In this episode, we dive deep into understanding and working with our internal and external worlds to build resilience, confidence, and joy. We discuss the importance of recognizing the power of our internal world and how the lenses through which we perceive situations impact our emotions and reactions. By practicing self-awareness and mindfulness, we can learn how to work with our emotions and discover a superpower within that can help us steady our world and show up as a leader in our lives and for our kids. Join me as we learn to connect with our internal world!
What You’ll Learn on this Episode:
- The difference between your External and Internal Worlds
- How to be a loving leader to yourself
- How thoughts are created and how to work them to feel more of what you want to feel
Mentioned on the Show:
Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl
Transcript
*This transcription below was provided for you or your convenience; please excuse any mistakes that the automated service made in translation.
Welcome to leadership parenting.
We are in episode number five, and I’m really looking forward to talking today. About our internal world and specifically about how different it is from our external world. And how important it is to know about these two worlds so that we can start to map ourselves and our experiences. So let’s start by defining these terms. Your external world is what we can see around us. And we might even say this is where our life happens. Right? It can feel like our external world is our life. Because this is what’s tangible. This is what we can touch. What we could hear. What we could see. It’s the people that we’re around and the jobs that we do. And the work, and the goals, and the vacations, and the challenges, it’s all of that stuff that makes up our life. And our external world is going to be up and down like that infinity circle, rising and falling. Like we talked about in an earlier episode. It’s all the good experiences and the hard experiences. And An important thing to remember about our external world, as we’ve talked about in that earlier episode, is that there’s a limit to how much control we actually have in our external world. Okay. So now let’s lay out what our internal world is. That’s the place where we have our personal unique experience. And it’s going to be something that hopefully we can begin to resonate with as I describe it, but it’s going to be very personal and unique to you. Because only you can get inside your skin and only you can get inside your thinking. And only you have your own personal experiences. And I’m going to suggest here that this internal world is where the reality of your life actually is manufactured. And it’s interesting because it’s really very unique. It’s pretty mind blowing when you think about that. I mean, each person has their own personal experience and their own lens of the world.
0:02:49
No one can tell you what is happening for you, or what your next step should be, or what you should do. And I think that in a way that’s a little disappointing. I mean, I love going to experts to fix problems for me. It’s just the best thing ever Like, if I have something wrong with my car, I wanna take it to somebody who knows cars inside and out and can listen to that engine sound and say, I know. I know what that is. I know what you need to do. And it’s the best literally the best feeling in the world. But with humans, it’s quite a bit different.
0:03:27
And I learned this early on. I might be considered a mechanic for the mind. But when someone, you know, brings their mind into the shop, I can’t tell you at first glance exactly what’s wrong or exactly what we need to do about it. Hence my kind of spiel at the beginning of every client relationship that I have, I say, look, we’re a team and you’re the expert on you. And I know you may not feel that way right now, but you are. And I certainly am not the expert on you. I have skills and I have experience, but I’m gonna need to get an inside glimpse of your internal world. And then maybe I can help you or guide you. But even better is this idea. That if we’re gonna glimpse your internal world, you are going to be the guide. You are going to have this connection to that internal world because you’re so unique to you.
0:04:27
And it’s really important that you learn how to hear your own voice. And do you know what I mean when I say hear your own voice? Your voice is your internal world, and even deeper within it is your wisdom. But it’s not just your wisdom. There’s so much going on on the inside of each of us. Our thoughts, our feelings, the way our body feels are memories that trigger more feelings, both pleasant and unpleasant. Like, this goes both ways. It’s not just with unpleasant feelings, it’s It’s just how we experience the world. Ultimately, you want to be connected to your inner world.
