Transcript
Speaker: Hey moms, it's Laura Olinger.
Speaker: Welcome to the Positively Healthy Mom podcast.
Speaker: Because there's no manual for the hardest job in the world.
Speaker: Hello, and I am so excited to welcome January Donovan today to the Positively Healthy Mom.
Speaker: So hello, January.
Speaker: How are you today?
Speaker: I am so well.
Speaker: We made it.
Speaker: We're trying to fix our schedule, but we made it, and I'm so grateful to be here and just honored.
Speaker: Thank you for having me.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: So as a self-worth coach and founder of The Woman School, tell us how you got into this work.
Speaker: Oh gosh.
Speaker: So the short of it is that my wound became the compass to my work and contribution.
Speaker: And what I mean by that is that I suffered as a woman because I just didn't know
Speaker: I didn't know how to make friendships.
Speaker: I didn't know how to know my value.
Speaker: I didn't know how to manage my mind, my emotion.
Speaker: And so I, you know, I had great parents, but they were immigrant parents.
Speaker: And I think our world massively shifted in the last hundred years, more so 50 years.
Speaker: And most of us are just trying to figure out as we go.
Speaker: And so I kind of came to a point in my life where I'm like, I don't like going.
Speaker: And that was my freshman year in college.
Speaker: And I just was, the words just disgusted myself.
Speaker: And I met a mentor in college, my freshman year, my first month.
Speaker: And her name was Elena.
Speaker: I talked about this in her school.
Speaker: And she said, Jen, you're a what kind of woman do you want to be?
Speaker: And I remember laughing at her.
Speaker: And I was like, you have no choices.
Speaker: I guess you do.
Speaker: Let's design you.
Speaker: And so I met with her every single month, almost for three and a half years.
Speaker: She gave me homework.
Speaker: She trained me with mindset and skills that she didn't really realize it.
Speaker: But I was so hungry that I showed up.
Speaker: She would say, give me 10.
Speaker: I'll show up with 30.
Speaker: My first homework was to get rid of comparison and competition because I was lonely and I wanted quality friends.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: My second homework was to build a morning routine so I could prepare and meditate and plan my morning at 4.30 in the morning.
Speaker: My third homework was to make my bed so I was accomplished before I even made my day.
Speaker: And so I had homework all throughout and that changed my life profoundly to a point in college, I started training women, some of these skillset and I just kind of did it.
Speaker: I did it for free for 15 years and in charge of time, I just believed in it so much.
Speaker: I would do training on skills because where do you go to learn pivoting skills, decision-making, communicating yourself effectively?
Speaker: I mean, you know, we have divorce rate of what?
Speaker: 55% and we don't teach a communication is 77% words, 38% tonality, 55% body language.
Speaker: I mean, it's outright robbery, what we're doing to women right now.
Speaker: And so I just sort of used my own wounds, my own experience and my own training.
Speaker: And four years ago, roughly, we launched the women's school because my husband said, January, do you want to reach thousands or millions?
Speaker: And I was just passionate about it.
Speaker: I did it with all, you know, I had four kids under four.
Speaker: like you and then i just kept training women and so i think there was just a hunger for depth and i think for deep training and really boils down to really is that in the last 150 years roughly we've been fighting in the west for women's freedom the freedom to choose the freedom to be part of the marketplace the freedom to be able to work but i think that what we have right now is data that
Speaker: in spite of all the freedom we have, women are not free.
Speaker: As a matter of fact, they're more enslaved, they're more anxious, stressed, burnt out, unfulfilled with their life.
Speaker: And so now we have data where 1800 years ago, that's not the woman we're signing up for.
Speaker: And now there's a woman that feels like she can do whatever she wants, whenever she wants, without any sense of actually kind of understanding who she is.
Speaker: And so it kind of took me to this work of we need to reclaim womanhood in context of modern society.
Speaker: take all the good that we've learned from 1800s, all the history of women, the feminist movement and cast a new vision of what it means to be a woman.
Speaker: And then let's train her.
Speaker: So that's, that's where I came to this work.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: And it feels like we're getting so many mixed messages as far as what the ideal woman is and how we need to show up in this world.
Speaker: And it can be overwhelming.
Speaker: So what do you think are the biggest sources of overwhelm for moms today?
Speaker: I think underscaled, bottom line, overwhelm equals underscaled.
Speaker: And let me just kind of just break that down.
Speaker: If you're a mother and you've never been taught or trained, and not when I say not hear a podcast, neurologically wired in the 95% of our brain to manage your mind, manage your emotion, say no to yourself, honor your word, build a routine,
Speaker: clean your house, not in, you know, effectively, not for all day.
Speaker: Um, all of these are skillset that are actually intertwined together.
Speaker: So let me give you an example.
Speaker: When I teach time management, I can't even teach time management without first teaching mind management, the ability to honor a word, the ability to say no to ourself, the ability to follow through all of those skills hinges on our time management skills.
