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Well, hello there, sweet friend. Hope you're having a great day. Thanks for joining me on the show. Today, I'm walking you through the mentality of you can, you just don't want to. This mindset helps you to overcome all those times in motherhood and marriage and in life that you're telling yourself, you can't do something. I can't work out, I can't wake up early, I can't go to bed earlier, I can't invest more time into my marriage, I can't communicate like that. I hope that this episode helps you to see where you're actually making things much more difficult on yourself. And let's be real, our circumstances are hard enough as they are. We don't need our own thoughts making them worse. And that's why I love this mentality so much. It's not, I mean, sometimes when people hear that, hear me say this, especially online, obviously, when I say you can, you just don't want to, they come up with these extreme examples. well, what about a cripple that wants to climb a mountain? It's not that they. They don't want to climb the mountain. It's they physically can't do it. And it's like, can we just keep our feet right here on the earth and stay in this present moment with each other and evaluate our lives and recognize where in our own lives, in our personal experience, we are telling ourselves we can't do something because you and I maybe we actually could climb a mountain. maybe we could walk a couple miles. Maybe we do have functioning legs that can do all those things. And right now, the best thing that we can do is see ourselves as someone that can do those things if we wanted to, rather than taking it to the extremes of what someone physically and can and cannot do and, and that. So I'm just going to encourage you. Keep your feet on the ground with me, would you? Could we do that? Can we keep our feet on the ground? Can we stay present with one another and just take a good I've had a long look at our motherhood, our marriage, our health, our life, what we want for ourselves, what's completely possible for ourselves, and where we're selling ourselves short with this I can't mentality. Now, the way I came up with this mentality was actually several years ago. My first son who is going to be seven in June, he was about two and a half, almost three years old. And I vividly remember this. We were putting together one of his little toys in his room and it needed a screwdriver. and you needed to put the screw in using the screwdriver. And I passed him the screwdriver for him to do it. And he was getting so frustrated, like just feeling frustrated. The screwdriver just kept missing the groove of the screw, so it was slipping off. And he said, I can't do it. And in that moment, I told him, you can. You're just learning how. It's all right. Everybody's got to learn how to do it. You can do it, though. Here, try it like this. And I helped him position screwdriver so that it was directly over the screw. It caught the groove and then he was able to do it. And that's how I first caught on to this concept of like, how often am I telling myself I can't do something when really I can, I'm just learning how. And then there were other instances that are blaringly obvious in motherhood. And I appreciate that about motherhood, that it just brings it all up to the surface for us. where my kids would say, I can't, like, I can't tie my shoe. And I would look at them like, I can't put my clothes in the washing machine. I can't unload the dishwasher. Things that I just know my kids can do. Like, I know they can do those things. And I changed, instead of like the arguing back and forth saying, oh my gosh, why do you make this so difficult every time? Does this have to be an argument every single time? And believe me, I've done that approach too. I actually stopped doing that approach because I learned from experience that it just doesn't work. And I feel exhausted every time I do that with my kids. Like it is fascinating how committed they can get to an argument where it just goes on and on and on and on and on. And I have that exact same fascination with myself. Like, why am I arguing about this? It's so tiring. So that's why I like to have these mentalities. That's why I like to have these responses. It's not to prove, A man with broken legs can climb a mountain. It's not about the extremes. It's about my reality that I want to be in and I want to work with and I want to feel empowered. So yeah, I'm going to use this mentality. And in those times I knew my kids could do something, I would respond with, you can, you just don't want to. It's okay if you don't want to say, I don't want to, because the last thing you want is to forget all the things you can do or to trick yourself. into thinking you can't do something like this. And I've said that to my kids over and over and over and over again. And I live by that too, because there are totally times that as a mom of four young kids, I will tell myself, oh, I can't work out today. Like if it's past 7:00 a.m., all my boys are awake, they're ready for breakfast. I didn't wake up before them to do my workout. It's so easy for my mind to say, well, I can't do it today. Now. It's like it's freaking 7:00 in the morning. It is 7:00 in the morning. in the morning and I'm already telling myself, I can't work out today. Why can't I, why can't I make their breakfast and go do 10 minutes of high intensity