Ep #41: Finding the Right Answer

I'm Mikki Gardner, and this is the Co-Parenting with Confidence podcast, episode number 41, Finding the Right Answer. [music] Welcome to Co-Parenting with Confidence, a podcast for those courageous moms out there who wanna move past the conflict and frustration of divorce and show up is the mom they truly wanna be. My name's Mikki Gardner. I'm a certified life and conscious parenting coach with my own personal dose of co-parenting experience. Throughout my co-parenting journey, I have learned to become confident in who I am as a woman and a mother. And I'm here to help you do the same. If you're ready to learn what it takes to become a great co-parent and an amazing example to your children, well get ready and let's dive into today's episode. [music] Welcome friend. And thank you for joining me. I really do know that especially in the summer, there's a gazillion and three things that you could be doing. And I am so grateful that you're here with me right now. And if you're new to the podcast, welcome, I'm so glad that you found us. Speaking of finding the podcast, I'm so grateful to each of you that rate and review the show. It is so important and helps me more than you know, because really when you rate and review a show that you love, it helps other women find that and get the support that they need. So if you haven't and you're enjoying this show, I would be so grateful if you would go over to Apple and rate and review the show. And I always like to give a little shout out to those of you who do, I'm really appreciative. There was a new review that I wanted to highlight, and the source is, 'Great source for divorce', who wrote, "Mikki's way of drawing out the jewels in her guest and bringing such a well-rounded range of co-parenting topics to the show makes this one of my favorite podcasts". Well, thank you. I really appreciate it. And I really appreciate your thoughts, your time and the five star review. So let me ask you something. How many times a day do you find yourself knowing what the right answer is and confused that no one else seems to understand it or listen to you? So frustrated that you know the right thing, but everyone is just ignoring you or challenging you, or maybe you're on the other end of the spectrum where you're feeling so lost, wishing someone would just tell you the right thing to do to make your ex stop being such a jerk, or maybe you're so exhausted with the overwhelm of how complicated and frankly, hopeless co-parenting can feel that all you wanna do is run away, hide and numb it out. Maybe the pain of the divorce, the weight of all of the changes, the history of all the arguments the sadness has just added up and you feel trapped and stuck. I understand how that feels. I understand when it just feels easier to wait around for someone to tell you what to do or just hide until you know, and honestly, so many of us do that. If you think about how we've been brought up, there's constantly someone or something telling us what to do, telling us what to buy so that we feel better, what to do or not do, right? There's always some other authority out there. And so, when we find ourselves under the weight of all of these things, it frankly just feels easier to wait for someone to just magically pop up and tell you the magical right thing to do, or to just hide and put your head under the covers until maybe the light bulb will go off. And honestly, this feeling is frankly reinforced because we're living in a 24/7 world where things just never stop. We're at such a fast pace. We have a 24 hour new cycle where everything changes overnight, moving and going and all just to keep us hooked and trying to keep up, basically. We've become so accustomed to this pace. And we're frankly, addicted to stress and anxiety and overwhelm. It releases chemicals in our body and we become addicted to them. It keeps us in a state of franticness looking outside of ourselves for the answers and living in doubt. And it's been set up this way, right? It keeps us hooked, whether it's consumerism, religion, government, sort of any of the authorities. Why? Because that's how control is maintained. As long as you need someone outside of you to answer the question, as long as there's a product that you can buy to make you happy, as long as someone else has the answer, we'll always be searching. But what's really happening is that in each and every moment, we have an opportunity to turn inward, to turn inward, to find the power and the answers that lie within us. All we have to do is be willing to hear them. It sounds simple, but it can be really hard. And what do I mean by this? Have you ever had a moment when you had like a deep inner knowing a deep resonance that you knew what was next, that you knew what you needed, right? That maybe you needed to go talk to that person or this person was put right in your path at exactly the right moment. And you just felt pulled towards them. Maybe it was your body directing you away from something. We have that innate sense as well. So whether you were being led to a wonderful place, a new relationship, something beautifully unexpected, or being really, like pushed away from something. Your body is telling you "Don't do this. Don't go there". These are all examples of how our body is a wealth of knowledge and wisdom. When we are quiet and tuned in enough to listen. When we are tuned in enough to access the answers that are within. And listen, our world is just going faster and faster and faster. And when we don't have this practice and this skill of slowing down, we don't know how to do it. It's something that we actually have to cultivate, that we have to learn and that we have practice. And first, it means becoming really intentional about stopping what isn't helping. What does that look like? It's stopping doing all the