Speaker: So the skill set I teach, we teach mindset and skill set needs to be introduced in the woman because we are overwhelmed because we are under skilled.
Speaker: But here's the worst part of it, Lauren.
Speaker: Women are blamed and shame for the choices nobody ever taught them how to make.
Speaker: Because who taught you any of this?
Speaker: Where do you go as a mother to learn a rhythm of life that honors your routine?
Speaker: Where do you go to know that your value is not contingent in your child's performance?
Speaker: That's a skill.
Speaker: Where do you know how to make sure that you make time for yourself, receptivity, to receive training, to receive growth, to receive, to just make time to shower?
Speaker: All of these are so crucial.
Speaker: It's non-negotiable.
Speaker: You know, where if you don't have mind management skills, emotional command, your toddler cries, you're going to cry with her.
Speaker: As opposed to actually...
Speaker: helping her work through her own emotion and not be a victim of her emotion and also not you being victim by her emotion.
Speaker: All of these skills to me is a reason why mother has become hard, chaotic, stressful.
Speaker: And now we falsely advertise motherhood as a place where it's just hard.
Speaker: Or is it that there's hard moments because we're underskilled and
Speaker: But it is life-giving.
Speaker: Like the most important job in the world, the most life-giving job in the world.
Speaker: We have now labeled it, conditioned a whole generation to believe that it's what sucks the life out of a woman.
Speaker: I think that conditioning is causing people to not want to have children, to resent motherhood.
Speaker: But here's the thing, how many of us are called to be mothers, but not just called to be mothers, that actually motherhood is actually the place that draws greater fulfillment, that actually allows us to see a capacity we've never seen is possible.
Speaker: And so I think there's a robbery that is leading to a lack of fulfillment in motherhood because we've labeled motherhood as hard.
Speaker: And I don't think to a fault of our own, I think society
Speaker: is not preparing us enough.
Speaker: I mean, think about this.
Speaker: There's no more home economics.
Speaker: When I was in school, they had home economics.
Speaker: Men and both girls and boys, we had to learn how to cook, prepare school, you know?
Speaker: And this idea, I was just doing a training on this, and every single time I talk about the importance of kitchen skills in context of health skills.
Speaker: Like, you cannot be healthy if you don't know how to clean a kitchen efficiently and effectively.
Speaker: Because so much of our health issue is obviously reading labels, but it's not just what you eat.
Speaker: It's managing your mind.
Speaker: How do you manage your mind if you feel like you can't clean your kitchen?
Speaker: Because it's overwhelming to make a meal, to clean it effectively.
Speaker: I mean, I time my children when they clean the island.
Speaker: I'm like, there's three minutes.
Speaker: It's a three-part process.
Speaker: It's not half an hour.
Speaker: I have like a timer on my fridge.
Speaker: I'm like, we don't know all of this.
Speaker: But we are expected to.
Speaker: That's the problem.
Speaker: Just because we are born a woman, that doesn't mean we know how to be one.
Speaker: We no longer have our mothers, our grandmothers, our aunt.
Speaker: We had the infrastructure in the 1800s where we lived in a family nucleus that actually said, oh, your grandmother says, this is how you cook.
Speaker: But not only that, we are distracted because we have our phones and we're not learning through osmosis anymore.
Speaker: We are...
Speaker: literally learning to tick tock.
Speaker: And so, you know, we're not actually handing over the skills that I think are necessary in a world that's dramatically shifted.
Speaker: But more importantly, our parents could not teach us in a world that's, how would they even know how to manage Instagram or tick tock?
Speaker: You know, we're, they didn't have to do it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So in the context of our world, that's massively shifted the lack of skill training.
Speaker: And I think the third part is women today are devalued.
Speaker: And if you ask yourself, what makes a woman, what do we revere in our culture today?
Speaker: Power, what we call in a woman's school, power, the poisonous meat poisons her self-worth.
Speaker: Power, possession, perfection, popularity, positions.
Speaker: And we know this because women would treat women who have
Speaker: you know, a million followers differently than somebody who's 10 followers or when somebody says they're a millionaire to somebody who is working, you know, as a teacher, but we do it so subconsciously.
Speaker: It's automatic.
Speaker: It's habitual because the 95% of our brain has been conditioned from a very early age to think you compete, you compare your values based on your grades.
Speaker: What makes you valuable is what school you go to.
Speaker: Your body is your worth.
Speaker: How many guys like you, how popular you are.
Speaker: All this is so systemic.
Speaker: And we are feeling all the pain of being poisoned, our self-worth being poisoned because we have no language to refute it because there's no training.
Speaker: And so we're all swimming in the same muck.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: That's very powerful.
Speaker: And it almost magnifies to me or clarifies the level of problem that we're actually dealing with.
Speaker: You know, it's I don't think we spend our days thinking about this very consciously.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And and so what does that do to a woman's self image?
Speaker: You know, we are constantly beating ourselves up, feeling like we're not good enough, you know, as women, as mothers, as wives, as partners, as, you know, anything.
