Ep #115: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

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Welcome to Co-Parenting with Confidence, a podcast for those courageous moms out there who want to move past the conflict and frustration of divorce and show up as the mom they truly want to be. My name is 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.

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Welcome back to the podcast. I'm excited to be here with you. It is the holiday week of Christmas in 2023. And so I wanted to talk about gift giving. And what I specifically mean is giving yourself the gift that you need. So I want to ask you, do you feel completely satisfied in where you're at in your life? Is co-parenting easy and simple for you? Do you feel completely confident and capable in knowing exactly how to meet any challenge in your life, whether it's with your kids or your ex or in your career? I'm guessing if you're anything like me and the other moms that listen to the podcast, the answer is, well, no.

We don't have the answers to everything. But one thing that I've learned through this journey that I've been on is the greatest gift I gave myself was the gift of learning, the gift of evolving, the gift of getting myself the support and the community that I needed around me so that I could feel better, so that I could be more confident, so I could feel more capable in my life. And this is what I want for you. And so today I wanted to talk about the gift that keeps giving because when you are willing to invest your time, your energy, your money, your resources, into yourself, you do something incredible. You become a stronger, better version of you. But even more than that, you give your children the gift of watching their mother be the strongest, most confident, most amazing version of her. And you know what that does? That gives them a blueprint. It gives them an example of what they can do and how they can overcome challenges, be resilient, be calm, be peaceful, enjoy ease and happiness in life. Isn't that what you want for them?

So often we say, "Well, we just want our kids to be happy," but no, we want them to be resilient and strong and capable and confident. Ready to meet any challenge. And you know the best way to make sure that they do is to do it yourself, to become that version of you. No, you don't have all the answers, but you have the tools in your toolbox to be able to meet any challenge that comes your way with grace and with ease and with confidence. So how do we even do that? Well, so many people that I meet and I talk with are riddled with guilt, and that guilt turns into resentment when it's not dealt with. It becomes anger that's stuck inside of them. And sometimes it's palpable when you meet them and it grows. And when the anger grows, your health and your future declines and it leads to overwhelm. All of that happens when we are not taking action in the direction that we want to go. When we are taking action, when we do have the tools and the skills and the ability to be resilient and take action towards what we want. Things like guilt can still be there, anger can still be there, but you're moving forward and filling your soul up. You feel better emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually.

But what that requires is for you to get into the brave zone and the brave zone is where we do the work. This is where I am with each and every one of my clients as we walk along their journey. And the brave zone isn't somewhere that maybe you necessarily want to go alone. I know for me, I took that journey with my coach, and now I am a coach doing that for other women. Because when we are in community and we lock arms with other people who understand where we've been and know how to get where we're going, it makes our life easier, but it makes it less lonely because we're walking with other people. Doing the work to get to the brave zone is all about learning how to let go, it's about saying no, it's learning how to have those uncomfortable conversations without backing down, learning how to support yourself, how to rest, how to ask for help. It's all of these things. It's creating emotional boundaries.

There's so much work that goes into this. And I think, ultimately, it's really learning how to emotionally regulate ourselves, learning how to regulate our nervous system so that we get out of the reaction, get out of reacting and start taking full responsibility, full ownership over our feelings, our thoughts, and our actions. This is no small feat, do not get me wrong, but this is the gift that changes your life and then will change the life of your children.

A lot of times we really want to make big changes in our life but we don't know how because it feels as if our body is telling us not to do it. We feel fear. We feel anxiety. We feel stress. And all of that feels like a sign to not keep going forward. Fear is simply your body's way of giving you yourself a boundary. It's saying, "No, this is too scary." But really, it's almost like it's welcoming you into the next phase. It's that door to the brave zone. So it's your job to learn how to regulate your nervous system so that you can create a feeling of safety, so that that fear can leave your body, so that you can experience what it feels like to step forward and to make real changes. And that's learning how to manage your energy. So many of us just want to feel better, or we just want things to be easier. But that doesn't come from just wishing things were different. It comes through the action that we take a million times a day that keep us in that regulated situation. Every time we become dysregulated, we have to regulate back. On any given day, it might happen five times, 10 times, a thousand times. It depends on what's happening in your life.

But the more you learn how to manage your energy, the more you learn how to do the work and to take action from a place of confidence, from a place of calm, from a place of taking full responsibility, not reacting, this is where you learn to step into the brave zone. And that brave zone is where all of our change and our power lies. So it's starting to understand.

So many of us, and I've been talking a lot about people pleasing this month because of the book coming out. You know what? People pleasing is really at its root cause, our inability to be and to feel unease, or to feel discomfort in your body. Again, that fear, the stress, the anxiety, the worry, it takes over because we feel like that it's telling us that something is wrong, but really it's just a feeling in our body that is really just a message, a message that we should either go towards or away from something, but we can't get that message when we are just reacting. And so the gift that I teach with each of my clients is learning how to stop reacting and learning how to regulate your emotions, regulate your nervous system so that you can start to move forward. So that you can create that safety to step into the next version of you. And the more that you're able to learn to do this, the more you trust yourself and the more self-trust you have, well, this is where things get really juicy, because when we can really trust ourselves to love and mother ourselves deeply, to care for ourselves deeply, and to protect ourselves deeply, there is really nothing that you can't do when you have the trust in yourself to do that.

