164. Will Self-Awareness Calm You or Justify You?

Buckle up, buttercup, because we've got some coaching work to do. You are ready to show up as the exact mother that you want to be, no matter where you go or who you're with, no matter what your kids are doing. You've got it in you to love the way you respond, and this is just one of those perspectives that you need in order to do that really well. So welcome back to the Momset Podcast, friends. It's Tessa, and we're going to open up with a very important question, and that's going to set us up for this topic of discussion. Does your self-awareness spike or cap your temper? So when you feel that temper coming on and now you're aware of it, do you feed it with a story or do you tame it with a new perspective? I did not realize that in my life, when I would feel angry and I would notice that anger, I would immediately justify it. And then in that justification, I was telling myself why I have a right and a reason to yell, to say hurtful things, to ignore someone, to shut down, to isolate myself, to make myself small. I would create this whole story in my head and believe every detail. And then that anger I was feeling would get bigger and louder and consume what felt like my entire body and push me to this point where it truly felt like I was out of control. Where even if I wanted to stop, I wouldn't be able to stop. And most times I really did want to stop. And most times I truly felt like someone else was at the controls. That's when I would say, well, this person makes me mad, they make me yell, they make me ignore them. And it was doing things that I didn't really want to see myself do. It's not the person I want to see myself be. So if you ever have these moments in your life where you're like, gosh, this is so out of alignment with who I want to be, you have a choice in that moment. You can go seek the storytellers and the validators of your life that will give you all the justification as to why you are the way that you are. Well, Tessa, you had a hard childhood and your dad passed away when you were 6 and your mom wasn't available and your stepdad was a pedophile and la la la la la. You know, you just had it so I could find people in my life that would say that, 100%. I spent years doing that. And I thought that was freedom. I thought that's what I needed. And now I know, I wish I would've learned this sooner, and I'm so glad I know it now. Now I know there's actually people in my life that will hold me to a higher standard, that will speak life over me, that will set such a high bar of their belief in me that I am like a rocket shooting up to meet that level of belief they have in me. And just the difference that it is and who you choose to talk to and what those words do. It's like going from all of this reactivity where you would feel a certain way and then you'd say, well, I have the self-awareness to realize that I feel so angry, except then your reactions would just multiply every time they'd get worse and uglier and meaner and faster. It's that compared to taking reactivity, turning it into ownership, and transforming that into leadership. And that's what I wanted to make this episode about. So I was putting my little— he's 21 months old. I keep saying that he's 18 months old and you know what? He's 21 months old. I counted this morning. I was like, is he still 18 months old? Is that a thing? He's just always 18 months old. No, he's 21 months old. But anyway, I was putting him to sleep and it was Friday night and I'm putting him to sleep and it was a later night for us and it was just taking a little bit longer and he was thrashing in my arms and I knew he felt overtired and I started to feel so frustrated because of the arching and the crying and the pushing against me. He was like trying to crocodile roll out of my arms and he's 21 months old, so he's getting a little bit bigger. Okay, he's a dense dude. He's a big guy. He's my big guy. That's what I call him. I say, you're my big guy. Anyway, he's in the sleep sack and I'm like trying to sing him a song and I'm trying to walk him around calmly and he's still just like in this heightened state. And I noticed that I started to feel frustrated. I was starting to feel irritated, impatient. Like, that's the best way for me to describe it. And I noticed that my arms started to get like tense. Like, I was just like trying to hold him tighter and still like, I've got you kind of way. But the more he would roll and fight against me, the more closely I was trying to hold him to like keep him in this spot. And I just kind of dawned on me and it caught, and it caught my attention that when I am aware of these thoughts of frustration or these feelings of frustration, there's a story behind those feelings that I can investigate better and further. And I, I feel like I've become a master at that in my life. When, whenever I feel something, I investigate the story behind it because I understand that thoughts create feelings and thoughts plus feelings equals actions and thoughts plus feelings