99. Be Rebellious In The Face Of Hardship!

Welcome to the momset podcast, my friend. I'm your coach, Tessa Romero, and as a woman of God, an adoring wife, and a mother of three darling boys, I am passionate about giving you the tools you need to build a mindset skill set that enriches your experience through motherhood and daily life. I've had my fair share of challenges and hardship throughout my life, and that.

Is exactly how I came to this.

Place of finding purpose to my pain and helping you do the same. I know we can thrive right where we are at, and it's time for us to take back motherhood by being the mommy that we want to be right now. Thank you for being here and making this a wonderful place for me to show up alongside you.

Oh, my friend, you're gonna have to hang in here with this episode and myself as I ask you to do something that may feel completely counterintuitive. And I think when we try to get ourselves to do something that feels so counterintuitive, we resist a lot to it, and we come up with this narrative in our mind of why we can't or shouldn't or don't want to or why it won't work. And. And it can be like this slippery slope if we're not careful and turn into this downward spiral. Now, I don't want that to be the case for you. I really don't. And I have found this counterintuitive act to be so profound and remarkable and still extremely challenging, because, like I said, it's counterintuitive. You're going against that intuition that's telling you what to do. And sometimes I just think that what we initially want to do, we say it's intuition, and really, it's just poor programming. Right. It's coming from a negative mindset, a victim mentality. It's coming from conditioned behaviors, patterns, beliefs, and things that we don't even feel proud of doing. Just because you intuitively want to yell doesn't mean that that aligns with who you want to be. Just because you're, like, intuitively, oh, I'll ignore him. Well, no, maybe we would actually like to know how to communicate effectively in those moments and not ignore our spouse. And I'm speaking from personal freaking experience here. So let me just let my examples be the episode that we have today. So what I'm going to ask you to do today may feel extremely counterintuitive, and I found it to be extremely profound and effective. And, you know, we're going to do hard things anyway, so you might as well, intentionally choose to do something that we're like, yes, this is going to feel hard. And I can see the path six months from now, two years from now, 20 years from now, looking exceptionally better than the path I was on when I only wanted to do what felt comfortable, natural, intuitive, easy for me. And that's what that's. We're going to talk about today. So I'm going to ask you to be rebellious. That is what this is about. This is about being rebellious. And rebellious. And there's another word to scrutinize. Those are two words that I truly just appreciate. I appreciate them because part of me thinks that they sound negative. Like, to scrutinize something and to be rebellious, like, they sound negative. And what I love about words is words are neutral. They're not good or bad, positive or negative. They're just words. And then we associate a meaning to them. So. So part of me has this associated meaning to these words that would sound negative. And when I look at the definition, I'm like, huh? Like, to resist that authority could sometimes be a really good thing. And when we look at scrutinizing, to like, truly take under careful consideration and observation, that can be a really good thing. So I've. I've been working on these two words because I find them to be so powerful, and they're. And there's something that I like to live by. So first, I live by validate feelings and scrutinize thoughts. That's one little phrase rule for myself that I live by. Validate any and every feeling that comes. I mean, once it's here, you're not going to bully it away from you. So you might as well just freaking validate it, Give it space, chat to it like a good friend, and validate it while it's there. And it passes much faster in my experience. And then to scrutinize thoughts, the frick. My thoughts don't deserve to be validated. A lot of times there's just nonsense in there. There's like an evil message and line in there that's like, that would be a terrible thing to follow. There's some bad ideas in there. So I like to scrutinize my thoughts, take them under careful consideration and evaluation. And that's how I come up with some of the truly the best, I believe the best tools that I share with you here on the podcast, in my content and in my courses is because I do those two things. So I want to share that with you too. I feel like it's relevant to this episode, validate your feelings and scrutinize your thoughts. Now, this other part of rebellious, to be rebellious, you know, I wouldn't necessarily, when I was a little bit younger, think that that's a good thing to do. And I wouldn't think much of any of us would think it's a very good thing to do based off of our conditioning, beliefs, patterns, behaviors. And now I see from just this past weekend, that's a very important thing for me to do is to be rebellious. And I