THE ADVICE YOU NEED TO HEAR
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 118.
Hello, my friends. I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to support other women in this journey through midlife, learning how to maximize our well-being and live into the fullest version of ourselves. There isn't a day that goes by that I'm not actively thinking about what this means for me in my own life.
Life is ever-changing, and the simple truth is, it's never perfect. It's also fleeting. And in our most conscious and present moments, we deeply want to appreciate the life that we're living right now.
But it's not always easy. We as moms are also always doing our best to support our teens as they navigate the ups and downs of their lives. And in our wisdom as moms, we'll often give our teens advice about how to go about the business of living their lives, navigating conflict, relationships, processing emotions, how they should do their best.
I've done it. In fact, I'm sure I did it just this morning when I was talking to my son about everything he needs to get done over the next few months as he tackles his senior year. I imagine you often give your kids advice too.
And here's the thing. The advice we give our kids is actually, often, really good advice. It's so good, in fact, that when I'm coaching clients, I often hear them telling me about some particular piece of advice that they've given their teen.
And so often I hear the words that they're saying, and I think in my mind, these are exactly the words that you, my dear client, need to hear yourself. Sometimes these wonderful women will even hear themselves and smile, knowing how perfectly their own words of advice fit the situation we had just been talking about only moments ago when they were talking about their own challenges. Consider how much wisdom you have inside of you already.
I wonder how much time you spend tapping into that wisdom for yourself. So today I thought I would share a few examples of the advice that we share with our kids that we, as women in midlife, raising our kids and transitioning to the empty nest, that we also have an opportunity to live into so that we can access the best version of ourselves. But even as I share this, I want to offer that living into this advice is so much easier said than done.
And so as I go through this conversation, I wonder if we can not only create a little compassion for ourselves, but also for our teens, who also often struggle to live into the very good advice we give them. Because even when we know intellectually that the advice is sound, we don't always know how to take it. So let's dive into all of this together to see if we can find a path forward.
The first piece of advice is don't be so hard on yourself. I have been telling my boys this for years. In fact, my oldest has been beating himself up for as long as I can remember.
Even as an infant, he was so frustrated when he couldn't do something. Fast forward to elementary school, if he got a lower grade than he'd hoped on a test, he would be really upset. And I remember time and time again telling him to go easy on himself, to not beat himself up.
I would do my best to try to convince him that disappointment was just part of the learning process. I hear myself saying these words even now, and I laugh at how many different goals I have in my life right this moment, where I find myself and my brain wanting to go down that familiar path of beating myself up. Those phrases like, you're just not good enough, you're fooling yourself if you think you can do this, you've never been good at this, or you're too old or you're too lazy.
I had bunion surgery three months ago and I'm still limping. My brain wants to tell me that I'll never get back to walking normally, that it was stupid to do the surgery. I have social media accounts to engage women online in my coaching practices, and I am not a social media influencer by any means.
So my brain is constantly judging my performance, gauging my impact by the number of likes I get on a post. I feel like I should know better. But this is what my brain offers me on autopilot.
We are just so hard on ourselves, almost as a default setting. In the work I do with my clients, we start with a 10-week program where I teach them step-by-step the tools of mindset mastery so that they can empower themselves to overcome any challenge and reach for their dreams. In almost every session, I will remind my clients to drop judgment of themselves.
Some women already know that they're self-critical and want to work on letting go of that self-judgment. But there are other women who will say to me, oh, I'm not judgmental of myself. Maybe they'll say, it's more that I'm judgmental of other people, or I'm actually pretty compassionate with myself, and maybe that's the problem.
But I want to invite you to consider that this may be less true than you think. And here's what I mean. All of us have in our minds expectations of how we want to be in our lives.
In fact, inevitably, women who come to me have a goal that they want to achieve, either in their own life or in connection with their teens. And of course, they have a hope that there's a possibility that they could potentially achieve this goal. But their current reality is that they're not where they want to be or where they think they're supposed to be.
And look, I think it's really valuable for all of us to have goals. And for me, it's a critical part of who I am as someone who likes to be constantly evolving and moving forward. But before you can get there where you want to go, there is the reality that right now, it's very likely that you don't like something about where you are now.
And to really, truly move forward, you need to take an honest assessment of why you're not there yet, wherever you want to be. And so whether you're just dissatisfied with where you are, or whether you're taking a hard look at why you're where you are, either way, this can feel a lot like judgment. Some of us even argue that if you're not hard on yourself, and you're not self-critical, then you're not going to generate the motivation to move forward.
In so many areas of our lives, many of us have been trained to think about success and accomplishment as requiring pain and a bit of beating yourself up to get to the finish line of your goals. But what if the opposite is required? What if the self-judgment is actually one of the reasons that you're not where you want to be right now? Think about that for a second. Some women will come to me and say, I've been a homemaker, or I haven't had a job for 20 years, and I can't imagine who would hire me at this point.