neural training in my living room? Why can't I go for a family walk today and count it as my workout, do some sprints with the stroller? Why can't I take my kids into our weight room in the basement and do a workout down there? Like they've seen me do tons of times before, why does my mind just automatically say, I can't do it? as soon as the clock strikes seven o'clock. And that's why I love holding myself accountable to this mentality. I can, I just don't want to. And it's okay if I don't want to. I do need to say I don't want to though. So that way I never fool myself into believing that I'm capable of so little. I'm only capable of workouts before 7:00 AM. I'm only capable of cooking dinner if my husband has all the kids out of the house. I'm only capable of cleaning up if all my kids are asleep. Like, I don't want to live like that. And I have a feeling a lot of other moms don't want to live like that. We don't want to feel stuck. We don't want to feel limited. And, like, there's just, like, our life is just designed by somebody else. I I don't like that feeling. So when I use this mentality with myself and I tell myself I can, I just don't want to. Everything changes. When I put it in the frame of, I don't want to, it's like I come alive inside. I see myself as more than capable of doing something, and I almost start to fight for it. If I start to say, I don't want to work out, it's like this blaring truth comes forward of, what do you mean you don't wanna work out? Of course you wanna work out. You love to feel strong. You love to have this time for yourself. You love to get your heart rate up, get a good sweat and be huffing and puffing. Set this example for your kids. You have a vision in your head, Tessa, of being the great grandma that runs around with her kids. We want to work out. And I fight for what I want because I put my mind in an empowered position rather than succumbing to the victim mentality of the I can't because of them. I can't because of this circumstance. And it's totally a choice to do that. It's fascinating to me how much we will fight for that victim mentality. Like when people see my content online and it's like, I'm saying this exact message of, you can, you just don't want to. It's okay if you don't want to. It is fascinating how much they wanna fight for that I can't mentality, that I can't perspective. My kids really won't let me do it though. And it's like, wow, our own mind has blinded us so severely that we have now become just unaware of what we're actually saying. We're actually blaming our baby, two-year-old, four-year-old, six-year-old, teenagers, adult children, whoever they are, we are blaming other people for why we don't go for a walk, why we don't go to bed earlier, why we don't wake up earlier, why we're picking up a happy meal. why our child is drinking a juice box? Well, they'll just scream until they get it. I can't tell them no, because they just scream. And it's like, dang, dang, of course we're gonna feel stuck. Of course we're gonna feel limited. Of course we're gonna feel really hopeless, because we've decided that our response weighs on how someone else is communicating, what someone else is feeling and doing, instead of looking at it as, no, my response is completely reliant on who I believe I am. if I believe I'm the mother that is kind and compassionate and patient and wise, then that's how I'm going to show up. And that's how I'm going to respond, especially when my kids are screaming for a juice box or they're throwing a fit that I said, okay, I'm gonna work out now. Like, those are the times that I'm going to see a stronger version of myself come forward because I'm clear on who I am and. I just want, I mean, if you're listening to this episode, if you have decided to listen this far into the episode, clearly you are someone that wants to know what you can do and you're not going to ever know what you can do if you live by this mentality of, I can't, I can't cook dinner, I can't wake up early, I can't go to bed earlier, I can't cook meals from home, I can't buy the food that I want for my family. I can't save money because there's no money to save. Like, I can't communicate differently with my husband because he shuts down every time. I can't pull my kids out of school and homeschool like I want to. Like, we have to ditch the I can't mentality if you're going to start showing up as the person you want to be. You can't have both. There you go. That's what you can't have. You can't have both. You can't have the I can't mentality and be the person that you want to be. I, I, I would just imagine that if you had both, you would not be happy. That would mean that the person you wanna be lacks a real vision of what you're capable of. And that sounds like a really sad place to be. So when we use this mentality of, I can, I just don't want to, the purpose of it, the purpose of it is to shift into empowerment, to put yourself into a mental position where you're willing to actually fight for what you want. to figure out a way. When you start fighting for what you want, you start figuring it out. When what you want is clear enough, the how reveals itself. It's so easy to know how you're gonna do something when you're so clear on what you want. The how reveals itself. And when why we want something is really clear, what we need to do to get it, it's easy. It's easier to make those sacrifices because we know why it's