182. You Don't Need More Patience

Hey friends, and welcome in. Pour your cup of electrolytes, put your kids in a stroller or on their bikes, and head out for a walk. Or you can enjoy listening to this while folding some laundry that you've been avoiding, both of which are Tessa approved. Okay, I'd love to see it happen. More than anything though, I'm just glad you're here regardless of what you're doing, because I know this episode is going to greatly serve you. And I feel grateful that through my Lived experiences, I can continue showing up for you every single week with some value to provide and to give you some insights into the things that I am still very much working on and grateful to be focused on. So I hope that this episode brings your focus back to what you actually need. I think it's common for us as mothers to say that we need more patience, and patience is a beautiful thing. It is a reflection of Christ. In beautiful ways, and we want that for ourselves too. I absolutely want to be more patient. I mean, the utmost patient woman you've ever met is what I would love. And I really believe that patience comes after you've developed skills. You don't just start with patient. You don't just say, I want to be patient, so I'm going to create an I am statement that says I am patient, I am patient, I am patient. And will your way to have more patience, because if your focus is on the gap between where you are and the and the type of patience that you want to have, you'll constantly feel like you're in this void. You don't know what to do in the meantime that you're supposed to be patient, and what patience actually feels like anyway. So instead of telling you to develop more patience, I am going to guide you to developing more. So if you're new here in this space, that's what we do. We take real, sometimes hard, usually ordinary mom moments, the ones that happen at 7:30 on a Sunday night when everyone's past their limit, your husband's out of town, and you are showing up and showing out. And we learn how to keep authority over ourselves right in the middle of all of that, not by white-knuckling it, By skill. And the fruit of those skills looks like patience. And this is what I very much want for you. So for me, in starting this story, it was Sunday night. My husband is on a 10-day fishing trip during this period, and I was in it to win it. Okay. I already have enough experience with my husband being gone and me solo momming it to know that routines look different. Expectations adjust. And I've come to love these times of intimacy, intimate connection and delegation with my kids to see all of us step up and really see what we're capable of and still hold ourselves to standards of excellence, even when our circumstances look very different. And I very much spend a tremendous amount of time with my husband every single day as our family does. So when he's gone, There's a big hole. There's a big hole. So having the right mentality to navigate 10 days without him with our 4 kids is extremely important to me to protect the quality of my time with them and make sure that I'm having a lovely experience too, just like I want for my husband. So this Sunday night that I'm referring to, my husband was gone and we were a full hour past our bedtime routine, which I personally felt told Total peace about knowing I shift my expectations and I delegate responsibilities between my boys. We slow down so that everybody can eventually speed up. So go fast or go slow to go fast kind of thing. And I want to tell you about this moment that I almost said 4 words to my son that I would have instantly regretted. I regretted even thinking them. So the amount of regret I would have had letting them leave my lips— would have been very heavy. And I had them locked and loaded, like the tip of my tongue painted red, like an on-air sign lit up in my mind. And the only reason they never left my lips is a skill. It is a skill. It is not because I'm the most patient woman you've ever seen. Well, although I would absolutely love to be so, that's not the truth. The truth is I had a skill that kicked in right when I— Absolutely needed it and have trained it to do so. I've trained skills in myself. So the only reason why those 4 words never left my lips is because of a skill. So before I even tell you this full story and walk you through the skill that I'm absolutely going to share with you today to help you do this too, I want you to hear about this and be one of the first to hear about it because everything I'm about to teach you today comes from it. This is one of the exact skills I walk you through inside of Strong-Minded Mother, my brand new 12-week live coaching program for moms who are done being at the mercy of their overreactivity and controlling tendencies, people pleasing, perfectionism, where you just find your mind, your emotions, or your tendencies hijack you and then you feel out of control with yourself. You literally lose authority. over what you're thinking, what you're feeling, what you're saying, and what you're doing. And it requires more than just reframing. It requires more than regulation. And that's why I created Strong-Minded Mother, because I want to see more strong-minded mothers leading their home with authority over themselves. I believe that when you show and demonstrate this authority over yourself, you get to become the calm authority of your home and your family will willingly give you authority over them. Because they trust what you'll do with it, having watched what you do with the authority over yourself. So I'm extremely passionate to be delivering Strong-Minded Mother to you this October, and I'd love for you to be on our waitlist. So go ahead and click Be First to Know in the notes below to get on there and get the first details sent over to you. And now let's jump into the story. My Sunday night. So