165. Is it Too Late For You? Spoiler Alert, NO. Let's Speak Truth and Life.mp3

Let's speak truth and get really comfy with reality today, because someone's gotta be speaking truth and speaking life over you. And I volunteer every single day in every way to be the one to do that. I absolutely love that position, and I feel very convicted that the more I express just how wonderful it is to be in this spot, to be the positive one, to be the one that speaks truth and speaks life and sees another perspective, the more you're gonna wanna do it too. And the more naturally it's gonna come for you. And you're like, oh yeah, I get it now. And that's what many of you are starting to do. You're starting to see the YES! language tools that I share. And I've launched the YES! Family Flipbook and I'm showing you guys how I have these scripts for disrespectful tone or name-calling. And I have tools for speaking life and clearly instruct and quietly wait. And as I've been opening up more and sharing with you guys this huge project I've been working on for the Yes! Family Flipbook, and I've linked it below for you, I highly encourage you to pre-order it. You get a really cute Say Yes disc necklace. Um, if you check my Instagram story, I've been wearing mine. That is my gift to you as a member in our community that is quite literally getting on the same page in this work. By getting the S Family Flipbook. And those that preorder also get priority shipping, so you will get the first flipbook out of all the batches that we send out. So I'm really excited for you. And here's the thing that I've noticed that is holding a lot of people back that want to make change, and they feel really intimidated, nervous, and fearful to do it. They say, but I've already been doing it this way for so long, and wouldn't it be like really hard for my family, and I've been putting it off because I just know it's going to take so much work. And if I just start speaking life over my kids now when I have been saying more critical things, that's— they're not going to accept that from me. They're going to be— they're going to look at me funny. They're going to be like, what's wrong with you? What's gotten into you? They're not going to trust that. And I just really am ready to set the gates of your brain on fire when I hear that, because there is a brilliant and truthful perspective sitting right in front of us that you have full capacity to see in your life too. Let's say that you've been speaking negatively, critically, judgmentally, harshly, yelling. You've been doing that for some time. Let's say it's been going on for years, okay? Maybe a decade, depending how old your kids are. Maybe two decades, I don't know. Let's say it's been going on for a long time, and no matter how long you've been doing this, you notice that your kids are starting to do it too, and you feel super guilty because you hear the way your 4-year-old talks to your 2-year-old, or you hear the way your 10-year-old and 15-year-old are going at it and the way that they speak to each other. And instead of it seeming like a family that cooperates, collaborates, and encourages one another, we're now in a position where there's a lot of hostility, there's a lot of aggression, irritation, annoyance. Someone's constantly threatening someone. They want to take something away if someone has hurt them. And developmentally, a lot of this can be really appropriate. Like, yelling can be developmentally appropriate. Getting the payback, as one of my boys says it, that can be developmentally appropriate. And while it is a human experience to go through what it feels like to yell, what it feels like to be in a power struggle, and to think that the real way that we win is to be right and to be the loudest or to just take the biggest thing away, give the biggest punishment, That's how we win. While all of this is a real and valid human experience, and much of it is developmentally appropriate, and it's something that I believe every single person experiments with, tries on in one way or another. I know I have personally, I feel like I've tried all of that on, all of it. And for me, I've just noticed how awful it feels. It's never felt good to take something away from someone else because I don't like what they're doing. And then I just say, well, then give me your Spider-Man. Or like, it's never felt good to just think of what do my kids care about and I feel disappointed in their behavior, so I'm gonna take away what they care about. It's never felt good to do. However, it did feel really natural to do that. There has been times where it felt really natural to yell, but it never felt right. It never felt intentional, um, effective for the family culture that I was trying to create. Didn't ever feel in alignment with the mom that I want to be. So just painting that full picture, a bigger picture here of it's not all because of what you've modeled. Like, our kids are thinking for themselves too. They come up with their own ideas. They are their own people. So are you, and so am I. And on that, our leadership matters greatly. What we model intentionally becomes what they do naturally. And I could even say that with unintentionality, what you model unintentionally becomes what they do naturally. And that always, just that