Speaker: So it's like, how do we build on the inside in order to feel good enough and feel worthy?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So I think it's a two-part question.
Speaker: What is it doing with a woman's self-image?
Speaker: It makes them feel like they're not valuable.
Speaker: It's not even just enough.
Speaker: They're not significant.
Speaker: So what happens when women don't feel they're valuable?
Speaker: Then they live to prove themselves, prove to their boss, prove to their children, instead of actually knowing that their value is unconditional.
Speaker: It doesn't change.
Speaker: Nothing changes it.
Speaker: Not your children's failure, how much money you make, right?
Speaker: So what it's making to women's self-image, it's making conditional.
Speaker: So they're literally running a rat race of proving and pleasing.
Speaker: It's happening all subconsciously.
Speaker: We don't even have language to police it.
Speaker: So that's what's happening, which then...
Speaker: causes anger, anxiety, numbing.
Speaker: Now we've got addiction.
Speaker: And not only do we have addiction, addiction that we're literally kind of just filling ourself with Netflix or binging on other things that are unfulfilling, we're searching for death.
Speaker: So I think what's happening is that what Thoreau said, you know, men and women are living lives of quiet desperation.
Speaker: I think that's where we are.
Speaker: And data tells us that because the antidepressant number, anxiety, the depression, all that is skyrocketing.
Speaker: So what's the solution?
Speaker: Well, we can't solve the politics around us.
Speaker: I think we can't see what's happening.
Speaker: I think it needs to be a grassroots effort and movement towards interior training.
Speaker: And that's really what we offer in the school is that we have to shift the mindset and introduce skill training in our culture.
Speaker: But how does that happen?
Speaker: I think we need to shift the conditioning of women to say, every woman needs training.
Speaker: Like your life is hard when you're under-trained.
Speaker: And that a life without training eventually leads to anxiety, depression, stress, everything, overwhelm, burnout, motherhood, anything.
Speaker: So to me, the antidote is that every woman makes a choice to go into a journey of training.
Speaker: Athletes train.
Speaker: They have coaches.
Speaker: They have a community.
Speaker: They have classes.
Speaker: We need to reshift women's perception that we are to train for life, for our life.
Speaker: And that it never ends.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Because, you know, I have eight children.
Speaker: I need new skills in context of eight children now building a business.
Speaker: Like I need to learn boundaries in a different way.
Speaker: It's not just even boundaries now.
Speaker: It's boundaries in context of my current season of our life.
Speaker: So to me, that I think is a solution is that every woman says, I'm responsible.
Speaker: I need to develop myself, both my mindset, my skillset.
Speaker: And if we do that individually, then we come together as whole.
Speaker: and not fractured version of ourselves.
Speaker: And that's how we move the needle forward.
Speaker: Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker: And I'm so happy you brought up the concept of boundaries because that's something I was planning on talking to you about.
Speaker: I feel like as women, that is one of the hardest things that we deal with.
Speaker: And it's on a kind of micro level, a macro level within the family, out of the family, within ourselves, because it seems almost like...
Speaker: there's, you know, our feminine energy is, you know, warmth and loving and giving and receiving and kind of both of those, you know, energies for our kids.
Speaker: And so it's like, where do we decide to draw the line?
Speaker: And how do we enforce that as this is me, this is, this is, you know, this is my line, and you can't come this way, but I'm not going to go this way, right?
Speaker: So how do you teach how to communicate those boundaries to,
Speaker: kids or spouses or whoever?
Speaker: Great question.
Speaker: So one of the issues that is challenging is because the boundary skill hinges on all the other skills.
Speaker: And here's what I mean.
Speaker: In order for you to communicate your line, you first need to just know what you want and don't want as a skill set.
Speaker: You need to be constantly thinking, what do I want and what do I not want?
Speaker: How many women are trained to process what they want and don't want?
Speaker: As a matter of fact, one of the trainings that I have, the first things that we do with women is to actually go through every part of their life and say, what do you want and don't want?
Speaker: And I can tell you that's triggering.
Speaker: because it's a muscle that's been in atrophy.
Speaker: Some women just freeze.
Speaker: Like, January, I've never asked myself what I wanted to want.
Speaker: Some women just weep.
Speaker: Like, I have never given myself permission.
Speaker: Some women are angry.
Speaker: Like, why does it matter what I want?
Speaker: Because what they want and what they want never mattered.
Speaker: So boundaries hinges on your communication to actually say no to yourself.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: I will not tolerate you raising your voice to me.
Speaker: No, thank you.
Speaker: Like you have to own.
Speaker: So you have to almost know your standards.
Speaker: That's a skill in itself to be able to say, these are my standards in my friendship, in my relationship, in my motherhood, in my career.
Speaker: Like that's a skill in itself.
Speaker: The ability to make a decision.
Speaker: How many women suffer indecisiveness that leads to anxiety?
Speaker: I don't know what to do.