0:05:08
Number one, so you can listen for your wisdom or that voice, that knowing inside of you, so it can confirm what you need to do, or help you set a boundary, or maybe even show you what you might need to change. And this is one of the reasons why we started out in these episodes understanding who you really are, that your essential self is a real thing that it’s the core of your inner world. And it’s our connection to that essential self just knowing that she’s there, and she is. She’s in there that that connection helps us grow our wisdom. And I guess what I mean by growing our wisdom is that what we’re doing is we’re finding our wisdom, and then we’re practicing using it. So that it gets easier to find. Number one, and number two, it gets stronger. The wisdom itself gets louder. It easier to recognize and to connect to and rely upon. So, the work we’re doing is really building the confidence that we have that wisdom. And then we can count on ourselves, and that we particularly can count on ourselves to get through any hard challenge.
0:06:22
And so when you talk about leadership in this context, we’re really talking about leading ourselves. And this is why I chose the title of this podcast and the work that I do is leadership parenting. You know, it so much of what we talk about really fits more in the category of mental health and wellness and empowerment than it does in parenting. And and we will get to the parenting, but we have to lay down this foundation And kind of my tagline is we’ve got to lead ourselves and then we can lead our families.
0:07:01
And I love the analogy. I love that phrase. Leading yourself. And I would even add to that, lead yourself lovingly because who doesn’t want to have a loving leader? And if you’ve ever been in a work situation where you didn’t have a living leader, like someone that wasn’t respectful or was highly critical or didn’t kinda do what they were not doing what they’re telling you to do. It’s it’s a hard experience and it’s not somebody we want to follow. Leaders need to engender a warmth and a confidence and a kindness to inspire us. So we can do hard things and face the challenges and solve the problems and even celebrate with us. So I love using leadership. It’s just the best analogy of how we can show up in our relationships with others. Of course, that’s our specific role to be leaders to our kids. But I’m going to suggest to you today that we go deeper and start with ourselves. So we lead ourselves. So as we lay out this concept of internal and external worlds, I’m hoping you can apply some of the stuff we’ve already started to study here. And put it in the context of becoming that strong leader for yourself. And that’s gonna one of our first steps is understanding that we have these internal and external worlds. So let’s look at that.
0:08:32
If you were to map this out on a piece of paper, you could draw a big line down the center of the paper. And on the left side right external, and on the right side, write the word internal. And on the left side of that paper under external, you would write everything that is happening outside of you. The facts that are present, the technical description of what’s going on without interpretation. K? So just really kind of like like what you would be doing if if you were taking a picture of the situation without having any meaning put to it. Like, what people might be saying, what they’re doing, what what might be happening in the circumstances, what the weather’s like, what the facts are. And on the right side of the paper, under the word internal, you would put everything that happens in your personal experience. What you’re thinking about all those things? How you’re feeling in the moment? What’s happening in your body? Your energy level, your general mood, your values come into play here, your memories and your past experiences. All of those shoulds and interpretations and rules for life, all of that comes into the internal workings of our life. That would be on the right side of the page. Okay.
0:09:56
Let’s just pause here and marvel at this. At first glance, it can seem like the world outside of us is huge. So much bigger than just one person than just me, just you. But when you take a closer look, I want you to consider that it is actually flipped. Your internal world is really the bigger and deeper force in our lives. You are always filtering everything you experience through your inner world and there’s a lot going on in there. And if we think that that external world is the bigger influence in our lives, then that will be where we put our focus. We will put our eggs in that basket and I want you to consider what that might look like. That means We’ll be focused a lot on trying to manage circumstances and people’s actions and accomplishing tasks and goals That looks like trying to get things set up and running in a way that feels good to you every day. And we do this. Right? We have to do some of it. Like, this is a part of life. We should be showing up and making plans and engaging in our lives and having some basic expectations of how things might go, but I just want to recognize that we literally are just one person dealing with a lot of moving pieces, most of which we have no control over. Every experience we have has both parts to it, an external happening or an event, things that are going on, and our internal experience of it. And this is critical to really accepting and understanding this model. There’s not one or the other. There will always be both.
