Success Without the Stress is Every Mom's Dream But There's a Better, More Realistic Way

Yesterday I was talking to this amazing mom of one of my online students, and I asked her if she could have anything from these courses, what would she want for her kids? And her answer was, I would want them to get into a top Ivy League school like Princeton or Harvard without any stress. So I texted her back, hello there, and welcome to the Mind Body Space Podcast where we learn about the brain-body connection to help us and our families thrive. So I texted back, "Less stress, but not no stress." And she replied, "Yes, some stress is good, but I just don't want constant stress." And I said from experience that if you want to be in the top of anything you're doing, whether it's plumbing or getting into the top schools or working at the top companies or even running your own business and wanting to be at the top, then stress is always going to be there. Now let's define stress. Stress is something that keeps us alive. As living creatures, we actually need stress to get up in the morning. Stress identifies any change in our environment, internally or externally. Whatever changes causes physiologic stress and sometimes mental stress. If we take that physiologic stress and what we do with it afterwards, mentally, in our thoughts, emotions, and then our behaviors, That's where we have control. We can't control stress because stress really just means change, and we wouldn't wanna control all of that anyway. You'd be dead if you didn't have stress. But what we can control is that physiologic stress, and then how we interpret that stress mentally, process it emotionally, and then ultimately the behavior that comes out of that mental processing of stress. So as moms, obviously we never wanna see our kids suffer. I mean, most of the time do not want to see our kids suffer, especially when they're little. I know I wanted to protect my kids from everything, and even now, even though they're young adults, I still want to protect them from pain and misery or unnecessary stress. So yes, as moms, we don't want to see our kids suffer. Who does, right? But suffering or stress is an inevitable part of life. So real suffering comes from things that we can't control sometimes, whether we're sick or, or something happens that's out of our control. But we can control the perception, the processing of stress. So this is where resilience comes in. Resilience comes in with the knowledge that you can adjust your perspective of the stress, whether it's physical or mental, and that you have tools to use that can actually deal with this stress. So let's reframe stress again. If you're competing at the highest level, whether it's getting into the top school or playing in sports or music or whatever performance, um, job performance, it gets uncomfortable and it gets stressful because if it didn't, then everybody would be doing it. Everybody would be at the top. Nobody would be distinguished and there would be nothing really to strive for. Stress in part is what makes achievements meaningful. So resilience isn't about avoiding stress, it's about how we learn to respond to it. Do you bounce back from it? And basically stress doesn't really harm you in the long run unless you are unable to bounce back from it, whether mentally or physically. And stress can even be advantageous if you bounce back from it mentally or physically to a place that's higher than you were before. So literally meaning if you learn from that stressor. And this resilient response to stress can be trained. It could be learned. It's most advantageous if you learn it at a very young age. Like anything else, it's a skill. It's not a personality trait, although some people have a better trait for handling stress than others. So one of the most powerful skills that we can teach our kids and ourselves is metacognition. Metacognition is just a powerful perspective-taking skill that allows us to actually look at ourselves, look at what's going on under the hood in our brains, in our minds, in our bodies. So kind of stepping outside of ourselves. Metacognition literally means thinking about thinking. And this is such an important skill because if you think about it, If you see someone else's problems, it's so much easier to solve than our own. And that partly is because we can see from the outside in. That's why we hire coaches and other people to give us feedback, right? But the problem is coaches or therapists or whoever you're working with, they're not with you 24/7. And 24/7 you're with yourself. So to teach yourself the skill of metacognition is one of the most important tools you can give your kids. And this is where neuroscience gets really exciting because once kids learn about their brain, about how the processes of emotions and cognition and behavior work within their brains, when they learn about their stress response, their relaxation response, which is the opposite of the stress response, when they learn that they can actually have control over their physiology down to the cellular level, and that they have a way to practice skills that would put them in control over their own thoughts, behaviors, emotions, a lot more than they ever thought before, using, using the research behind neuroscience, that's when it gets empowering. That's when they're able to observe their own stress patterns, name what's happening, and be able to really use strategies to coach their own brains. So even if we didn't have a coach growing up, or even if our parents weren't the best parents, I mean, Let's face it, most of the science is new, so a lot of us did not grow up with this kind of neuroscience-based parenting. We can still parent ourselves. You know, our memories are subjective, and science has shown that our memories are