Speaker: Should I tell them?
Speaker: Should I not?
Speaker: That's a skill in itself.
Speaker: So my point in saying this is that
Speaker: boundary, the skill of boundary hinges on all the other skills, which is what makes boundary challenging.
Speaker: Does that make sense?
Speaker: Because it's like a puzzle piece.
Speaker: Where does one start and one begin?
Speaker: So that's number one.
Speaker: Number two, boundary also hinges primarily on our ability to communicate effectively.
Speaker: So I believe we lack scripts.
Speaker: We don't know what to say.
Speaker: And we don't know how to say it.
Speaker: So let me give you an example.
Speaker: I, you know, you're not allowed to speak to me that way.
Speaker: We actually like, we fumble in our words.
Speaker: And this is why in the women's school, we have thousands of scripts.
Speaker: Like I, I have to give you because in our culture, we have no scripts.
Speaker: So we have no arsenal.
Speaker: And so we're trying to figure out boundaries.
Speaker: We don't know what to say and we don't know how to say it.
Speaker: So 7% are words, 38% tonality and 55% body language.
Speaker: So not only do I not have words to say, you may not speak to me that way.
Speaker: I don't know how to say it that conveys the level of seriousness I mean.
Speaker: I'll say, can you not say it that way?
Speaker: Please don't treat me that way.
Speaker: No, you may not treat me that way.
Speaker: That is unacceptable.
Speaker: What you can say is,
Speaker: But you may not do that.
Speaker: Whoever, you know, our children or our spouse.
Speaker: So it's a scripting issue.
Speaker: It's an effective communication issue.
Speaker: I teach boundaries as a two part.
Speaker: It's knowing your line.
Speaker: But then also communicating your line.
Speaker: So it's so connected because you can have boundaries and then women are like, well, people are not honoring my boundaries, but it could be that you don't have the right tonality.
Speaker: And so then they'll say, well, people don't honor my boundaries.
Speaker: I'm like, show me how you communicated that.
Speaker: Because we also, our attitude, it's communicated that determines people's response to us.
Speaker: See how connected it is.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: It's like.
Speaker: It's very.
Speaker: And so it's interesting.
Speaker: I happen to have this post-it note on my desk.
Speaker: I got it out because I took a picture of it and I was sending it to a friend who needed a little bit of guidance.
Speaker: And it just kind of, it resonates with what we're talking about.
Speaker: So I thought I would, I would give it to you what's on here because I once was speaking with an intervention coach about an intervention that I needed to be part of.
Speaker: And so what it says is breakdown equals conviction equals clarity.
Speaker: equals courage equals change.
Speaker: And so a lot of times what happens is a woman who has no boundaries will literally let it go so far and so long that she then gets to the point of having to have basically a breakdown, but that breakdown then inspires conviction and says, Hey, this isn't going to work anymore.
Speaker: She gets clear, gets that clarity of what that boundary is.
Speaker: She finally then gets the courage and then she can change.
Speaker: But ideally, we don't want it to ever have to get to this point.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I love I love what you're saying just about we need training on this because we're not born.
Speaker: We're not wired this way.
Speaker: And especially if you know, if we didn't have a mom who role modeled this for us, because I always say the moms are, you know, the teachers.
Speaker: And that's where the kids usually learn this, you know, kind of behavior or not learn it.
Speaker: And so I think I don't know what it what are your thoughts about.
Speaker: Well, I
Speaker: Well, it's a great quote.
Speaker: I think, you know, where my mind goes is like, how many skills does that woman need to even not come to that point?
Speaker: And even when she came to a point of courage, what skill does she need to even execute the conviction to say what she needs to say?
Speaker: That's where my mind goes, because I think we've got a lot of these vague concepts, even in our culture, and it's no longer sufficient.
Speaker: Like let's empower women.
Speaker: What does that even mean?
Speaker: Like empowerment without equipping them with practical skills is delusional.
Speaker: Like you can't just say you can do it.
Speaker: Go for your dreams.
Speaker: You're enough.
Speaker: I'm like, if you're not neurologically training them with the right mindset and skillset, they're going to go and be empowered for five minutes.
Speaker: And they're going to go back into binge into their Netflix and question about their self-worth and then go to the boss and try to please improve and go to the next guy that tells them they're beautiful.
Speaker: Or they're going to try to please their kids and not actually discipline them and hold them accountable.
Speaker: I mean, motherhood to me, like if you don't know your value and you don't have the skills, it's so easy to cater to our children's emotion to a point that we become a victim to their negative and immature emotion instead of actually leading.
Speaker: I'll give you an example.
Speaker: Like, you know, in my house, I have illegal words.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Because language shape culture.
Speaker: Language shapes our thought.
Speaker: It shapes the way we think about things.
Speaker: And so I have a script book in my drawer and my kids have written hundreds, some of them a thousand scripts to rewire their brain because I have to hold them accountable to a level of standard.