things that just keep us busy. It's stop numbing out to avoid the feelings that we don't wanna feel, hoping that they're gonna magically disappear after that six hour binge of Netflix or that fourth glass of wine or the millionth retelling of the injustice of your ex's recent antics to whomever will listen. I know all these things feel really good in the moment. But long term, they don't, and long term, there's no answers in them. They just keep us searching and keep us with messes to clean up. So really what I'm talking about today is the ability to start turning inward. And that's where I wanna keep our focus, to offer some simple ways to slow down, become more intentional now so that you can speed up later. I mean, frankly, we can keep going at a pace that's frantic, that's stressed, that's searching for answers and wait until we're forced to slow down, forced from burnout or fatigue or drama. We can ignore it, but the time will come when it has to be addressed, when we do slow down, it's just how much of a mess do we wanna leave behind us to clean up later? What I'm suggesting today is that we can take an intentional approach to slow down now, to slow down on purpose. It's kind of counterintuitive but slowing down is really grounding yourself in your power. It's setting you up to take huge leaps forward later. So you might be saying, "Okay, fine. Maybe in theory, this sounds okay, but how?" Well it truly is, like I said, a practice, a skill, a muscle that we build and we strengthen over time by using it. And it's really about touching base with yourself each and every day, so that you can tune in to how you're feeling and what you're needing with what is there, that's there to appreciate what's there that you might be needing to let go of. What's there that you can trust, especially when things are moving so fast, building the skill of turning inward makes a world of difference for your mental and emotional wellbeing. So I wanna walk through a few ideas and strategies in ways that you can start to build this muscle, this ability to turn inward and answer your own questions. And these are some of my favorite ways, that I've started to use. I'm gonna give you four of my favorite ways to really build a muscle of turning inward. Because the stronger this muscle gets, the quicker we can reach for it. The quicker we can reach for it, the more answers that we can solve and that we can answer for ourselves. So the first one, the first practice that I really love is whenever I'm inclined to look outside myself for reassurance or for answers, I really wanna just stop and try to answer it for myself first. Whenever I am feeling the need to pick up the phone to ask for help, to ask for reassurance, to figure out what I should do next, right? This might be retelling the story. This might be asking five different people, what's the next thing I should do. What's the next way that I should approach this? Instead of continuing to ask outside of ourselves, we really wanna turn inward and ask yourself for the reassurance and the answers. And we do this by pausing and asking, what am I needing to hear right now? And then getting quiet and just letting yourself answer it. Maybe you hear the voice inside you. Maybe it takes a minute. Whenever I do something like this, I'm basically writing to my intuition. I'm actually slowing myself down, turning inward and asking myself, what am I needing to hear right now? And then I get really quiet and wait, how do we know that it's our intuition? Well, here's how you know, there is a voice inside your head that is like a fire hydrant, spewing thoughts at you, 24/7. This is not you. This is the ego. The ego is all the thoughts that you have in your head. You or your intuition is your spirit. This is the true you. This is the one that witnesses all of those crazy thoughts. And so, what I like to do is just, if it feels like it's being spewed at me, like it's just open from a fire hydrant, I know that's the ego's voice. That's not the voice that I wanna listen to. Instead, what I'm listening for is a deep, quiet voice. That's the intuition. It's more like a well where you have to walk up to it. You have to lower the bucket. You have to, you know, let the bucket fill and then slowly bring it back up. And then you get to see it. So you can feel the difference between the two. One is spewing at you, 24/7, and one you have to approach and wait until the answers are revealed. That's your intuition. And that's the answer that you're looking for. So the second practice that I like is a daily non-negotiables practice. And what do I mean by this? This is really setting up a practice of things that you are gonna do each and every day, no matter what happens, no matter what craziness happens, you are going to do this each and every day. For me, I like to start my day with it because then I know that I did it. I like to start my day with it. And I know when we have little kids, it's often hard. It feels impossible, but I can get up 10 minutes before anybody else. Or I had a friend of mine who said that she had quiet time in the morning living room time, she called it, where she had coffee in the living room. And she journaled and her kids were not allowed in there. And they just knew. They would watch a cartoon or they would be coloring and they'd be doing something else, but she just created this space and it was a non-negotiable. And I think she should probably come on and tell us how she did this, but it's possible. And so what we wanna do is set up a time and it doesn't have to be an hour, two hours. It can be five, 10, 20 minutes where you're choosing how you are going to start your day intentionally, whether that's prayer, whether that's stillness, whether that's meditation, whether that's movement or yoga of some kind, but whatever feels really fulfilling and enriching for