THE L.O.V.E. TECHNIQUE
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional rollercoaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 97.
Hello, my friends. How are you? No, how are you really? I want to do a check-in, because life can be a lot. Every day offers a new adventure in riding the tide of our emotions.
There are days when you wake up with gratitude and hope, and others when you wake up with dread and regret. As moms and women, we typically carry so much of the burden of our life for everyone in our families. We often put our kids first, and have been for a really long time.
What that looks like for each of us might be different, but I'd like to boil it down to a basic feeling of responsibility to help our kids stay safe, be happy, and successful in their lives. It's no small task, especially as our kids get older. Just last weekend, my son went out both nights, one night to a concert and the other to a party.
He's living his best life this one. But for me, I noticed the unsettling feeling that comes with knowing my kid is going to be in situations where there's likely to be drinking and drugs. Kids are driving.
Are they being responsible? My son has literally just gotten his driver's license, and so this opens up a whole new area of worry. But even last weekend when my son was getting a ride home with someone else, I couldn't help but panic when I woke up realizing I had fallen asleep without knowing he was home safe, so I quickly checked to be sure he was. This young man weighs over 200 pounds, can bench over 300 pounds, and you would think I wouldn't worry, but I do.
Then there's my oldest, a freshman in college. He called to share that he'd gotten a stomach flu but still had a show to perform that night. He'd gotten demonstrably sick during an interview, and he was stressed about a series of tests coming up.
There was quite literally nothing I could do to help him, and yet I noticed I felt anxious. He wasn't safe, not happy. Was he even in a position to be successful? And look, this is just life with kids.
We worry about them whether they're home or away at school. And then there's everything else. If you have a partner or a spouse, there's the everyday managing of household responsibilities.
Who's in charge of what? What are each of us expecting from the other? The never-ending hamster wheel of keeping the house clean, things repaired, laundry done, fridge stocked. Maybe you're juggling a job or volunteer responsibilities, a parent that you're caring for. Your own physical health might be an area of concern, even if we're just talking the ups and downs of hormones, signs of aging.
You feel this pressure to do something to feel better, to be healthy, but it's hard to find the time and the energy when so much else is in flux, in transition, so much on your shoulders. It's a lot. Sometimes I like to do this check-in with myself just to recognize how much I'm juggling, because we don't give ourselves nearly enough credit for all of it.
In fact, we're much better at beating ourselves up, thinking it's not good enough, noting all of the ways we're not living up to our own expectations. If you're with me in holding on to all of this responsibility and pressure, the unsettling anxiety of there being so much more that you need to do to fix, to help, I want to invite you to take a deep breath. Almost visualize everything you're holding on to right now, and for just a few minutes, I want to invite you to put it all down.
All of it will still be waiting for you. You don't have to worry that you're going to drop a ball, but for just a moment, just set it all down and breathe in the lightness of being free for a moment to just be. Just breathe.
It's amazing how helpful even just a minute of deep breathing can do to bring you a moment of relief. Deep breathing actually activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and digest function in our bodies. This reduces your stress response.
Remember that fight or flight response we have. It decreases your heart rate and can even improve your mood. But one thing I've found helpful is to combine this deep breathing with the reminder to myself, a mantra to just let it go, to put down the responsibilities and the stress and the anxiety for just a minute.
From this place of momentary relaxation, I want to share with you a method I'm calling the love technique. And the goal of this method is to give you a roadmap for how to create more of this piece in your life on a daily basis. I use this technique as the foundation for my Mom 2.0 coaching program.
And so I thought it would be helpful for you as you do your own exploration of mind work and this ongoing effort to create more peace, confidence, joy and even love in your life. Now, things like deep breathing and meditation and yoga work in the moment because you're singularly focused on stimulating that parasympathetic nervous system. There are extraordinary benefits to this in our lives.
But if you're anything like me, I do these things feel great in the moment. But the minute I'm done, I pick it all up again, all of the stresses and the responsibility of my life. And I'm quickly back to where I started.
In the past, it wouldn't even take very long. Just insert me back in my life. And before long, there would be something that would trigger me and I would be right back into anxiety and frustration.
So wouldn't it be amazing if there was a way to let go of at least some of this heavy burden of stress and responsibility so that we could approach our lives from a place of peace and love rather than anxiety and stress? But the truth is, it's not that easy to just let it go. In fact, telling ourselves to let it go becomes one more thing that we're not doing right in our lives. If you've been following along with me on the small podcast, you've probably listened to some of the episodes on mindset traps.