Speaker: in the words that they use in my own home before even escalates to mom, she did this and she did this.
Speaker: And she called me this.
Speaker: I'm like, if we never even allowed it to begin with, there wouldn't be, she did this, she did this.
Speaker: And the infighting, if there was a standard of language that says, no, you're not allowed to use the word annoying because you could use it to your sibling.
Speaker: Now your sibling, one of the biggest cause of therapy is actually sibling damage and the language that we use for each other.
Speaker: Or we
Speaker: Words are so powerful that they, you know, the way they're speaking to each other.
Speaker: And so that's an example of, you know, how as mothers, if we don't know the power of words that shape our thought and communicating that as a culture in our home, we could be fighting our children.
Speaker: Our children could be fighting.
Speaker: They could be having a lot of drama in their school.
Speaker: If we only taught the basic of giving them
Speaker: some of the foundational skills, it wouldn't escalate to that point.
Speaker: Does that make sense?
Speaker: You know, like, yeah, I was training my eight-year-old.
Speaker: It's funny.
Speaker: I was my eight-year-old then.
Speaker: She's now 13, but
Speaker: We were practicing right before school and people are going to have opinions of you, you know, and we have the script in our home.
Speaker: Your opinion of me is not my opinion of me.
Speaker: So we were rehearsing it prior to school starts.
Speaker: And then later on, she told me that a couple months later, I forgot that we were doing it because I do it with my children.
Speaker: And she's like, oh, mom, this guy bothered me.
Speaker: And, you know, and she was telling me the story.
Speaker: I was like, are you upset?
Speaker: You know, what do you want?
Speaker: What did you do about it?
Speaker: She goes, don't worry, mom.
Speaker: His opinion of me is not my opinion of me.
Speaker: And she just went on, not even like a thought.
Speaker: And I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, I teach 50 six-year-old women.
Speaker: You know, but it rolled out of her.
Speaker: Like it was nothing but because she just needed how to manage those situation.
Speaker: But here's a question I have for you.
Speaker: How many mothers are incapable, because we're not trained, to train their children with the right script and mindset to convey that so that they won't come to a point where somebody is bullying them, somebody is telling them, and they're inheriting the labels that
Speaker: that they're carrying and not, and moms, we don't know everything that's going on in school.
Speaker: They're just carrying it.
Speaker: Oh, you're so ugly.
Speaker: You're so FAT.
Speaker: You're so SEPID, but we're not there to police those words.
Speaker: And if we just, even that's a one skill, you know, like one script, and we have thousands of women in the woman's school, you have been in the museum, maybe you have me could release them from years of therapy or feeling like their label is that they're not enough or that they're FAT that would damage your self-worth.
Speaker: My opinion is like, if we don't give them the skills and our children are at risk of being manipulated and being, I would say bullied.
Speaker: And then we're doing everything good at home.
Speaker: Like we're trying to be the best mom, but it's no longer enough.
Speaker: We need to give them skills because it's not just about what we offer them.
Speaker: It's about equipping them because the world has gone mad.
Speaker: And in a world that's gone mad, I feel like it's an outright war.
Speaker: You need to equip your children with the skills that are crucial for survival, mental survival.
Speaker: And this is why a lot of our kids are, you know, they're suffering anxiety and stress.
Speaker: And like, that's another illegal word in my house, stress and anxiety.
Speaker: I'm like, what are you folks on?
Speaker: Expanses.
Speaker: You know, and so they know not to use that word, my 16 year old and, you know, and that's not that they won't use it.
Speaker: I just, they just know that there's a standard of communication.
Speaker: And I think that's what we need to do, Lauren.
Speaker: That's what we need to do as mothers.
Speaker: Otherwise, how are we going to solve the problem?
Speaker: How are we ever going to tell them motherhood is full of life and joy and that it can be healthy and it can be so fulfilling.
Speaker: It's not the death of our dreams.
Speaker: It's a matter of fact, the expansion of our dreams, because we should never look at our children and say, you're the reason I stopped dreaming.
Speaker: Can you imagine what have we wired into our children?
Speaker: You're the reason I dreamt even harder.
Speaker: You're the reason I expanded my dream and I train even harder because dreaming comes before discipline.
Speaker: It's the, it's the dream that fuels a life of discipline.
Speaker: Where do you learn this as a mother?
Speaker: It's a shame.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I'm passionate about it.
Speaker: That's what we do.
Speaker: And I just love just, you know, you're kind of just flooding me even with like, wow, you know, I feel like I've just learned a lot of these things in the past, you know, five or six years, but my oldest daughter's almost 16.
Speaker: So all the years that I wasn't training her,
Speaker: because I didn't have the skills, right?
Speaker: And so, but it's never too late.
Speaker: And as soon as we start to learn these, then we can impart these.
Speaker: And I feel like that's what I've been doing.
Speaker: But I feel like you've been doing this for such a long time.
Speaker: It's just incredible.
