Real Talk about the book Leadership and Self-Deception
What does it mean to be “in the box” towards someone?
Being “In the Box”= Seeing ourselves and others in a systematically distorted way. Others are mere Objects
Being “Out of the Box” = Seeing ourselves and others more or less as we are, as People.
Self-deception is creating stories based on your own reality that doesn’t serve you!
Collusion
When we are in the box towards someone we generally want to get other people to join in with us and confirm that what we are thinking and feeling is justified.
In the book, Leadership and Self-Deception, there is a story about Kate. She is in the box towards her son for being late home from hanging out with friends. When she was in the box she needed to her son to be doing wrong.
When he shows up on time, but just barely, she still complains about how he is cutting it close.
Kate and her husband were colluding together against their son.
Being the Change
Cortni wanted her husband to read this book since they were in the box against each other. But he didn’t want to. . . until she decided to read it without him and started making changes, then he was finally interested himself.
Ben: Cortni what would you tell someone who thinks this won’t work for them?
Cortni: TRY! Just give it a try. With the membership, give it a shot even for a month. And you will feel so much support from the other moms and Ben. It’s worth it! Just give it a shot.`
Join The Firmly Founded Parent (FFP) Membership
If you want to seriously up-level your parenting, join the membership.
If you’re tired of arguing with your teen and trying to help them even though they don’t want help, join the membership.
If you like 1:1 support, join the membership.
If you want the support of a community of parents just like you, join the community in the membership
I don’t like scripting out my podcast interviews. Their natural, conversation style.
These show notes will not do this episode justice.
If you want all the gold nuggets from this episode, make sure to listen to the episode!
What is Your Parenting Identity?
One of the things I’ve realized is that if you are struggling to make lasting changes in your life, it is probably because you don’t identify as someone who could make those changes.
Mindset Matters!
Often times, experts, whether in parenting, business, or weight loss focus on the tactics, but they often forget the mindset component.
Mindset is powerful.
How you think determines how you feel, and how you feel determines how you behave.
Managing Your Mind Helps You Parent.
If you want to better connect with your teen, you have to do your own inner work as a parent.
Most parents are reactive and never really take the time to intentionally parent in a way that is true to who they want to be as a parent.
By doing this, you have the power to BE The Change that you want to see.
When you create change on the inside, you will see things change on the outside.
Lasting Change = Doable Change
Most people try to create radical change that is not even who they really want to be.
Corinne mentions that you have to create change that is in line with how you want to live.
If you want to eat pizza and ice cream, you have to figure out how to be someone who eats pizza and ice cream responsibly.
It means figuring out, what can I do TODAY and doing just that.
I want to walk you through my 10 favorite things to teach parents.
In fact, these principles are not only my favorite things to teach, but they are the things that the parents who I work with consistently tell me have had the most impact on their lives.
So, over the next several episodes, you’ll get access to my top 10 favorite principles.
And, I’m going to teach them in the order that I think would be most beneficial to you.
Feel Powerless in Your Parenting?
If you’re like most parents, you’ve probably felt powerless from time to time.
In fact, if you’re a first time listener to this podcast, I’m guessing that you’ve recently found yourself feeling powerless.
If you’ve listened to my podcast very long, you’ve probably heard me say that when you feel powerless as a parent, it’s because you’re focusing on things outside of your control.
Today, we’re going to talk about getting your personal power back
It’s Time to Take Your Power Back
If you’ve been feeling powerless, it’s time to take your personal power back.
There are 3 exercises that I’m going to walk you through to help you take your power power back and start living in integrity.
Exercise #1 Stop Focusing on Things Outside Of Your Control
One of the main ways that I see parents giving away their power is by constantly focusing on things outside of their control.
You’re guilty of this if you’ve ever found yourself feeling anxious, worried, and stressed because you are focusing on something that you want your teen to do, or not do, or to change.
You feel all of these disempowering feelings because you are focused on things outside of your control.
So, here’s the exercise I like to call the T-Chart of Control.
Listen to the podcast for details on how to do this exercise.
Exercise #2 Your Word Is Powerful
The second way that you might be losing your personal power is in the way that you speak.
Your words are powerful.
If you are critical of yourself, you are losing personal power.
If you are critical of others, you are losing personal power, and your focus is on things outside of your control.
Anytime you complain, you are losing your personal power.
When you blame, you are losing your personal power.
So, here’s the exercise.
Start gaining an awareness of how you speak, both internally and externally.
Awareness is a powerful starting point.
Many of the things that we do are unconscious habits.
By bringing awareness to this, you will then gain the power to be intentional.
So, the exercise is this. Spend one day gaining awareness of how you speak. Then, spend one day being intentional of how you speak.
Exercise #3 Live In INTEGRITY
Most people are living OUT OF INTEGRITY in their lives.
To me, living out of integrity is something we’ve been taught to do.
Living in integrity is when you do or don’t do something that you is not inline with who you want to be.
It’s saying you’ll do something, and then not doing it. Or, saying you won’t do something, and then doing it anyway.