very unreliable. Our perspectives on our past— we have the choice on how we're going to look at our past. It is not set in stone. We can shift perspectives so we can learn from our past. Rather than looking at it from, let's say, an angle of depression or sadness. So even if our childhood was not ideal, we can learn to train our own brains and shift our perspectives about our past. It's not like you're changing the past or making up stories. It's really the fact that we don't really remember things, um, clearly anyway. So there's many different ways of looking at the truth or what is unfolding before our eyes. And we can train ourselves to look at things in our past or things that are happening to us in the moment and learning from it. And that means all the difference for stress levels in our physiology, in our brain. So one person can look at pressure or stress or competition and think of it as the worst thing. Maybe they feel like they don't have control over it, or maybe they feel like it's never fair for them. All of these thoughts could shift someone's thought, emotion, and behavioral patterns, push it towards a trajectory that might not help them be as successful as they could actually be if they shifted the perspective from being afraid of being put on the spot or being in a competition and maybe changing that perspective to welcome competition, to be grateful that there are other people who are better than them or who are role models for them or people that they can compete with so that they're not always the smartest one in the room, so that they have something to look forward to, something to reach for, you know, something to aspire to. So we all have heroes, whether they're athletes or people who do things out of the ordinary, and we all look up to people who do things seemingly impossible. What I'm saying is we can shift their attitude towards competition into a healthy thing, because competition is not always bad, right? It's one of the most basic motivators to help us get better, to reach for more, and to improve ourselves. So again, if you haven't listened to the podcast, uh, last week about how I didn't really have a plan, I was just raising resilient kids and, you know, they just happened to get into Harvard and Princeton, go ahead and listen to that episode. And of course, really, success in life does not equal going to one of these top schools. There are many successful people who do not go to these top schools. But again, we're talking about thriving in general, and we're talking about our children reaching their full potential, right? As moms, we just want to see our kids thrive. We don't want them to settle for less than who they can be. And, um, honestly, our brains thrive on it. Our brains love to learn, and our brains love to reach a new height. Our brains love a good goal. And working towards something. I mean, that is the whole point of having such a powerful prefrontal cortex. Human beings evolved because our brains want to solve problems. We want to get better. We want to do new things. Looping back to metacognition, again, it's one of the most important skills that we can teach our kids and also frankly keep up for ourselves, you know. And one of the easiest scientifically proven ways to do this is journaling. Now I am a serial journal starter. Uh, I do journal sometimes. I do something pretty often called the brain dump where I just dump everything I'm thinking onto a piece of paper and then usually throw it out. A lot of times it turns into like a to-do list or something, but it really helps. And you can tell such a difference between just things spinning around in your head versus writing it down on a piece of paper. So there are so many different reasons why this helps. Um, and I will be talking about that after next week's episode. So next week you're gonna hear from Bianca Turetsky. She's the author of the internationally acclaimed Time Traveling Fashionista series by Little Brown Books for young readers. And she's an avid fan of journaling. She's been doing it since she was little. She teaches kids how to do it. So she's gonna be on this podcast next week. Subscribe at mindbodyspace.com/podcast so you don't miss any of these episodes. And I'm really excited because again, and I did start journaling since I've spoken to her. So it's been helping me a lot to get focused and to keep things in order, whether, you know, it's personal or business. So listen for that episode to increase your metacognitive skills. And then after that episode, the following week, I'm going to break down the neuroscience of journaling. As moms, we want the best for our kids. We don't want them to suffer unnecessarily. And that's why I took my past 20 years of learnings from raising my kids, starting the science of resilience at NYU School of Medicine, law, Columbia Law School, and at the Juilliard School of Music, teaching high-performing individuals how to stress well, teaching them how to be resilient, bouncing back from stressors, and using stress to learn and get better in life. I put it all into these courses for you. Check it out at mindbodyspace.com. There's courses for kindergarten all the way to 18 years old and for moms and parents as well. Have any questions or comments or requests? Send it to info@mindbodyspace.com and we'll answer it on the podcast. Remember that you have more power over your own life, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors than you ever thought before. I have to remind myself of that every single day. Thanks so much for being here. Head on over to mindbodyspace.com/podcast to sign up for our email list to get the latest tips and to send us your questions. While you are there, check out our courses and products on time, brain, and stress for kids and parents. Thanks for joining us.