The opposite of fear is trust. So trust in yourself is the most important thing that you can develop and cultivate. And that is the gift, my friend, that will keep giving not just to your children, but your children's children, to your ex, to your family, to your friends. When you have more self-trust, you start to lead from a completely different energy. You start to lead from a place of powerful, loving energy. And this is where we want to start to make decisions from, when you start to really lead from this different energy, because women who are working from this place, from this real sense of self-trust, well, listen, they treat themselves differently. They really do. They rest. They ask for help. They have really firm boundaries. They don't project themselves into different things. They're really able to see the big picture. They change when needed. They have flexibility. They learn how to take time to course correct.

What does that mean? It means that when we really trust ourselves, we don't have to be right all the time. We can make mistakes, but we can stop and then we can assess what's going on, realign to the direction you want to go and then start taking action in that direction. That course correction could happen 10, 15, 20 times a day, but this is how you really start to take massive action and massive effort in the direction that you want to go. And the beauty of it is, is that the more action we take aligned with where we want to go, the easier it becomes. The more consistent we stay with really taking care of ourselves, doing that emotional and energetic management, learning how to stay aligned in the direction of what we want, instead of just reacting to what we don't. When you do this consistently day in and day out, it gets easier. This is when confidence grows. This is when ease and capability grows.

And the most beautiful part about it is we don't have to wait for chaos or for disaster to come in order for us to change or thrive. We can actually create change with calm and with ease. We can have strength in managing the storm, but we don't always have to have that storm. I know for me, I used to think that everything had to fall apart or there had to be this big giant thing in order for me to change anything. But I really learned that it's the course correction on a daily basis, minute to by minute, to be constantly moving in the direction that I want through awareness, through agency, and through aligned action. That is the biggest gift to myself because that is where I develop more and more self-trust.

This is what each of my clients tell me at the end of the journey together as we've gone through the process. That they feel more capable, more confident, and more at ease in their own skin. And it's because they have learned how to really show up for themselves, how to love themselves unconditionally, how to really mother themselves, maybe like they never were mothered as children. They learned how to really deeply care for themselves and walk in the direction that they want to go. And they learned how to really protect themselves from that strong mother protection energy. This is the game changer. This is the gift that I want you to give yourself. Whether it's therapy, whether it's coaching, whether it's a support group, you are not meant to do this alone. And there is help out there. And I know that I want each and every one of you listening to have the opportunity like each and every one of my clients has to really step into and invest in themselves. And yes, it might be a lot of time, a lot of energy, and it can be expensive, but don't let that stop you because everything is figure-outable as Marie Forleo says.

So what I want you to do is if you are feeling an inkling that you want 2024 to be different, if you want to feel better, stronger, more at ease, and more capable, I want you to go to my website to check it out and to schedule a breakthrough call. Even if you and I don't work together, I want us to be able to help you create a plan for how you are going to get there in 2024. Listen, my friends, if we want our children's lives to be different, we have to have a different life. If we want things to look different in our lives, we have to start acting, thinking, and being different now. And it's all of these things. It's really about learning how to build self-trust so that we don't get stuck in fear and overwhelm and anxiety, but we're actually moving forward even when that's present because you feel and you know how to do so. There's a link in the show notes to go to my website. Please check it out and please schedule a call with me. It's totally free, but I want you to have a good plan moving into 2024 of how you are going to change what needs to be changed in your life. If you know that there's an area that needs to be balanced, that needs to be aligned differently, let's figure that out together.

Listen, I'm here for you, my friend. I show up each week here offering you ideas and strategies and ways to move forward, and I want to keep doing that with you. But that also involves you stepping up, raising your hand and saying, "I'm here. I'm in. I'm ready," and we will figure out what that looks like together. You are a gift to me, and I know that you are a gift to your children because you're here listening and you're doing the work. You're showing up and you're trying, and that is all that is required of you. You're responsible for you, for how you're showing up in the world, and I want you to give yourself every resource that you need and that you have available to you so that you can really start to show up differently, stronger, more loving, more joyful, more at ease. It's completely possible. I believe that every one of you listening has the capability of creating the harmonious environment for your children. And it starts with taking action towards that in alignment with that consistently day in, day out, realigning and moving back in the direction you need to go. You can do this, my friend. I know that you can.

I wanted to wish you the happiest of holidays. Whatever holiday you're celebrating, I hope that it's one filled with love and joy. And I hope that you give yourself the gift this year of really stepping into the next version of you and getting the support around you to do that. I know that I just stepped into a new coaching relationship and it is scary. It's intimidating with the time, the money, the investment. I get it. And this is what we need to keep doing to move forward. This is how we change things. And this is how you feel better.

So make sure you check out the links in the show notes. There's so many ways and so many resources that I have for you. And so make sure that you're really stepping into it so that 2024 is an extraordinary year for you, my friend. And until next week, take really, really good care of you, friend.

Oh, and one more thing, the legal stuff. This podcast is solely intended for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for any medical advice. Please consult your physician or a qualified medical professional for personalized medical advice.

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Thanks for listening to Co-Parenting with Confidence. If you want more information or resources from this podcast, visit coparentingwithconfidence.com. I'll see you next week.

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