And while I think understanding how common and normal mindset traps are can be really valuable, I also want to say that I get it if this information can feel overwhelming. I covered 14 mindset traps. These traps reinforce each other.
And while many of them might make sense to you on an intellectual level, it's far more complex to understand how to actually break free of these traps. So with this podcast, I wanted to take a big step back to give you a bit of perspective on how I approach the journey of mindset work, both in my own life and in my work with my clients. And because I think it can be helpful to think of these things in terms of acronyms, I came up with the LOVE technique.
So I'll start with the letter L. L is to learn about how your mind creates your emotions and results. The O is observe, to observe your own mind in action as the watcher. V is for verify through your own observations the impact of your mindset, how the way you're thinking is either helpful or counterproductive in terms of how you feel, how you show up, and the impact all of this has in your life.
The E is for empower. Empower yourself to decide to create the results you want in your life. Now, I want to spend a bit more time on each of these parts to really help you understand the process and how you might begin to apply this in your own life right now.
The first step is to learn. And I applaud you for showing up. You're listening in to this podcast, and I imagine you've explored other podcasts and the work of other coaches and thought leaders to capture as much knowledge as you can about mindset and how it impacts your life.
In fact, I want to share a few examples of thought leaders who have truly inspired me in my own study of thought work, because each of them talk about thought work in their own ways, but essentially with the same underlying message about the mind's role in our emotional well-being. Look at Eckhart Tolle, a German-born spiritual leader and self-help author. Tolle says, Esther Abraham Hicks is a spiritual leader and law of attraction teacher who says, When you feel emotion that feels awful to you, it always means that what you're focused upon, that your opinion about it, differs dramatically from what your inner being knows.
They've also said, You are a creator. You create with your every thought. Every day you are attracting what you give your attention to, whether it be pain, anger, happiness, wealth, success, love.
You are attracting what you think about. Byron Katie is an American speaker and author who teaches a method of self- inquiry known as The Work. She has said, True for every human being.
Her book Loving What Is is extraordinary, and in it, she introduces The Work as a method of inquiry where she asks four simple questions. One, is it true? Two, can you absolutely know that this thought is true? Three, how do you react? What happens when you believe this thought? And four, who would you be without that thought? Katie has an amazing way of guiding people through this inquiry in a way that is transformative. But the one thing I've learned as I've been a student of all of these works and more, is that when you gain a simple understanding of how the mindset impacts your life, these teachings become even more powerful because they reinforce that understanding in ways that continue to help you transform your life.
The common thread with all of these thought leaders is that our emotions are created by the way we think about our life. This in itself is so powerful because many of us have grown up with this belief, and I think society reinforces this concept, that other people and the circumstances of our lives are actually what create our emotions, good and bad. The problem in my mind with this dependency on other people and our life to allow us to feel positive emotions is that we end up in a situation where we are out of control of our emotions.
Think about it. I need my day to go smoothly so I can feel peace. I need my kids and my husband to do what I tell them or expect them to do or else I feel angry and disappointed.
In Byron Katie's words, this is suffering. So the power of learning that your emotions are being caused by your thoughts rather than the circumstances of your life opens the door to you taking this power back, gaining some control and agency over your emotional life. And think about why this is important.
Not only obviously because we all want to feel better in our lives, more happy and at peace, more confident and motivated, less stressed, anxious, mad and resentful, less lost and sad. Of course we want to feel better. But also think about the impact of your emotions on your life.
When you feel anxious, what do you do? Do you approach your life with enthusiasm and openness, with trust? Or do you spiral in thoughts about the worst case scenario, feel unable to focus on anything else, get stuck in a vortex of worry? And how about anger? What do you do in life when you feel angry? Usually we lash out or just stew in our anger. We might become snarky, say things we don't mean, feel out of control. These are just a few examples of what can happen when we not only react to our emotions, but when we believe our emotions are being caused by someone else or something outside of us.
Every single one of my podcast episodes addresses some aspect of this first step. Learning how your mind creates your emotions, drives your actions and reactions, and also defines the results and impact your mindset has on your life. The next step in the love technique, the O, is to observe.
Observe your own mind in action as the watcher. As you listen to my podcast, I'm often giving invitations for you to bear witness to your mind. I've said many times how I love that Eckhart Tolle tells us you are not your mind.
