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by Ben | Jan 20, 2022 | Podcast
Each day practice being the parent of your dreams.
My Top Ten Daily Habits for Parenting Success
- Set Your Intention Each Day
- Last thing before you go to bed, set your intention for the following day.
- First thing when you wake up in the morning, remind yourself of and commit to your intention.
- Here’s some examples from my life.
- Today I will listen with curiosity, patience, and love.
- Today I will develop awareness around my emotions.
- Today I will be fun, energetic, and engaged with my children.
- Today I will learn a new way to connect with my 15 year old son.
- Commit to Connection Daily
- Be 100% committed to connect to your teen.
- Choose to love your teen.
- Show them that you love them.
- Show them that you are confident that they will be okay.
- Let them know that you trust that EVERYTHING will be okay.
- Connect with them right where they are.
- Stay calm, listen, treat your teen with kindness and fairness, and do your best to let them know that you aren’t mad and that you love and care about them.
- Embrace the Moment
- Far too often we are guilty of not being present.
- Don’t try to avoid the moment.
- Don’t try to fix, change, or improve it.
- BE IN THE MOMENT.
- Be in the moment WITH your teen!
- Manage Your Mind
- I like to use the Self-Coaching Model
- I also like to use the Be, Do, Have Model.
- I am starting to get into journaling and writing.
- Sharing what I’ve learned with others.
- Trust Yourself, Your Teen, and the Process
- This one is HUGE for me this year.
- Trust will change everything.
- You are exactly what your teen need, they are exactly what you need and want, and the process you two are experiencing is exactly what you need.
- Let Go Of Things Outside of Your Control
- This is hard, but so powerful.
- When you hold onto things outside of your control, you lose power and energy.
- When you let go, you have more power and energy to put towards things within your control.
- Let go of your teen’s model and manage your own!
- Practice, Practice, Practice
- One of my favorite lessons, and one I came up with myself, is the “Wheel of Time.”
- When you’re on the top of the wheel, practice and prepare for when you are on the bottom.
- When you’re on the bottom of the wheel, just keep going and do your best to do what you practiced at the top of the wheel.
- Life is all about practice and improvement.
- It doesn’t have to be pretty or perfect.
- Be Willing to Be Wrong and/or Make Mistakes
- One of the things that divides parents and teens is when one or both of them are committed to being “Right!”
- Be willing to be wrong.
- Let your teen be “Right!”
- Be willing to make mistakes.
- Be the example of what to do when you make mistakes.
- Be The Change You Want to See
- This is one of my favorite saying and teachings.
- If you want your teen to be something else, YOU Be that change!
- If you want your teen to be more confident, YOU Be more confident in both your teen and yourself.
- Play to Your Strengths
- Last but not least, play to your strengths.
- Yes, you have weaknesses, and if you’re listening to this podcast you probably want to address your weaknesses, but trust your strengths.
- God gave you strengths that are unique to you.
- Trust them and use them!
CALL TO ACTION!
Start being the parent of your dreams TODAY!
Come join an amazing community of parents in the Firmly Founded Parent Membership!
by Ben | Aug 26, 2021 | Podcast
One of my favorite things to do is to coach football! Here are some early leassons learned from this season.
“In the absence of feedback, people will fill in the blanks with a negative. They will assume you don’t care about them or don’t like them.”
~ Pat Summit
I LOVE Football!
First, I want to say that I LOVE football!
It really helped me as a struggling teen, and even as an adult, football plays a beneficial part in my life.
For the past 4 years, I’ve helped coach football in some capacity. Several years before that I also spent 4 years coaching at the high school level.
It’s thanks to football that my wife and I got into foster parenting and part of the reason I got into education. And now, as a life coach, football has a heavy influence on how I teach and coach parents and their teens.
This year, I wanted to take a minute and share some powerful lessons that I’ve learned so far from this season.
Lessons I’ve Learned So Far that You Can Use with You and Your Teen!
Feedback is important!
This is the first year that I’ve coached with this set of coaches.
One of the things that I’ve noticed that sets the best coaches apart from the others is their ability to give consistent feedback!
The coaches who are most respected give consistent feedback. Do something wrong, they’re going to calmly let you know. Do something right, they’re going to calmly let you know. The best coaches give players feedback, for example coaching on how to block better, then they wait and watch for you to do it right so they can give you feedback in the form of praise.
Recently in talking with my son, he told me that he didn’t like certain coaches. When I asked him “Why?” he explained that he didn’t think that they liked him. Again, I asked my favorite coaching question, “Why?” To which he answered, “I don’t think they like anyone. They never tell us anything. They never talk to us.”