so important. So I want you to give this a try. Honestly think of one thing that you tell yourself you can do. Common examples, I can't go to bed earlier 'cause there's way too much to do in my house. I can't wake up earlier because my kids are up all night. I can't communicate differently with my spouse because he shuts down, or I can't ask him those questions because he gets defensive. I can't change the way I've been parenting my kids. We're too far into it now. I can't homeschool my kids. My spouse isn't on board with it. Or I just know my kids don't listen to me. What do you tell yourself you can't do? Can't cook, can't clean, can't save money, can't make friendships, can't keep friendships. Can't go to an event that you really, really want to go to. What do you tell yourself you can't do? And now I want you to take one of those, the strongest one, and just position it differently. Say, I don't want to. I don't want to homeschool my kids. I don't want to ask my spouse that question. I don't want to work out around my kids. I can't work out around my kids. I don't want to work out around my kids. take the I can't go to bed earlier and turn it into I don't want to get things done earlier. I don't want to leave the mess for tomorrow. I don't want to declutter the house and get rid of our, get rid of the majority of our belongings so that there's not so much for me to manage. Get deeper and deeper and deeper. Because I can see where when we try to use this mentality, it really Ruffles us up and we feel very frustrated because when you just try to go for a simple Flip, like a simple switch in this. Like, for example, if we say, I don't, if we say, I can't work out around my kids, and I ask you to flip it to the, I don't want to, and you say, I don't want to work out around my kids. If you stop there, that feels frustrating. There's truth to it, and it feels frustrating. If you go deeper than that, you find this genuine place, this genuine desire in your heart that more vulnerable, more revealing of what it is that you want most. And let's go deeper, deeper. Let's play with this example. Instead of I can't work out around my kids, we shift it to I don't want to work out around my kids. What's more true than you don't want to work out around your kids? I don't want to feel interrupted by my kids. Okay, what's more true than you don't want to feel interrupted around your kids? Like in this workout, you don't want to feel interrupted by your kids in the workout. I don't want them to feel ignored by me. if I'm doing this workout and not giving my full attention to them, I don't want them to feel ignored by me. So I don't want to work out around my kids because I don't want them to feel ignored by me. Well, if you're operating based off of that belief, you're not going to work out around your kids because them having your attention matters to you. And that's a beautiful thing. We don't know how to change that. We can change the perspective, though, when you know the heart, when we know what the more vulnerable thing is. I don't want my kids to feel ignored by me during this workout. When we start there, we can start to shift the perspective into something more sincere, something more beautiful. And the first one that comes to my mind is, I want to work out in front of my kids because I want to show them what it looks like to love a body so much that you're willing to care for it. You're willing to condition it. You're willing to pour more time and energy into it. I want to work out around my kids so they can see me stumble and fumble and choose to do it anyway. I want to work out around my kids so they can see me do hard things. I want to work out around my kids so that they can be involved and encouraged and we can have this family vision of a family that pursues health. When they're teenagers, they're working out with me. When they're adults, they're inviting me to go on these marathon runs with them or sign up for a CrossFit competition or join a league with them. Like they know they have a mom that's active and healthy and enjoys doing these things and these are some things that we bond and connect over. That's what my mind naturally goes to when I want to shift the perspective out of the vulnerable, I don't want my kids to feel ignored by me, into the more thoughtful and sincere and empowered, I want my kids to see what it's like. I want my kids to know and expect it to feel difficult to become stronger, to start with lighter weights, to start with body weight before increasing those weights. And anytime I do that with my own mentality, I feel so much more empowered. And again, it comes down to this ability to fight for what you want. I'm going to fight for it. I'm going to fight for that morning routine, because I know why I want it so badly. I'm not going to say I can't have a morning routine because my kids don't sleep through the night. Well, what can I do? I can be really intentional with my morning routine. When the kids wake up, when we're all awake, what are the first things that I'm doing? Instead of trying to jump forward to being up two hours before my kids wake up, why not just start with where we're at when we do wake up? I can't have a morning routine. You have a morning routine. You do. You do it every day. What is it? Do you like it? I can't change my morning routine. