Ep #38: How We Change the World

I'm Mikki Gardner, and this is the Co-parenting with Confidence podcast, episode number 38, How We Change the World. [music] Welcome to Co-parenting with Confidence, a podcast for those cores moms out there who wanna move past the conflict and frustration of divorce and show up as 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. Welcome friend, thank you for being here with me today. I know there are so many great podcasts that you have available to listen to, and I am truly so grateful that you're here with me. I know that if you're listening to this podcast, there's a few things that I think I know about you, you're a loving and devoted mom to your kids, you desperately want to create a better life for you and your kids. You want to be a good mom, a great co-parent, woman and human, and you wanna raise kids who are gonna help make this world a better place. I don't know if you can relate, but lately, if you've been watching the news, scrolling on social media, it's hard not to get really down and become very depressed, the tragic loss of our children in schools due to gun violence is staggering, the racism and homophobia is downright terrifying, the threat to our basic human rights of autonomy over our bodies is in jeopardy, I'm not even gonna go into all the fake news and the fear-mongering around other current events. It's all just too much. For me I know I've really been struggling with this lately, grappling with how to talk to my kids about it all, how to stay aligned with what's important to me, even when I feel threatened, how to show up and keep doing the work, when I just feel so defeated. So today, I wanted to share some thoughts with you that I've just been thinking about and kinda get this off my chest. I know I've been talking with friends and supporting my clients with it, but I'm guessing if we're talking about it, it's hitting home for you too. You know, and it's totally normal to feel like it's all just too big for us to do anything about, We're just small people that can't make any change, and it's so easy to stay small, to stay scared and to stay stuck. I know from talking with so many moms after divorce that they feel even more unprotected, even more concerned for their kids, more confused on how to help when they're not in control of their parenting, and maybe they're co-parenting with someone who they vehemently disagree with on values and morals and current events. It's really complicated. So that's why I wanted to talk about this today, right? So that we don't get overwhelmed by all of the hardship, all of the scary things, but we actually stay focused on what we can do, what we can change, how you can show up for your assignment in this world, if you have not already seen it. Abby Wamba addressed the LMU undergraduates at their commencement for 2022, and I highly recommend that you watch it. It was really powerful. There's a link in the show notes if you wanna watch it. But towards the end, she starts to talk about each of our responsibilities to affect change in the world, she mentions that Jewish wisdom tells us not to be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. You are not obligated to complete that work, but neither are you free to abandon it, and so we need to forget about the big world, we are only obligated to work in the small world where we are. What is that small World? It's your office, it's your home, it's your family, it's your church, it's your neighborhood, it's your friend group, it's your community. Where we each are impacting the world around us each and every day, and that is what we have control over, that's what we have responsibility for. For me, I have to constantly remind myself of my beliefs, my faith, that we are one like one big ocean, and when one wave rises, it raises all the other waves around it, and that's you too. Right, that's me and that's you. And as we raise ourselves up, we lift all of those around us. So instead of spending all of our life waiting for the world to change around us, waiting for permission to be the mom, the woman, the human that we wanna be, we have to actually start today and that's what I wanna dive into with you. So I believe that the steps to really changing and taking responsibility to affect the world around us in a good way, are very similar to the pillars that I work with each of my clients on. The first one is awareness. What is awareness? It's just the reality of what is it. It's slowing down and becoming present. Slowing down enough to be able to separate the facts from the fiction. What do I mean by that? Well, it's really separating the stories that we are telling ourselves versus what is true, what is fact, and this is such an important step because we cannot change anything until we are aware of it. So awareness is always the first step. I've done a number of episodes about ways to become more aware and more present, and I'm sure that I'll be doing more and more because this is something that many of us are not experiencing on a daily basis, and it's not something that's given to us, we have to actively make sure that we are becoming more aware by slowing down and doing practices to become present with the world around us. The second pillar or step of change is accepting, it's learning to accept and allow what is true versus what we wish it were. This is, again, sort of the stories that we tell ourselves, it means dropping the expectations and getting real and getting right with yourself, this doesn't mean that we agree with or we condone when we're accepting, but it does mean that we stop resisting, ignoring, avoiding and running. And the third step is action. Great, this is the part where we actually put it all into action, where we wanna take aligned action from a place of awareness of acceptance, from a place where our eyes are wide open and are choosing to step towards what we want instead of running away from what we don't. When we're trying to go from awareness to action without doing the work of accepting it always falls short because we're inevitably in a state