He has a beautiful explanation of this as a separation of your own deepest self, your true nature, from the thoughts in your mind. You can also think of the separation in the way that you can stand back and ask yourself, what am I thinking? You create space to observe what's happening in your mind, how your mind is interpreting the circumstances of your life. It's one thing to learn about the power of mindset, but this next step, when you begin to practice the skill of becoming the watcher of your mind, takes these lessons to a whole new level.
And here's what's so powerful. Before learning about the connection between thought and emotion, you might observe your mind and think, I'm angry because my teenager is being disrespectful, or I'm sad because my daughter is leaving for college in a few months. We can see what we're thinking, but we attribute the cause of our emotion to the thing outside of us.
In this case, the disrespectful teen and the daughter leaving for college. But the observation I'm suggesting here is the practice of applying this lesson, that your thoughts create your feelings. So let's take the statement, I'm angry because my teen is being disrespectful.
Many of us have probably been there. When we say this to our girlfriends, they all nod in agreement. It makes perfect sense.
And it makes perfect sense to us that the teen is at fault. But based on this simple principle, that it's actually thoughts and not the situation that causes your feelings, well now we need to be very clear about our thoughts and the situation. So what is the situation here? What exactly is the teen doing that we're interpreting as disrespectful? Let's say the teen rolls his eyes when you ask him to help around the house.
Okay, so now you observe how your mind is interpreting this fact. In this example, the thought is, my teen is being disrespectful by rolling his eyes. And because of this thought, you probably feel angry.
Makes sense. And yet, it still kind of seems like it's the kid's fault that you're angry, right? But think about this. If I were to come over to your house and see your teen rolling his eyes, I wouldn't get angry.
In fact, I might have other feelings. Maybe empathy. Because my thought would be, oh, she has an eye roller too.
I could even have the thought, that kid is disrespectful, but I wouldn't feel angry. He's not my kid. So same teen, but we both have totally different emotions based on our different thoughts, which is why when we observe our thoughts, we have the opportunity to dig deeper into the thoughts we're having about the circumstances of our lives.
Why this person or this situation is really a problem. For example, why do you as a mom get angry because you're thinking my son is disrespectful? What are you taking personally or taking responsibility for? Why is it a problem that your son's rolling his eyes? Okay, so far I've explored L, learning how thoughts create emotions, and O, observing how your own thoughts are creating your current emotional experience. The next step is V, verify through your own observations the impact of your mindset.
How the way you're thinking is counterproductive or helpful in terms of how you feel, how you show up, and the impact all of this has on your life. So your mindset, the way you perceive your life, has an impact. Your mindset creates your emotions, both positive and negative.
So in essence, your mindset contributes to or takes away from your emotional well-being. Your emotions in turn impact how you show up in your life. Sometimes we react to our emotions, sometimes we resist them, sometimes we allow them.
For example, many of us allow happiness and joy. When they happen, we welcome them with open arms. We don't often feel comfortable allowing more difficult emotions like anxiety and sadness.
But with any given emotion, you can think of the ways that you personally react to, resist, or possibly allow these emotions. Let's stick with anger. How might you react to anger? Will some of us yell, see red, blame the other person? We could also resist it, tell ourselves we shouldn't be feeling this way.
Maybe we bottle it up or try to distract ourselves. And sometimes we might even be able to let ourselves feel it. Sometimes something happens and you notice you're angry and you just let yourself be angry for a bit until you cool down.
When you think about how you react to, resist, or allow anger in your life, what does that create for you? Going back to our disrespectful teen example for a minute, if you were angry because you're thinking my teen is being disrespectful, reacting might look like yelling at your teen not to roll his eyes. One way to interpret this is that you end up being disrespectful right back to him. And often when we lose our temper, we end up feeling guilty in retrospect.
You could also try to resist your anger, bottle it up because you don't want to yell or get out of control. But as with anything you bottle up, eventually that anger explodes either at your teen or just internally in terms of making you feel terrible or fueling resentment. This step, verifying the impact of your thoughts, I think this step is one of the most powerful ways to really internalize the skill of mindset work.
Because once you see the connection between the way you're thinking about a situation and the results you're creating, you can't unsee it. So you're thinking your teen is disrespectful. Okay, but what does that have to do with you? Why is it even a problem? What you might find as you really look to observe and verify the impact of your mindset is that you think it's a problem because you didn't raise him to act like this.
That you're horrified to think he might be acting this way out in the world with other people. That you don't like being around him when he acts this way. Or that you're sick of doing everything around the house and don't want attitude for asking for help with just this one thing.