Speaker: And so one thing I did want to get back to is, you mentioned that when you're in college, your mentor, the second thing she taught you was to have a routine.
Speaker: So I thought we could talk a little bit about that.
Speaker: Like, what does it take to build a routine?
Speaker: And what does your routine look like?
Speaker: Oh, this is a two-part question.
Speaker: So to build a routine, it hinges on all the other skills like we talk about, right?
Speaker: So boundaries, mind management, so that itself.
Speaker: So for me, I think without a routine, we suffer.
Speaker: We could get away with one child without a routine, but I think two children becomes really inconsistent.
Speaker: So I think you have to make a choice in how you parent and everybody can do it differently.
Speaker: I think in my opinion, and this is just my opinion, a rhythm of life is necessary for peace.
Speaker: And the reason why I say that is because I'm selling people on routine before I tell you what your routine looks like is because, you know, when you're just, when you make 35,000 decisions a day and you don't have rhythm of life and you're trying to figure out.
Speaker: what's next because there's no accountability of what comes next that's ordered by the time eight o'clock or nine o'clock comes around you're mentally exhausted you have no time to train your children no time to connect with your children because you're just responding all day right so that's the number one number two i think sometimes people um get hung up on routine because they think it's rigid
Speaker: And I always say routine is a rhythm.
Speaker: It's not like 10 to one.
Speaker: It's as a systematic order towards your day that everybody knows when to eat, when to sleep, when to work.
Speaker: So you know when to shower.
Speaker: Like moms was like, I don't know when to shower.
Speaker: That tells me usually I've been doing this thousands of times.
Speaker: I've trained hundreds of thousands of women that there's no order in the day because they don't know when to shower and it's not their fault.
Speaker: Nobody trained them how.
Speaker: So my point in saying this is that our children sometimes get a bad reputation for
Speaker: They're just cranky, but really sometimes because there's no order towards their day.
Speaker: A children needs order for security, a rhythm.
Speaker: And so when our day is chaotic and we're responding all day, we just go here, go here and here and everything.
Speaker: They too are just sort of responding and they're exhausted and then they throw a tantrum.
Speaker: And then the other limiting belief about routine is that then your life is just so boring and rigid.
Speaker: When you have a rhythm of life, when you know when to eat, when to work out, when to exercise, when to take care of yourself, you can be more spontaneous.
Speaker: Cause you don't feel guilty about it.
Speaker: So I think that I need to first address the mindset behind a routine.
Speaker: I think for me, are you asking me personally what my routine is?
Speaker: Yeah, I'm really curious.
Speaker: So my routine, I've been a morning person.
Speaker: I've been a 4.30 AM girl since.
Speaker: And even between babies, I love a period.
Speaker: One of the things that I do is that I don't do believe in crying out, but I train my babies to sleep through the night from the hospital.
Speaker: through a three hour cycle.
Speaker: So all my children, eight children, eight,
Speaker: 12 hours by 12 weeks.
Speaker: So that's, I used to teach that class.
Speaker: So that is a big component though, because some women don't want to do that.
Speaker: And that's totally fine.
Speaker: Some women want to do, you know, maybe sleep in their bed.
Speaker: I don't, we don't.
Speaker: And so they're in my, with me for 12 weeks and then I transitioned them out.
Speaker: So that's just a little caveat.
Speaker: So all I get up at four 30 in the morning where I have time for prayer.
Speaker: I've done for study.
Speaker: I study every day as a woman, I study myself, but I also study, you know, I study,
Speaker: so much of culture.
Speaker: And then,
Speaker: My children get up about seven o'clock.
Speaker: They know that they come down at seven.
Speaker: And some of my boys are up at 630 and then I'll stop what I'm doing.
Speaker: I still have a three and a four year old.
Speaker: So that's what my morning looks like.
Speaker: And then from seven to eight o'clock, my older children prepare for school.
Speaker: I have full-time live-in help because I obviously run a big operation, a big company.
Speaker: So that to me,
Speaker: um is my investment and that's why i invested after four children to do that so that i can actually have more time with my children i don't i don't um i don't believe in this i am woman hear me or i don't need help i can do it all by myself i think it's delusional and it's causing women to be sick it's a false understanding of a strong woman so i have help so that i can be with my children in this time i'm investing in them i'm helping them i also train my children to be
Speaker: quite competent.
Speaker: We do it with a lot of Montessori.
Speaker: Confidence comes from competence.
Speaker: So we train in the school.
Speaker: So they'll know how to make their own lunches and all to dress themselves.
Speaker: They know they're capable.
Speaker: So study kind of their development and their capacity and build skill after skill.
Speaker: So seven, eight, and then my, so between seven to nine, I'm literally just with my children because my two little boys are, um, they don't start school till nine.
Speaker: Um, there's times that I have like a training or,
Speaker: Something that's due, I'll leave at eight a little earlier, but for the most part, I'm there until nine.
Speaker: And so then I go to work and my life is simple.