this is a story of the work working again. A skill firing right when I've trained it to do so and being able to maintain that authority over myself no matter what the circumstance looks like. And it doesn't mean I never feel frustrated or I never feel rattled, impatient, led astray, or controlling. I feel those ways too. I just take authority over them and I go back to the real source. Of them, this idea of patience. If you're trying to build patience while keeping and nurturing and coddling the same harmful perspectives that created so much angst and frustration in you in the first place, what hope is there to sustain patience? That's not patience. That's that's a mask on a challenging emotion, and then saying everything's fine, everything's fine. Like. You're not even feeling your feelings at that point. You are trying to keep the same hurtful perspectives of yourself, your kids, your spouse, and then will your way to more patience. Patience, it's going to come from this place of peace where you stop arguing with reality, saying it should be different than the way that it is. You stop beating yourself up and you stop trying to coddle these terrible perspectives. That are harmful for you, and you regret them the moment they leave their lips. So let me take you to Sunday night so I can show you. I know exactly what it feels like. My boys and I, solo mom in it. We had a dreamy evening. I mean, you guys know I have always wanted four boys. I hoped for pray for four boys. I prayed for four boys. So having four boys to me is literally a dream come true every single day. Then the day got really dreamy because it's. summer and it starts downpouring rain. So here I have these 4 cute boys riding their bikes in this downpour flood of rain without a care in the world. And it was so sweet to watch. And they're laying in the gutters, like just getting soaked. And it was so sweet. And we also spontaneously invited some neighbors over to have their son play with my boys and I could talk to the parents and I had dinner done. I made chicken, rice, and vegetables. And I just felt so accomplished. Like, gosh, things are better than good. Things are truly great. And I felt really excited about all of this. And we come in from the rain, we eat dinner. The boys were so great. I sat down to eat dinner. They were so awesome in the bath. And then I love to go to bed with a clean home every night. You guys see on my Instagram story just about every night I post a clean kitchen. Yeah, that's my whole house. I know I only share the kitchen. I've got the dining room cleaned. I've got the living room clean, the kitchen cleaned. I think everyone sleeps better in an orderly room. So I love to have our rooms cleaned up before we go to sleep. If there's a basket of laundry, like I personally enjoy fulfilling the tasks of the day and giving myself as much as a fresh start as I can the next day. I think I deserve it and I love to prioritize it. So after the bath, I told my boys like, hey, we're going to rally together. We've got this. It's going to take us like 15 minutes to get this cleanup done. And I'm really excited to have your guys' help. And we had this discussion about, you know, with dad being gone, there is an opportunity for each of you and myself to step up in a greater way. And show more responsibility, more thoughtfulness towards others, and seamlessly serve. So if you see something that needs to be done, I want you to act in seamless service and do the things you notice need to be done. So I just thought, you know, smooth sailing, dreamy evening. I've got this. And I totally did for a little bit. For a little bit. Then my sweetie pie 4-year-old Mind you, this is like a 15-minute blip in my evening. My sweet 4-year-old had clearly hit his fill for the day. And, you know, this is a, this is the same 4-year-old that woke up at 5:30 that morning. We did a 5-mile family run that he was a part of in the morning. And, uh, he had been playing in 100-degree summer weather all day long, no nap. Very little downtime. Like, he's going from one friend to the next and a friend at our house and playing with me and making slime and playing in the rain. And it was a great day and it was a full day, especially for a 4-year-old. And having eaten dinner, taken his nap, a whole day out in the sun, very little rest, I can very much see why my son did what he did. I mean, it's completely expected, even if I didn't necessarily handle it that way in the first place, like at the first moment, the first glimpse of it. We'll get to that. But my son, he got a string cheese out of the fridge and flat out told me, I'm sitting to eat a snack. And he sat on the couch and pursued to— proceeded to eat a string cheese while my 3 other boys were little task rabbits. Cleaning up their shoes, putting them in the closet, rinsing dishes from dinner to put in the dishwasher, wiping down counters, cleaning up blocks, helping sweet Jakey. They were little task rabbits, really taking heed on the idea of seamless service that I had just pitched to the family. And my 4-year-old said, I want to eat a snack. And he sat on the couch and he ate a string cheese and he completely refused help clean up. And he was only thinking of himself in a big way. And knowing while my 4-year-old had a very full day, as did I, as did I, and the mom I want my 4-year-old to have, and the woman that I want to be, I want to be a reflection of Christ at every opportunity that I'm given. And I fall short of it because I'm human. And I had decided To pull on one of our new tools in our family toolbox, which is 10 minutes on a bed, which is basically when you treat people disrespectfully and you are like way out of line, uh, we do a 10-minute sit on your bed for 10 minutes. And I, I've really loved this because when I meet disrespect in my family, we have emotional regulation tools with stingers