0:11:45
And that line down the middle of your paper, it’s a real thing. Just like your skin keeps you parts of your body inside you and stops you from like kind of using into other people like jelly. This line represents an invisible boundary between where you begin and you end. And everything to the right of that line is you. It’s happening in your internal experience. Nothing from the left side of the line can make you experience something on the right side of the line. Wait. Did you hear what I just said? Yikes. That was a big statement. Let me say it again. Nothing on the left side of the line in our external circumstances can make, us experience something on the right side of the line in our internal world where we feel Things. Think things. The line is the border. Okay. But what about my kids when they ignore me or that driver that is weaving in and out of traffic in front of me or my spouse not helping out with the dishes or that mean thing my friend said about me to my other friend. All those things make me mad, sad, or upset. I know. It feels like that line isn’t there sometimes. Maybe it feels that way most of the time.
0:13:13
We can take a hundred different situations that seemingly cause us, I’m error quoting that, cause us to feel something. And argue that that thing made us feel that way. In fact, most of us make an understandable but critical error in understanding how our feelings are created. We think that something happens, and then we respond with a feeling. This is kind of a cause and effect theory, and it implies that we have no control over how we feel. So I want you to think about that for a minute. I know it feels natural to think that, but it’s a cause and effect. If something happens and it can make me feel something then I really don’t have control over my feelings. We’re at the mercy of that event.
0:14:05
Think about all the things that happen in your day that could have the power to make you feel stressed, to make you feel upset, sad, angry, or afraid. How hard do you have to work to keep everyone and everything in line, to make sure that they don’t cause you to feel any of the upsetting feelings. We just listed. We might be able to manage to keep a schedule, keep things running smoothly, But it all take all it takes is getting on the road with another driver who isn’t driving the way we think they should or having a child or a spouse or a coworker who has not kind of read our master plan and they can cause us to feel a variety of feelings we either do or do not want to feel. So there’s this critical mid step, I think, that is often hidden from our conscious awareness. It’s like that line between what happens ex externally and how we respond internally. Just it’s like, no. We we can’t always see it. Our feelings are not caused by the events in our life. They’re caused by what we believe and think about those events. In other words, what we believe determines how we feel. So that means when your child is melting down at the dinner table, she is not causing your frustration. It’s your thoughts about her melting down that are making you upset or mad. And I this feels strange, but this is actually really good news. Because can you ever really get a melting down toddler to stop mid melt so that you as a parent can feel better and then respond better.
0:15:56
The control over your feelings and responses Don’t lie outside of you, though it’s really easy to think that they do. Control over our feelings and our actions. Actually come from within us, within our self talk in our mind, inside of our internal world. So Victor Frankel illustrates this powerful point in his book, Man Search for Meaning, which I highly recommend. As a prisoner in a German concentration camp, he experienced the cruelest of all external events, all the worst of the worst. And he studied himself and he studied other prisoners And through his experience, he concluded and wrote a book about it, that even admit amidst having almost no external control. Every human being has a choice in how they respond.
0:17:00
This is a quote from him. Between stimulus, that would be the events and response. There is a space. And in that space is our power to choose our response. And in our response lies our growth, and our freedom. So I think he’s talking about that line between what happens outside of us and the point that we get to choose what to think about it. And in that space, each of us has a kind of internal steering wheel that can give us the power to navigate through even the toughest of situations in our life. And the keyword in all of this here is internal, which means we don’t have to wait for others to change. Or are circumstances to shift in order to be okay.
0:17:56
And I often use the phrase being okay on the inside, no matter what is happening on the outside. And though I think this is hard and I’m not suggesting that we walk around like blissfully, weirdly happy all the time. I think it’s possible to recognize that we have more power than we realize to work with our feelings, with our thoughts, with our internal world. So Where do you want to spend the most time in investment? In your external world? Or in your internal world? If I invest all my resources in managing my external world, I will get a little bit of forward motion for sure. But we’ll hit a wall at some point. And this is how our world is kind of set up. This is how we kind of go through life in an illusion. That we’re going to be able to manage our external world so well, that we will be able to feel how we want to feel. And I’m suggesting to you that managing our external world is only a small part of living a life that we wanna live.