Think about the weight of that self-judgment. It sounds like just the truth, but in reality, it's so much self-judgment. Does it make you feel motivated to identify your strengths or to reach out and identify opportunities with a mindset that you've only been a homemaker? This is just one example of how our self-judgments about who we are and what we're capable of directly impact how we're showing up to our life right now, right this minute.
And all of that is the reason you are here now. And that's not a judgment. It's not about where you are being right or wrong.
It is just what's true in your mind right now. And notice how I say true in your mind, because there is actually a very slim amount of information in your mind that is factual about your life. In fact, the vast majority of what you think about your life is the story that you're telling about it.
So the first piece of advice is something many of us are not used to paying attention to. But this first piece of advice is to practice in your mind, in the stories that you tell about yourself, to not be so self-critical. Could you imagine, even when you make a really big mistake, understanding how it happened, where you were coming from, how even in that mistake, you were very likely trying your best? And could you imagine learning whatever valuable lesson that mistake was trying to teach you and then just moving forward? This is the gift you give yourself when you stop thinking that you need to beat yourself up in order to move forward.
Because my friend, I guarantee you that the opposite is true. The second piece of advice that we often give our kids that we need to hear ourselves is, all you can do in life is try your best. Really think about it.
Even when you've messed up in the past, how were you trying in your best in that moment? Think about the times when you screamed at your kid. My friend, I screamed at my boys countless times over the past 19 years, just lost it. As I think back, by the time I got to the point of screaming, I was always fed up from hours of trying my best or days of putting up with an obnoxious attitude.
At the point I was screaming, I was at my wits end. I tried everything else I could think to try, and at that point, I was angry. But my friend, even in that moment of anger, I was doing my best.
In that moment, what my best looked like was frustration and anger and screaming and an ability to see another way out of the situation. Sometimes our best means we're reacting to really powerful, painful emotions based on how we're thinking about the situation we're in. Think about the power of reflecting on the times when you've messed up and finding grace for yourself.
The possibility that that was the best you had to offer in that moment. To take another example, think about a kid who cheats. Look, all of us take action from our own feelings about a situation.
So while yes, there might be a few kids who cheat because they're lazy and just don't feel like studying, but by and large, if you don't care about school, why would you bother cheating? I think it might be more reasonable to assume that the kid who cheats is trying to do well. They just have found themselves in a situation where they don't feel confident. They're in over their head and worried about failing.
Although we'd all agree cheating is wrong, if you were to give the kid a little grace, consider that they might have been doing their best in a situation where they thought they were going to fail. From their panic or fear, they made the wrong choice. But that ultimately, they want to succeed.
Kind of interesting to consider that we often have really powerful, positive goals, but are sometimes just not in a headspace or an emotional state to take action in a way that really helps us to move towards those goals. Imagine the different approach you might take with your child if they messed up, but you could find compassion for how they might have been trying their best based on where they were emotionally in their mind in that moment. How might that understanding give you the opportunity to connect with them on a deeper level as you support them in achieving their goal in a more effective way? We can extend that same grace to ourselves.
We all react to our emotions, and sometimes that doesn't look pretty. For me, I find a lot of grace in being willing to acknowledge that even though Monday morning I can look back at my actions and decide they weren't good enough, or just that they weren't the actions I want to take in order to be the person I want to be, I can honestly evaluate how my actions aren't really serving my higher goals from a place of understanding the mindset that created my anger or self-sabotage or anxiety. My friend, we all take action from our own emotions, and if we're in a crazed, angry, out-of-control emotional state, that's the quality of the action we're going to take.
And rather than beating ourselves up for that, can we acknowledge that maybe that's the best we could do in that moment? And we can also get in touch with our mindset to decide how we can do better in the future. The third piece of advice we often give our kids, and I have had this conversation with both of my boys in the context of their relationships with young women as they've been growing up, this advice is, you have to love yourself first. And this advice applies not only to romantic relationships, but truly every other relationship we have.
Here's the thing, another relationship can never give you what you need. Even the person who loves you with all their heart is not going to be able to make up for or fill in the gaps of the way that you don't love yourself enough. Some women need their partner to show up in a certain way because they feel unappreciated when their partner doesn't support them in the way that they want to be supported.
We can find ourselves waiting for that other person to read our mind and prove their love and appreciation to us. Or what may be even worse is that we feel like we have to go above and beyond to work even harder to get the love and appreciation we want. And it never seems good enough.
In relationships, when you love yourself first, you both don't need others to prove their love to you, but also are willing to stand up for yourself and even walk away if you're in a relationship that isn't loving or where you're not respected or appreciated. Only you can know what's right, but all of this stems from loving yourself first. You get to decide what kind of love you want, what kind of relationships you want to have, but you also cannot feel love without your own permission.