and burpees and like run to the stop sign and back. We are excellent at family discussions, shifting perspectives, asking questions, understanding one another, and we were missing something that could just help us breathe, have some breathing room from what is happening and what we choose to do about it. So I brought in this 10-minute rule where you treat someone disrespectfully and you will sit on your bed for 10 minutes. I will set a 10-minute timer and then I will come and And I will come in and we work through it together. And it's really been so lovely. And yes, I still use stingers and burpees for sure. So it's been like a really nice way to keep us well-rounded in the Romero home. So I chose the 10-minute bed sit. I did find it disrespectful that he was refusing to help, only thinking of himself and saying hurtful things to me when I did say, Drew, come up and pick up the blocks. And to me, I'm like, I'm just gonna let myself have this. And I had him sit on his bed for 10 minutes. So while he was supposed to be sitting on his bed for 10 minutes, which he normally does very, very obediently, very kindly— all of, all 3 of my boys that do this, they exercise it to a T. Like, they sit on their bed and they wait. And this was the first time that he did not sit on his bed. He was in the room. But what he did instead was he took out a huge container of baseball cards, dumped them out, and took his oldest brother's money from his money jar and crumpled it up, which his older brother found because I was still cleaning up. In 10 minutes, my oldest son goes in the room and then there's this shouting and taunting match erupted in that room. And the, like, my 8-year-old's crying and yelling at my 4-year-old and my 4-year-old is yelling and taunting and teasing. And it was still him talking disrespectfully to me when I made it into the room. So now I have this very— this, this 8-year-old feeling extremely upset, my 4-year-old having a lot of feelings of his own that is just coming out by taunting and disrespectful things being said. And I still want to handle this really well because that's always my intention is to handle things really well. And just like that though, It kind of felt like my dreamy I've got this evening was slipping through my fingers. And I was standing in my version of a very hard moment. My husband's gone. We're an hour late to our typical bedtime schedule. I really want to get the baby to sleep. Goodness, I know this boy needs to go to sleep. I want this cleaning done. There are just so many things that I wanted in that moment. And I did. I had my focus in the wrong place. I had my focus on Dumped out baseball cards, crumbled up money, boys shouting at each other, the clock. And that's where I put my focus. So I started to think and feel and behave from that place because I definitely was not repeating my I Am statement in that moment, which would have been a big help. But I knew it. I did have the awareness of that. And I had the urge to yell at my boys for yelling. And I had this deep pull to say disrespectful things right back to my 4-year-old. And I'll be honest with you, my hands wanted to grab my son and put him on that bed far more forcefully than I would ever want to experience, let alone admit to. And these were all just urges. And I had a clear instinctual— it was instinctual— plan to do exactly what I was raised with. If something like that were to have happened in the home that I grew up in, that's exactly what I would expect it to be met with. Every urge I had, everything I wanted to say, everything I wanted to do, how I was feeling. It was just such a deeply programmed rhythm that showed me that even after a decade, literally a decade of working on myself, I am far from done. And that's very humbling. It's very humbling. And it's also very exciting because I know I'm far from done and I've come so far. Now, I absolutely love who I am now. I love the vision that I have. I love the way I view myself and carry myself and exercise authority over myself. And there's still more for me to do, for me to accomplish. So I can only imagine how much better of a human I become through this ongoing experience. So if you ever feel discouraged that these urges, tendencies, and instinctual, um, Patterns pop up for you. They do for me too. What you choose to think about them matters. What you choose to think about those tendencies is going to give you patience in them. You don't just have patience with yourself because you say, "I'm gonna have more patience with myself." You must change the perspective of yourself. So even though I had these urges and And the words were on the tip of my tongue and I did lose sight of my focus, there was a big win. I kept authority over my hands. I kept authority over my tongue. And eventually I gained back authority over my focus the second I caught where it actually went because the awareness was a little bit less than I had at the moment. And I kept the authority over my hands. And what that means is even though I had the pull to grab my son and put him on his bed, I kept the authority over my hands and I took his hand gently in mine. And I allowed that intensity to just move through me. I understood that I felt it. I just refused to act on it. That's authority over self. You feel something and you still intentionally choose what you're going to do next. Your feelings are no longer these little dictators running you. They're messengers. And it's interesting to me how many people lack the skill of feeling an emotion before deciding what to do next, what to do about it, just to peacefully feel an emotion, peacefully feel frustrated, peacefully feel angry, peacefully feel excited, peacefully feel grateful. It requires so much vulnerability to feel an emotion. And so many times we just notice how we feel and act on it. And we miss a really cool opportunity to