157. Who You Become, Over the Outcome

Hey, friends, and welcome Back to the Momset podcast. It's Tessa. This week, inside of the Momset membership, we did a coaching session all about our 2026 vision, really talking about the new year and equipping the members with a mentality that will completely transform how we approach this new year. And I thought it would be a great idea to bring the conversation over to you here on the podcast so you can join us in this pursuit of to focus on who we're becoming over what we're achieving. So what if this year, in 2026, the goal isn't to achieve more? It isn't to get your kids to behave perfectly or to get your spouse on board with xyz? What if the goal is actually to become someone deeper, become someone greater? And that's where this idea of become over outcome makes its mark on us. So this year, actually, this started last year. It was last summer, I was listening to a fantastic book that I absolutely love on Audible, and it's called the Ultimate Jim Rohn Library. So basically, it's an audiobook that takes all of Jim Rohn's most popular talks that he's ever getting and compiled it all into one place on Audible. And it's like one of my favorite things to listen to. I'll listen to it while I run or work out, or if I want to listen to something while doing the laundry, I love to listen to this. And there's a story that he shares multiple times in this audiobook, and he says that when he first started working with his mentor when he was younger, the mentor said, why not make a goal to to. Or why not set a goal to make a million dollars? Come on. It's got a nice ring to it. Enough zeros to impress your accountant. Come on, let's make a goal to make a million dollars. And Jim Rohn goes, well, sure, why not? Who wouldn't want a million dollars? Who wouldn't want to have a million dollars? That much money sitting in the bank account, say, I did that this year. And his mentor said, well, it's more about for what it would make of you to achieve that. In setting this goal to make $1 million, Jim Rohn's mentor was telling him, you would need to become someone for what it would make of you in the process, who you would become in the process of accumulating and creating a million dollars in wealth right here for this goal. And that's always just sat with me like, wow, Set big goals for what it would make of you to achieve them. Not for the outcome itself. Don't set the weight loss goal for the outcome of down £50, down £40. Don't set a financial goal just to see the money in the account. Don't set a marriage goal just to get your husband on the same page as you with parenting or in spirituality together. Stop setting goals for outcomes and start setting goals for who you would become in the process of achieving them. Because if you really think about what you want to achieve most and what you have your mind set on for 2026, if it is different than something you've ever had in the past 2020, if, if what you want in 2026 is different than what you had in 2025-2024-2023-2022, 2021, as far back, if it is different than anything you've ever had, then you will need to become someone that you've never been. And that's, that's that infamous quote that gets, that floats around, right? In order to have what you've never had, you must become someone you've never been. And it's so true. So all of that feeds into this new mentality of become over outcome. And I want to stress this mentality even more deeply to you as I've shared so much about mindset and communication and parenting. I absolutely love to think and speak positively as a mother, as a wife, as a woman. And when I go to teach these skills and tools like the one asking questions, leads and positive consequences and say what you want to see. As I teach these tools, there's this misconception that comes up and I've finally figured out why it comes up. It's because the people that have this misconception are outcomes driven rather than identity driven. The become driven, they're so focused on the outcome. So they go and they use one of the tools that I suggest or they try one of the scripts like the, the name calling script that I have with my kids. And let's walk through this bigger picture. Let's say I create a piece of content for a script that you can use with your kids to correct name calling in a way that also protects your child's identity, integrity and character and that you can feel really good about saying. So imagine I'll teach it to you right now. Imagine one of your kids calls you or someone else's name. Instead of going to the knee jerk reaction of calling them a name. You are mean, you are rude. You would walk them through this line of questioning that intellectually stimulates them to recognize, oh I have made the wrong choice and I'm going to correct it now. So they call someone a name. You just ask your child, excuse me, what is their name? And your child will provide you with the person's name. A sibling, you, aunt, uncle, friend, whatever cousin. They provide you with the person's name. Let's say the name's John. Their name's John. Okay, so what can you call them? And they say the name again. John. That's right. Now ask John what you'd like to ask him or say to John what you'd like to say to him using his name. This is an excellent way to correct meanie, stupid head, poopy head, all the little things that they come up with. We're teaching our children to use people's names because it's part of respectful communication and it builds up their self esteem too, to use other people's names. And it sets the standard for how other people communicate with them. Now if your child doesn't know the person's name, then you can provide it or teach them the proper social skill to go get someone's name when you need to use it, asking someone else for their name. So anyway, this whole thing, right, so I'll share this script online. I, I teach it in momset. It's in the upcoming yes Family Flipbook. It's all over the place. And there's always, always 100% of the time a comment about, well, my kids just respond with no, their real name is Meanie Head. Or like going back to the name calling. And so they feel like they've failed because it wasn't their ideal outcome. Now if we flip this mentality around to be focused on who