and actions creates your outcomes. And it has never ceased to amaze me how much power we have in influencing an outcome just by controlling who we are in the moment. It's mind-blowing to me. So I'm investigating these thoughts creating the feelings of frustration. And the thoughts behind it were, he shouldn't be fighting against me. Why can't he just be asleep now? It's dark in here. It's calm in here. He needs to calm down. And these thoughts were stressing me out. It was not my son. It wasn't what he was doing. It was what I was thinking about it. So in the self-awareness to notice the frustration, irritation, impatience, those feelings, and going back to the story, I decided to change the story. He's doing the best he can right now. I'll loosen my arms a little bit. I'll give him room to stretch out and roll around and get his little wiggles out. And I've still got him. And I'm telling myself, "Oh, I feel so tired of walking around. I can sit in the chair. Come on, I'll sit in the chair." And I changed around each of these stories that I was telling myself because I noticed the feelings of frustration, irritation, and impatience. And I get him to sleep and I loved the way I handled bedtime. I loved it. I loved the way I did it. I held him longer in the rocking chair once he was asleep. I'm like, kissing his puckered lips. So stinking cute. And I just noticed like, gosh, he's the perfect weight in my arms and on my lap. And I love this feeling of holding him. And I just kept telling myself like, tuck me away from the world for just a little while. Just me and you. You could just tuck me away from the world. Everything in this room, it's dark, it's quiet. Things slow down here. It feels so good to be in here with you. And he's sleeping in my arms. And then I lay him down and I leave his room. And it was like 9 o'clock now or so. And I just go straight to bed. My husband's waiting for me and we go to sleep. And I was about to fall asleep, but I had this thought. And I'll literally, I pop myself back up in bed because this thought struck me so clearly. That I wanted to record this podcast episode about it. And I knew that if I went to sleep without writing down the thought, I'd probably forget it. So I sit up and I write, does your self-awareness spike or cap your temper? Do you feed it or tame it once you're aware of it? The story you're telling yourself about the feeling is feeding it or freeing you from it. And that was, that was it. I was like, okay, if I, I know if I write this down, then I can get the rest of the episode. And that's what all this is based on is just how often do we put an emphasis on, well, you have to have the self-awareness, have the self-awareness, be aware of how you're feeling without properly understanding what to do next and equipping mothers and fathers and children and just people with what they can do once they have the awareness of the feeling because most people are using their self-awareness to step into justification. And what that means is they'll say something like, I'm aware that I feel mad, so I have a reason to explode. And that's a big difference. If you imagine that evening of me putting my son to sleep, if I had a mentality like that, I feel so frustrated and irritated and impatient, and you know what, I'm just, I'm just, I don't know, going to do something hurtful. That— I feel like times like that, it's just so easy to slip into that. And it's because you have the awareness and then you go on to feed the feeling with a story rather than having just the gratitude. I would call it gratitude, having the gratitude that emotions lasts 90 seconds. That's it. So yes, I genuinely do feel frustrated and a little irritated and impatient walking my son around that room, and he's rolling in my arms and pushing against me and crying a little bit louder and like doing all these things. And yes, I feel that way. It only lasts 90 seconds if I choose to free myself from the story. Once the emotion's there, there's no taking it away. Okay, you gotta feel it. I can feel it for 90 seconds. That's all right. And then I'll stop the self-inflicted pain and harm of the story I'm telling myself that's creating these emotions in the first place. The problem is most people put their emotions on life support so it lasts 90 days. I would say most people feel perpetually angry. Perpetually sad, perpetually frustrated, perpetually impatient and irritated. They get no relief from it. It's just constantly happening in their life. And then as soon as one story runs out to create that emotion, they pick up another one. Now that that car passed by them and that moment's gone, they're gonna find another one. Now that that drama in a friendship is gone and over with, I'm gonna find another thing that's irritating me, another thing that I find to be unfair, another thing that I find to be annoying. We have a serious storytelling problem, friends. We do. If you're feeling the same way every single day and you don't like the way that you're feeling, you have a storytelling problem. That's