0:19:12
The powerhouse, the real and the best place to invest our focus and our energy is gonna be on managing our internal world. And not just managing it, but knowing it and connecting with it, and aligning with it and working with it because our feelings are not created by the things outside of us. They come from our interpretation of those things. And if we think that our feelings come from our external world, we won’t understand and learn how to work with them. So, you know, we’ll be looking to manage all those outside influences influences. And that’s really what feels so stressful. It’s kind of a recipe for failure. And it’s like we’re looking at the world as very powerful and we’re at its mercy.
0:20:07
So I’m trying to flip this. I’m not suggesting that we don’t, you know, organize things and and put some energy and effort into running having things run smoothly. But I I really want us to be able to recognize that our power goes even deeper than that. So I want you to consider that at that line where our internal world starts, we’re looking at our experiences through lenses, like through glasses or even just through lenses in our eye. Nothing comes into our existence, our understanding of it without passing through your lens. Nothing. It’s like it’s not there if it doesn’t pass through your lens. It’s like you’re behind a two way mirror and you’re just taking in data from what you see from your perspective. It has to go through your lens. And you’re gonna make sense of everything that’s going on around you through that lens.
0:21:01
So when that car in front of you is weaving in and out of cars and speeding up and running lights or behaving around we may be looking through our lens and thinking that person shouldn’t be driving that way. It’s wrong. And they have no right to do that. And I’m not allowed to do that, and I’m teaching my kids how to drive and I tell them not to do that, and I just think people are so careless and uncaring and selfish. So, like, That’s the thinking in my mind that’s coming through my lens. This shouldn’t be. They shouldn’t be doing that. They’re selfish. They’re stupid. And then that’s gonna create a feeling for me. It might be anger. It might be fear. And I might respond with the behavior. Of honking the horn or, you know, people will sometimes slow down if someone’s behind them. They’re following too close or they’ll hit their steering wheel or yell at the car. Any of those things. And even if you don’t say anything or do anything, imagine what happens in your body when you have all of those thoughts. Your threat system turns on. And you get all sorts of adrenaline and cortisol running through your body and your hands tighten on the steering wheel and your heart rate goes up. Okay.
0:22:09
But now let’s look like what it would be like if you had another interpretation of the same event. What if you knew what was happening in the car in front of you? You had some inside information and say maybe that person has a child in the back seat who has a big gash in their head and they’re bleeding. Or the wife is in the front seat about to give birth or they’ve heard that somebody they love is in the hospital and maybe they only have a few minutes to live and they’re trying to get to them. Like, would it change how you think? And I’m not saying it should. I’m just saying, if you have a different perspective if you have different thoughts about something. That’s all I’m trying to illustrate here is not what’s right or wrong, but if if you have different thoughts about something, can you imagine how that might change, how you feel? And then, it might change what you do.
0:22:58
When we change our thoughts and the story or narrative shifts, then Our feelings follow, and this is the power of knowing and working with your internal world. This is why we can love something about our spouse, like maybe that they’re very chill and relaxed. And we think that’s pretty amazing when we’re dating. And then when we have been married for a little while, we start to dislike it after we’ve we’ve kind of been with them for a while because we want less chill and more getting stuff done around the house. Right? Or vice maybe it’s vice versa. Or when we see something our kid is doing that isn’t what we think he should be doing, and we have these spots that come from the things we experienced as a child. Or from a book we read, or from watching our friends seemingly well behaved children, and we have thoughts like, what’s wrong with him? He’s making this so hard. I hate this. This is normal. I hope you don’t feel like I’m judging this because I think this happens to all of us.
0:23:59
These expectations and stories in our heads give us feelings that can get big and seem so true, which make it hard for us to act in the ways that we want to. Because feelings interrupt our body’s calm state and make it hard to connect with our higher self. We can feel in threat mode and get reactive. And this is why it’s so important for each one of us to know our internal world, so we can be leaders to ourselves. And help ourselves through these tricky external situations that seem to surround us all the time. And I don’t want you to get caught up in the minute details just yet. I just want you to notice that you have stories, you have thoughts in your mind, You’ve got a lens that you’re perceiving everything through. And this is actually not a bad thing. This is a point of leadership for us. This is the start of what we need to be aware of, and the rest is gonna start to entangle after that because when we don’t know that we have a choice in any of this, We just think that external things make us feel how we feel, and it just is not true.