How can you consistently offer feedback? What feedback would you like to offer?
For me it’s teaching my teen, it’s praising his efforts, and it’s letting him know that everything is just right.
You are responsible for your culture!
I love the team that I am coaching with, and I am grateful for the opportunity. I want to be clear about that!
I also want to share some of the lessons that I’ve noticed and some things that you might be able to apply in your home.
This lesson has become glaringly obvious lately.
You are responsible for your culture.
Recently I overheard some coaches complaining about players being late. The funny thing was, this group of coaches is consistently late themselves. They are responsible for the culture that they are complaining about. Not only do they tolerate players being late, but they also model that behavior by being late themselves.
Being responsible for your culture is both a blessing and a curse. We can see the negative impact in the example above.
This is also a blessing because if you want to change your culture, it starts with YOU.
Be the change that you want to see.
How are you responsible for the culture in your home, both the good and the bad?
How can you take responsibility for your culture? Where would you like to start BEing different?
For me in my home, it’s positioning myself as the hero by avoiding my tendency to complain and blame. It’s creating a culture of responsibility and BEing the hero of our own stories.
Excitement is contagious!
It’s been fun to coach with these coaches. One of the new coaches is my son’s favorite coach. When I asked him, “Why?”, he said, because he’s always happy and excited. This coach is one big buff, athletic-looking, dude! When he gets excited, it’s a little scary because he’s so massive, but EVERYONE around him gets excited.
What if you got excited every time you saw your teen? What if that was one of your new ways of BEing? What impact would that have on you and your teen’s life?
For me, it’s celebrating my teen’s victories and successes. It’s being excited to see him and spend time with him.
Call to ACTION!
My BETA Impact Parenting Program is now live, and the doors are closed . . .
. . . BUT . . .
. . . If you want to take your parenting to the next level, you can still join the Firmly Founded Parent.
Now that my Impact Parenting Program is up and running, we’re going to be revamping and improving the Firmly Founded Parent, and I want you to join us to make it the best monthly parenting membership EVER!
Join TODAY!!
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by Ben | Aug 12, 2021 | Podcast
How you interpret things and the stories you tell will determine whether you are the victim or the hero of your story!
“You are not at the mercy of your circumstances. You are at the mercy of your interpretations.”
~ Jim Fortin
Interpretations are Just Thoughts and Stories.
Most people think that their interpretations are facts, just the way things are.
If they were facts, they would go in the circumstance line of the model.
Fortunately for us, interpretations are thoughts. This is the best news ever because it means that you have the power to choose your interpretations.
You can look at your interpretations in the model and see how they impact your ways of BEing. How do they make you feel? How do they make you act? What results do you get from your interpretations?
Since interpretations are thoughts, how you interpret things will determine what you look for, where you put your attention, and how you think.
If you’re not intentional about your interpretations, your interpretations will create results in your life that you are not happy with.
Why Intentional Interpretation Is SO Powerful.
Interpretations are just your stories of how you perceive circumstances around you. How you interpret life around you determines the stories that you tell yourself in your own head.
So, when you have an interpretation, it shows up in your thought line in your model. As a thought, your interpretations create the feelings that drive your actions which create your results.
This is HUGE!
If you don’t like how you feel, or you don’t like your actions, or you’re not happy with your results, choose new interpretations.
Here’s an example that I use when I coach football.
Look at being physically exhausted.
Most people interpret being exhausted or tired as meaning that you need a break, you need to slow down and conserve energy or that something has gone “wrong” and that it’s bad to be tired and exhausted.
Most of these interpretations take place on the subconscious level. You don’t even realize that you are thinking this way.
In football this causes athletes to take plays off and slow down to conserve energy.
When I coach, I change my team’s interpretation of being physically tired or exhausted.
I teach my team to interpret being tired as simply our internal indicator that the other team is tired. I teach my team to understand that it is human nature to want to rest, slow down and conserve energy when you’re tired.
When we are tired, we know that the other team is also tired, and this is a good thing for us because they are more likely to make mistakes. And, when they make a mistake, we’re going to be ready to take advantage of it.
I teach my teams that being tired is simply a physical reminder to step up and take advantage of the other tired team. We play our best football when we’re tired. We get sharper, we pay attention to detail, and we take over games during the 4th quarter. We love being tired because it gives us a huge advantage.
Games are won and lost when people are tired. This is what we’re preparing for.
How to Be Intentional With Your Interpretations.
First, you have to be aware of what your interpretations are.
To do this, practice awareness throughout the day. When you notice an interpretation, identify and label it. “This is an interpretation.”