it. You are feeding your emotions the exact story they need to survive because without that story, they'd last 90 seconds and then you're free of it. And that leaves us with much deeper questions to ask ourselves. Who am I without this story? And why do I feel so afraid to just be her that I would put myself through so much harm to repeat this story over and over and over and over again? Isn't that crazy? That's crazy. So you need more than self-awareness. You need the self-awareness. Yes, absolutely. But self-awareness is not permission for justification. Self-awareness is not the go-ahead to react. If you have the self-awareness that you feel angry, that right there is the moment you change the story because you caught the anger. Your self-awareness should lower your reaction, not heighten it. As soon as you notice that you're frustrated, your next step should be improved. As soon as you notice that you feel so tired, and that is genuine, and that is fair, and it's good. I mean, look at your life. Look at how much you're contributing to, you're creating. Of course you should feel tired. Do you need the harmful story attached to that? No. Once you have the awareness of feeling tired, your next step should look peaceful. It should look restful. It should look like what you actually need. And that to me is such a beautiful thing. And I, I literally just laid in bed that night thinking about this. Self-awareness can cap the emotional experience instead of spiking it and heightening it. It can cap it. It can say, this lived long enough to get to here. Where my awareness is at, and now it comes back down. It's like a bell curve, right? It reaches the top of the bell curve and you're like, this is where my awareness is at, and now the emotions, the stories, and my response comes back down. And it's a peaceful thing. And that, I think, is something that I could only put into words and have an articulate experience of this past weekend, putting my son to sleep. And I've been doing this work for years and it never dawned on me that this is a thing until now. And that's what I love about the podcast is I just come here and I share the things with you that are dawning on me and I'm raising my awareness of so that you can learn it faster than I did. So you can have awareness of it and power in this. Sooner than I got to. And if this is the type of work that you love to do, I have 2 more points in this episode, so stick around with me. But I have 2 more points this episode, and I want you to know that I'm hosting my first in-person community event on May 16th. It's called Yes Mom Live, and I'm going to teach you to stop parenting from a place of fear and worry and reactivity. And that's much as what we're talking about here. If you're someone that's, that as soon as you have the awareness of an emotion, you react on it and it bridges a justification for you to be doing the very thing that you told yourself you never wanna see yourself do, I can help you with that. And at Yes Mom Life, I'm going to empower you and guide you through the experience of starting to parent from a place of who you want your children to be rather than who you don't want them to be. When you're parenting from fear, worry, and concern, you're speaking death over your kids. You're talking to them about the character you don't want them to have, the behaviors you don't want to see in them, the things you never want to see them, hear them, and watch them do again. You never want these things. You don't want them to do this. Friend, you're giving them the wrong picture. You are instigating the reality and creating the reality that you don't want. And worse than that, they're gonna start reacting to the way you feel, all that anger and frustration and fear and worry. They're feeling stressed by that too. And I just know that when we're using the tools of Yes! Family from the Yes! Family flip book, also linked below, it's available for pre-order now depending on when you're listening to this episode. The Yes Mom Live is all about the tools found in the Yes Family Flipbook. And I'm helping to guide you to a place of seeing your children beyond the behavior you're witnessing right now. Speak directly to the character you want them to have and instill the values you want them to live by. And take the very moments that you used to react to and turn those into your favorite favorite moments to teach. Listen to any of my episodes that I tell a story in, and it could have gone south real quick in any of those stories. The only difference and reason why it doesn't is because I look forward to those opportunities to teach in. I know my kids are probably never going to come up to me in just a calm mood and everything's fine, they've had the best day, and their brothers are getting along, and come up to me and say, Mom, You know, what do you do when you disagree with someone and they take something from you and then they say something that hurts your feelings and you, you just disagree with these things? What's the right way to handle