I go back to this example all the time because I think it so illustrates this point. If you're walking down the street and a stranger comes up to you and says I love you, I appreciate you, and I just want to thank you for everything you do in life to make the world a better place, could you imagine what you would be thinking if this stranger came up and tried to show their love and appreciation for you? You'd probably say, do I know you? Because you wouldn't be thinking this person really loves me and appreciates me. And you definitely wouldn't be thinking that you'd done something worthy of love from this person.
And so because you wouldn't be having these thoughts, you wouldn't feel loved or appreciated. Of course, we have different relationships with the people that we actually love. Specifically, we have different thoughts about those people.
They're not strangers and we want them to love us. The main difference between the strangers and the people you love is that you have expectations of the people you love. There are certain ways that you want or have come to expect that they show their love and appreciation for you.
And when they meet those expectations, then you give yourself permission to believe I'm loved and I'm appreciated. And then sometimes when they don't meet your expectations, you start to wonder, do they love me anymore? Do they appreciate me? But when you really love someone, don't you think it's possible to know without your loved one needing to prove it that they love and appreciate you? Look, other people can't read our minds. Our teenagers are for sure not always good at appreciating our efforts.
Sometimes our partners are also not good at appreciating our efforts. But you can still believe that those people love and appreciate you, even if they haven't done anything to prove it to you. At the end of the day, you can't read someone else's mind and know exactly how they want to be appreciated and how they want to feel loved.
And so we all do our best. We all show up in the best version we can in every moment. And sometimes that might not look good enough to the other person.
That's true of how we see our teens and our partners. And it's true of how they see us. But imagine the power of loving yourself first and not needing someone else to fill in the gaps or give you permission to feel what you really want to feel in that relationship.
You can always leave. You can always set boundaries. But assuming this is someone who you truly care about and is worthy of being in your life, someone who you want to be in your life, why would you ever assume that you didn't have permission to just feel love? The fourth piece of advice that I found myself giving my college kid quite a bit this summer is you can always change your mind.
And maybe the corollary to that is there are no wrong decisions. For our kids and for us as we raise our teens or as we make decisions about our next chapter, it can feel like the weight of those decisions is really heavy. You don't want to make the wrong choice.
My son is entering his sophomore year of college. He's going to have to declare a major this year and he's really grappling with a lot of questions about what he wants to do with his life. On the one hand, I applaud him for taking these decisions so seriously.
I love that he's weighing the pros and cons of various options and he's opening himself up to all the opportunities available to him at school. But he's also putting a lot of pressure on himself to make the right choice and maybe even looking for evidence in the world to confirm his choices. And the truth is, there is no evidence that will guarantee the future.
We can never know truly how our choices will turn out or what the impact of our decisions will be. And so while it's true that decisions do lead you down a path, and it may even be possible that you can't get back to where you're standing right this minute, it's also possible to think about every moment in your life as an opportunity to make a new decision. It doesn't matter where you are in life, whether a senior in high school applying to college, a college sophomore, or a 50-year-old woman contemplating her next chapter.
There is literally no point in life where we run out of choices. Yes, at the very end, I imagine there's only one choice. But every single moment up until then, you actually have an infinite number of choices in front of you.
So often we only give ourselves two choices because we don't really want to open our minds up to the possibility that the spectrum of choices ahead of us is infinite. You can feel hard enough to choose between two options without having to contemplate a hundred other choices. But even if you only give yourself two or three choices, you still have an opportunity to make a choice.
And by the way, doing absolutely nothing is also one of your choices. There's something I do when I'm feeling really overwhelmed. Rather than taking on my to-do list and feeling the weight of all that pressure that I'm creating typically when I'm thinking something like, I have so much to do and I'm not getting enough done.
So I notice the overwhelm and I say to myself, just stop. You have only two choices. You can do nothing, like literally sit and do nothing, or you can take this one next step.
Sometimes I'll admit I do nothing, even if it's just for 20 minutes. The best choice for me in that moment, if I'm feeling overwhelmed, is often to just do nothing to get my mind right. And 20 minutes later, I give myself the same choice.
Do nothing or take that next step. And at some point, I'm ready to take that next step. There is literally not a time when you don't have an opportunity to make a new decision.
So consider that the decision in front of you doesn't have to be so heavy. What if you could just make the best decision for you right now and know that you can always make a different decision? I think when we feel stuck and not able to make a decision, we're already anticipating regret. We're anticipating that moment when we get down the road and we see the impact of our decision and we realize it isn't what we wanted.
So here's what's fascinating. We already know ahead of time that we're going to beat ourselves up. It's like if it ends up being a mistake, it will definitely be my fault.