0:25:09
Certainly, it it strips us. Of our power. And I probably spend more time on this exact topic, repeating it, and applying it, and reading about it, and remembering it. I I spent so much time on this more than anything else because It’s such an illusion for all of us, and it’s an illusion for me. It’s where I get stuck. That external things cause me to feel what I feel, and the truth is a little more difficult to accept because it means that we have responsibility and work to do, but it’s also far more hopeful and far more encouraging. To know that we get to choose. We get to work in our internal world. Okay.
0:25:53
So here’s the next thought after knowing this internal world stuff. It’s kind of freaky, isn’t it? That if we have this whole internal world, why is it so darn hard to find it or work with it? Like, I’m asking that question, and I’m the professional. Right? Like, that’s kind of sad. Right? But so true, so real, because it just kinda doesn’t feel right. If this is really where the steering wheel of our life is, then why is it so hard? Why doesn’t it feel natural? And I don’t know if I have the definitive answer for that. It probably, you know, doesn’t matter. Maybe it would be helpful, but there’s probably not an answer. I just think that this is the work. And that’s actually the thought that I tell myself, look, I don’t need to have an answer for this. This is this is where the power lies. So I kind of try to let that bone like not be a dog nighing on a bone and try to let that lay down. And this is why we’re here. This is we we have stuff to learn, we can figure it out. And if we can understand the formula for how it works, then we can work with it. Because the bottom line is that any way we think becomes true for us.
0:27:07
Your body just doesn’t know how to tell the difference between external reality and what you are thinking about that external reality. Your body just takes what you think for granted. So for example, when you say to yourself, this is the worst date ever. Like this morning, this crazy morning where things didn’t go right, or like we wanted them to, or when we say to ourselves in our kind of conversational, dramatic way, this is the worst day ever. Your body goes, oh my gosh, the worst day ever, and it responds. It responds with the kind of hormones that you wanted to respond to when with when you’re in danger, like adrenaline and cortisol to get your heart racing and your muscles ready to fight or run not the best feeling in your body when you’re trying to remain calm and focused on being an intentional parent who loves her mom life.
0:28:04
So, you know, and and we can substitute so many other thoughts and phrases that go through our minds about not being good enough or thinking that we shouldn’t have said that thing or our spouse should have remembered what we told him the other day, or maybe I married the wrong person. Like, all of these thoughts create feelings inside of us. And it’s very easy to think that the external world is causing us to feel this way. When in reality, It’s how we’re interpreting things that are causing our feelings. And I’m not saying that our interpretation is always wrong. A lot of times our interpretation is spot on, and it’s gonna create feelings that follow. Like there isn’t a right or wrong or good or bad to this, it’s understanding that our responsibility is to check-in and understand that that interpretation is at play, and we need to pay attention to it.
0:29:02
So an example from my life, my mom life, in expectations, I became a much happier and peaceful mom when I started to work with and change my expectations of what my house needed to look like. As I was raising my kids. For the most part, I got to a place where I really did believe, I honestly believe that my home was not supposed to look like a model home. But this was, like, only after having been outnumbered with children and shoes and toys and dishes and a dog and all of the things that undo all of that amazing careful work you do to prepare your home so it feels lovely and peaceful and serene and clean. Like, all of that, all of that undo really bothered me at first.
