EP. 65: What Are You Believing to Be True?

The light is so weird at this time when I'm recording, and I feel like I could— I just recorded a podcast and I had like a light here the whole time because I wasn't totally paying attention the whole time to that. So today I'm doing something a little bit different where I have no notes. It's very impromptu. It's top of mind. But I wanted to come on here and talk to you about something that I see at the root of every challenge and an invitation and how to shift it for you and for your teen. Let's get into it.

Hey, I'm Ashley Chandler, The Teenage Guide, and for nearly 2 decades, I've worked inside middle schools and high schools and with college-age students and family living rooms, helping hundreds of families go from daily conflict and closed doors to real connection with their teenager. I speak parent and I speak teen, and I create a bridge between you that a lot of other methods can't and won't. If you're navigating adolescence in your home and a version of yourself you're still becoming, you're exactly where you need to be. Let's reimagine the teenage years with science and soul at the forefront. This is The Teenage Guide Podcast.

So I wanna start off sharing a few little stories of recent client experiences, and I think the way that it can mirror back to so many of you listening. So I am working with a high schooler who signed up for my Fall Sprint, which is my coaching package of 6 sessions. I know sometimes families want that kind of quick, burst of support and really quick results for someone who may not have systemic challenges, but they want to start the school year off strong. So, you know, that's an option. I'll link it in the show notes. So I'm working with him and he has a unique profile with ADHD and he's got some other things happening as we all do. We all have our own unique puzzle that we have to start to put together for ourselves. Not through judgment, but through curiosity so that we can make sense of ourselves and our lives. And in the 6 sessions, it's only been 5 sessions so far, there has been a dramatic shift in what he was reporting and his mom was reporting last year with a lot of D's, C's, and F's, and a lot of resistance at home and a lot of fighting when it came to school.

Hmm.

And in just 5 sessions, week after week, we're setting up the beliefs and the boundaries and the systems and the toolkit so that right now, I just had a session with him earlier this week, that he is getting A's and B's and I think one C, okay? And it's almost borderline. More than that though, my philosophy is that grades are a reflection Of what we're believing, what we're making time for, our effort, our stress tolerance, what's maybe consuming us in the background of our lives, and then our executive function skills. Okay? So it's a combination of identity and relationship to ourselves, our skills, and maybe what's happening socially. And then we can see the impact in the grades that we have at school. And in just 5 sessions, he's gone from last year and the year before that believing that he was a D, F, maybe occasional C student to now seeing the real impact of what I call my Soul 2 Systems toolkit starting to take shape and having that consistent support. And he's got more A's than B's and one C, and that is a reflection of the accountability and the systems in place and the toolkit, right? But he said something earlier this week in his session that was really interesting. He said, I don't know, I think I'm more of a C student. And so that's kind of my goal. And it hit me because I thought, hmm, that's not what we're seeing here, buddy, at all. Right? So I am challenging him. I am actively challenging him to poke holes in that thought, that belief, because he's super bright and he's drawn to things that have structure and routine and systems in place. And that even saying that out loud is just a reflection of maybe what he's thinking, which is, I'm a C student. And so I continually am challenging him to start to shift and see himself Actually, I'm not a C student. Will I get the occasional C? Sure. But I'm really bright, and I'm starting to develop habits that support the way that my brain works, the way I process information, and what I need in order to have the best experience or get the best outcome, right? And it's a shift in our thinking that ultimately determines our experience. And this is such a big piece of the work that I do with clients, both parents and teens. Oftentimes we want the thing over here. We want this specific experience over here, right? And so we think it's action-based. We think we have to do certain things in order to get that thing. What's underneath the doing is always the being. So if we want something over here as James Clear says in Atomic Habits, behavior change is identity change. We want a different experience, and this is what all the research points to. We have to believe different things about ourselves. And when we believe different things about ourselves, we set different boundaries. We say yes to different things. We say no to different things. We start functioning in a way that We filter through what we will allow and what we won't allow. We start to decide what kind of actions we're going to take because that's the kind of person I am. I'm the kind of person who makes time for school. I'm the kind of person that sets reminders and accountability outside of myself because this is important to me. This is how I see myself. I'm the kind of person who goes to the teacher and asks them for support or asks them for clarifying questions, or I'm the kind of person who takes accountability with a teacher when I drop the ball. And when we start showing up in those ways, our experience inevitably changes. The grades are a byproduct of that. So I wanted to share that story to start as one example of behavior change is actually identity change. The second story that I wanna share is I'm coaching parents too, right? I'm coaching parents and teens, and you can customize the way that you work with me depending on if you need the bulk of support right now, if they need the bulk of support, you both do in your relationship, et cetera. So a lot of times I attract very high-functioning parents who are used to getting results in different areas of their life. They're used to being really successful professionally, but when it comes to maybe relationships on the home front, there's a lot of challenges and struggles. So this particular dad is experiencing a lot of challenges on the home front and in nuclear family, extended family, et cetera. And the way he's describing himself is all of these skills and traits and characteristics of the way that he's always believed to be about himself and his own ability to— he works great with people. He's such a people person. He is really empathetic. It makes him an amazing leader. He's very high up in his company. And those same qualities are also what's blocking His ability to set boundaries in a way that must be set in order to have healthy relationships on the home front. And I noticed this come into play where there's kind of a dark and a light to our gifts. And so the things that serve us in one area can oftentimes block us in another where we're being called to grow. We are being called to step up and say, I won't tolerate that anymore. And when we do that, when we can set that boundary, where is that coming from? Where is the ability coming from to be able to say, that is not okay with me anymore, and I will not tolerate? And if right now you're thinking it comes from your identity, And your relationship to yourself, you would be right. It's what you're believing you're worthy of. It's what you're believing you deserve. What you're believing is your responsibility to take on and what's not. What you're believing is lovable about you or deserves attention or focus.

And—

You know, what happens over and over again inside my client containers, inside my work, inside my programs is inevitably because we're talking about our relationship to ourselves. We're talking, oftentimes parents come to me wanting to fix the teen or the relationship with the teen. It's always starting with the relationship that you have with yourself, always. And that inevitably impacts the relationship that you have with your teen, because what you're believing about yourself and how you're showing up in those moments is the way in which you do things. So it's not so much what you do, it's the way in which you do them. So I trust and hope that between the student example, how are we limiting ourselves? No, you are not just a C student. And actually the evidence is right here. The growths and the shifts in just 5 sessions has been remarkable. To the family coaching, to recognize the ways that our dark and our light and our gifts can show up and how we set boundaries and the experience that we wanna have starts with our identity. So on that note, there are 3 ways to thrive and work with me. I'm gonna link 'em in the show notes. I've got my membership, I've got my Fall Sprint coaching container and private containers where families get customized support. In each one of these, you experience the connection, the confidence, and the relief day-to-day that you genuinely wanna have pretty quickly. So never underestimate the power that you have as the parent. I'll see you next week.