All of these thoughts, my friends, these are the thoughts creating the anger. It isn't just about the teen's eye roll. In fact, it's not even about the disrespect.
It's about your thoughts, that what's happening shouldn't be happening. And the impact of that is that you feel terrible, you lash out, and then likely feel guilty about how you reacted or bottle it up only to stew in resentment and lash out the next time it happens. None of this is helping you create the connection you want with your teen, nor is it helping you support your goal of teaching him how to be a respectful human being.
When you start to see this impact, verify the powerful connection between your mind and the way you experience your life, you start to realize for yourself in a way that you can only truly experience if you do this work. You realize how terrible you're making yourself feel about your life because you're not supervising your mind. You're not taking responsibility for your mindset because you're blaming the circumstances of your life.
And let me be clear, this is not to say that you need to put up with a teen that rolls his eyes or with circumstances that you really don't like. You get to set boundaries. But notice what happens when you set boundaries from anger.
You probably yell, then tell the kid they're grounded for their attitude. And spoiler alert, the kid walks away not having learned a lesson, but thinking mom is out of control and unreasonable. Cue more eye rolls.
Think about what would be different if you were to approach the situation from love rather than anger. Love might have you notice more about your teen than just an eye roll. You might realize that they usually help out without eye rolls, but that it's been a tough couple weeks at school.
You see how he looks stressed. Most importantly, you might observe that his eye roll really had nothing to do with you and everything to do with him and his own mindset. You might still decide to say something about the eye roll, but doing this from a place of love might look more like, honey, I know it's been a hard week, but I'd appreciate if you not give me the eye roll when I ask you to help out, as opposed to what's wrong with you? You're so disrespectful.
A key part of this verify step is seeing for yourself through your own life and practice how your mindset creates results that you want and also creates results that you don't. So the last step, E for empower. With this knowledge and practice, you can now empower yourself to decide to create the results you do want.
What does that look like? Well, you see, through practice, by observing your own mind, your perception of your life, and how this creates your emotions, fuels your reactions and resistance, and therefore creates the results you do have in your life right now, more or less peace, more or less connection, more or less happiness. Creating more peace, more connection, and happiness becomes a choice you get to make. Because the way you your life isn't fixed.
It's not an absolute truth. Your thoughts, your mindset, it's simply one interpretation of the current circumstances of your life. And this, my friends, is why having a coach as a partner and a guide in this process is so invaluable.
Because it's hard to see the color of your house when you're living inside of it. In fact, I talk about those tinted sunglasses we wear representing the lens through which we perceive our lives. Most of us don't even realize we're wearing the sunglasses until someone invites us to take them off for a minute.
My role as a coach is to help you understand the tint of your sunglasses, to prompt you to evaluate how that tint, your perspective, is helping and hurting you in your life, and to inspire you to get curious about what might be different if you shift your perspective, even just a little bit. My goal as a coach is to teach you these tools so that you gain the skill of managing your mind, so that you can always empower yourself to decide what you want, decide how you want to approach your life. Think about how many ways, in how many areas of your life, that simple power of trusting yourself to always make that next best decision for yourself and for those you love, from a place of peace, confidence, and most importantly, from a place of love.
Here's what I've found so powerful in my work with moms of teens. Every single one of us loves our kids. That's never in question, and never something we have to work on doing more.
So you know what it looks like to parent from love. But we run into problems when that love is clouded by anxiety, anger, resentment, guilt, and insecurity. Do you know which of these emotions are driving your actions right now? This is true in our lives with our kids, with our partners and friends, families, co-workers, every person, and every situation in our lives.
Whatever the reality of those people or things, the way you perceive all of it is what fills your life with joy, purpose, connection, and peace, or anger, guilt, resentment, and fear. You have the opportunity to empower yourself to decide what you want to create, and this is exactly what I teach and empower moms to do in my one-on-one coaching program. 10 weeks, 10 one-on-one sessions along with video lessons and worksheets that are designed to help you learn about how your mind creates your emotions.
Observe your own mind in action as the watcher. Verify through your own observations the impact of your mindset and empower you to decide to create the results you want in your life. The goal of my coaching program is to empower you to create the life that you want as your kids grow up, as you approach your next chapter, as you decide to take ownership of your emotional well-being.
Check out Mom 2.0, my friends. The key is to lead with love. Until next time.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program, Mom 2.0 at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