you, you wanna start your day there. For me, it's meditation, it's 20 minutes of meditation and then about a quart of water. And if I do those two things, I'm pretty good. I know I've started my day with a lot of water and I've meditated. So that's what I mean by having a daily non-negotiables. This is really, really important, because when we sit down in prayer or stillness and meditation, we are turning inward. The third practice for those of you that love to write is journaling. And typically, like in the morning, journaling is part of my morning practice. And for many people I know it is, but what I'm talking about here is whenever we find ourselves with a problem, trying to solve a problem, we typically would be asking for help or anything else. What I like to do is what we call a thought download, take a blank sheet of paper, set a timer for five or 10 minutes. And all you do is write down every single thing that comes into your head. We get it out of our head and onto the paper. We don't judge it, we don't critique it. We're not looking to examine it. We just are wanting to get it out of our head and onto the paper. And what this does is two fold. One, it helps us create space in our brain because our brain just wants to be heard. So we're actually getting it out. But then we see it right in front of us. We can see all the silly, crazy things that are going on in our heads. And then we get to choose. Which one do I wanna believe? Thoughts are not facts. Thoughts are just random sentences in our brain. It's our choice whether we wanna believe any of them or not. So when we see them on paper, it's a lot easier to separate sort of the facts from the fiction and decide what really is a problem and what isn't. The second thing that this does is it actually is teaching you when you sit down and do that instead of just blanketly reacting or reaching out for external help, it's actually teaching you to take a breath, to step back and to turn inward. We're able to create some space to start to solve the problems on our own, instead of that habitual, just reacting, going outside of ourselves for the answers. Another thing that I really love to do is creating mindful moments. And this might sound silly, but this is definitely something that helps you build the practice and the muscle of turning inward. You know, frankly, the past doesn't exist. It only exists in our head and the future doesn't exist. It's just something that we're projecting. The only thing that actually exists is this moment. And so when we're able to tune into what is happening in this moment, often, even in the most chaotic of times, 99% of the time, you know, if you're listening to this, I'm making an assumption that you're safe, that you are sort of have your needs met, basic needs met. If you're listening to this, I assume you have a computer or a phone, you have the time and the space to do that. So we're making some assumptions that our basic needs are being met. So in this very moment, when I'm sitting here, I'm safe, I'm okay. Unless there is imminent danger around me, in which case get up and go run, right? No. When we are able to create these mindful moments, we're able to build the muscle of teaching ourselves of calming ourselves, regulating our emotions, being able to regulate our actual physical body to bring ourselves down so that when things... And why do we wanna be able to do this? Because then when times are stressful, when people are coming at us, when things are chaotic, we have this muscle that we can kind of build, take a breath and calm ourselves, actually deregulate our nervous system. And one of the things that we can do is these mindful moments. And so it might be something as simple as... I try to do it each morning with my cup of coffee, I do love my morning coffee. I like sitting and watching it being made. I put the little pot in, I watch it come out. I like seeing the little froth that it makes on the top. I love holding the cup in my hands and feeling the warmth. And I love that first sip. Ugh, it's like the best. But actually, instead of rushing through it, spending some time really enjoying it, being present for it, being intentional about it, we can do the same thing with washing dishes. Feeling the warmth of the water, seeing the bubbles, feeling them. It might sound ridiculous. But what we're actually doing is teaching ourself to tune in, to slow down, to be present in the moment. This is hugely powerful, because in a world that is constantly running and cycling around you and constantly trying to pull you, the more grounded you're able to become, the more powerful you are, Because you can access your own wisdom, your own piece. You can deregulate yourself, you can answer your own questions. This is really powerful stuff. So the last little tip that I wanna offer, and this is actually from Amber Ray, she has a book. The answers are within that I really love, it's sort of a book of journal prompts, but she offers a daily check-in and I think it's really powerful. But what she's asking is that we just take five minutes a day, whether it's in the morning at any time, you know, during the day that you wanna just take five minutes and answer a few questions to just check in with yourself. So there are journal prompts for you to finish and you answer each one and it only takes three to five minutes, but it's... I feel I need, I forgive, I celebrate, I release, I trust. And if we just take five minutes to sit down and to complete those sentences, it's a really beautiful way to check in with yourself, to turn inward, to just have a little bit of a touch base, to see how you're feeling. Frankly, we all need to remember that when we pour into ourselves, we actually can pour into others. You can't pour from an empty cup. So the more you fill yourself up and are overflowing, then you naturally