exercise authority over ourselves and develop skills. And that's what I'm really excited to walk you through in Strong-Minded Mother this fall is maintaining authority over your emotions, maintaining authority over your perspectives, over your tendencies, over your roles, and over your image. Those are the 5 areas that we work on in Strong-Minded Mother. So I did keep authority over myself in that area and I gently grabbed my son's hand and I put him back on his bed and saying very Little, like I let my, my shoulders drop. I let my hands relax. I felt that tension just move through me, move through me rather than having the outlet in that way of intensity towards him. Feel it, feel that vibration. That's what feelings are. Emotions are energy in motion. You are feeling a vibration. So we don't even need more patience with our feelings. We need an understanding that this is energy in motion. I'm going to feel it. Yes, I feel irritated. Yes, I feel tired. Yes, I feel this intensity. And here's the way I'm going to choose to behave and conduct myself because I know who I am. I know what is true. I know what I'm capable of. And I have authority over every single one of these tendencies and feelings that I'm experiencing right now. So I got my son back on his bed and I still had these like blaring letters and words on the tip of my tongue. And sometimes my tongue can feel like the hardest thing to tame when I really want to say something on the tip of my tongue. Withholding that can feel like an extreme amount of discipline. And I feel so accomplished within myself. I feel like I reached a new level Of self-mastery and, and allowing myself to reflect Christ and turning away from my old ways of doing things every time I refuse to say those hurtful things. So personally, it is a mission of mine to withhold the hurtful things and purify the source of them to eliminate the opportunity that they even come up. I'm just far from that right now. Um, although I have made tremendous amounts of progress, just remember, like, there's still so much work for me to do. I just happen to love the work that I do. I love the wins. I love the closeness that I've grown to God. I love seeing and learning new ways to communicate that are more true than I ever did before. I love all of that. So I only added a little bit to my son and he was still saying disrespectful things. So I just said, sit here. I want to help your brother. And the baseball cards, well, willing the discipline to make him clean those up in that moment was a decision for another day. I just gave myself this one. I gave myself the opportunity to fulfill the 10 minutes on the bed and I will clean up the baseball cards. Lord knows I needed to be on my knees anyway. So I cleaned the baseball cards. And as I'm on my knees cleaning up these baseball cards and he's still on his bed saying more disrespectful things to me and I'm Still feeling extremely irritated, like I am feeling very tired and I'm feeling so angry. And just like this aggression was still pumping through my body, and thoughts create feelings. So if we're only looking at our feelings and saying, "Why can't I be more patient?" You never get to the source. Of those feelings in the first place. So again, it takes us back to that first focus of this episode where you're trying to keep the same perspectives and develop patience. Yet your perspective is exactly what walked you away from patience in the first place. The patience, the peace, the acceptance of others, the unconditional loving, the faithfulness, the the hope, the goodness. The love, the forgiveness that we are called to, mercy that we are called to, we walk away from it when we hold tight to our own perspective. So I always— I've encouraged you guys to do this where you validate your feelings and you scrutinize your thoughts. There's no use in scrutinizing and criticizing a feeling that you have when it's already there. It's just already there. Like, the best thing to do with a feeling that you have is feel it. Feel it, acknowledge it, accept the message it's here to deliver. Scrutinize the heck out of your thoughts, though. Those things run rampant. You don't need to protect their feelings or their ego or their pride. Scrutinize them, friend. Show them who's boss. Absolutely. That is— at least that's what my brain needs. Needs a strong source of authority up there. So anyway, I'm cleaning up these baseball cards and I'm listening to my son still say the same disrespectful things. And I'm still feeling the same intensity pumping through me on my knees, cleaning up these baseball cards. And these 4 words were like etched into my frontal lobe. They were just etched into my vision as I'm staring at these baseball cards, which again, that's where my focus was. My focus— what was I looking at? What was I thinking about? The baseball cards, the crumpled up money, the time on the clock being an hour later than what we typically do. So I had the best intentions, and then my focus went astray. And so my feelings followed, and then my urges and my tendencies followed suit. So you control your focus and you will control a whole bunch just automatically. But what I noticed was I had this like strong path to just tell my son, stop talking to me. Like the big red letters on my frontal lobe right there in my line of sight were stop talking to me, like a red on-air sign. Stop talking to me. That was like my— it's like my brain was pushing so hard for my mouth To say these four words as if it would have been a magic fix, as if it would have worked and got him to stop talking. Stop saying the disrespectful things. Well, I'll just tell him to stop talking to me. Like it was like my brain was working so hard. I mean dopamine dopamine motivation chemical on overdrive motivate this chick to say this hurtful thing. Stop talking to me. And it was, it was a real fight of will