level of severity and accountability has always just really fired me up. I'm like, oh man, like, what, what am I doing intentionally or unintentionally that is creating a very natural pathway for my kids in their thought processes and in their communication styles? And, you know, I see a little bit more of that every single day. And they're their own people. Each of my boys have a very distinct personality. They have very distinct things that they care about. That light them up and bring them down. It's all unique to them. So on that note, when you're thinking about, okay, I see these tools that Tessa shares about and I would really like to bring them into my home, and sometimes I think we're just way too far gone because my kids sound like me and the way they talk to each other, the way they react to something inconvenient, or not going their way. They just sound so much like me. I think we're too far gone. If you have ever thought— this is where I could set the gates of your brain on fire— if you have ever thought that you're too far gone, your example has gotten too bad to turn it around, you are so far in the hole that there's just no way you could climb out. It would take so— you're telling yourself it would take so much hard work and I would never see the end of it. There'd never be, you know, a sunrise on the horizon for me because I'm just in total darkness. I don't even know which way to go. And I, I really get messages like this and you might be relating strongly to it because I know there's more people feeling this way than just when I felt this way and the people that are messaging me right now. And I always take it back to this idea that if your children are behaving like you, positive or negative, if your children sound like you and they give consequences like you give consequences, and they care about being right like you care about being right, and they will argue till they're blue in the face like you argue till you're blue in the face, and they yell like you yell, and they threaten like you threaten, and they talk to their sibling the way that you've, you know, you've talked to them. If you have noticed that pattern, I want you to know that it actually, all it does, it does not say what tomorrow is going to look like. It does not say what the rest of their childhood is going to look like, and it doesn't determine the way they're going to handle the the next inconvenience, the next annoyance, the next moment of frustration. It doesn't determine any of that. You are not a fortune teller. You don't know the future, so stop it. Stop it. All you know is what has been and what is, and then what comes next, what's coming in the future, that's that's gonna reveal itself. And no amount of you fearing it, one, keeps those things from happening, but two, makes it any easier to go through it when they do happen. Because the more you fear the worst-case scenarios and these big consequential futures happening in your life, the more afraid you feel of them, and then the more reactive you get to them if and when they do happen. That you spent all of your mental energy fearing these things instead of really getting clear on, well, how do I wanna handle that? What's my vision for this? So it really does you no good to sit and fear what it's gonna look like tomorrow. And the behavior your kids show you today, if they're arguing with each other, what good does it do you to think, oh my gosh, 10 years from now, they're never even gonna talk to each other again. And when they're 30, they're never gonna have a friendship or a personal relationship. And I know they're never gonna wanna spend time with me. 25 years from now. What? What? Do we understand where our brain is going right now? Unhinged, off the rails, because it's in this delusional, made-up reality. You don't know those things. It's just not truthful. It can't be truthful because you don't know. When we just want to stay in truth— I told you I'm gonna speak truth over you today. I'm gonna speak life over you. When you just wanna focus on truth, focus on what is right now in the moment, not what will be, 'cause you don't know that. You don't know that. And then when we teach our brain to stay in what is, we actually find that we have a lot of really cool solutions, really cool ideas, amazing self-reflection and self-awareness. That is exactly what's needed to prevent and avoid all of those really hurtful, harmful, scary predictions that our brain was making and to increase our confidence in steering clear of those things, you gotta be present in the moment. Now, confidence is just remembered experience. That's it. You feel confident that you can do something because you can remember all of your experience leading up to it. That's it. It's it. You, you feel confident in your ability to, to navigate through a tantrum, even if you've never calmly handled a tantrum. You can increase your confidence to handle a tantrum calmly, not by saying, I am confident. That will probably actually remind you that you're not and you don't feel confident in this, but by recalling all the experience you have that has prepared you for this moment. The times that you reviewed the flip book and you have it on the counter. The times that you've communicated with your spouse the way that you want to be