we're becoming and you stay focused on becoming a positive communicator, someone with excellent heart, posture, tremendous compassion, a fantastic teacher. If you're focused on who you're becoming through this communication style that no matter how your children respond to it, if they continue saying the name calling or if they push back on the script you're attempting to walk them through or refuse to answer the questions that you're asking. No matter what your kids do, to push the boundaries, which is their job, to test the waters which is appropriate no matter what they do, you still feel like you've won. Because using that script, speaking positively, thinking positively, aligns with who you want to become. Using the script was never about the outcome. To get your children to, to quickly comply or to immediately obey or to cooperate with you right away. That's not the goal though. The goal is to see yourself be a person that speaks this way so naturally. And that takes me back to the Jim Rohn thing, the way that it inspired me to like, set those big goals. Not so that you can just have it, not so you can just accomplish it. Set them so that you can become the person that achieves these things, the person that holds themselves to a higher standard. So when you look at going into 2026, really start to sit and think like, okay, well, what are the goals that I have for 2026? What is it that I've been telling myself I want to be able to do for a lot of people that I talk to? They want a morning routine in 2026. They want to see themselves waking up earlier. They want to see themselves going to bed earlier so that they can wake up earlier. Got it. Well, if you make it all about the outcome, waking up at 5. If you wake up at 5:15, you feel like you failed, you stopped trying. Well, now I don't have enough time to get these things done. I might as well just sleep in till six. I'll get up at six. And then six o' clock rolls around, then you really feel bad and then you're like, well, I might as well just wake up when the kids wake up because it's now. I know they're gonna be up any minute, so I'm just gonna wait. Your mind spirals in the negativity in the same thought pattern that the old you has always used. You haven't become someone new because we're so focused on the outcome being the way that we become someone new rather than the process to achieve it is what shapes our becoming. The process of yes, saying I'm gonna wake up at 5am and getting out of bed at 5:15 and getting out of bed at 5 30, getting out of bed at 5:45, getting out of bed any minute, sooner and earlier than you did before. That's the becoming process. Wow. I've become someone that gets out of bed before the negative self talk hits. Regardless of the time, stop focusing on the time. Get out of bed before self doubt comes, before the victim mentality hits, before negative self talk comes in. Get out of bed before that. That's the process of becoming. So the things that we do matter and having these goals matters because we like to see the direction in which we're going in. It's the purpose behind it though. If the purpose to lose the weight is just to lose the weight, to look different so that your clothes fit differently, whatever is that going to inspire you as much as, as, and like, truly get you to do what it takes to change your eating habits, to change your movement habits, to change these things that you, you would need to change in order to lose weight. We're not going to get a different outcome by doing the same things. So in order to do all that, would it inspire you, Inspire you nearly as much as thinking about who you would want to become in this process? Who is that person in you that weighs the amount that you want to weigh? What's so different about her? That's such an exciting thing to consider. The. The very moments in the day that you're feeling run down and you're feeling discouraged or a little bit helpless, a little bit lazy, getting into that perfectionist tendency, the version of you that you would like to become through this weight loss journey, through this health journey. Oh my gosh, she's bouncing off the walls at 2 o'. Clock. She's so excited that she still has at least five more hours of intentionality in the day before that bedtime hits. And man, when that bedtime hits, she's dialed in the present. She's just dialed into it. The books. She really takes the time to animate the words that she's reading on the page. And her kids get her full attention. All the screens are out of the room. It is just her and them and the family's just delighted to be together. And then dad's telling stories and sometimes he even does the shadow puppets with the flashlight. And gosh, we all get a kick out of that. Like, there's an entirely different vision of what the day looks like, especially now, where the, where the hardest moments are right now for you in the day. The version of you that you're becoming when you strive for these goals, when you strive for these really big things, the version of you that you become in the process of that goes through what you find most difficult today with ease. It is easy for her. She loves it when 2 o' clock rolls around. She loves it when it's 11 o'. Clock. She loves it when it's time to put the baby down for a nap. She loves it when it's time to wake the baby up. She loves it when the nap is shorter than expected. She loves it when the kids say, mom, come jump on the trampoline with me. She loves to see weeds growing in the rocks because she knows I'm now invited to spend some time outside. Just sitting in one spot, pulling weeds, getting the root, plucking it out of the dirt. Watching my kids play, like I can just sit and be here. Are you kidding me? You get to imagine that as you accomplish whatever goal you set for 2026, you. You're going to become a person that you sincerely love being. Down to the very thoughts you have about all the little things that you're doing. And where we kind of get tripped up in all this is we like things that are measurable, so outcomes are measurable, and who we're becoming is. It's transformational. It's difficult to measure a transformation, and it's easy to overlook it. It's easy to feel like, well, everything's the same when you're two months into