for a solid 30 seconds. It was absolutely a fight of will because it was all I thought for 30 consecutive seconds. And it felt like an hour. It felt so long in that moment. And I just, in this blissful miracle of a moment, I got enough self-awareness back online And I heard everything he was saying, and I recognized how intense, how intensely I wanted to say, stop talking to me. And it caught my attention. I just thought it was odd that I wanted, like, just this, my brain was working so hard to get me to say something that I would regret. And that caught my attention. It got like my focus back online and got me to kind of wake up and say like, oh, Well, heavens! Where'd we go? What's happening here? So I just realized, like, I heard everything he was saying, and the only thing my mind was handing me was stop talking to me. And it was right on the tip of my tongue, and it was exactly the way I got authority back over my perspective. It took something that intense, that all-consuming, one sole thing for me to say these four words. To get me to wake the heck up and realize this is so far out of alignment with the way that I want to handle things. And yet, friends, I didn't forcefully grab my son. I haven't yelled at anybody. I'm not hollering curse words. Like, and just, that's where I'm at in my, in my walk of gaining authority over myself is even that, even thinking, stop talking to me. is so far out of alignment with the mom that I want to be. And that's enough. That's enough for me. And that's what I want for you. Like, imagine gaining such awareness over yourself and such clarity in your vision and such authority over these 5 key intricate internal experiences that you start recognizing even just thinking that about my child, thinking I would say that in that moment. Thinking I would grab them that way, feeling this intense, like this pull, and like fighting internally with myself is unacceptable. I refuse. I refuse to have a mother— motherhood and exist through it like that. I just refuse. Imagine allowing yourself into that realm where, yeah, you've still got work to do on yourself. Me too. It just feels like a completely different and empowering experience to know, oh brain, you better believe I'm taking authority over you right this second, right this second. And I will hold that authority over you for a longer period of time and it will get longer and longer and longer and longer. And emotionally, I'm going to grow my emotional tolerance bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And we just, we literally grow ourselves as people through the circumstances that we're in and you interpret them as opportunities. So in this moment that I took authority over my perspective, I used the redirect skill. So the redirect skill is a skill I teach you in Strong-Minded Mother. It's also in my mastermind. It is so crucial and we use it for perspectives. So keeping authority over your perspective is extremely important. If you are using like a makes me mindset, a makes me perspective, you do not have authority over your perspective. Now you need the external circumstances to fuel your story of make me. My kids make me mad. My kids made me miss my workout. My husband makes me stay home with them. My mother-in-law makes me feel so insecure around her. My kids make me make 4 different snacks for everyone because they won't just all eat the same thing. Are you in authority of all those perspectives if it makes me? No, absolutely not. And that's why I light it on fire and I watch it burn in front of us. I say, absolutely not. Refusing, refusing. So in Strong-Minded Mother, I teach you the redirect skill. And even getting this skill to fire in the moments that you need it would make an enormous difference. You guys have learned, you guys have experienced how, how powerful it is to have the skill set to regulate and the skill set to reframe. Yes, redirect is as powerful, if not more so, than regulate. Because what good is it to keep all the perspectives that are causing you to get so dysregulated in the first place? Listen. Save that for another day. Anyway, so my redirect. When you're redirecting, you want to get authority back over your perspective. So you feed yourself, you redirect to us to a perspective you already know, or you go in search of a perspective, a brand new one that you've never considered before, by asking questions. Those are your 2 options in these moments. So because I lacked an already prepared perspective, my skill set already understanding this. This did not take intentional processing for me. And I'll walk you through it in a way that you can develop it out, that it will fire for you in these works, because we know it's these very circumstances that I'm learning the skill the best. Okay. And there's obviously the prep work done beforehand. So since I lacked a perspective to carry me through in that moment, none in my toolbox came just to life. And thought, you know, I apply here. No, none of them, not a one. So I went the route, and through the skill set that we've developed, I went the route of asking the question. The nice thing about questions is it literally requires your brain to answer the question, and curiosity is an incredible antidote to this intensity of an emotion, because without the, the set perspective in place What do you have to feel so upset about if you don't even know what you think about it yet? So the more opportunity we can create curiosity, the longer we can grow our emotional tolerance and the more emotions we invite into the mix. Questions are extremely powerful. So with the redirect skill, we have 2 options. You can feed yourself a perspective you already have prepared, or you can ask questions to get to a new perspective that you have yet to consider. And it completely changes your emotional experience. I will literally prove it right now. So I'm in