handling these tantrums, what you've done that day to increase the level of patience and tolerance you have in your communication skill set. All of that increases your confidence. It's just remembered experience, and it doesn't have to be, oh, I've done this exact thing before. It's, I've put in the reps, I have practiced, I have developed something here that equips me to handle this moment really well. And when I handle this moment really well, well, now I'm going to have even more confidence. That's going to go in my remembered experience bank and build me up, build up my confidence for the next thing that I go to, that I go to do. So just know that we're going to stay in the truth of what is right now. You are all done letting your brain jump forward 10, 15, 25 years to how No one's talking in your family. Your kids don't talk to each other. They don't call you. They just cut everyone off, whatever it is. You don't know that. Okay? And we are truthful communicators. We're truthful thinkers. We're truthful women. And as truthful women, we will keep our mind focused on truth and reality because that's just the best way to think logically about things. Now, talked about this leadership. Okay? Now that you know we're focused on truth, here's where I'm gonna start speaking life over you, friend, and burn these gates down in your brain because you've convinced yourself, oh, they sound like they're arguing like I've been arguing and they're fighting to be right like I've been fighting to be right and they're speaking unkindly to each other. And gosh, I feel so guilty for the way my 4-year-old talks to my 2-year-old because it's exactly how I've been talking to them. And then you tell yourself that you're too far gone. You're just down in this ditch and you can't get out and there's no sun on the horizon and you're just trapped here forever. Well, friend, the only thing that is proven when you see your children thinking like you, feeling like you, behaving like you, is that you are an effective leader. That's the only thing that's proven. If your children will do what you do, with or without you even saying it, they just pick up on what you're doing and they do it too. That literally just means that you're a leader worth following. In their eyes, it's worth following, Mom. Isn't that amazing? You're already an effective teacher. You're already a worthy leader. You just are. And even if you feel intimidated in this role, you're in it. It's yours. And you may say, but I don't deserve this. That's probably true. I don't. I don't deserve all this goodness. I don't deserve these 4 beautifully healthy wonderful boys. I don't deserve these things. There's no way I could have earned it. It's just to me, grace, mercy, unconditional love, like the real beauty and generosity and abundance that is truly available to us. And now we just have to ask ourselves, well, what am I going to do with it? Yeah, I'm fully aware that I'm undeserving of these beautiful things. And since I do know that I'm undeserving of it, this is how I want to show up to it. This is— I mean, I'm going to give this my best because I know it's more than I deserve. And if your children are already doing what you do, even if it looks scary, it looks big, it looks angry, it looks frustrated, it looks tired, it looks guilty, it looks ashamed, they're just— they're already following you. So you're an effective leader. And you're an effective teacher for them? And what does it say about your kids? Does it say that they're just so disrespectful, they're disobedient, they're, gosh, out of control? Is that what it says about them? Is it true that if a child is doing what an adult modeled, that the child is out of control? No, I'd say the child's right on track. The track's laid out for him. The child is respecting the leader that's there. The child is honoring his mother and father, following in their example. How— I just really love this idea of Expecting my kids to be following me and not like just expecting them to do what they do and taking that behavior as an accurate feedback for where they're really at and to teach me what it is that they know how to do. Everything my kids do is just showing me what they know how to do. What are their skills? And if they completely drop the ball on something and I'm like, oh wow, the way we handled that is really outside of alignment with our family culture and our values and our integrity. What's going on? Oh, we're missing a skill. We're missing a skill. And come to, come to think of it, have I ever even really covered that value? Do you even know what the word integrity means? Do you know what honesty means? One of my favorite questions, my 5-year-old does this very frequently. My favorite question that my 5-year-old asks, and he asks this all the time, "What does that mean? What does that mean? Mom, what does honesty mean? Mom, what does truthful mean?" Like, I'll use these words and I'll describe things. Again, clearly instruct, quietly wait, say what I want to see. I'm using yes language through and through. And my sweet 5-year-old, and I'll think I made it as simple as possible, and my sweet 5-year-old will say, what does that mean? He's literally asking me, what does kind mean? And I'm like, wow. Like, that's just so powerful to see and