0:29:49
Until I had to kind of go into self awareness and find the things that were in my values that were upsetting me. You remember we talked about in episode four how our values are underneath all of the things that we’re feeling. So I had a lot of things that were under there and and they were really all good all of them. There wasn’t one that was probably not good, but they were at odds with each other. I wanted beauty, I wanted organization, I value cleanliness, but I also value fun and children feeling like they belong and that they’re home and the ease that comes with being with each other and not having a stressed out mom that had to have everything be in order. And you can probably start to hear the judgment that I had, and it would switch back and forth between me, judging me for being too rigid or judging my kids or my life as being out of control. And so I tried to control the chaos around me, that external world and I was successful in many ways, but ultimately I had to work with my own perception of everything. I couldn’t have both a perfect home and a warm landing place for my family. I eventually changed my expectations enough to make room for some more chaos. And I was a much happier mama.
0:31:06
And You know, we do have to put systems together and routines. Like, they’re helpful. We need them. They’re vital. But nothing can show up as a match for the internal expectations that we have. If we’re unaware of them, if we don’t work with those expectations, we’re going to be let down. And they’ll be increasing pressure put on the people around us to make us happy. And you know that saying if mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy? We are the hearts of the home. We’re laying a foundation for the mood and the tone in our home.
0:31:42
And when I say that, I hesitate it for a second. I don’t know if you heard me pause. I hesitated, should I say that? Because the last thing I wanna do is put more pressure on you. I I don’t think I’m probably gonna put a ton more pressure on you because I know we put pressure on ourselves. You already feel it. But I want you to just consider that your happiness is more in your hands than we realize. Your children are tuned into you because they came from your body, they came from your womb. And even if you adopted them, They come from your heart. You’ve been their sustenance.
0:32:18
And when our hearts are troubled and we are unable to be calmed, Remember because the calmness lies external to us when we’re looking for that, you know, external validation. When our hearts are troubled and we can’t be calmed, the pressure is big. It’s a big pressure on us for sure, but it’s Big on our kids too. It’s big on our family. And I really do believe that children want to please their parents. They want to make things better for their parents. But you know as much as we’re struggling with all of this? Well, they they are too, except they have less experience and their brains aren’t even fully formed yet. It’s too much pressure for them to make us happy by meeting our expectations. And I would say the same for our spouses, though their adults and they’re, you know, good teammates and they have a lot of power, they still don’t even have the power to make us happy. Because our happiness is always gonna be manufactured inside of our internal world. It’s an inside job. And I think that’s the best news ever. Actually, because when you realize that your happiness isn’t in someone else’s hands, but it’s in yours and that you get to choose how you’re going to look at any certain situation, that power is undeniable. And isn’t that what Spider Man says? With great power comes responsibility. Great responsibility. Well, here we are. So here is a summary.
0:33:58
Your feelings come from your internal world. They don’t come from outside of you. Even though it can feel that way. Two, we can work with failings and learn from them. Three, thoughts and feelings dance together, and thoughts do the leading. Thoughts create feelings and then our feelings can trigger more thoughts. So we need to learn how the dance goes, so we can choreograph our own life. We can learn to identify thoughts that cause us suffering and reach for higher thoughts that bring love and strength to us. Higher thoughts or thoughts that serve you, not scare you. They help you feel appreciation, not cause you to feel powerless. That’s what we’re trying to do to get used to thinking in a higher way that serves us better.
0:34:56
When I look at a little kid melting down because they don’t want to turn off the show or they don’t want to stop playing and they won’t put their shoes on, I’m gonna have a thought about what that means. I might have the thought geez. I just let them play for all this time. And now they can’t even put their shoes on. I don’t have time for this. I can notice that that thinking is there and look for an alternative thought. That helps me be more understanding or calmer or more creative in figuring out how to handle it. I could train myself to think This is a transition time. It’s hard for kids. It’s hard for them to transition between one activity and another, and this isn’t personal. There’s nowhere that I have to be so quickly that I can’t be compassionate and help them get through this. Now that’s a higher thought. And honestly, even as I was saying that, I’m like, I did not always think that way. We don’t. We don’t always have access to our higher thoughts in a moment. We just don’t.