wanted to share that with you here. So I love to remind you that everything that I come up with and I share with you is based off of what I'm going through, too. Yes, I love to think about you, and much of what I believe you need is also what I need. So I usually find what you need through what I need in that moment because my mind goes to a negative place. My body's feeling so tense. I am not proud of my behaviors. Right. I skipped out on my journaling or didn't do my workout or not reading my Bible, not going to bed at a good time, whatever it is. I don't just sit here and think about, huh, what does she need to improve on? No, I'm looking at my own life and thinking, ooh, yeah, I could have said that better. Yeah, I could have actually proactively talked about that. And, oh, wow, I really let that feeling just lead the way. Didn't die like that. Is something I just want to remind you of and encourage you about is I've been doing this work on myself for over six years, coaching other women for over five years now, and I just don't think it's ever done. And I think that's okay. I think that we can just agree to be in this together for life and understand that it's going to take intentional effort and focus and the best of us to show up and continuously keep on this path. And we're just going to slip out of alignment from time to time. So this past weekend, I really did slip out of alignment. I was not treating my husband the way that I know he deserves to be treated and would love to be that wife for him. And I just wasn't showing up in that way. And. And I totally justified it to, well, I've got this enrollment going on. I'm making this new course, and I have all these stressors, and he's doing his project and, like, you know, just these thoughts, gosh, my goodness, they were so overwhelming. And I honestly just wasn't doing A good job at proactively caring for myself to ensure that I could communicate effectively and I could understand what was happening before getting to that place of hindsight. Now I'm in hindsight and I understand what happened. I'm like, well, shoot, that would have been really awesome to catch. I don't know, like on the first day, like in the first signs of it. And I'm still very much working on that too. We're doing this together. So this idea of being rebellious came about because I just wasn't proud of the way I was showing up around my husband. I was putting a lot of blame on him and justifying myself, like knee deep in the victim mentality. Thank God that, you know, I just did a three day workshop on that and here I am finding myself in it. So I thought that was a little bit ironic. And anyway, I didn't like the way I was showing up. And I was so fortunate enough to have family visiting pros and cons there, right? Because I felt like I was going through a lot and I wanted to show up a certain way for them, enjoy this time with them. And I was truly having a very hard time and. And I'm really grateful that they were here. We could all spend time together. So I realized the point I was in and not showing up the way that I want to, not treating Marcus kindly at all. My bad attitude was written all over my face and every inch of my body. So I said, I'm going on a walk. I'm going on a walk. And I'm really fortunate that I had the support at that time that my kids were cared for and I had the opportunity to go for that walk. And I saw the window of opportunity and said, yep, that's exactly what we're going to do. Otherwise this day is not looking sharp, friends. So I take myself on a walk and just to walk by myself. And I kid you not, I went for a three mile walk. And in that three mile walk, it took me the first two miles of walking to finally get my mind to a place of like surrender, like finally just see it different, like come up with something different. And truly, like I needed to regulate my body. My body was totally in this fight or flight state. And again, I hadn't done a great job caring for myself over the past several days. And I justified that. I was blaming Marcus and I was knee deep in this victim mentality. So on this walk, it took me two miles of talking out loud to myself. Here's that. And walking at a pretty decent pace. Just to get to a point of regulation so that I could potentially see something different. Something different that I missed the first time. And when I was on this walk, though, and after those two miles, like, but right before I hit that point of being able to make a shift, I had this idea of be rebellious. Like, just be rebellious. Rebel against this in every capacity you could possibly imagine. Right now, I. I feel like I didn't even understand where most of these negative, terrible thoughts were coming from. It felt so. So. So unlike me. So, so different than what I'm used to. And it felt extremely. It felt difficult. It felt very overwhelming to have these, like, this rush of thoughts. And I would, like, get to this point of, like, okay, Tess, come on, get it together. You got this. I'm literally saying my I am statement out loud. I'm doing everything that I know how to do and understanding, like, where I'm blaming Mark, where I'm justifying myself, where I'm complaining about things. I know all these tools, and yet it's like