to hear from him where these questions are at, because it proves our kids are truly doing the best they can to their mental and physical capacity. There is a, a reasonable assumption that they're make— they're making up the definition for some of the words that you use because the definition has never been clearly spelled out to them. We've never told them what the word means, so they're assuming what the word means, and it could be a very inaccurate assumption. It could be the opposite definition of it. That to me is It's so freeing. They're operating in innocence, and you're doing the best you can as a teacher, as a leader. You're doing what you know how to do. That's it. And if we look at it without the shame and without attacking yourself and getting so angry with yourself— if you're angry with yourself, you're not curious, because curiosity and anger do not coexist. So really take some time to think of that. Am I so angry with how I've shown up as a mother that I'm completely missing the literal answers right in front of my face that would require curiosity for me to see? I would need to inquire about, about these situations, about my reactions, about my thought processes. I need to get really curious about this. Where's this all coming from? Well, you're not doing that. If you're angry with yourself. And even if you tried like, oh, Tessa, you don't understand, when I get angry with myself, I'm asking all kinds of questions. Why are you like this? Why are you this way? What's wrong with you? Yeah, friend, those are not self-discovery questions. Those are shaming questions. They fuel your anger, they fuel your shame, and you're sending your brain on the wrong scavenger hunt to go look for all of the information that would tell you and confirm that something is indeed wrong with you. And, and it's going to recall all these terribly painful, hurtful, harmful life experiences that you felt so afraid and so neglected, so abandoned, so alone. It's going to recall all of that because you asked, why am I like this? Oh, here's why. Because my parents weren't available to me. I was shut down emotionally. I like my ideas were turned around, my creativity was stunted, I got bullied in this grade, and this teacher said this thing, and my husband just recently said this, and I weigh this much, and I look like this, and this friend did this. Like, it's gonna recall all of these painful, hurtful things. And then what are you gonna go do when you're feeling so pained and you're feeling so hurt? What are you gonna go do? Yell. Scroll your phone, shut down. You gotta escape it. If you don't have the emotional intelligence, and this is not a, a jab on anybody, it's just the way it works. The emotional intelligence to be able to recognize and truly identify how you are feeling and what's at the base and root of that feeling, and the self-discovery to know what it is that you actually need in that moment. You're going to try and escape it because it's way too big. And that, that's not being a bad mom, that's being human. It just, it just is. So I'm telling you from a place of truth that you are an effective leader. If your kids are talking like you, they're behaving like you, they're thinking like you, and you pick up on that, you notice that, it just means they're following you already. They're already following you so that when you want to make a change, you don't even have to convince them to follow you. They're just programmed to follow you. God's great design is to program the youth, the young, the little, the little ducks to follow their mother. Like, look at any animal. Little ducklings hatch, they see their mom, and then they follow said mom. All around. The mother duck never needs to say, you have to follow me everywhere, and take things away and refuse to feed them and, you know, or keep them out of the water in order to get them to listen. She lets them face all kinds of natural consequences. You want to follow me because I am your safety, I am your nurturing, I am your best example. So of course you want to follow me. And our kids see us the same way. It's just so much more divine. It's so much more complex and completely beautiful because we, we get so many more experiences than ducks and birds, right? Our— there's so much more intimacy and there's an intricateness to this design. But I'm telling you right now, you don't have to figure out how to program your kids to follow you. They're born wanting to do that. An internal pull, this intrinsic desire to follow you. And they do, just like you followed your parents, just like I followed mine. It's just programmed. It's human nature. It's human nature. You don't have to do that part. What you do want to do is make sure that you like the direction you're taking them, that you're acting in integrity. There's a righteousness about your processes, be it emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually. There is a righteousness about you where your integrity remains above reproach. You hold yourself to a higher standard and you strive for excellence. Yeah, it would be really easy to say, oh, not me. I'm not going to do these things because I've had it so hard and there's way too much and it's not fair. You could. Is that your standard of excellence though? I've, I've done previous