that? Are you, are you actually kidding me? What reality are we, are we living on? That's not reality. That is not where our kids come from. They don't even know that that's something they need to learn, let alone ask it. They're going to show you behavior. They're going to tell you their perspective. They're going to just let you see exactly where they're at. And then you see, oh my goodness, this applies that lesson I really want them to know. Oh, this is the perfect time to teach that value of honesty. Don't reaffirm lying by speaking to it. And that's what Yes Mom Live is all about. If this is firing you up just to listen to this for 2 minutes, you need a ticket to Yes Mom Life. Come spend a full day with me in Southern Utah. It's beautiful weather. It'll be the best environment, a room full of positive and empowered mothers that get this and want more. They want to hold themselves to a higher standard. They want to change their behavior, even if they go before anyone and everyone else in their life. And I want that for you too. So the tickets, the details for the tickets is down in the show notes below. Go ahead and check that out. Join me at Yes Mom Life. Now, I want to wrap up our first point about awareness, awareness in itself being neutral, and then it's that next step that we take. Do you, when we're looking at it as, okay, does my self-awareness cap where I'm at or does it spike it? And you can ask yourself, did my awareness make me more powerful or more reactive? Now you know. If your awareness makes you more reactive, it's because the story you're telling yourself. If it makes you more powerful, it's because the story you're telling yourself. And we want awareness for responsive nature and power there, the power to alter and improve our internal state. Awareness is not permission to react, and it's not a bridge and gateway to justification. That's not what it's for. Second thing that we're focused on here, the story you attach to the feeling determines its power. So you have, I had this feeling of frustration while putting my son to sleep. And the story I attached to that, to that feeling of frustration and impatience and irritation determines its power over me and in my life. Feelings are real, absolutely. Validate every way you feel. And scrutinize every thought you have because the story you tell yourself is feeding those feelings. It can be the feeling of gratitude. It's the story you're telling yourself that feeds the feeling of gratitude. It can be the feeling of frustration. It's the story you're telling yourself that feeds the feeling of frustration. It's you. The answers are in you. The experience is in you. It's not in your circumstances. Two mothers can feel the same the same irritation, but tell completely different stories. One story says, my kids never listen. I have to do everything around here. No one respects me. And that feeds the temper. She's a mom that feels frustrated in her home. And she asks herself, well, why do I feel so frustrated? Oh, because my kids never listen and I have to do everything around here and no one respects me. You're fueling, you're fueling that temper. You're fueling that frustration and you are going to eventually, like a teapot, start shouting, okay? 'Cause you're building all that pressure up. And here's a mom that feels irritated and she tells a story that tames the temper. Oh, I noticed that I feel overwhelmed right now. Same thing, I feel overwhelmed right now. I need to slow down before I respond. I tell myself, I process before I respond. So when I feel frustrated, I feel frustrated and I process before I respond. That tames it. It puts a cap. This is the extent in which my temper will reach because now I'm aware of it so it can come back down. My kids are learning and I'm teaching them. Completely transforms the emotional experience there. So the story you're telling yourself is determining whether the emotion becomes fuel for reaction or information for growth, information for healing to take place for maybe the first time in a really long time. You're going to take tremendous steps towards your healing because of your awareness and your— and your choice to respond in that moment. So your feeling isn't the problem. You can validate every way you feel. The story you attach to it decides that outcome. Decides what you're going to do next is what story are you deciding to stay in and live in. And you have so much power here to elevate, transform, and enrich the story you're telling yourself. The third point that I really wanted us to capture together is ownership turns awareness into leadership. I see motherhood, it is honestly my favorite experience in life because I have these 4 little darling boys right by me and this opportunity to lead them well, to teach them early on the things that I'm learning later in life, that I learned in my late 20s and now in the first couple of years of my 30s, like, wow, my life is opening up so much because I'm finally understanding these things. And some of them are simple, like the time I