this, I'm literally just cleaning up baseball cards still, putting the money in the jar, cleaning up the rest of the baseball cards, hearing my son say all the hurtful things on his bed. And the words, stop talking to me, caught my attention, right? Redirect skill fires. And automatically I'm asking myself, how would I feel if God told me to stop, stop talking to him as my Heavenly Father? Because I was talking disrespectfully, or I was saying something hurtful, or I was in a bad mood, or I had an ugly tone, all of which I have done. How would I feel if he said to me, stop talking to me? It would completely rattle. It would completely change my existence here, my set of beliefs. It just— when I asked myself that question through the redirect skill, which is what I teach you in Strong-Minded Mother— I don't teach you to ask yourself this question. I teach you the skill that delivers the questions in the moment so that you can do it all on your own. You don't need to memorize this question, although I find it to be an extremely powerful one. How would I feel if God told me to stop talking to him, especially when I felt that upset? It just— it's a good thing I was already on my knees because I would have dropped right then and there. I swear to you, I would have dropped to my knees and wondered, how on earth did it get this far? How on earth did I— did it get this intense over something so minuscule that I lost sight of Exactly what I so graciously receive from God every single time I talk to Him. Every single time I'm in, I've got this bad mood, I've got this chip on my shoulder, I have disrespectful things to say, I have a sharp tone, I'm talking about His other children on this earth, and never once has He told me to stop talking to Him. Quite the opposite. And that just It was what I needed and more. It struck me so deeply. And I'm telling you, instantly in that moment, I still, I didn't say a word to my son. I wasn't on my knees beating myself up, blaming myself that my son's behaving this way. And I wasn't acting on the, on the current emotional state that I had. I just recognized 4 words that I would never want to leave my mouth. Especially to my four-year-old. Caught how far out of alignment that is. Use the redirect skill. How would I feel if God told me to stop talking to him? And it completely changed the entire atmosphere for me. It was like someone turned on a faucet and just let the water flow, and all this water running through me—it was like a chill, like. I just chilled out. And that might sound so unrelatable, so unrealistic, so unobtainable. And I really don't care because it is 100% what I experienced. It was like an ice pack being put on my neck and my whole body cooled down. And the weight that I felt in my arms, and I noticed that my shoulders were up at my ears and they lowered. And it truly It's a good thing I was on my knees, right? That moment was so profound for me that I just sat in it and I really considered how it would feel if God told me to stop talking to him. And I got back into access and authority over my feelings. I'm a vulnerable girl. Anger is a secondary emotion. I know that. Right now, vulnerably, I feel inadequate as a mother. I feel ill-equipped to help my 4-year-old with this. This has been a little bit of an ongoing thing, and some of these feelings that come up in it feel like defeat. Feels disappointing that we're going through this, that he's saying these things. And all of those feelings— defeat, disappointment, discouragement— are not anger. So this True process of keeping authority over yourself is the greatest thing that I've been pursuing in my role as a mother behind my relationship with God, in my role as a mother to help me better pursue a relationship with God and let him work through me is understanding I do have authority over myself and I can give Christ authority over me too. And believing in that more than you believe that you have to act the way that you feel, more than you believe that every thought you have is a fact and it's the only way to think about something, more than you believe that you're just going to recreate the childhood that you lived through, more than you believe any of that, believe that you have authority over yourself and that you are willingly giving Christ authority over you too. And the work the Holy Spirit does in you— that was the Holy Spirit giving me that question that moment. I know it. That was not me. That was just me looking at 4 red letters and a skill delivering the right question for me in that moment. The emotionally— the emotional way that I changed though was fantastic. It was exactly what I needed to maintain an incredible evening with my 4 kids on my own, still solo mommin' it, still 4 boys, still one saying disrespectful things on his bed, still an hour past where we're typically at in our bedtime routine. Everything's stayed the same and I decided to change first. And if you're wondering what happened next in my eventful evening, it actually ended in the most fabulous way. I found, like, just still with so much gratitude that I maintained enough authority over myself to love the way I handled it with my 4-year-old, even though internally it was much more intense than I would love to experience. I love that I found the question, how would I feel if God told me to stop talking to him? I'm going to ask myself that before I say many things for a long time. So I love that I found that question through that experience. And I finished getting the cards cleaned up. My son was still like saying these disrespectful things. And I said, sweetheart, I'm going to go take my shower and I will be back in here after I take a shower. You said you're coming back? I said, I'm coming back. I will be here right after I take a shower. I'll be back in 5 minutes. And he said, okay. And he sits on his bed and waits. And the light was