Speaker: What I mean by that, I know I work from nine to three and I'll put everything in that time.
Speaker: Nine is about 4.30.
Speaker: My children come home at 3.30.
Speaker: So I'll really, I try to really be there by 3.30.
Speaker: But if sometimes I have podcasts in the afternoon or something, I'll be there at 4.30.
Speaker: I make dinner because my husband likes it when I make dinner.
Speaker: Um, I am very selective about what I say yes to.
Speaker: And I say no to, which is part of my routine is my ability to prioritize what's important.
Speaker: What's really not important.
Speaker: And, um, my children, my two boys, which they're home by one.
Speaker: So they're not with me for a couple hours a day till I come home, which is part of my call right now.
Speaker: Um, but I'm with them in the morning and I'm with them in the evening.
Speaker: I, when I hit home, I'm home.
Speaker: Like I don't,
Speaker: you know, my husband runs the company.
Speaker: So we'll kind of take turns.
Speaker: He's fully present.
Speaker: So from four, I'll cook with my children.
Speaker: I'll spend time with them.
Speaker: And then dinner is sacred.
Speaker: My children will have to get permission if they're not joining with dinner.
Speaker: My oldest son, I live in a town where everything's sort of consolidated.
Speaker: We move for the town.
Speaker: Not everybody has that luxury, but I'm also very limited with my children.
Speaker: I'm like, you do one sport, if not none, family is more important than
Speaker: unless you really are going for the high, like my oldest son, 16, he's training for to be professional golfer.
Speaker: He homeschools.
Speaker: So he competes.
Speaker: Um, so he homeschools every day.
Speaker: Uh, he homeschools, but he also plays golf every day.
Speaker: That's an exception, you know?
Speaker: So sometimes he won't be home for dinner because he plays golf till whatever, seven and golf is like seven hours a day, six hours a day.
Speaker: That's my routine.
Speaker: And then dinner, secret, I'll cook, and then we'll clean.
Speaker: And then it's family time.
Speaker: And then I put the kids to bed at 8, 9.
Speaker: My husband's home, and I spend time with my kids.
Speaker: Lights out at like 9.30.
Speaker: Sometimes it's a little later, so I get about seven hours of sleep.
Speaker: I should get eight.
Speaker: But I can function with seven, sometimes six if I...
Speaker: So there's a bit of a dance, but that's really my, my, and if I have speaking engagement of something, I can pivot it.
Speaker: But my children know they're also very consistent in their routine.
Speaker: I hold them to a standard.
Speaker: Then I know they know what to expect at home.
Speaker: So my children, they know it's like, okay, how did you contribute today in the house?
Speaker: It's like, no, you, you don't live in this like border.
Speaker: I'm not a hotel.
Speaker: So they're like, mom, I contributed.
Speaker: I made sure I did.
Speaker: And then sometimes I need my older children to watch younger children.
Speaker: I spent time with them, you know, and so they're like, they know it.
Speaker: They're like, mom, I'll take the one to three hour if I need to, for some reason, I'm out of town and I'll take the six to, you know, six to eight.
Speaker: So they'll know.
Speaker: So that's really kind of our routine.
Speaker: And my husband obviously does it with me so I can, we can kind of tag team, but I guess the key simplicity and less is more.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it did.
Speaker: And what stuck out to me was that kind of like the whole family knows the routine.
Speaker: So if the older ones are watching the younger ones, they automatically know what to do because they know what time of day it is.
Speaker: They know what happens at the time of day.
Speaker: So you're right.
Speaker: It does seem like really, you know, just a well-oiled machine and, you
Speaker: I think the last thing I wanna just really try to understand from you is what's making such a statement to me, and I have a feeling to the moms listening,
Speaker: is just your level of conviction just in your entire process, in your entire life.
Speaker: Like I am so ready to just kind of jump on board with your kind of way of life, your way of doing things.
Speaker: So like what, where does that come from?
Speaker: Because I can tell it's very,
Speaker: internal.
Speaker: And what I've heard you say multiple times is mindset and skillset, mindset and skillset.
Speaker: And so it's almost like you have programmed yourself, but like, where did you find the energy to even do that?
Speaker: That's a great question.
Speaker: My wound.
Speaker: And that's a simple answer.
Speaker: I think our wound becomes a compass to our conviction and contribution.
Speaker: I never had a home growing up.
Speaker: My parents were immigrants.
Speaker: My first awareness was in the slums with my grandfather.
Speaker: My parents were good.
Speaker: It's just that they had to work hard.
Speaker: It was a different time.
Speaker: So my first, I didn't have my parents by, you know, seven to 11 years old.
Speaker: And then my parents came to United States to be housekeepers.
Speaker: And so we live in a different house.
Speaker: And so to me, the home life was not existent.
Speaker: I didn't even know what a living room was.
Speaker: Like I didn't, nobody ever tucked me in.
Speaker: I remember I would pray.
Speaker: I have this image of myself in my sheets, three, four years old.