my body was just so resistant to it. And I wanted to just believe this convenient narrative of how I have to do it on my own. Like, I have to do this on my own. And once that narrative came up, I was about two miles into my walk, and I finally caught that thought, and it was saying, you got to do it on your own. You got to do it on your own. You got to do it on your own. And I thought that was just so revolutionary for me to catch onto, because when you can understand more about yourself and why you do what you do, you understand that it really doesn't have much to do with anybody else. It's that you have put yourself in this position to believe something like that. You've put yourself in this position to operate and function this way. And that's why I wasn't communicating effectively or. Or caring well for myself over the past few days, because I had this deeply instilled belief that I need to do it on my own. And this is something that goes back all the way to childhood for me. And it's totally something that I need to, like, actively work on and uproot and instill a different belief there. Because, yes, growing up in my childhood, I did feel alone a lot. And, like, I needed to just figure this out because I don't have anybody to help me. And I had. I had a few, like, really solid, wonderful people in my life, especially through high school, that were angels for me, saving graces. I'm so grateful for them. And I always will be in everything that they taught me. And at the same time, when I was home and I wasn't with those people, that was like the belief that I feel like equipped me to show up with the circumstances I was in. When I could just believe strong enough that I'm on my own, I need to do it on my own, I can only count on me. Then it's like I was able to survive. And at that point in my life, I wasn't focused on the possibility and the potential for myself to thrive and become who I want to be and feel good and have this great stream of thoughts running through my mind. Like no part of me really thought that was possible for me at all. I'm like, well that's nice for them over there. And I'm actually in these circumstances over here, which is why I have to do these things, I have to believe these things, I have to feel this way, I have to act this way, I have to see my future looking this way. And that's what I believed. And I was just in that, that state of survival, truly. And I, I didn't know any better. I didn't know, I didn't know what I didn't know, you know. So in, in the time that I formed that belief, this is truly 15 years ago, greater than that, probably closer to 20 years ago that I started forming that belief of I have to do it on my own, I can only count on me, I'm the one that needs to do this to figure this out. And I put so much on myself. That's exactly why, where that thought came from, and this is why I love self discovery work so much, is this understanding of, it's rarely about what's going on right now. It typically has something to do with something you've experienced before and you've already established a belief and then that belief is being projected into what's going on right now. So that's why I wanted to share that with you. Because when that thought came up for me, I'm like, I have this intense negative victim mentality narrative going on. It's been working against me for the past three days. I don't like the way that I'm treating my husband. I'm truly just like retracting myself from everybody else, just displaying this tension and terrible attitude. And I'm like, what the frick is going on? And it's like I only had a few minutes of that, that conscious window to ask myself what is happening? And then I would get like unconscious again. Is what it felt like. And my, my point there, though is when I found that thought on my walk of I need to do it all. I need to do it all. I've got to. I've got to be the one to do it. I can't count on anyone else. And it's not even so much that. It's that I convince myself and I have this belief that I don't need anyone else. I don't need them. I can do it on my own. I can do it all. I don't need them. And again, when you think about childhood and how much we truly do need our family and we need our people and we need community and we need influences and we need role models and we need love. We truly need. I mean, your basic human needs are love, connection and belonging. We need these things. And I think just for what I went through, as I've worked so myself so much, there's so many layers. I've just discovered that my way of coping was trying to convince myself that I don't need other people. I don't need you. And it's not because I don't love them and I don't want them. It's just that it was. It was my way of surviving during that time. So I created that thought of like, I can do it on my own. I don't need you. And my mind was so anchored in that belief that it took me almost two miles just to be able to get to the root of that and figure out, like, what is the freaking root thought going on here. Talking out loud to myself experience. So experiencing so much negative resistance come up every time I tried to go to my I am statement and new perspectives and considering the other side and everything else. It