on. He's on his bed. And I told my other boys, I'm going to come back. I'm going to talk to Drew and put Jake to sleep after I take a shower. And I love that I gave myself that. Honestly, I love that I gave myself those 5 minutes to take a shower. It changes everything, really. And I told my 2 older boys that they can read quietly on our lovesack. While I take a shower. And they're like, okay. So I take a shower, come back out, and I go immediately to my son's room to talk to him like we do and work through things. And he was asleep. And I love that for him. I love that his sweet 4-year-old body that felt so tired and explained a lot of the behavior that I just witnessed over the last 15 minutes all came full circle. And my darling guy was asleep in his bed. And I just love that the Lord gave me that too. That felt like a real gift right then. And then I go tell my boys, like, great job reading. I'm gonna put Jake to sleep. And after I have him to sleep, I'll, I'll come, like, read to you guys and put you to sleep. They're like, okay. So I put— I go to put Jake to sleep and he did. He took a little bit longer than I was anticipating. And in the 40 minutes I was putting my baby to sleep, my boys were quiet. So I just assumed they kept reading and I finally get Jake to sleep. I lay him down and I did. I felt So patient putting Jakey to sleep. 40 minutes and I felt so patient. Like that question, how would I feel if God stopped talking to me? Or if I, if God told me to stop talking to him? That question and the way it changed me emotionally and the way it got my focus back where it belongs on Christ and the way in which I choose to reflect Christ, that is the best place to put your focus. I, I've been doing this work for a long time, and I think I have found a lot of places to put your focus. And I am telling you, from what I know, that is the best, most fruitful place to put your focus is on Christ. So anyway, my, my focus was clearly back there. I was feeling on fire. Get my, get my baby to sleep. And I come out of the room and I go into the living room to tell my boys, like, I'm ready to read to you. And they were gone. I was like, where'd they go? So I go into their room and all 3 of my other boys are asleep. My sweet honey pies put themselves to sleep for literally the first night in my entire motherhood. And again, that was just like such a beautiful lesson too, that things can look and go different than I anticipated. And it's a beautiful thing to open up your Your willingness, the ways in which you're willing to do something and to let your kids— just trust them. Like, that was a really— that was a big thing that I was grateful to take into the rest of the time that my husband was gone, was trust my kids. Just trust them. Give them the opportunity to thrive, to succeed, to show up. And I think sometimes that's really what's missing is we don't even give them a chance. We don't even give them a chance to prove to us that they would make incredible choices and that they can do responsible things. And so that's what I'm personally focused on right now in motherhood is giving my boys the opportunity to do hard things, to do responsible things, to be responsible for more. And it's been a wonderful thing to see them all grow in those areas. So I walked away from all of their bedrooms quite delighted with myself. Turned on the dishwasher and I was like, yeah, baby. I'm going to FaceTime my sweet husband, tell him all of my wins, and then read my book for a little bit. And it was just a wonderful way to end the evening, even though we had that hard moment. It didn't require my son changing his behavior for me to keep and remain over authority of myself and to be the calm authority in my home. I don't need my kids to be in good moods. And to only say respectful things. While I want that for them in the development of their character, the way they behave does not determine what I think about them. The way they behave does not determine how I feel as a mother. The way they behave does not determine what I choose to say and what I choose to do next. That is my job. My job is to keep authority over what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, what I'm saying, And what I'm doing. And I really believe that living that out fully in front of them is more than enough to instill it in them. I believe that with my whole heart, showing them who we can be in this life, that they just, they want to be that too. More than doing, more than outcomes, more than accomplishments, but who we're choosing to be. I want to give my kids an example of someone to be. that they feel excited to grow in that way too. And as long as I'm focused on reflecting Christ, being someone that is a reflection of Christ, I know I can tell you right now, my kids crave that and they're between 2 and 8. So I feel very secure and confident in that, that my biggest job as a mother is to keep my focus in the right place, to model what it's like and to pass down the models Meaning the skills that I'm living in, as they are very much ready to do more and more of. So I did not magically become patient in that moment. You don't magically become more patient in your home. There's an actual strategy behind it, and it does require you to grow in your focus, where you're putting your focus, lots of honesty there, and in your skillset. I want to be so clear with you because I think this is where we all get it wrong. I didn't summon extra patience out of thin air. I didn't grit my teeth and fight my tendencies tooth and nail to barely hold on. It did feel like a fight of willpower for 30 seconds. Remember I said that it felt like a battle of wills for those 30 seconds that my brain was on a serious dopamine kick to motivate me to say those 4 words. That absolutely felt like willpower. However, 30 seconds of willpower. I got that all day, every