0:35:57
And we’re gonna talk a little bit more about how to calm our bodies down so we can get to those higher thoughts. But if you can just start noticing what kinds of thoughts you’re having and how they’re making you feel. It will start to open the door for you to be able to work with them so that you can start to feel calmer and feel better. You know, that’s our goal. It’s not to turn you into, you know, this robot that always says the perfect thing all the time or feels the perfect thing all the time. Because you seem to think the perfect thing all the time, our job is to give you a sense of understanding and connection to yourself so you know how to work with all of that. First and foremost, so you’re not in pain. You’re not suffering in this emotional turmoil. That we all often get into. We want you out of that as much as possible so that you feel good. And number two, We want you to do it so you can lead your kids. Not only to teach them how to do this, but just give them that steadiness that we as mamas are okay enough to be able to take care of them. I bet you do that in in your life already, and that is so awesome.
0:37:09
And it’s important to know we don’t always think higher thoughts a lot of the time. We’re in survival thinking a lot of time. We’re in reactive thinking a lot of time. We have thoughts that we’re not good enough, that things need to be a certain way, and that there are other people that can do this better than I can do it. We have the thought, I just can’t handle it. Like, that’s a big scary thought. I just won’t be able to handle this. And sometimes these thoughts hold us back. And they tie a step tight so that our external circumstances have to be just right because we think that we won’t be okay. And what I’ve learned with my kids and working with other moms is that even if we have a little bit of chaos in our life. Okay? Realistically, a lot of chaos in our life I can still be okay.
0:37:58
So hopefully, I’ve laid out the vision of an internal world and an external world and that you’ve got both going on. And I want you to use the tool of self awareness to just notice where you are in that internal external landscape. And before I give you a little assignment, I want to just talk real quick about self awareness there’s some components to self awareness that make it work. And the main one is number one being an observer, so just noticing. And the second one is doing it without judgment. So as we’re talking about doing all of this and recognizing how your thoughts create your feelings, Can you imagine if you start looking at how you’re handling your internal world and you start to be judgmental about that and critical about that, which is just more thinking. Right? That’s gonna feel awful. Feels awful to me when it happens to me. So that’s why we practice things like mindfulness, where you just notice and observe it without judging it. You’re not saying you’re doing it right or doing it wrong. It’s just noticing. So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to start looking at your internal world and your external landscape. And the last thing I want you to do is to Jud yourself on how you’re doing with it. I just want you to notice it.
0:39:13
In any given moment, I’m filtering what’s going on around me through my own lens. How am I looking at it right now? What’s the story I’m telling myself? What are the thoughts I’m having? Are they harsh thoughts? Or are they benevolent thoughts? How are those thoughts making me feel?
0:39:34
If you find a thought, something like my child is making me mad, I want you to recognize that your child did something factually, and then you had a thought about it. And it’s actually that thought that made you mad. You can still be mad. I just want you to notice where it’s coming from. And if you’re not good at this at first, then you are in the club. Because no one’s great at this. I don’t even think after years of practice, maybe I’m great at this. But I’m in the game. And I want you to be in the game too because I just want you to start noticing that there’s a step in there. There’s a space like Victor Frankel says. That’s all I want you to notice.
0:40:21
I don’t know if you kinda can catch the vision of this yet, but this is a superpower. It’s how you learn to work with yourself, lead yourself so that you can then leads your family. What a great thing we’re working on together? So give it a try Once again, do I say this every episode? Don’t judge it and just play with it? Gosh, you’re gonna be tired of hearing me say that, but I really believe it’s true.
0:40:51
This is powerful work. It’s also really cool. As you’ll start to see, it’ll make a change. For the better in your life, it’s gonna give you more control. It’s gonna help you love yourself better, and that’s something that we all want to have happen. So until next time. Next week, you guys take care. Thanks so much for listening. You can always find me on Instagram at lea german or on my website at lea german dot com. Thanks again, and I’ll see you next time. The Leadership parenting podcast is for general information purposes only. It is not therapy. And should not take the place of meeting with a qualified mental health professional. The information on this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any condition illness or disease. It’s also not intended to be legal, medical, or therapeutic advice. Please consult your doctor or mental health professional for your individual circumstances. Thanks again, and take care.
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