![#082 Your Teen’s Model]()
by Ben | Jan 6, 2022 | Podcast
If you try to control your teen’s model, they will hate The Model and they won’t understand its power in their life.
Don’t Try To Force The Model On Your Teen
One of the most powerful tools that I teach is the Self-Coaching Model!
When I teach it to parents they love it and say it makes total sense.
Usually when I teach it to teens the model they love it.
But, I’ve noticed a trend with teens whose parents are coaches or who have coaches.
Oftentimes, these teens tell me, “I hate the model!”
Every time this has happened, it’s because their parents have tried to force the model on them or tried to get them to change their model somehow.
I totally get it.
I love the model. It’s so powerful.
I want all teens to know, understand, and use this tool, ESPECIALLY my teen.
If you’re like me, and most other parents, you’ve tried to get your teen to understand the model.
The problem comes when you try to get your teen to change their model when they don’t want to and/or aren’t ready to change their model.
I love parents teaching the model! I love parents talking their teens through the model.
My warning is this . . .
. . . Don’t try to force the model on your teen.
. . . Don’t try to change your teen with the model.
If you do, they are likely to hate it.
So, How Can You Help Your Teen Learn The Model?
Understand that the model is at work in your teen’s life whether they know it or not. Whether they accept it or not. Whether they like it or not.
One of the most powerful ways that you can help your teen learn the model is by managing your own model.
Another way is by realizing that you only change the circumstance of your teen’s model.
The biggest thing is, manage your model and let your teen manage theirs.
Be Open To Your Teen’s Thoughts
One of the things that I teach people to help them use the model is to do thought downloads.
When it comes to your teen’s model, you can be a powerful tool for helping them do thought downloads.
One of the biggest mistakes that I see parents making is that when their teens try to share their thoughts with them, the parents try to change their teen’s thoughts by telling them, “Don’t think like that,” or “Don’t talk like that.”
When I teach people to do thought downloads, I tell them it’s important to be aware of ALL of your thoughts.
When your teen is complaining to you or venting to you, or just telling you what they are worried about, see this as them doing a thought download with you. You are their paper, and they are just pouring out their thoughts to you.
Validate Their Feelings
Emotional Health is the ability to feel any and ALL emotions and to identify and process them.
Far too many parents try to manage their teen’s emotions.
The parents are worried that their “teen can’t handle this.” We try to get them to avoid or change their emotions from what they are actually feeling.
This is actually the opposite of emotional health as it is encouraging the teens to only feel certain emotions and to avoid identifying and processing the feeling.
Give Them Autonomy to Take Action
It’s hard to see your teen do things that you completely disagree with. I totally get it. I’m a human and a parent too. It’s hard, but you CAN’T control your teen. It’s not your job to make sure that they “behave” or act “appropriately”.
What you can do is give them the space, autonomy, and confidence to act on their own.
Sure, you may still have to enforce some boundaries and consequences, but it’s powerful to remember that you don’t have to control your teen’s actions.
By giving them the autonomy to act on their own, they get to own their actions and create their own results.
Trust and Let Them Own Their Results
One of the things I see parents doing is blaming themselves for their teen’s results. This takes power away from your teen. If you want to give power back to your teen, respect their results. Let them own it.
Another problem that I see is parents catastrophizing about their teen’s results, believing the their results are “wrong” or “bad” or that their results should be different.
Your teen is the only one who can create their results!
Trust that their results are theirs and that their results are exactly what they need.
Manage Your Own Model
Bottom line is this, MANAGE YOUR OWN MODEL!
You can’t control your teen’s model, and any effort trying to control their model is simply wasted energy that could be spent managing your own model.
I promise you, if you want to improve your relationship with your teen, do your own mental and emotional work. Practice connecting with your teen right where they are.
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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!
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![#082 Your Teen’s Model]()
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.
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![#082 Your Teen’s Model]()
by Ben | Apr 22, 2021 | Podcast
Human beings are herd animals. We like to think, feel, and act in accordance with our herd. Just look at politics, religion, and sports as evidence.
“To raise a child, it sometimes takes a village…but sometimes that village should shut up and mind their own business.”
~ Susan McLean
Human Beings are Herd Animals
This is not a bad thing. We have evolved this way. It has kept us alive as a species.
The problem is that most people aren’t’ aware of their herd mentality and the impact that it has on their lives and how they parent.
Some examples of herd thinking, feeling, and actions are religion, politics, and sports. There’s nothing wrong with any of them, but often time people don’t even realize that they are in a herd.
I’ve recently explored how being a herd animal is impacting how I live. From worrying about what people at church might be thinking, to wanting to fit in to my neighborhood, I have realized that I am constantly influenced my my various herds.
How Are You Being Impacted by Your Herd?
Again, being in a herd isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it might be impacting your life and your relationship with your teen in a negative way, especially if you are not aware of its impact.
Recently a mother got coaching on her teen’s screen time. She said, “All these studies say that if my teen is on a screen for more than X amount of hours, they will be depressed. I’m constantly worried about her depression.”
I asked, is your daughter depressed? To which the mother answered “No.”
She was sucked into herd thinking. Simply adopting the thoughts and beliefs of others as her own.
Another parent recently told me about a support group that she was in. “All of the other parents in the group say . . . ” Other parents were telling her things like, “Your teen should be getting better grades,” or “They should be more grateful/respectful/kind/so much B.S” or “You poor thing,” “It’s so unfair.”
This support group constantly left this parent feeling not good enough, victimized, and depressed.
How To Leave the Herd Mentality Behind.
- Awareness Is the First Step
- Understand how you are being impacted by herd mentality.
- What are some of the thoughts and believs that you have simply adopted from your herd?
- How does that impact your emotions?
- What actions are you taking to fit in with the herd?
- Be Intentional
- It’s okay to think like the herd, if you’re choosing to.
- It’s okay to think differently from the herd.
- Emotions are less unpleasant when we manage them.
- Our emotions don’t manage us when we manage them.
- Join a New Herd
- This one is SO powerful. You are the average of all the people you spend the most time with. If you don’t like a particular herd, leave it and join a new one.
- Facebook groups, book clubs, parenting groups can be powerful options.
- Join the Firmly Founded Parent.
- Meet others who think like you and who are learning new ways to think.
Call to ACTION!
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