episodes on standard of excellence. I love the standard of excellence. I think it's very, very exciting. Love to do it every day. And you know, I, if you know the direction that you want to lead your kids in and you just let go of this one false idea, this one false idea that it's too far gone, they wouldn't follow this positive change because I've taught them all these negative things. They would just keep doing the negative things. Friend, you've just given them contrast. That's all. You've given them diversity. Good for you. That's wonderful. When our kids have real lived experience, especially if you've been doing it this way for 20 years, imagine the opportunity, the front row seat you'd be giving your kids to watch you change. You think they want to be this one way their whole life? They're never going to want to change anything about them. They're never— they're never going to want to change the way they communicate, the way they think, the way they show up, the way they think what's possible. Come on. Of course they're going to want to change. Of course they're going to want to grow in their life. And to be able to say like, wow, I remember watching my mom change. Like, my mom used to yell all the time growing up, and then it's like a flip switched in her head. And she communicated so clearly and calmly and even slowly with us. Like, you could tell that she was really choosing her words, and it always just kind of stumped us. And now I'm so inspired by it. I know I can change my communication too. Yes, I could yell, and I understand what that feels like, and maybe it feels powerful in the moment, and I've experienced with that, but the guilt that follows I've realized it's, it's entirely selfish. I'm the only one that feels better. Nothing gets better accomplished there. There's no collaboration, vision, teamwork there. When you give your kids that experience and they— and you let them watch you change, here's, here's my, here's my, uh, theory. My theory is Most moms don't think, like, truly at the core of things, at the heart of things, aren't thinking, this won't work for us, my kids won't follow me. I, now that we have unpacked so much of this, my theory is it's a fear of the vulnerability, the exposure. Just the facing of the ownership of the way we've done things, taking full accountability, full responsibility for it, and saying, I'm choosing to change. And when you choose to change, you know what that means? You blow up the beliefs that got you there in the first place. You blow 'em up. And I know from firsthand experience over, over the years of working on myself, when I've blown up major sets of beliefs that I viewed the world through, like the makes me mindset— how everyone made me mad and they made me ignore them, and he made me miss out on opportunities and chances in my life, and he made me so insecure, and he made me so afraid of men— like, when I really went in on mastering my communication and loving my mindset and dying on this hill of being who I want to be in any room, in any group, like choosing that be the hill I die on— when I went all in on that, you know what doesn't belong in there? The makes me mindset. And it felt terrifying and so wrong to let go of that mindset. And it's because when you let go of that one mindset, you're forced— you're forcing your brain into a position to see all the places and all the times that it's been wrong. And your brain truly has a strong distaste for being wrong. It just wants to be right about anything. Even if it's wrong, it wants to be right. And I was putting my brain in a position to see you're wrong, you're just wrong. And now it's one of my favorite things. I love the experience of being wrong. I love it when I'm wrong. I love it when I assume it's gonna go one way and I'm wrong. I love it when I catch that my brain is like thinking my kids are gonna do X, Y, Z, or think this way or say this thing next and they don't. I love it. When I'm wrong. I'm like, oh, this is so— it's so freeing. It's so freeing to be wrong because then you can right your wrongs and you can have humility and you can have so much more grace from that, from that place where you're just like, you know what, sometimes we're wrong. And sometimes the things we lived by, that makes me mindset, that was wrong too. And now I can go through my life and right all those wrongs and be free of them. And I absolutely love that experience. And to me, when I hear moms saying like, oh, it's too late for us, it's really just the fear of exposure. It's the fear of vulnerability. And they know that making this change would mean admitting that the way they've done things is wrong. And that can feel really scary and really painful. And believe me, I know that. I know that, and it's still the right thing to do. Sometimes the right thing to do is scary and it is painful and it is more than you think you're capable of. Yeah. And you still put one foot in front of the other and you do your best to do it. You do your best to figure it out. And it's just that humility, that, that process, it really opens up so much in life. So In closing of this episode, I just really want you to see that what's happening now in the moment is really the only truth you have. You don't know what the future is going to look like, and