this transformation rather than this outcome. Tracking weight on a scale, tracking money in a bank account. Like the things, the tangible things that we can just measure. It's hard to measure patience, though. It's hard to measure calm. It's hard to measure creativity, vision, like your ability to be a visionary. It's hard to measure your tone in conversation. It's hard to measure those things. Yet those are the things that we really want most. Do you seriously care about a goal? Like, if you were to set a goal to have more quality time with your kids, first of all, it's way too broad. It's very difficult to accomplish things that are so broad. So be more specific what that means to you to have more quality time with your kids. But do you really care about. About having more time with your kids? More, more time with your kids? Do you really care about having more time with your kids? If you spend that time yelling, if you spend that time feeling frazzled and frustrated and impatient and exhausted around them, do you really want more time feeling that way around your kids? No, you don't. And that's the transformation. So we like to set these goals of, oh, in 2026, I'm going to spend more time with my kids. Well, until you become someone that thoroughly enjoys spending time with her kids, you're not going to reach that goal because it's way too painful. It's too painful to spend more time out of alignment with who you really want to be. It's too painful to hear yourself yell more, name calling, criticizing, judging more often. So we keep doing what we've been doing. We avoid with our phone, we procrastinate things, we say, yeah, maybe later, or we just have a complete energy that misaligns with spending time together. We give ourselves all the limitations and reasons and justifications as to why we can't do these things because we have we're in the wrong focus. We've gotta be transformational focused. When we obsess over results, we constantly feel like we fail. We shame ourselves or others when the goals aren't met. Right? I tried the script and it didn't work well. What do you mean by work? What were you hoping for? What was your, what was your real reason in doing it? Was it to see yourself be a patient, intentional communicator, full of positivity and grace and compassion and a geared up and ready mentality and energy to teach your kids these social skills that you just feel so excited about? Was that your goal in using the script or was your goal to get your kids to comply with you? Was your goal to just nip the tantrum in the bud and make it stop right then and there? Was your goal to just make your kids behave perfectly around you? What I find to be really cool about the work we're doing, when it comes to positive mindset, positive communication in motherhood, being a positive mother, being a positive person in this work that we're doing, I find to be so cool about it is the, the fact that good behavior, witnessing, quote unquote, good behavior in children does not equal a good relationship with them. If you go somewhere and you see kids behaving perfectly, they walk in a single file line and they keep their hands to themselves and they use their inside voices the whole time or they just keep their mouth quiet the whole time, they are appropriate in their manners and everything they do just looks so cookie cutter perfect. That does not mean that that child feels safe. It does not mean that that child has a great relationship with with his or her caregivers. Good behavior does not mean good relationship developmentally. Our kids are supposed to to explore. They're supposed to act differently and behave differently than adults that have access to greater developmental mentality and emotional skill set than children do. It is a child's job to push boundaries. It's a parent's job to hold them and it's a child's job to push them. So when we see children that do not push boundaries, that does not mean that they are in this great relationship. It doesn't mean that their self worth and their self esteem is so high and they must have this positive self talk and view themselves so highly. That's not what that means. That's not what that means. And when we get out of this outcome focused mentality and we focus so strongly on who we're becoming, we find that we are better teachers to our children that are doing exactly what they're supposed to do. They're doing the best they can to their mental and physical capacity. And we have put ourselves in a position to grow our mental and physical capacity to better be able to meet them exactly where they're at. So instead of feeling afraid when your child throws a tantrum in a store, you feel, you feel completely secure. And instead of feeling frustrated when your kids are hitting each other or they've, they are speaking disrespectfully to one another, and maybe in the past you've yelled, maybe in the past you've criticized them for it. Instead of doing any of that, you feel so grounded in the moment, you have sincere appreciation for the sacred test site that is your home and the space you've provided for your children to practice social skills. And without needing to role play through anything, you're just able to use the material your kids give you right when they give it to you in order to recognize exactly where they're at developmentally and what value, what skill set you want to be able to teach them more of. And that's the way you respond to what they're doing and the circumstances that you're in. Doesn't that sound so much more refreshing than trying to control your kids? When your outcomes focused and you have goals in motherhood and your outcomes focus, you will constantly think that your kids are in the way, that you're the victim of them. They don't let you go to bed earlier, they don't let you wake up earlier. They make you so mad. And when they make you that mad, you can't just communicate. Communicate clearly and calmly. Well, why not think about that? When you feel that angry, what keeps you from being an effective communicator? Is it really your kids or is it your skill set? That's a hard question. I get it now. We're facing complete ownership. When we look in the mirror. What would we rather do? Blame our kids? Be in our victim mentality? I've