Now remember piece of advice number one, don't be so hard on yourself. What if you could make a decision right now that you believe to be the best decision and also decide right now that you're going to have your back about it? Wherever this decision takes me, I know right now that I'm making the best decision I can for me. With the information and the experience I have right now, I'm doing my best.
Again, piece of advice number two. So if the future brings new information or I see some unwanted consequence, then I can make a new decision. Consider how all of this advice is stacking on itself.
To not be so hard on yourself now or even in anticipating how you'll have your back in the future. To know that you're always doing your best even if a decision you make now doesn't turn out the way you hope. To love yourself.
To empower yourself to make that next best decision for yourself. Why would you choose to believe that you weren't in retrospect doing your best even if a decision turns out to be something that you want to change? But my friend, we do it all the time. Think about regret, that emotion we feel about decisions we made in the past.
What if we could intentionally, consciously decide to let regret go forever? What if all you need to do right now is to decide what you think is best? In this moment, have your back about it and then in the future, know you did your best and that you have the power to make a new decision. The fifth and final piece of advice is that you have your whole life ahead of you. Again, I offered these words to my college sons so many times this summer.
I've often shared with both of my sons how I took a very winding journey to get where I am today. I didn't go to college to become a life coach. There were many personal and professional decisions I made along the way that I could never have envisioned making ahead of time.
In college, I majored in public policy and I have never in my life once been paid in a field related to public policy. But when I think about the road I've taken over the past 51 years, it all makes perfect sense. Every single decision, every experience led me down a road to this moment.
I think about the simple coincidence of not having gotten hired by 99% of the firms that I applied to work in after college, and finally lucking out in an investment banking interview where I was so fed up with the process that I asked a really cheeky question and that somehow the question landed exactly right with the partner and I got the job. Fast forward one year and a friend of mine from college invited me to interview at his bank, which was a professional step up at a bank that had originally rejected me in the first process. So because of a series of random decisions, I met my husband at that new firm.
He was even supposed to interview me that day, but he was busy. I sometimes joke that I might not have gotten the job if he'd interviewed me, so maybe I'm lucky that he was busy that day. So many random decisions, me trying my best, and somehow it all added up to me finding my husband, having my two beautiful children, who I can't imagine my life without.
You probably feel the same way, that literally had I done nothing else in my life, I have done these two things right. And that's not to say that I've been the perfect mom, but I had the gift of bringing them into the world and that's enough. Every step on my path has taken me to this moment.
And I have so much life ahead of me. It breaks my heart that I often talk to women at this stage of life and because they're consumed with sadness and closing the chapter of having kids at home and dreading the transition, some women will think that there will never be anything as beautiful in their life again now that they're closing this chapter. I want to invite you to consider that every moment you've had in your life has led you to this moment right now with these beautiful children in your life.
Why would you ever believe that going forward, the love and the purpose and the joy you get to feel in your life doesn't have the opportunity to compound and grow in new ways, ways that you could never even dream of, not even now. God willing, we are going to live decades more, twice the life or more of what we've already lived. You are literally standing on the threshold of a whole new lifetime.
How are you going to seize that opportunity? It's so powerful when you think about it that way. I know some of you might be listening thinking, well, that feels really daunting and I don't have the energy for all of that. Maybe you feel too overwhelmed or sad or stuck to even contemplate what that looks like.
So I want to remind you of this advice that I'm sure you've given your children in some form along the way. Don't be so hard on yourself. Every moment you are trying your best.
Love yourself first. You can always make another decision and you have your whole life ahead of you. As I read this list, I know from personal experience that all of these things are so much easier said than done.
And frankly, it's also why when we give this very well-meaning advice to our kids, they blow us off or roll their eyes. When you're stuck or feeling down about yourself, it can feel really hard to look on the bright side. But consider that you are exactly where you're supposed to be.
I wonder if the difficulty we're experiencing through this transition could be what's required to make us even stronger for the future. Consider what incredible opportunities we could be preparing ourselves for now because we're already going through the hard work of creating that next version of ourselves. Consider how it might be possible even if you can't see it yet.
The work we do in my coaching program takes you step by step through the how of becoming the next version of yourself. Learning how to let go of self-judgment. Acknowledging what your best looks like right now with compassion, but also empowering you to be able to intentionally decide what you want your best to look like going forward.
In my coaching program, I show you how to take action from self-love, whether that means giving yourself the love and validation you need or whether it means loving yourself enough to set boundaries and walk away. This program is all about making decisions because you have your whole life ahead of you and many, many more decisions to make. When you find that grace to love yourself first and you actively and intentionally stop beating yourself up, that's when the decisions about the rest of your life get so much easier because you know you're going to have your back.
You know yourself and you trust yourself to move forward and to dive into the next chapter of your life. My friends, you have your whole life ahead of you and today is the day to get started. Until next time, friends.
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.