even in the past experiences, they're full of your projections. So until you fix the projector now, your brain, you can misperceive past experiences all the time. All the time. You can confuse those memories, you can mix them up, you can you can fail to see the lesson and the wisdom in those, in those, until you get right with your mind now in the present. And anytime your brain says, oh, we're too far gone and my kids aren't going to have great relationships with each other and they're going to cut me off and not talk to me in 10 years, we won't even have relationship— that's not true. Not true. We are truthful women. Stick to the truth. What's happening right now? I notice my kids talking like I talk. I notice my kids doing things I do. I notice my kids feeling the ways I feel, and I model these things. Okay, great. Now, would you let yourself clearly articulate and define what you want your teachings and your leadership and your example to look like? Because if they'll follow you, through the frigid north, they'll follow you east and west. Wherever you go, there you are, and there they'll be following you. So decide for yourself the kind of leader you want to be, the kind of teacher you want to be. What do you want to teach? What do you want to lead through and lead on? Get clear on those things. And then when you're clear on those things, the opportunities present themselves. The things that you used to yell about now you're seeing the opportunity to teach value and you're grateful for it and you love the way you handle it. And then your confidence goes soaring because now you have more remembered experience of times that you're handling things in a way that you really wanna handle them. And I'm telling you, for those, lastly, for those that are like, oh, but it's gonna be so hard to make these changes, friend, I promise you there's never been a day of me working so hard on integrity and grace and mercy for others and forgiveness for others and holding myself to a standard of excellence and biting the living life out of my tongue. There's never been a day of doing all those sometimes extremely hard things that it's felt harder than sitting with the guilt at night and getting into those shame spirals that I used to live in and digging myself a deeper hole If you want out of the hole, you got to put down the shovel. Yeah, I just like really did not understand that for a very long time. So I had a very deep hole because I just kept digging. I just kept running my mouth. I just kept assuming the worst. I just kept blaming other people. Digging, digging, digging. So if you're, if you're sitting here thinking, oh my gosh, it's going to be so hard, you are literally putting yourself in a position that is 10 times harder than the growth you want to accomplish. It is so much harder to not like yourself than it is to reinvent yourself. It is so much harder to fear your future than it is to sit in the present and correct your brain about it. You're already doing extremely hard things, harder than the growth. It is harder because it's so exhausting, and that— it's just painful and exhausting when you're attacking yourself like that. So friend, stick with truth, okay? Take this life that I'm speaking over you. Your kids will follow you in this. You don't need to keep yelling just because you've yelled before. You need to be vulnerable to be a calm, clear, and effective authority and communicator. Someone that is a source of positive interactions. Did you know every interaction you have in your home has the opportunity to be a positive one no matter how it starts? I always think about that. An incredible outcome is usually just a few good words away. Ah, it's right there all the time. And it's, to me, it's just like, it's so beautiful. It is. It's so beautiful. And then the moment the, the size of the moment, the intimidation of the moment falls at my feet because I know I just need a few good words. A few good words completely transforms the moment, completely changes an outcome. And it's so true. So friends, stick to truth, speak life, get your Yes! Family Flipbook because you can implement all of this work in your home and be extremely successful at it. And it will be so much easier to live with and implement all of this new, all these new approaches, you can just choose one tool every week. Just, just say what you wanna see that week. Just clearly instruct and quietly wait that week. Just magnify the good that week. Just use their name that week. You could do that, you could do one tool a day, doesn't matter. You're going to learn these tools and then they're going to be, you're gonna do it intentionally, your kids will do it naturally. Because you did it so intentionally. And pretty soon you're gonna be layering these tools together without a second thought. You're gonna magnify the good and then you're gonna give a positive consequence and then you're gonna say what you want to see and then you're gonna clearly instruct and quietly wait all in one moment and be like, whoa, look what I just did. Yes, because all of the tools work seamlessly together and none of them, none of them contradict each other. So I'm excited for you to pre-order yours. I sure hope you're feeling fired up and ready to go, friend, and I'll see you real soon.