taught you guys many times, the victim mentality is all about blaming, complaining and justifying. So if you're justifying your behavior, if you're blaming what you do on someone else, especially your kids, and you're complaining about the circumstances rather than being dialed in on solutions. That's the victim mentality. So what if in 2026 we set goals, though that required us to grow as a person, to become someone that could accomplish such things? Who would you need to become in order to be in bed by 8:30 at night? Gasp. Who would you need to become. Who would you need to become to be someone that does have that morning routine you say you want. That's great that you want a morning routine. I love the direction that this is going in. And you will accomplish it. You will succeed at all that you pursue if you're focused on who you become in the process. Because you recognize. Wait, I am literally supposed to feel frustrated in this process because when I feel frustrated, it's proof that I'm learning. The brain always feels frustrated when it's learning. It's difficult to create new neural pathways. You feel frustrated because you're doing something new and your brain says, can you please just use what we already have set up? It is just so much more convenient for us. Just use this. Just use this. And it pushes you a few, the first few times and then it finally creates that new neuropathway for you. And when you do it through play, it happens. Gosh, I think the number is like 10 times faster than if you were to do it just through copy paste written out. Make it very structured form. Through play, we learn much faster. Faster. So instead of I want to lose 20 pounds, we would think of it as I want to become a woman who honors her body with movement and food and rest. Doesn't that feel? If you are a woman that honors her body with movement, nourishment and rest, you're going to do a whole lot more than lose £20, I'll tell you that right now. You're going to laugh more. You're going to be light hearted. You're going to be stunned. Scheduling the hiking, hiking Wednesday mom trip with all of your community friends. You're going to be making community friends if that's who you are. Instead of this outcome. Focus. I want my kids to obey faster. Oh, we're going to focus on the become. On the become goal. I want to become a mom who responds with consistent kindness and leadership. That means something entirely different than how quickly we want our kids to obey. And the most ironic part in this that I take true delight in is as you become the person you want to be most in this season and you keep that just consistent focus on who you want to be. Who do I want to be? Who do I want to be? Who do I want to be? The rest works itself out. Your kids just so happen to cooperate with you more. Your husband just so happens to be on his phone less around you. Your family just so happens to start eating at the dinner table. You just so happen to enjoy your time through the holidays. Or through times that you're traveling and visiting family and the things that used to trigger you before have lost all power over you. How did that happen? Because you stopped focusing on these outcomes. I just want everyone to get along over the holiday. I want to be someone that can get along with anyone this holiday. Oh, the become, the become. The magic is in the become. Instead of a goal, I want to stop yelling, make it about who you become. I want to become a woman whose peace is stronger than her triggers. Her peace washes away triggers. I want to become a peaceful, centered, God fearing woman. That's who I want to become. And when you're a peaceful, centered, God fearing woman and you're in a moment that the family is experiencing tension and you notice that you catch it faster than everyone else, first of all, your patience far exceeds anyone else's in the room. You have new and better ideas than anyone else was able to access because you've become the kind of person that can do that. And that is just, that's. It's very powerful to consider it that way. So I'm hoping that this is the kind of encouragement that you needed heading into the new year that you can sincerely look at all the things which are beautiful that you want to see yourself do in 2026. Travel more, save money, lose weight, become more active, be present with your family, and again, be as specific as possible. What does it mean to be present with your family? Lay on the living room floor for 30 minutes a day and just, you know, focus on it. In that sense, when you set these goals, truly ask yourself, okay, who would I need to become in the process to accomplish that thing? Like, if I'm accomplishing that thing, that means I must be what kind of person if this is my natural state by June of 2026 or March of 2026, if this is just what I'm naturally doing by March of 2026, who would I need to become in the first three months of the year, minimum? It's so exciting to view it that way. So I hope this is the encouragement that you needed. Sweet friend. If you're interested, you can always join us over in the momset membership. I will link that below for you. I'm extremely excited for 2026. We have a couple events on the calendar that I'm just so much looking forward to bringing back. I told you guys through postpartum I was going to put the events on hold so I could just fully enjoy being in that newborn stage and the little infant stage and the baby stage. And now my sweet little fourth one is approaching quickly. 18 months old, and I. I feel so ready. I feel so ready to become someone that hosts a couple events this year and tries new things and puts myself out there more with these concepts that I live by and believe in with my whole heart, and embracing my faith more ferociously, just boldly, courageously, being someone that lives in that light continuously. And I I have a lot of goals set out for 2026, and really, it just comes down to this overarching vision of being the person that I want most be and doing the things that she does and living the kind of life that she would have until it's all just very normal for me. So this is inspiring me just as much as I hope it's inspiring you. Have a wonderful Christmas, my sweet friend, and I will talk to you very soon.