventually. So it was my thoughts that were creating my feelings of frustration. Another mom could have been in the same situation and not find it frustrating at all. In fact, they might find it comical. If I came into this situation and I was a mom, but those weren't my kids, it probably would've been a little bit funny. It probably wouldn't have been a little bit like, wow, this is entertaining. Yeah, because they weren't having the thoughts of, great, now we'll all be sick. Now my kids, well, you know, will never get better. And my kids are just never doing what I asked them to do. Their thoughts were, well, this is actually kind of funny. So it's our own thoughts that cause our feelings. And while this can seem like a little bit. Hard at first for us to wrap our minds around. It's actually amazing news because it means that our kids do not have the power to make us feel a certain way. It means only we have that power no matter what our kids are doing. We can choose which thoughts we're having or we can at least know it's not my kids. It's my thoughts that are causing me to feel this way. Only we have the power to make ourselves feel a certain way. Now because I believe small changes on the inside bring big results on the outside. Each week I'm going to give you a small change challenge, something small you can do throughout the week if you choose, that could end up bringing big results to your life. So the small change challenge for this week is just awareness. I want you to just notice. Anytime that you are thinking or saying things where you are giving your power away to your kids, because just becoming aware of this opens up our minds to taking back the power. Remember, small changes on the inside, bring big results on the outside. Thank you for joining me for another episode of Inside Out Mamas. My hope is that our time together inspires more feelings of peace, confidence, and joy in your mama journey. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss a show. And if you're ready to take these insights even deeper, head over to brittany turley coaching.com to check out my digital workshop. Designed to help you reduce daily mom overwhelm without adding to your to-do list. Thanks for listening. And remember, small changes on the inside, bring big results on the outside.