day, friend. If it's only gonna be 30 seconds, I can do that. I've had home births, contractions. I can do 30 seconds of willpower to tame my dang tongue. I can do that. So I used a skill and I used it sharply. It was 30 seconds of willpower and then just the overbearing fruits of an incredible skill and an incredible focus, and it was used sharply. And it's just so well trained in me that it fires in the best moments. And that's what I'm teaching you in Strong-Minded Mother, not the questions to memorize asking yourself, not the scripts to memorize using with your kids, not the only ways to regulate. I want you to find your favorite way to regulate because you understand the skills. And you understand also that just because you feel angry doesn't mean you're dysregulated. Okay? Just because you feel annoyed doesn't mean that you're dysregulated. You still have tons of authority over yourself. So I do hope to see you inside of Strong-Minded Mother this fall. Um, definitely mark it on your calendar. I'm so looking forward to this group. It's going to be a smaller group. I'm personally coaching it. It's delivered live. And in 12 weeks, we are getting you in a position of authority over your perspectives, your feelings, your tendencies, your roles, and your image. It is your skills that build your patience. Skills build your patience. Okay, so I want to leave you with, you don't need more patience in the hard moments. You need a skill sharp enough to show up before you do any damage. And patience isn't summoned, it's built. It's a byproduct of skills you've practiced. It's a greater tolerance to sit with uncomfortable things. A skill you practice in calm becomes a skill that kicks in on instinct. Yes, ma'am. Okay. And redirect is the skill of this episode, and it takes your focus off of the what that's fueling your aggression, what you're looking at, what happened, what's going on, what everyone's thinking, and points it somewhere that frees you. The reflection of Christ. It can, it can point you in a direction regardless of your faith. Mine is extremely strong in me. So naturally, I want my redirects to go back to my faith. Redirect is just as load-bearing of a skill as regulate and reframe. You need it. You need it. So I want to help you with that. So your one thing for this week, I love to leave you with one thing to help you feel like you are taking action steps towards having authority over yourself, being who you want to be no matter where you go or who you're with. Ask yourself this question when you have words on the tip of your tongue, you're in a rotten mood. Okay. What would I feel and think if God said that to me? If you are about to say something to your spouse, Must be nice that you just get to go on a fishing trip for 10 days. What would I think and feel if God said that to me? Must be nice. That just does not hit right. No, stop talking to me. What would I think and feel if God said that to me? Oh, you are so disobedient. I repeat myself 100 times a day to you. What would I think and feel if God said that to me? Before you let the words leave your mouth, Just ask yourself that question: What would I think and feel if God said that to me? As soon— that's it. Just let that be it right now. Whatever is loaded on the tip of your tongue— stop talking to me, what is wrong with you, I can't do this with you right now— could you imagine if God told you, I can't do this with you right now, when you brought Him your prayer request, when you brought Him what's heavy laden on your heart? I can't do this with you right now. Pause and run this question. What would I feel and what would I think if my Father in Heaven said that to me? Because the second you feel it, the sting of it— yes, the smallness of it— you're freed. It helps put things into perspective for you. It completely shifts your emotional state. Your focus is different, and you recognize Emotions truly are just energy in motion. They are not dictators over me. I have authority over them. While yes, they're real and I do feel this way, I can invite more feelings into this experience. I'm capable of feeling more than one thing at a time. I'm bigger than a fairy. You know, you're not Tinkerbell. So the question does the work. It lifts your focus off of what your child is doing and puts it back on Who you are choosing to be in it? It puts your focus back on what's most important to you. What's most important to me is being a reflection of Christ. So what is most important to you? Maybe what's most important to you right now is being the mother that you want your children to have. Maybe you can say that with complete confidence. That's more than enough to start. So say the question out loud a few times this week when nothing's on fire, in the car, doing dishes. You notice a subtle thought, maybe just like a thought towards yourself. You're like, ah. Why do I always mess things up? Or, oh, I just don't have time for this right now. Just redirect the question towards you in smaller moments, and then you'll notice that when the big on-air sign lights up in your mind and your dopamine's kicking to motivate you to say something, the question is already there. Your brain will fire it off. If it helps you, write it on a sticky note and read it every time you walk by your fridge. Okay, so that's your work this week. One question. Wait before the words come out. What would I think and feel if God said that to me? That's how you can start building out this redirect skill. There's so much more that I'm prepared to teach you for the redirect skill and many more inside of the Strong-Minded Mother program coming this October. I would absolutely love to see you there and help you grow authority over yourself because I know if I can do it, you can absolutely do it. And if you want it, you can have it. I believe that with my whole heart. So I will see you guys real soon.