of resistance, were in a state of unconsciousness, and it just doesn't last right. We're trying to will power our way to something versus having sustainable change. So I said those three pillars, but you might be wondering what does this... How do we even apply this to our life? And so I wanna talk about ways that we can actually enact change. The first one is by meeting your own needs with abundance. So what does this look like? It looks like treating yourself as you want other people to treat you. Treating yourself with respect, with kindness, with love, it's about caring for yourself generously, allowing yourself to have enough sleep or maybe just a little bit more. It's caring for yourself generously, it's doing the things that fill you up versus deplete you, it might feel really, really good in the moment to sit on the couch and watch Netflix until 2 in the morning. It does not feel good the next morning when you have to get up for work or when your little kid wakes you up and wants to get going with the day and you're exhausted. Right, so caring for yourself generously looks like doing the hard things to take care of yourself, eating well, exercising, getting rest, taking really, really good care of yourself, not waiting for other people to do it, but you stepping into the role of meeting your own needs with abundance and with generosity, and so often we feel like we have to have more time, more money, more resources to be able to do this. But it's just simply not true. Finding ways to care for yourself, right? To say no when you mean no, to stop saying yes when you mean no, and deciding what is in your best interest and letting that be okay. So the second step that I wanted to talk about is such an important one, and it's becoming the adult that you needed in childhood. As a conscious parenting coach, this is a lot of the work that we do on what I call re-parenting. This is the process of going back and healing childhood wounds by being the adult that you needed then. It looks like deciding who you needed when you were a scared, vulnerable kid. What did you need to hear? What did you wish the adults would do around you? How do you wish that they would have supported you especially in your time of need? Then we decide to be that adult today for ourselves, right, we actually show up and we be that person. If you needed someone to tell you that they love you and that you're worthy, right, that is your job to do that today for you. You get to show up and be present, you get to be impeccable with your word, you take responsibility for you. What does that look like? It's doing the emotional work, so that you're taking responsibility for your thoughts and your feelings, your actions, not blaming everyone around you, right, it's taking responsibility so that you are less reactive and more responsive. It looks like stopping trying to fix everyone else and do their work because you're uncomfortable with the situation, so many of us do this, people pleaser is co-dependence, it's part of the process, but it's becoming deciding who you needed to be and who you need to be, to not do those things, and then you find ways to be that. It starts with being an example of what you believe in without trying to convince anyone else of your worth or your rightness, you just believing you. The third step is deciding to ditch the drama. I mean, let's face it, how many of us feel like we're in a constant drama cycle, whether it's the drama from your ex, maybe it's a friend who's constantly complaining, maybe it's a family member, but it's like the drama just keeps on coming. So when your ex comes blazing in on the drama bus, you just simply don't get on when they hurl all the insults your way, you start to view it as a game of hot potato and save yourself the pain from catching it and getting burned. You decide on purpose, what you will believe and what you won’t about yourself and others. You decide with intention not to engage unless it is a battle worthy of your time, your energy, your money, and your mental space. This means that you have to learn to become more comfortable with discomfort, with disappointment, with negative emotions, it's learning to be more comfortable and allowing them to be there without buffering, without running, without trying to change it. It's deciding in advance. Just not to engage. You know, one of my favorite quotes is, "you do not have to attend every fight you're invited to," and it's so true. Right now the world is so divisive, families are divided, people are at odds, but we do not have to engage in every fight, but when we do we're gonna come from a place of deep belief and looking to enact change instead of fight. The fourth step that I wanted to offer is really service. Let's think about it. There is never a time when kindness, when generosity and service don't feel good. When we are genuinely helping others, we simply feel better, and being of service isn't being at someone's disposal, but instead it begins with being aligned with your values, coming from a place of true goodness and abundance and sharing from there. We can all find opportunities to help others with any of our resources, time, energy, money, wisdom, whatever it might be, talents, and it doesn't even have to be outside your home. One idea that I could offer is that you might decide to serve your kids each and every day by giving them just 10 minutes of your time, completely undivided, focused on them, time. You let them decide how they wanna spend it, this intentional interrupted time. And then you just be present for it, you watch and you learn something from them, look for ways to connect, to let them feel loved and seen and heard. I promise you, it will be the best 10 minutes you spend during your day. Serving can also look like intentionally deciding to listen to understand instead of listening to control. So what do I mean? Let's face it, right? Shit happens and life is hard, we lose things, we fight, we experience loss, we're misunderstood. And many times it's hard to sit with this and we end up not being present to the