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. What do you want your morning routine to look like? And sometimes, yeah, it feels painful to look at the things that we want. My best friend and I were talking about that this morning. We were chatting with each other and she was like, I'm doing all this vision work, focusing on what I want, and honestly it just feels painful and it feels frustrating too, because there's so much that I want that I don't have yet and I don't know how I'm gonna get it. And then my mind starts focusing on how the heck am I gonna get those things? And maybe I can't have those things and am I too late for some of those things? And what are the things that won't work? And it just feels so painful to tell myself the things that I want So much of me believes I can't have them. And to me, that's the heart issue behind the mindset work is I can give you all the tools to help have an empowered mentality, just like I'm working on too. And let's remember, Tessa's doing this too. Tessa has thoughts that say I can't. Tessa has thoughts that say, of course, Tessa has thoughts that are negative and mean and nasty. And I just choose to think differently when they come. Most times I choose to act on something different, to help myself through it, to try and understand myself better instead of letting them call the shots of my life. So if you're feeling like it feels so painful to shift out of the I can't, because when I say I can't, it just feels like I'm innocent. And for once I wanna feel innocent, for once I wanna feel like, It's on somebody else to make it happen. It's not me that needs to change. It's not me doing something wrong. It's somebody else. We all crave that feeling of innocence. You're not alone in that. And I used to want it really badly too. I wanted it to be someone else's responsibility, someone else's fault. And what I learned was no one was coming to change it. And nobody knew what I wanted as well as I did. So even in their best attempts, even in my husband's best attempts to give me what I want, if I wasn't talking about what I want, then he was constantly guessing. And that, I mean, how close are we going to get on guesses all the time? So it's not even fair to the people that want to show up in your life and want to help you and serve you and help you get what you want to leave them guessing of what that is that you want. and if you don't believe that you can have these things, your mind will, by default, sabotage the attempts consciously and subconsciously for you to have them, because all your mind wants to do is make predictions and be right and be right about the predictions that it makes. So if you predict that you can't have a better marriage and your husband starts putting in more effort to the marriage, you'll reject it. Because the story says, I can't have that. So your mind will make sure you don't get it. The story says, I can't lose weight. So your mind will make sure you don't lose weight. It's that story, it's that programming. And when I just want you to take some time to recognize, what am I programming myself to believe? Keep your feet on the ground, stay present in your own life. Stop looking for the loopholes of how this mindset work. to you and think about the ways that it does. Don't get trapped in that narrative online where people are just trying to defend and stand up for what they can't do. Do you really want to be someone that spends their life arguing about what they can't do, trying to convince other people to see that they can't do these things? Why would you want that? Don't you want people rallying around you saying, yes, you can, you can do it. And we can find resources and we can have great friendships and we can have a thriving marriage with young children and we can parent differently. and we can lose the weight. We can gain the weight. We can change our style. We can change our personality. We can change our response patterns. We can change and do all of these things. And if you don't first believe that you can, well, then how far are you going to get? Why not just let yourself believe it? Why not ingrain it so deeply that one day you wake up and your first thought is, I can get up. I can have my time to read a book, to journal, to work out, to read scripture. I can call my friend. I can call her right back. Living more in this I can mentality. So wrapping this episode up, here's what I want you to do. I want you to have out a piece of paper and like I said, write down the things that you tell yourself you can't do and then evaluate each one and reframe it to I don't want to. How would you frame that thought of I can't, I can't lose weight? How would you frame that into I don't want to? You would frame it as, I don't wanna do what it takes to lose weight. That can feel, I mean, gosh, doesn't that feel so much harder to sit with than I can't? Of course we're gonna prefer I can't, but I would prefer I can't. When I feel stuck in my fitness, when I feel like I'm coming up against something and it feels really hard to accomplish what I want, when I feel stuck in my business, when I feel stuck in my marriage, if I tell myself, well, I just can't change it. I can't grow the business. I can't coach better. I can't, I can't improve that skill, whatever it is. I can't figure this out compared to, I don't want to put in the work to figure it out. I don't want to sit down at my desk and put in the time right now to resolve this issue. I don't want to go through the motions that