was that single belief, I don't need you. That is exactly why I was retracting myself. Having this terrible energy, intention and attitude and showing up that way. And it's so opposite of who it is that I want to be and I want you to get really familiar with what is that thought that you have that truly is just like the atom bomb going off in your life. Like when you decide to dig your heels in on that belief, everything else seems to just kind of fall apart. For me. The belief is I don't need you. And I understand why that belief came about and it truly did serve me for, for some time. It really. It helps me to just function and, and see what I have and have acceptance of that and, and become more of who I wanted to be and get myself to a Place that I could better find relationships and. And love, connection, belonging. So I'm not mad at myself for creating those beliefs. And I don't want you to be mad at yourself for having beliefs either. I just want you to be able to understand that you have some that can be really working against you, and sometimes they come up when things feel hard and we just don't even realize it. So when I found the belief of, I don't need them, I don't need you, whatever it was, and I could do it on my own, it was like this aha. Moment of, okay, this has almost nothing to do with what's going on right now and has everything to do with what I've experienced in the past. And this is a great opportunity. This is my chance to still show up as who I want to be and teach my body something different, teach my mind something different. Because I have safety and I have love and I have connection, and I belong here. I have beautiful, beautiful children that adore me, and I. Gosh, I'm just crazy about them. And I have a wonderful, supportive husband that has backed me on every single adventure I've wanted to take in life and starting coaching in this business and having more children and doing a home birth. And, I mean, he's truly just everything I could want and so much more, so much of just the dream. He really is the dream. And I'm not gonna let my past ruin that for me. I'm not gonna let this belief come in and sabotage what I have going on. I have a really beautiful thing going on. And. And I'm not going to let this belief ruin it. I'm not going to let my old behaviors that I go to when I have this belief to retract myself, to be closed off, to be cold, to be tense, to not share information. Like, seriously, sometimes the things that I do, I'm like, are you freaking kidding me right now? Like, obviously, if you don't say those things, how would anybody else? No. So working on myself is truly just sometimes comic relief, Honestly, that I'm like, wow, we really did that, didn't we? You know, you have to be able to laugh through your journey too. You have to be able to see some of the things that you're doing and just kind of laugh through it. Like, wow. Yeah. Didn't see that when I was in it, but I get it now. And let yourself have some humor. Seriously, laughter is just freaking medicine. So my point is, when. When I found that belief of I don't need them, I don't need you. And trying to just get myself to accept that, like, you're gonna do it on your own. You're gonna keep doing this way. Every part of me just wanted nothing to do with that. And that's why I was experiencing so much internal friction. And. And I just got. I just got to this place of feeling so angry. And on that walk, I discovered the why behind it and that understanding of the belief and. And then understanding, you know, this isn't coming from my work right now. It's not coming from my family right now. It's not coming from my marriage right now. It's coming from what I experienced 20 years ago. And what's really cool, in the amount of time that I've been working on myself, not once have I really uncovered that destructive belief. That's what's really cool about this work, is you can make so much profound progress on yourself and grow tremendously. And, yes, the work is never done. You are always going to be in this work. Congratulations, Lifelong path. Here we go. And you can still make tremendous progress. Strides like, wow, just really impress yourself. I feel like I impress myself all the dang time. I'm like, wow, yeah, that really freaking. Well, that was awesome. Or I really like that little phrase you just came up with. We're gonna write that one down. I want to repeat it a lot, right? And wow, Tess, like, you did the cold plunge when you didn't feel like doing it, and you got up and did your workout. Like, that's awesome. And I've made so much progress in myself communicating with my spouse and being the mother that I want to be. And, gosh, this business like, so much. And I still have more to do. So I think it's really cool that I've been working on myself for over six years. Not once did I really uncover this specific belief of I don't need you. And this past weekend gave me the opportunity to just be like, okay, obviously I was ready to find something different and new within myself that I didn't even know was holding me back. I didn't even know it was limiting me. And now I do. So I get to take this belief of I don't need you and really do my work on it, do things that I know how to