other people involved because we are so uncomfortable, so we try to fix, we argue, we sugarcoat it, we just try to find any way around it. Instead, one of the most powerful things that we can do is just to be a witness to someone else's experience. I know for me, so often I have to stop myself from trying to fix maybe my kids problems and realize that he just needs to be heard and seen and know that I'm there, that's it. He doesn't need my two cents, he doesn't need my advice, he doesn't mean need me to run out and fix it, sometimes he just needs someone to witness him, and we can all be that for our children, for people around us, it's completely possible. But we just have to become more intentional and decide that this is how we wanna live our life, and then commit to it. And these are just a few simple steps, this isn't an exhaustive list at all. But when we feel overwhelmed by what's going on outside of us, when we feel overwhelmed by the situation inside of our home, when we feel overwhelmed and exhausted and at the end of our rope, we need some tangible ways to start moving forward, to start making progress. To start affecting change. And so part of that is to begin with meeting your own needs with abundance, like I said, really deciding to treat yourself as you wanna be treated, and the second thing is to be the adult you needed as a kid. Listen, we we all have those moments in life where we wish the adults had shown up differently, when we wish someone had been there for us. We can do that for ourselves now, and then we can start being that person for others for our children. We don't have to continue the patterns and the cycles that were handed to us, we get to choose each and every day, but we do that through awareness, through acceptance and through aligned action. We also have to just decide to ditch the drama to get real and right with ourselves. This is a really important step. Again, with the world as divisive as it seems, it's important for us to get real and right, so that we're not contributing to the mess. And the last thing, and one that I always believe firmly and it is just to be of service, to get really aligned with your values and then show up in the world for others that way, whether it's in your home, whether it's in your church, whether it's helping someone on the street, whatever it might be, even just having a conversation or a smile with a stranger. We never know what impact that could have. You know what I've really realized over the last little bit is that you don't see women going in and shooting up places, you don't see many women inciting riots, you don't see moms involved in acts of terrorism, you just don't. But what I do know deep in my bones that it is us moms who are gonna change this world, and this is how we are going to change it. We are gonna become present and calm, responsive, grounded, confident, kind, loving, and fierce. We are gonna show up every day. We are gonna stay committed to what is important, stay committed to being an example, staying committed to affecting change, we're gonna stay committed to being present and grounded and focused and loving for our children in our own home and outside of it. We're gonna stand up for ourselves and our children, we're gonna take responsibility for what we do have control over, we are going to do the work to create meaningful change. I know that this is true because I see so many extraordinary women each and every day who are doing the hard work to show up against all odds. You can do this to starting with yourself, starting with committing to be the change that you wanna see. You and I can do this work together, this is what I want for you. For your kids, for me, for my kids. This is what I want for the world. And I know that it is us moms who have to step up and make this change, we are the ones that are going to affect this world in a positive direction. That's the show today. I mean, I think honestly, I needed to hear this more than anything, and I just wanted to say it because it's been so heavy on my heart lately. And if any of this has felt like I'm talking directly to you, that you can relate, well, just know that I'm here with you. And if you're feeling called to step up, but you want support, you feel like you can't do it alone, you need a mentor and a guide, I've got you. I wanna be that help for you, so you can start changing your world and your family today, you are worthy of the most amazing abundant life as are your kids, each and every one of you. I know sometimes that it's hard to believe that about ourselves. I know I struggled with that for a very long time, and when we're working through co-parenting, it can feel even more difficult, but I know that it's true that you are enough and that you are worthy and that you are deserving of all the abundance this beautiful life has to offer you. And I'm gonna hold this belief for you until you're ready to carry it for yourself. Just know that you are not alone, and I am here for you on this free podcast, I'm over on Instagram, putting out content there, and if you are interested in having a coach and a mentor and having the biggest supporter to help you grow and heal, then just DM me or set up a time where we can talk with a clarity call that's in the show notes because you are not alone, and this work is imperative for each and every one of us to do, so that can affect the change, so that we can be the change for our small worlds, and that is how we're gonna change this big world. We're gonna do it each and every day, each and every moment, we are gonna do it together, but we're gonna start doing it step by step, moment by moment, day by day, and staying committed. And I know that when we link arms together, we are unstoppable. Thank you so much for spending this time with me. I am really, truly grateful, I'll see you next week, and in the meantime, take really, really good care of you friend. Thanks for listening to Co-parenting with Confidence. If you want more information or resources from this podcast, visit co-parentingwithconfidence.com. I'll you next week.