Ep #28: Why Aren’t Things Changing When I’m Trying So Hard?

I'm Mikki Gardner, and this is the Co-Parenting with Confidence podcast, Episode number 28. Why Aren’t Things Changing When I’m Trying So Hard? [music] Welcome to Co-Parenting with Confidence, a podcast for those greatest 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 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 read and let's dive into today's episode. [music] Welcome friend and thank you for joining me today. Before we get started in today's episode, I wanted to ask you a little favor, for those of you who have been enjoying this podcast and receiving value from it, I would be so grateful if you would go over and rate and review the show. This really helps me more than you know, it's two pronged, one, when you rate and review, it helps other women find the show so that we can create more peace and more alignment in the world for us and our kiddos and isn't that really what we're after? The other thing is, it also tells me what you're enjoying, what's the value to you, so that I can give you more of it, so if you would do me that favor today, I would really be so, so grateful. And for any of you who are new to this podcast, maybe you're wondering what it is that I do besides sit here and talk to you each week, which I love doing. Well, I also have a one-to-one coaching practice, I'm a life coach, where I support moms and even some dads in their journey of healing from divorce and learning the tools to co-parent from a grounded, loving, confidence space. I love what I do, I love my clients, and it is my honor to be able to do it each and every day, but in addition to my private clients, I also love sharing with more people, right. The more we can get the message out in the world, the more we can all start showing up and being that change we wanna see. Most months, I'll even offer a free workshop, all of the free workshops are really meant to be a learning opportunity, a conversation, and for you to walk away with some tangible actionable ways to start to feel better today. 'Cause isn't that what we all want? And selfishly, it's an amazing opportunity for me to get to spend time with all of the amazing moms in this community, you know, why am I talking about this? Because this week I did a workshop, and it was all about confidently co-parenting through the chaos. I don't know if you're anything like me, but life just seems chaotic these days, whether it's just the things going on in the world, in my own life, big traumas, little traumas, it's all happening. And we all want to feel more confident in the way that we're handling it. So in the workshop, I talked a lot about the ways that we get tripped up, how we get held back from really stepping into life and into that role of the confident co-parent that we truly wanna be. So many moms and women and clients that I talk to are frustrated, feeling like they're trying to change, but nothing's really changing. It feels like two steps forward and one step back, it's like Groundhog Day over and over, you know, and a lot of times there's a frustration because they feel like they made this huge change in their lives, they got divorced, they moved out, things were supposed to shift, things were supposed to be better, but they're still feeling stuck, stuck in the same old patterns, stuck in the same feelings and it's just over and over. Well, that's what this episode and a snippet from the workshop is really about. I wanted to look at what's holding us back and give you some tangible actionable ways to move beyond the past, beyond those limiting beliefs, beyond the cultural and the prescribed expectations that hold us down so that you can step into your true authentic self so that you can show up grounded, strong, loving and confident, who you truly are. So let's take a listen. And that's the work that I wanted to talk about today with you guys, is that in order to have something different, we have to start doing things differently. Right, and it sounds so simple, but you're like, "I do things differently, I changed my life, I don't feed into things the same way. I do all these things yet I'm still in the same spot. Well, so that's what we wanna look at is what is it that's holding us in that spot, holding us down and not helping us propel ourselves forward consistently, so that we are getting the life and the co-parenting relationship and the family relationship, and the love that we want. And so part of it is starting to understand what is getting in our way, what trips us up? And so that's where I wanna start today. And so what I find is a lot of us don't understand, because we aren't taught this in school, I wish they did, I wish we had an entire... Definitely middle school, in high school, sort of, course about what can you really control in your life, right, because we kinda have it backwards, but we cannot control other people, period. End of story. As much as we might try, It just can't happen. But all too often, we think that somehow we can, right. If we were just different. If we just set it a different way, if we just... If they were just different, if they would just do it this way, then this wouldn't happen. You can see how it's like this game of cat and mouse. But when we spend all of our precious energy trying to control the other people, we're wasting our energy. And so we have to understand, first and foremost, that we cannot control other people. Well, fortunately, everyone's born with free will, that's part of being human, that's part of the gift that we were all created from source, and we were all created with this free will, this free will to choose. And so when we understand that we don't have control over other people or over how they think and they feel and they act, we can start to understand what we do have control over and what we do have control over is ourselves. Meaning, we have control over how we're thinking, therefore how we're feeling, and therefore how we're acting. So our entire experience, right, we might not be able to change the way that things happen or what happens in the world, but we are capable of changing the experience that we have of it. Now, this might not sound huge or that great, right, especially when other people