do on it and heal it. And I'm excited to do that. And it felt really hard to uncover it. So sometimes those hard. Just the hardship that you find yourself in, it's really easy to say, this shouldn't be happening, and I don't want this to happen. And at the end of the day, day it should be happening because it is happening. Like, if you're going through anything in life, it should happen because it is happening. And you are not the be all, end all controller of life that decides everything that should and shouldn't happen. And you don't know if your life would be any better if things only went the way you think they should go. They might be 12 times worse. Like, if we really were to look at it, you just don't know. So it's so much more peaceful for us to live a life of just understanding. I'm given what I need and if it is happening, it should be happening. And then I'm going to make my choices in response to what's happening, not reaction. I'm not going to be a reaction of life. I'm going to respond to life. If this is life's move, well, guess what, Life, here's my freaking move. How you like that? And that's what I mean by being rebellious. Because I felt angry and I chose to rebel against it. I had this long ingrained belief over 20 years I've believed this, this whole, I don't need you. Right when my mom didn't show up to any of my games to watch me after she said she would, my way of coping was just saying, I don't need you. When she wasn't there to walk me down the football field for our senior night. Thank God, my boyfriend's parents were just like literally angels on earth and they walked me down the football stadium thing. And, you know, I just, I built up this for so many years, just this belief that I don't need you, I don't need you, I don't need you. And what's so ironic about that is I do, I do need that and I want it. And I think sometimes when we don't get what we want and what we honestly need, we try to convince ourselves that, well, I didn't really want that. I don't really need that. And it's so destructive, it's so damaging. And that's why I want you to be rebellious. I want you to rebel against the belief you have that's keeping you from being who you want to be in your marriage, being who you want to be in your motherhood, being who you want to be in life. Yeah, other people have made some pretty shoddy choices sometimes, and you've experienced consequences from their choices, no doubt. And you're still an active participant, an active player in life. So what choices are you making that people are going to face your consequences. That's what I just witnessed this weekend. And that's the thing, is that vulnerability of being able to say, I do need you and I do want you is so much harder than saying, I don't need you and I don't want you. One is so guarded and rooted in this idea of trying to protect ourselves, and the other one is just extremely vulnerable. We open ourselves up and we soften. And when I caught myself on the walk and I found that belief, I had a mile left, and I'm like, you know what? I said my I am statement again. This is who I am. One of my favorite affirmations. And I just said it out loud, and I looked up at the sky and I just said, I want to feel me. I want to feel you, and I want to feel how you feel about me. And I just kept saying that over and over and over. And. And then instead of having it say, I want, I switched it up more. As I, like, said it and felt it more. I said, I feel me. I feel you. I feel how you feel about me. And my faith is very strong to me, so that works really well for me to just take it back to, like, how does God feel about me? Surely he feels a whole lot better about me than I do right now. So I want to feel me, and I want to feel you, and I want to feel how you feel about me. It's one of my. One of my favorite affirmations. So this is that I said my I am statement. I got back into those affirmations that really helped me and I helped myself. See, like, you know, you do need Marcus, and you do want Marcus, and all of these feelings that you're having right now are from just goodness, rotten, stale beliefs that we haven't worked on yet, and now we're gonna work on them. And then Marcus and I ended up having a wonderful conversation. I was able to express this to him of, look, I have this belief, and I've had it for over 20 years, and I pretty much just now came to understand and find that it's here and why I wasn't sharing information with you that I wanted you to know and I wanted you to care about, and that's the only way for you to know and care about it is if I tell you. So I see these things now, and I am so sorry. And being able to have that accountability, ownership, and have a wonderful conversation together again. I'm so grateful my sister was in town because she was with her boys while we had this talk. And then I come back out of the room after like bawling my eyes out and I'm like, well, good thing it's my sister. So she can see that I'm all puffy eyed and red and crying and gosh, I'm just madly in love with my husband. And I have a beautiful family, a beautiful life. And that doesn't mean that I do everything perfectly. And I just want you to know that you don't have to do things perfectly. And in order