It’s wanting something for yourself, for your live, and then not BEing the person that creates that.
I want to walk you through my 10 favorite things to teach parents.
In fact, these principles are not only my favorite things to teach, but they are the things that the parents who I work with consistently tell me have had the most impact on their lives.
So, over the next several episodes, you’ll get access to my top 10 favorite principles.
And, I’m going to teach them in the order that I think would be most beneficial to you.
Do You Know Your Values?
Most people don’t really know what their values are.
They think they know, and they know what they want them to be, but they don’t know what they actually are.
Often times, parents will tell me that their top values are family, connection, and their teen’s development.
But, when we start digging it to it, it turns out that none of these are actually one of their top values.
If you don’t have awareness of your top values, you won’t have intention when it comes to your values.
If you’re like most people, you don’t truly know what your top values are. Rather, you know what you think they “should” be.
In fact, if you’re like most people, and like me when I started digging into my own values, you’re going to be surprised at how many values you’ve simple picked up a long the way and blindly held onto.
Your Values Create Your Results
So, if you want to gain awareness when it comes to your values, start here.
If you want to gain the power and intention over your values, start here.
When it comes to gaining awareness around your values, take some time and look at your current results.
Your weight, your bank account, your relationship with your loved ones, your current profession are all the result of your values.
Because of this, your results will always reflect your values.
If you want to understand what your values are, look at your results and ask yourself, “What values created this result for me?”
Once you have this awareness, you will them be able to intentionally choose your driving values.
The problem is, most people want to skip the awareness step and go straight to the intention step.
If you skip the process of awareness, you will never understand. You will continue to be blindly driven by your unintentional values.
Understanding Your Values Leads to Understanding Your Teen’s Values
I cannot over emphasis just how key this is.
If you want to understand the values of others, you haver to understand your own values.
Most parents, never take the time to truly understand their own values, and as a result, they never truly understand their teen’s values.
If you want to build values based connections with your teen, you need to first understand your values.
Take some time to do the exercise that we talked about above.
Look at your results and ask yourself, “What values created this result for me?”
Once you get good at seeing your own values, you can then ask yourself, “What values created this result for my teen?”
You will be shocked at how many values you and your teen have in common.
Secrets to Values
There are no “RIGHT” or “WRONG” values.
Your values are not better than someone else’s.
We all have roughly the same amount of values in common with others as we do in conflict with others.
People that we like, we choose to focus on our common values.
People that we dislike, often our teens, it’s because we focus on our conflicting values.
I want to walk you through my 10 favorite things to teach parents.
In fact, these principles are not only my favorite things to teach, but they are the things that the parents who I work with consistently tell me have had the most impact on their lives.
So, over the next several episodes, you’ll get access to my top 10 favorite principles.
And, I’m going to teach them in the order that I think would be most beneficial to you.
Being the Parent of Your Dreams is an Identity Process
Your identity is a powerful driver in your life.
It’s really hard to do things that aren’t aligned with your identity.
Think about smoking for example.
If you’re not a smoker, it would be pretty hard for you to smoke.
It would feel wrong, and icky, and just completely foreign to you.
It’s because, if you identify as a non-smoker, that goes completely against how you think, feel, and behave.
This is important to recognize because if you think you’re a “Bad Parent” it’s going to be hard to do things that you think only good parents do.
Your Parenting Identity is Like Your GPS
If you think about GPS, it only needs two pieces of data to function.
Where you are, and where you want to be.
That’s it.
With those two points, it can calculate different routes to get you where you want to be.
To be the parent of your dreams, you need to trust your parenting GPS, and you need to know where you are and where you want to be.
That is your identity.
Once you know that, tough parenting moments get easier.
Just like having GPS makes driving in unfamiliar territory, knowing your identity makes parenting in uncharted territory easier.
Create a 10-Word Vision Statement
One of my favorite exercises to walk parents through is that of creating a 10-word vision statement for themselves and their parenting.
It’s super easy, and SUPER POWERFUL!
I’ve had several parents name this as the #1 thing that’s changed everything for them.
Here is a simple process for doing this:
Brainstorm/journal for 5-10 minutes about who you want to be as a parent.
What are your values?
How do you want to show up?
Then, take what you just journaled and identify what things are within your control.
“I want my teen to feel safe around me” is outside of your control. You can’t control how your teen feels.
However, “I want to be a safe harbor for my teen and listen with curiosity and love” are things that you can control.
Next, craft a 10-Word Vision Statement that is empowering and within your control.
My favorite that I’ve ever come up with is:
Parenting with love, confidence, and curiosity is easy and fun.
This vision statement will act as your navigation system in awesome parenting moments and in tough parenting moments.
Know Yourself and Trust Yourself
Every parent has a unique blend of skills, strengths, and gifts.
Get to know yours!
Trust that you have been given these skills, strengths, and gifts because YOU are the perfect parent for your teen.
When you know these strengths and gifts, you can access them more easily.