choose to go to bed, the time I choose to wake up, how I fuel and nourish my body, And some of them are much more complex and integrated with connection with others, like the mercy we have, the forgiveness we live by, our values and how those shine through in our relationships. I mean, the conversations that I have with my kids soften me and strengthen me daily. It just, it's so purposeful. All of it is so purposeful. And I really believe that it's this ownership that gives you the opportunity to lead well. It's not who's on your team and who's in your group and who you've been assigned to. It's the level of ownership you have. If you have a low level of ownership over the way you feel, I'm going to say this right now. I saw a post just, what was it, this morning? I saw a post this morning and I'll read it to you. I took a screenshot of it. I was truly just like, what planet are we living on that that is supposed to be helpful? I'm just like, what? And it's from this mom account. And she said, I'm 4 and sometimes I make mommy yell at bedtime just so the waiting will stop. I could have thrown my phone across the room, which obviously we can work on that awareness piece right there. Like, seriously. That's the messaging that your 4-year-old ever in any capacity has the, has the authority and the power over you to make you yell? What? What? I— do you see what I'm seeing here? Guys, I love you. I really, really do. I love, I love people. The further I get into my healing, the more people I love and the better I love them. I love you. You can believe that your 4-year-old makes you yell and I still love you. I want more for you though. I want more for your 4-year-old than I make my mom yell. And I want more for you than your 4-year-old makes you yell. Do you understand how limitless you are? How remarkably made and designed you are? There's not some little 4-year-old outside of you pulling strings and pushing buttons inside of you. Nobody gets on the megaphone speaker inside your brain and presses the red button that puts it on loud and play, and then they get to decide the words that come out of your mouth. No. That is wrong. You get to decide what you say, how you say it, how fast you speak, what's the volume of your voice. All of that is you. So even if your 4-year-old would like the waiting at bedtime to stop, they could never make you yell to do it. And I really hope that in that message, that the relatability you find in text like that and in storytelling like that becomes less and less and less. I pray that you see your complete abundance and freedom over your choices, your perspective, your internal experiences and environments, because that's already been given to you. You don't have to go beg, ask, and pray for those things. They've been given to you. Just exercise them. Exercise them. Show that you have authority over them because you do. You're not waiting on your 4-year-old to change or your 4-year-old to stop wanting the waiting to end. It's in you. And that's so powerful. And a leader would never say, "You made me go off course." You're on my team and I asked you which way and you said left, but we were supposed to go right. No, you're the leader. The leader takes the most amount of accountability and responsibility and ownership whenever and wherever they can. They look at how their leadership led up to that moment of the team going left rather than right. Not to be responsible for someone else's choices and not to bear someone else from their feeling of which direction they told them to go in, but just to look at, hey, I play a role here too. And a leader is the ultimate example of taking ownership of the role they play. And that's a mother. That's a father. That's a mother. That's being a parent is your opportunity to finally be the leader. And there's so much freedom there, there's so much excitement there. And it's ownership. The goal of self-awareness is not just noticing emotions, it's owning how we respond to them. You don't have to control the way you feel. It's okay to feel tired, sad, depressed, frustrated, angry, annoyed, irritated, impatient. Guilty, jealous, regretful. It's okay to feel it all. It's own the way you respond to it. That's what makes you a leader. You're not a leader because you always feel happy, you always feel grateful, you always feel blessed. You're not a leader because things look easy for you. You're a leader because of how you respond. To life and the obvious things happening and the silent battles within. That's what makes you a leader. Ownership sounds like, "I feel frustrated and I'm responsible for how I respond." Not, "You made me mad," or, "My 4-year-old makes me yell." Or again, one of those validators in our life trying to make it someone else's fault, make you the victim of bedtime, make you the victim of a 4-year-old. It's crazy. It's truly, it's got to be the definition of insanity. Here we are, just a little bit older, still blaming people, expecting a different outcome. When a mom says, I'm feeling frustrated and I'm going to take a