would, that it would require of me to create content consistently. to post every day. It's not that I can't post every day. It's that I don't want to make that much content. I don't want to stretch myself that way. It's okay. It's okay if I don't want those things. It's okay for you to not want those things. Sometimes we just don't want it for a season. So when I say it's not that you can't lose weight, it's. It's something deeper. I don't want to give up the. The foods that I use for comfort. I don't want to face this narrative that I've been telling myself that this is just the way that I am, because what would it mean that I've been doing this first portion of my life? Or what would it mean to come back and say, wow, I changed my mind. Would that mean that I was wrong this whole time? What about all those people that I said that to? There's so much going on in your mind and writing it down just helps you evaluate it better, helps you scrutinize the thoughts more. Remember your feelings. Validate your feelings, scrutinize your thoughts. So write them down. Take them under careful consideration. What are all the things you're telling yourself you can't do? That's your first step. Second step, reframe those things you wrote down into, I don't want to. I don't want to go to bed earlier. I don't wanna give up the time that I've told myself I have when my kids are asleep. I don't wanna use that time I told myself I have. with my kids being asleep to sleep. Get really clear on what it is that you're telling yourself. You can't do reframe it into what it is that you don't want and then get deeper than that. What's more true than I don't want to go to bed earlier? I don't want to give up the time that I've convinced myself is my time to do what I want while my kids are asleep. What's more true than that? I don't want to feel like I'm sacrificing time myself where I don't want to step into a new area of discipline, self-discipline sounds scary. That's way more vulnerable than this defensiveness that we get into. So go deeper and deeper and deeper. Keep asking yourself, what's more true than that? What's more true than that? What's more true than that? And you'll come up with much more vulnerable answers that will truly be insightful to what it is that you need most. Because, you know, maybe you don't really need to go to bed earlier. Maybe that's not what you need most. Maybe you just need to be more intentional with the time that you're maybe you need to decide that you're done cleaning at a certain time, and that's the time that you get to journal, read scripture, read a book, stretch, listen to good music, meditate, sit outside with your husband, whatever it is that disciplined nature can come in. It's not even that you have to go to sleep earlier. You'll just finally have those answers if you write these things down. That will help so much. So the mentality you're stepping into is I can, I just don't want to. And then when you say, I don't want to, notice that shift in yourself. It's going to feel like something is coming alive. Something is coming alive that will help you fight to get what you want. And we need a little bit of that fight in us when we're going to make these types of changes. And it will help us see when we're just not being very honest with ourselves, when we're seeking the feeling of innocence over our own empowerment and our strength. We want it to be someone else's fault. We want someone else to take responsibility when really the only way through this is when we choose to be responsible and we choose to be the ones at the driver's seat of our life. So you can, you just don't want to. It's okay if you don't want to. You do need to say that you don't want to though. You'd never want to fool yourself into thinking that you're capable of so much less than you're actually capable of. Get rid of that I can't mentality. at any opportunity that you have, and I promise you there's tons of them. It's very, there are very few things in life that we actually can do. Very few. The stories of what people are doing are fascinating. There are men in wheelchairs for years walking again, amputees walking again, men, men and women that were paralyzed, that healed their injury, healed their spine and are moving and walking again. So please use those stories as inspiration and an opportunity to see that you're just as much in this game of life as anybody else. You have just as much say in what happens next as anybody else. And what you choose to say is true about you and true about your life is going to make a big, big difference because that belief system, that belief in what you're capable of, is worth protecting. Even if the people around you are like, no, but you really can't. Poor you. that is not the narrative of my life, and I really hope it's not the narrative of your life. Choose to be the person that can do it anyway, and fight for it. It's worth fighting to protect your mentality and to grow one that you love to live with. So I'm cheering you on. Get out that journal, do some writing, figure out where it is in your life you're telling yourself you can't do something that you actually can do, you just don't want to, and then investigate further why you don't want to. What's the vulnerable piece behind it? because, friend, you really, really can, and sometimes you just really, really don't want to. I'm wishing you all the best, and I'll see you next week.