Speaker: I would pray by myself.
Speaker: I would tuck myself in.
Speaker: And so
Speaker: I think so much of what I suffered for because nobody showed me how.
Speaker: And so I think I've used all my suffering in a way that's redemptive and say, if I could help one woman and say, nothing is wrong with you, you're just under skilled, a lot, that's who I was.
Speaker: I was a good girl who suffered unnecessarily, made some poor choices that had repercussions in my life because nobody showed me how.
Speaker: And so my conviction comes from my wound.
Speaker: but also from the women who trained me.
Speaker: Like, if they were not there to invest in me, I would be a hot mess woman.
Speaker: Forget mom.
Speaker: I don't know where I would be.
Speaker: So that to me is the two sort of dichotomy of not having it and to nothing special about who I am, but that somebody just showed me how.
Speaker: So to me, I feel my conviction comes from, I would say, my obligation, my privilege, and what I'm accountable for.
Speaker: I want everyone to see here that motherhood is so beautiful.
Speaker: It's rich.
Speaker: It's fulfilling.
Speaker: You have hard days, but they're not hard life.
Speaker: You don't wait till you're children, but you have to be skilled.
Speaker: Otherwise, it is going to be overwhelming enough.
Speaker: And so to me, I want to redeem how we view motherhood as not only that we give life, but we breathe life.
Speaker: Breathe comes from the word inspire, that we inspire life to our children because there's life within.
Speaker: And we can't give from a place where we're just trying to get through because what's costing us as mothers is that we have abandoned our life only to be resentful.
Speaker: only to be angry, only to be numb.
Speaker: And what does that do?
Speaker: It then gives our children a perception of motherhood or stress or anxiety.
Speaker: Now it's become generational.
Speaker: So my conviction comes from both my wound and really a deep gratitude.
Speaker: And I feel like my call.
Speaker: And so I don't know.
Speaker: I always tell my husband,
Speaker: If I die tonight, I've done everything that I could to fulfill my God-given call and serve women because I wake up already convicted about what I do.
Speaker: But I've also seen the fruit of it in my own family.
Speaker: I know that it works.
Speaker: My family's not perfect.
Speaker: But I know that it can be beautiful and rich and peaceful and ordered.
Speaker: That our marriage doesn't have to be sacrificed because of motherhood.
Speaker: That our marriage should be enriched because of motherhood and vice versa.
Speaker: And but I have also seen the thousands of testimonies of women who have gone through our schools and say, oh, I just thought something's wrong with me.
Speaker: I just needed this skill.
Speaker: And what it boils down to is wholeness.
Speaker: Every part of us matters.
Speaker: And if we are whole, we're capable of giving from a cup that is full without compromising the very thing that matters to us, who we are.
Speaker: And that's why, you know, so much of reclaiming womanhood in modern society is about really
Speaker: introducing a new woman that is a whole version of herself, a whole version of a mother.
Speaker: And that's our mission.
Speaker: That's beautiful.
Speaker: And the perfect way to say, how can people find the woman's school?
Speaker: So if you go to jayneridon.com on Instagram, or you can also go to the woman's school.com, we just launched the woman's school community, S K O O L that I do practical life training, live training.
Speaker: I'm
Speaker: you know, and kind of where I will be investing my time.
Speaker: So join us.
Speaker: And if you're interested in joining our foundational course, that's brought us to 40 countries.
Speaker: I believe in this work so much.
Speaker: I'm convicted.
Speaker: Join us at 16 week journey, although it is about six months and it's deep interior work at the foundation.
Speaker: What I believe of how to be a woman,
Speaker: in modern time.
Speaker: You can just learn about the new one masterclass in our website.
Speaker: But I'm going to go even further.
Speaker: If anybody out there who's been, you know, I want to coach women on the life of wholeness and reclaiming womanhood.
Speaker: We also have a wholeness coaching program.
Speaker: If you want to make money and we have women that are making hundreds of thousands of dollars reclaiming womanhood without having to leave.
Speaker: A lot of mothers are actually doing it
Speaker: because they don't have to leave their home and they're doing such fulfilling work and they don't have to create anything because all the classes are created for them.
Speaker: They facilitate the work.
Speaker: It's meaningful work and it's financially very beneficial.
Speaker: And then they're training their children because they're learning all these skillsets.
Speaker: So if anybody's interested, that's where you can also find me.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, that's perfect.
Speaker: Well, thank you so much, January.
Speaker: I so appreciate your time.
Speaker: And this was just, I mean, I feel energized right now.
Speaker: I just want to say like everything, it just kind of poured out of you and into me.
Speaker: And I feel kind of like so curious and ready to tackle everything in my life now.
Speaker: So thank you for the inspiration.
Speaker: Thank you for being open to it.
Speaker: I'm really grateful.
Speaker: Thank you for listening to the Positively Healthy Mom podcast because there's no manual for the hardest job in the world.
Speaker: Don't forget to subscribe and share with your friends.