deep breath before I answer, you should hear how many times I've said that to my kids. Mommy is breathing and I'm thinking before I give you my answer. Because I know what I say next matters too. And then I will just be quiet and I will breathe and I will think and I will put myself in the best possible mental headspace with the best possible perspective I can access at the time before giving my answer. And that's leadership. It's modeling what I'd like for them to do in a similar position. And it's so empowering. And when we do that, we're teaching emotional intelligence. We're teaching self-control, we're teaching personal responsibility. And this is where I feel off-put and disagree with some of these, I'm like doing air quotes right now, biblical parenting approaches. Delayed obedience is disobedience and they need these consequences and you must punish. And no discipline is pleasant while it's happening. So you know what? Spanking's not pleasant while it's happening, but it is a necessary discipline. That is just not true, and I disagree with all of the above. All of the above I disagree with. The discipline to do what is right, even when it is hard, that's the leadership. It's to model self-control. And you know, if you really want to parent biblically, you really want to do it by the Bible, be merciful. Give an ounce of all the mercy and grace that's been given to you. Forgive the way you'd like your heavenly Father to forgive you. That's biblical. To humble thyself and realize, gosh, do you really get it right all that often to be up there all high and mighty? Thinking that everyone else should be doing better. And, you know, I'll fully own it. I'm still— I feel new to the Bible. I feel new to faith. And maybe that's why I'm so childlike about it. And I just know that the discipline to exercise self-control, the discipline to do what's right even when it's hard, the discipline to give mercy, the discipline to forgive, the discipline to teach in a moment that it would be really easy to justify, and it would be really easy to punish, the discipline to remain out of anxious thoughts and fears, even when it would be really easy and comfortable to slip into them, to hold myself higher than that, that's where I wanna lead from, and that's what you get to do. And when you do this, this is a massive shift for children because kids learn emotional regulation by watching us regulate ourselves. So again, when you come to Yes Mom Live, this is what I'm going to be speaking over you and feeding to your mind and inviting into your heart, is this opportunity for you to put down all of the worldly worries and the fears that you are reacting to and see how powerful you are when you simply choose to say the next best thing and control yourself. To speak highly and to communicate in a sense that if you could program and instill someone else's character, that's exactly what you're doing. And you do it through your words. And that's what I'm going to be teaching to you. And we're going— and through that, we're able to teach emotional intelligence and self-control and personal responsibility, which is what we want for our kids. And they learn it through us. And in those meaningful conversations we have in the middle of difficulty, when we see their tantrums, their setbacks, their obstacles, challenges, disobedience, forgetfulness, disrespect— when we see that all as opportunity to teach, it becomes beautiful. And the lessons actually stick and the connection's intact for safety to remain and them actually take it in, and you learn it a little deeper yourself too. So in all of this, I just want you to keep a mindful thought on these, on these few things. Does your self-awareness spike or cap your temper? If it's spiking your temper, friend, you've just turned to justification and reactivity. We use our self-awareness to cap. This is the extent in which it reaches now that I'm aware of it, and I bring it back down. It's always that power is in what you choose to do in response to it. So self-awareness is the moment of power, the doorway to choice. The second point of this episode, the story you attach to the feeling determines its power. So the story I tell myself about feeling frustrated about feeling disappointed, about feeling afraid, that determines the amount of power the feeling has in that moment. And the story is either fuel for reaction or information for growth. And lastly, we're turning ownership into leadership because ownership turns awareness into leadership. We take that next step. And we own how we respond to our children, to our circumstances, to our spouse, to our friends, to life, to the weather, all of it, all of it is an opportunity. And this is massive and completely freeing. So I want you to spend some time just challenging yourself. What do I do once I'm aware of how I feel? Do I feed the feeling or do I challenge it? And I truly hope that I get to see you at Yes Mom Live, and that's happening on May 16th. So get the ticket details below, and I will talk to you guys real, real soon.