to validate your feelings and scrutinize your thoughts, you don't have to do things perfectly and never feel hardship or out of alignment. And honestly, would life be any better if you did? Would life be any better if you never felt something hard and you were never out of alignment? I don't think it would be. I think it would just be feeling like, ah, what's the point? Like where's, where's the meaning? Where's the purpose? Where's the I can do better, I can break cycles, I can love, I can love fiercely, right? I can give what I didn't have. That just, I think it's really cool what life gives us the opportunity to do. And you're gonna have to rebel against those beliefs, you're gonna have to rebel against those feelings, you're gonna have to rebel against those past behaviors. That was what it took for me is just I the last mile of the walk getting really clear. And that's where I had this idea to get really clear on. Be rebellious, you feel angry, get soft, rebel against that anger. You don't have to act that way just because you feel angry. And really just getting myself to this understanding of when your mind start. Now that you know what's going on, when your mind starts saying I don't need you, rebel to every length of the freaking earth against that. Do everything rebellious towards that and start saying I need you. Like if I had a belief in my mind that was saying I don't need you, and I was trying to armor up, armor up, armor up, distance myself, just don't talk, make it worse, right? If that was going on and I just walked right up to my husband, I held his hands and I said, I need you, I need you and I want you. And these are the things that I want you to know and I want you to ask me about, surely that would get us further and work a lot better than my whole I don't need you approach where I'm not telling him things. I'm not communicating with them. I'm barely making eye contact with him. Like, that's not freaking getting us anywhere. And yet sometimes it's so hard to see it in the moment. And when we have that victim mentality in place, we end up again putting the blame on somebody else, justifying our behaviors, and then complaining about everything that's going on without ever just stopping to think, like, what is really going on? What is really going on here? Oh, well, my mind is projecting a freaking belief that I instilled 20 years ago, and it's just like, dousing my marriage in it right now. And that is looking really freaking ugly. And it has nothing to do with my sweet husband who is excited about what he's got going on right now. And we have family in town. And every single person in this room loves me. Every single person in this room wants me here, and every single person in this room needs me in their life. And I could choose to rebel against the I don't need you and live with those beliefs and really nurture them, instill them. And yes, there's still healing work. Absolutely. For me to do around that other belief of I don't need you. Because, I mean, that's not just gonna let up and let go just because I called it out and said, ah, found you. It doesn't just say, nah, game's over, time for me to go. Not quite. You have to work harder than that. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that because I know what to do. And that's what I want you to know what to do. I want you to be able to find a belief and know what to do with it. I want you to be able to experience an emotion and know how to validate it. I want you to know how to scrutinize your thoughts and show up as who you want to be. Even when it feels like the most rebellious act of all, it's to just truly show up as who the frick you want to be, not who you think you need to be or how you're feeling in that moment or the belief that you established 20 freaking years ago. You don't even know what it is. This is why we work on ourselves. And yeah, I just. I'm grateful for the opportunity this past weekend that I was so far out of alignment for a few days there, caught myself, was able to find a belief that was instilled over 20 years ago, come up with a new frame of mind just to be rebellious, rebel against it, teach your body something different. Teach your mind something different. I get to decide who I am. And now that I know that this belief is here, I know what I can do about it. And it's a very empowering place to be. And I want you to feel empowered, too. I don't want you to feel perfect. I really don't care for perfection and I don't want you to have a positive mindset. I care if you have an empowered mindset. I'm not looking for bright sides and silver linings. I'm looking to know that there's always something we can do and we see ourselves as capable, ready, equipped and prepared to do so. And you are just the person for the job, my friend. So I'm grateful for you. Thanks for listening in. Thanks for letting me challenge you a little bit, the same way that I challenge my freaking self. And just to know we're on this road together and our families love us, our families need us. And more than even just needing us, they want us. I think that's really special how wanted we are. So I want you here. I appreciate you. Oh, my sweet friend.

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