Thought downloads are also powerful tools to help you identify your interpretations. Any time you find yourself saying things like, “It’s not fair,” “My teen’s lazy,” “I’m not good enough,” or “This is bad.”
These are all interpretations.
Second, once you’ve become aware of your interpretations, you can start to be intentional about how you interpret things. When you identify and label your interpretation, intentionally more your attention to your desired interpretation.
It might look like this.
“My son is lazy. Wait, that’s an interpretation. I move my attention to the interpretation that my son is doing his best.”
Boom!
We identified the unintentional interpretation and moved our attention to an intentional interpretation.
This will impact the rest of the stories that we tell ourselves.
Third, as you do this, practice new intentional interpretations by doing models. In the first step I invited you to do thought downloads. Once you’ve done this, you can do an unintentional model and an intentional model based on the thoughts and interpretations that you identified in your thought downloads.
Call to ACTION!
My BETA Impact Parenting Program is now live, but the doors close TOMORROW, Friday, Aug. 13th at 11:59 MDT.
If you want to take your parenting to the next level, I want you to be a part of this program.
Space is limited! Get in before it’s too late.
Join TODAY!!
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by Ben | Mar 18, 2021 | Podcast
Once we’re aware of what is actually going on, we can intentionally become who we want to be.
“Every human has four endowments; self-awareness, conscience, independent will, and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom. The power to choose, to respond, to change.”
~ Stephen Covey
Awareness Changes EVERYTHING!
Last week we talked about the power of awareness and how to develop the skill of awareness.
I believe that awareness should come before we try to make changes.
Many times, once we’ve increased our awareness, things change without us even trying to bring about change.
Intentionality is the Next Step.
It’s powerful to be aware of what’s truly going on in your life. Far too often, we realize that things are not going how we would like them to, and we jump straight into trying to change things.
Now that we’ve developed some awareness, we can start to identify things that we would like to change. From last week’s exercise of developing awareness around your thoughts, feelings, and unintentional models, you now have a greater awareness of what is really going on.
Now being intentional is the next step.
Now that you’ve identified your unintentional thoughts, feelings, actions, and results, you can start becoming intentional with your model.
Intention Impacts Who We Are
Last week we talked about how simply changing the action doesn’t create lasting change and how it’s so important to develop awareness before trying to make changes.
Most of the time, after temporarily changing our actions, we go right back to being who we used to be.
Last week we used the example weight loss. Usually, people don’t take the time to understand exactly what is going on or developing an awareness of what’s going wrong. Instead, they jump right into a new diet or exercise program. They might experience temporary results, but without awareness, the real issue usually takes over again.
You go right back to being who you were before because your identity never changed.
Now that we have have the awareness, rather than simply changing what we do, we want to intentionally change who we are!
Someone who is extremely physically fit isn’t that way simply because they exercise regularly or because they eat healthily. Instead, they exercise regularly and eat healthy because they ARE someone who is physically fit.
Simple Steps to Develop Intention and Identity
#1 Do Daily Thought Downloads
Last week you became aware of the thoughts and beliefs that govern your life. Now that you have awareness around your thoughts, you can start becoming intentional with your thoughts.
Old thoughts like, “I’m an awful parent”, can be substituted for thoughts like, “My parenting superpower is listening,” or “My only job is to love my teen, and I’m awesome at that!”
Thought downloads will help you to continue gaining awareness, and they will help you see how you want to intentionally think differently.
#2 Explore Who You Want to Be and How They’d Think
You can do this in thought downloads, just in your head, or by writing yourself a letter from your future self. Explore how your future self would view your circumstance? What’s their perspective?
This will show you new thoughts and beliefs that you can practice believing about yourself.
#3 Explore Who You Want to Be and How They’d Feel
After you’ve explored these new thoughts, explore the feelings they create. When you think, “I’m great at connecting with my teen”, explore how that makes you feel.
#4 Do Unintentional and Intentional Models to Create Your Results
Last week we practiced doing unintentional models, now we are going to continue doing unintentional models followed by intentional models.
Unintentional Model
C- I yelled at my teen.
T- I’m the worst parent.
F- shame
A- I hide and don’t actively parent.
R- I’m not as involved with my teen.
We can intentionally change anything in the model but the circumstance. Explore what result you would like to get instead of your unintentional result. What action would create that result? What would you need to feel to take that action? What thoughts create that feeling?
Intentional Model
C- I yelled at my teen.
T- This is an opportunity to connect with my teen.
F- hope
A- Apologize and model humility
R- I’m an example of how to grow from mistakes
#5 Be Intentional and Patient
Human beings are ruled by their habits. So, this might be the hardest part.