are acting like complete jerks, but you are more powerful than you think you are, and it's... Once we understand where our power lies, that we can start to tap into it, right. When we're constantly spending all of our time fighting to be heard or to be seen, or fighting against what we don't want, we're keeping all of our attention on what we don't want, and wherever our attention goes, all of our energy goes, and so it's like we're handing over control to the exact thing that we don't want any more of, right. So we have to become really myopic in our ability to focus our attention and therefore our energy on what it is we do have control over and what it is that we do want. And so another thing that I see with my clients, and it happens for all of us, just all humans, I'm just gonna go out on a whim and say all humans, but I see it all the time with my clients. And honestly, in my own life too, when I'm totally honest, is personalizing what other people are doing or saying and making it mean something about us. So, have you ever done this? And so it might sound like, "Well, they're disrespecting me, or they're doing this, and so therefore, he doesn't think that I'm worthy of his respect", and so we can see how it gets turned around, how this person is acting is suddenly about us, or when someone ends the relationship, it's really about them and their decisions, but sometimes we make it all about us as if we're the problem there, and that's not necessarily the truth. So what's going on for them may or may not have anything to do with us, but when we think it does, we struggle, and when we struggle, we show up differently, right. So it's really important to learn that we have to separate from what we have control over and what we don't. And we have to separate from the story that we're telling ourselves, if we're personalizing other people's behavior and making it mean something about us. Is that true or is it not? Now this isn't to say that we just sort of give a blanket pass, is like everybody's responsible for themselves. No, I think it's more just, again, putting the attention on what we have control over and what we don't, because when we're able to do that and we're able to let other people own their actions and own their feelings without it meaning something about us or something that we have to change or we have to do something about, this is where our freedom and liberation lies, right. We have to stop making it about us, let them have their experience and focus on what really is important for us. So that's the first thing that I think really trips people up is just not understanding what they have control over and feeling helpless, feeling that they are at the mercy of. And it's really about flipping that script and understanding what is it that I do have control over and stepping into that. The second thing that I think gets into so many of our ways is what I call shoulding on ourselves. I'd like you to maybe experiment with this in the next 24 hours, how many times do you say should? I know for me, I have to put myself on a should diet, right, I just go cold turkey off of should, because when we become aware of how many times in the day that, "I should have done that, I should have said that, Oh, I shouldn't have done this. Or, I shouldn't have done that, or he should totally be like this, or my kids should do this", all of those shoulds are expectations. And Brene Brown so wisely said, "An expectation is simply a resentment waiting to happen", and it's so true. Because all of those shoulds, all of those expectations are clouding our vision, are creating a lens from which we see the world, and we might not even agree with that but they're just kind of there, and that's... They trip us up more than we think they do, and so where do all these things come from while our childhood, they come from culture, religion, the media, family of origin, the experiences that we've had, all of them start to really build up this, again, lens from which we see the world, but what's important to understand that these expectations, these shoulds, these sort of beliefs that we hold sort of blindly sometimes, they're all based on the past, and they're all based on that... This idea of what should be happening, not really what is happening, but what should be happening, and so often when we live in that way, we don't measure up or other people don't measure up, or we don't feel like we're enough or we're doing enough, or we are the mistakes that we've made in the past, when we have these expect, these high expectations, all these shoulds, how we should be, and all of that is based in the past, it's really hard to not use those to judge yourself of where you are today, or to judge others of where they are today. And so I think it's important that we recognize and we become more aware of where we're shoulding on ourselves, and one way that I think is an easy way to look and see if you're struggling with this, well, two, the first is to put yourself on a should diet for 24 hours and just see how many times you may or may not say it, and then the second way is to understand what time zone are you in, and what I mean by that is that there's three options available to us. There's the past, there's the future, and there's the present moment. When we are in the past, this is where a lot of the expectations, the shoulds, all of the core beliefs that we have maybe held come from, it's about the mistakes that we've made. It's about what hasn't happened or all those things that did happen that we don't want, or what should have happened that never happened, and really what it does is it keeps us tethered to this very narrow view of the world, that it's just what we know and what we've experienced and that's it. So it doesn't allow us openness, it doesn't allow us curiosity, it doesn't allow for growth, so if we're stuck in that past, that past mindset, that past time zone, we're gonna get more of that. Or there's the future, right. There's a lot of shoulds that can happen in the future too, but this is what... This is where worry, this is where overwhelm live, right. And our brains are constantly... They're just computers, that's all they are, super-efficient, amazing computers, but they want to always