are available for other people in a more intentional, abundant way. But the only way that we can do that is when we're really tuned into what we need and giving ourselves that, tuned into our body. Because feelings in our body are directive. Most of the time, we just wanna ignore our feelings, get away from them, 'cause maybe we don't like them. Maybe they feel too intense, but feelings are directive. All they are is sending messages of things that you need or things that need to be addressed. And so when we can start to tune in and be able to feel our feelings and see them as directive, place where we need to head, where we need to sort of let go of. And when we can start asking ourselves these questions and tuning inward, it really puts us in such a pace of power, of influence, of change. And some of the byproducts that I've seen from slowing down and accessing your intuition and the answers within, I've seen it in myself and I've seen it in my clients over and over and over, is you build confidence. What is confidence? I think it's just knowing that you're gonna figure it out. [chuckle] You might not know the answer, but you're gonna figure it out. And that confidence comes from being able to turn inward. It also comes from self trust, which is a byproduct of this slowing down and turning inward self-trust is just showing up no matter what. And you know that you have your back no matter what happens. That's part of that sort of morning routine that I talked about of having an intentional start to your day. That has been one of the most powerful things that I know that I have witnessed is that just trusting, just showing up each and every day, even in that small space of the morning, creates so much trust for showing up in other areas. The other byproduct that I've noticed is a real sense of groundedness, being rooted, being so rooted in the ground that nothing can shake you. I talk to my clients all the time about wanting, the imagery that we use is being a giant Oak tree. A giant Oak tree is beautiful and tall and strong and offer shelter from the storm. Our children can sit underneath it and they're safe and they're protected. But that tree is, has roots that are so deep in the ground that nothing is gonna shake it. No chaos, no storm that's brewing outside can move it. And that is how we wanna be. And to be that we have to be so tuned in. So turned inward so grounded that nothing can shake you. The other bright product to this slowing down and accessing our intuition is we actually find a miraculous answers. [chuckle] You hold each and every answer and you have everything you need inside of you. It was already placed there for your fullest evolution. And so when we're able to really sort of access our intuition, answer the questions within not looking outside, but looking inward to the divine part of us, This is where all the magic happens. And I know that some of this might sound like just one more thing to do on your to-do list. You're like "I don't have five minutes to sit down", and I understand, I understand feeling that way, but it actually is in the slowing down that propels you forward later. It's the slowing down now that makes you, that allows you to speed up later, that creates such a huge transformation in your life. If you don't like the current situation, if you don't like the state of your current co-parenting relationship or other relationships, if you don't like how you're feeling on a daily basis, if you're not happy with the way that you're showing up as a mom, you cannot continue to think the same things, feel the same way and do the same things, and expect to feel differently. It just doesn't work that way. Slowing down can feel very scary. And I understand that, but I also am willing to bet that there is a part of you while you're listening to this, that is resonating. That kind of has had a deep exhale, like, "Oh yes, that's what I need". That's your intuition. And it's "Are we willing to listen?" I mean, why not try? Why not just try it for five, 10 days? Just having a couple moments to yourself. The only thing you have to lose is the deafening noise. All of the voices telling you that you're not doing it right, or you're not enough. And there's your intuition who will always be waiting for you to listen, who will never steer you astray. And who always knows that you are enough and worthy and complete exactly as you are. I know this to be true, each and every one of us is a masterpiece because we are a piece of the master. We are all cut from the same cloth, the same energy. And when you boil us down and you pull off the meat suit that we're wearing, these bodies, we're all energy. We all come from that same energy. And it's that energy that is healing. It is that energy that's love. It's that energy that's goodness. And that's the energy that we wanna tap into and listen to because it always will have the right answer, but we do have to be quiet and turned inward to be able to access it. If you want tools and strategies to help you turn inward, to feel more confident in life and in co-parenting, or you're just interested in finding out about any of the upcoming workshops or ways to work with me. I want you to go to my website and sign up for the 'Three Myths of Parenting After Divorce', so that you're on my mailing list and you don't miss any of the fun stuff coming up. It's www.mikkigardner.com. And that's Mikki, M as in Mary, I-K-K-I-G-A-R-D-N-E-R.com. And you can click on The Three Myths and sign up, and that way you'll always be in the know. I really appreciate you spending this time with me. I'll see you next week. And in the meantime, take really, really good care of you. Thanks for listening to co-parenting with confidence. If you want more information or resources from this podcast, visit co-parentingwithconfidence.com. I'll see you next week. [music]