Last week we talked about exploring your thoughts and feelings without judgement and with compassion.
This week, this applies to this step. Practice being intentional without judgement and with compassion.
DO NOT expect change and perfection right away!
Give it some time. Be willing to practice, and practice, and practice. Continue gaining awareness, start making decisions intentionally, and practice living in alignment with your intentional model.
This is changing who you are as a parent and how you show up in the world. This will take practice and time.
Call to ACTION!
Join Firmly Founded Parent, our monthly membership helping parents become the parents that their teens love and respect.
Get on a FREE consultation call with me today to see how you can stop pushing your teen away and start connecting with them right where they are.
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by Ben | Mar 11, 2021 | Podcast
Far too often we try to fix or change our lives without ever becoming aware of what is actually going on.
“The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.”
~ Nathaniel Branden
Awareness Changes EVERYTHING!
Have you ever heard the saying, “You don’t know what you don’t know”?
This is true in our own lives. We don’t know what we don’t know. Often times we simply know that we want a change, but we lack the awareness to really understand exactly what it is that we want to change.
Often times we think we can simply change our actions and gets the change that we are looking for.
Simply changing the action is rarely enough to create the change that we want.
Think of someone who starts a new diet and exercise program. They make temporary changes, but eventually they go right back to who they were before.
This is because they aren’t truly aware of the real issue.
When we take the time to become aware of the real issues, we can address those issues rather than hoping they’ll simply go away.
Increasing awareness also creates the Observer Effect in our lives. In science, this refers to how the act of observing something can change the outcome.
Many times in our lives, we don’t actually have to actively make changes. Instead, we can increase our awareness, which is often enough to bring about the change that we are hoping for.
Awareness Is Hard and Often Uncomfortable
Awareness seems like it’d be super easy, right?
Unfortunately, it’s harder than most people realize. It takes effort, willingness to explore and be vulnerable, and willingness to experience some discomfort.
It’s hard because it challenges our individual identity. It compares who we think we are, who we want to be, and who we really are.
Most of us want to skip awareness and dive into the work of changing things.
We see this a lot in weight loss. People don’t take the time to understand exactly what is going on, developing an awareness of what’s going wrong. Instead, they jump right into a new diet or exercise program. They might experience temporary results, but without awareness, the real issue usually takes over again.
Simple Steps to Develop Awareness
#1 Do Daily Thought Downloads
This might sound simple, and it is, but it is also powerful. This is a great practice to help you become aware of the thoughts and beliefs that govern your life.
#2 Explore the Thoughts without Judgement and with Compassion
You can do this in thought downloads or just in your head. Explore where your thoughts and beliefs come from. Why do you think what you think? What are your biases?
#3 Explore the Feelings without Judgement and with Compassion
After you’ve explored your thoughts, explore the feelings created by your thoughts. When you think, “I’m a terrible mother,” explore how that makes you feel.
Also, explore the emotions that are most prevalent in your day. Similar to how Sesame Street has episodes that are “brought to you by the letter ‘B'” and then they highlight all the things from the episode that start with B, what is the feeling that is scattered all throughout your day?
Once you identify the recurring feeling, identify the thoughts and beliefs that are triggering that emotion.
#4 Do an Unintentional Model to Be Aware of Your Results
Take your thoughts and feelings and build an un-intentional model around them. This means that you will take a thought and the feeling it creates and plug it into the “T” and “F” lines of the model.
T- I’m the worst parent.
F- shame
Next, take a second to identify the circumstance that triggered the thought, and stick it in the “C” line.
C- I yelled at my teen.
T- I’m the worst parent.
F- shame
Next, identify an unintentional action, “A” line, that is driven by the feeling, followed by the unintentional result, “R” line, to your actions.
C- I yelled at my teen.
T- I’m the worst parent.
F- shame
A- I hide and don’t actively parent.
R- I’m not as involved with my teen.
#5 Sit with the Awareness
Human beings are fixers. So, this might be the hardest part.
DO NOT jump in and start fixing and changing things.
Give it some time. Sit with the awareness. Continue gaining more awareness and deepening your understanding of EVERYTHING that is truly going on.
You don’t know what you don’t know.
The more you know the more you know.
The more awareness you develop, the more you control you will develop.
Simply being aware will change some things. Be aware of that, and give yourself some space to just allow what you find.
Call to ACTION!
Join Firmly Founded Parent, our monthly membership helping parents become the parents that their teens love and respect.
Get on a FREE consultation call with me today to see how you can stop pushing your teen away and start connecting with them right where they are.