complete the story, it... Our brains don't like to be uncertain; they don't like anything lingering out there, it's a computer that likes to have a question, answer, ask and then it answers it, it's just, boom, boom, boom, boom, that's like all it wants to do all day. So when we worry, we project this past, all these past beliefs onto the future, and then we say, our brain says, "Okay, I gotta complete the story here because I don't like it to be open, I don't like it to be uncertain, I have to close the loop." So when it does this, the brain will literally use the past, bring in some of the current things that are going on, and then use that evidence to complete the story, often it has some worst case scenarios involved and so worry, I also heard, I can't remember who said it, is just a prayer for chaos, and it really is because we don't know, we're just projecting chaos into the future. So the present is the third option, the present moment is where all of our power lies because we can be present to what is true, present to what is actually happening, not the past version and not the future worry version, but what's really going on. When we can ground ourselves and find ourselves in the present moment, not basing everything on what should happen, right, or basing it on all the things that have happened, we can meet the world where it is, kind of meet people where they are and see things and separate them out so that we can see more clearly, again, cleaning off that lens from which we see the world when we're in the present moment, we can do that much more clearly. And so that's one of the things that really trips us up as we get stuck replaying these old stories or projecting this worry and chaos and overwhelm into the future instead of being present to what is happening. And so again, with all the shoulds that we find, we end up shoulding all over ourselves and we end up under a giant pile of should, and when that happens, we're stuck, we're pissed off, right? And we're not present to what's really going on, and so what is the antidote of that? Well, it's taking ownership, it's taking ownership over the way that we're thinking, so that we can take ownership and process the way that we're feeling, because that is what is gonna drive what we do, all of our actions in the world. And when we can do it from a place of non-judgment, it's not about judgment or blame, but about how can I align towards the change that I wanna see in the world, that is where the power is. Being really honest about what we can and can't control, being present to what is happening in the moment, and being aware of what time zone we're in, or if we're under a giant pile of shoulds, and then deciding who we wanna be. And this is the thing, that the confident co-parenting is a decision that we make, it is the decision that we make by choosing who we wanna be. It's not about choosing who is in our life, or what other people are doing or how we control the other people, it's choosing who we wanna be, and then we get really, really busy being that person. You know, so often we do the same thing over and over, we live in these patterns. Again, it's a lot of, though, the thought patterns that we've had of the past or these limiting beliefs or all these shoulds, and we spend all of our time seeing the world from that vantage point, and when we do, we kinda do the same things over and over, and then we're frustrated like, "Why aren't things different? Why is nothing changing?" Or we make these huge sweeping changes, but then we find ourselves right back in the same pattern, and there's nothing more frustrating than when you have identified the pattern, identified what you don't want, made huge changes, and then suddenly find yourself back in those same patterns of feelings. I mean I know in my own life when this happens and it happens, it is frustrating, and it's a reminder to me that I am stuck either in the wrong time zone or I have to start choosing differently, and sometimes that choosing is hard, sometimes it's not comfortable, and sometimes it requires a little bit of pain. You know I always... Like in this with my clients to, for those of you that have young children or have had young children, you know when they're growing, I remember nights where I just had to rub my son's legs 'cause his legs hurt so bad from just growing, right. Sometimes the growth hurts, and sometimes that's okay, because we need to go through the discomfort, we need to go through those growing pains to get to where we wanna be, and so if we want a different life, if we want to show up differently on a consistent basis, for ourselves, for our children, for our families, we have to be willing to be different, and when I say be different, I'm talking about a way of being. When I say a way of being, what I mean is being equals, thinking, feeling, and acting. It's three prongs, we can't just think differently, we can't just make ourselves feel differently, and ultimately for us to act differently, we have to address the other two first, and so that's where we have to focus on what we do have control over and really let go of what we don't, so that we can have the maximum amount of influence. So that's the show for today. If you wanna attend one of my future workshops, I would love to have you there, and also you can hear about other ways that you could work with me because I'm constantly doing new things. And so if you want to just go over to my website, it's www.mikkigardner.com and click on the three message of co-parenting button at the bottom, and that way you'll get on the mailing list and you'll be in the know. It's also in the show notes to make it easy. And if there's ever a topic that you really want me to cover, I would love to hear from you. I keep a file with all the requests I get, and I would love to know what's on your mind today, so just send me an email. That's gonna be in the show notes too. Thank you for spending this time with me. I am so grateful. I know there's so much you can be doing, we all have very busy lives, and I'm grateful that you spend this time here with me. So I'll see you next week and in the meantime, take really good care of you. [music] 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. [music]