Transcript
Speaker: Hey moms, it's Laura Olinger.
Speaker: Welcome to the Positively Healthy Mom podcast.
Speaker: This episode is part two of my conversation with Jodi Rae Solomon, a life coach and trainer for Robbins Research International.
Speaker: OK, so before we switch gears into our next topic, I did want to hit on one more point about the six human needs relating to moms specifically in themselves.
Speaker: And so that might be where we transition into what we're going to talk about next.
Speaker: But, you know, what I have found in, you know, because I coach moms as well, not just teenagers, I coach moms.
Speaker: And moms are frustrated, they're tired, they're stressed, they're overwhelmed, they're all these things, right?
Speaker: And a lot of times one of the biggest ones is they don't feel appreciated or they don't feel like their contribution to their family is being noticed.
Speaker: And so what do you say to, now that we've like explained what these six human needs are, how do you feel like a mom can be
Speaker: um, get those needs met that she is needing, but without necessarily going to the members of the family, like without saying, Hey, teenage son, I'm really annoyed that you didn't just say thank you because I, uh, made your breakfast at 6am so you could get to football on time.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Like, how do you, how do you, um, fulfill yourself with those needs without being a burden on your family member?
Speaker: Or do you be a burden on your family member?
Speaker: Just curious about your thoughts about that.
Speaker: Great question.
Speaker: First and foremost, it's understanding and recognizing what your personal top human needs are.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Because that's your driving force.
Speaker: And so if you recognize in yourself, like right now, I'm really needing, you know, feedback from my child for saying thank you for making breakfast because I need to feel significant.
Speaker: That's a different driving force than if I need my child to say that because I need to feel love and connection.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: So understanding what your human needs are can help you also then understand why am I seeking this?
Speaker: Because once I understand why I'm seeking something based on what my human needs are, then I can shift or pivot.
Speaker: Either I, okay, if I'm looking for this feedback because I have a need for significance, then perhaps...
Speaker: I get to the opportunity to shift my mindset into realizing that my significance comes from within, not from without.
Speaker: Or listing off all the other places or people in my life that have brought me a sense of significance who were not in the terrible teenage years.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But if my driving force is love and connection, then I can reframe that to understand that it doesn't matter what somebody else gives me.
Speaker: It's what I give.
Speaker: Because again, love is a gift that you give.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It is not something that you get.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So understanding what those your personal top human needs are is really key to understanding why it is you want the things you do and how to reframe it so that you can feel like those are getting filled up within them.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I'm so glad you talked about that.
Speaker: Cause I do find a lot of moms just are carrying this kind of resentment toward their families for all the things that they do and kind of like towards their spouses or whoever else.
Speaker: And you know, it's because it's, it's, it's like, they're like getting those needs met, but in, in maybe a negative way or in the wrong way, or they're not prioritizing maybe a healthier need per se within the context.
Speaker: So I'm so glad you explained that so well.
Speaker: Okay, so now I would love to switch gears over into your specialty.
Speaker: So you are a coach to women.
Speaker: And so, you know, I know that you specialize in a lot of like inner child work, inner critic work.
Speaker: So what is kind of like the best way you can explain that to the moms listening?
Speaker: And how can you help them?
Speaker: Like, what advice can you give them today?
Speaker: So we all have a voice in our head and that voice is always talking to us 24 seven, unless you're meditating and you've learned how to, you know, shut the quiet or quiet the voice down.
Speaker: Um, the thing is, is the voice talks in both positive and negative.
Speaker: However,
Speaker: most people are hardwired to start listening to the negative side.
Speaker: And the reason is because we have a 2 million year old brain that was hardwired and designed to keep us safe.
Speaker: And so if, you know, we're walking down the path and there's a tar pit in front of us, our inner critic will stand up and start screaming, oh my God, you got to stop because you're going to fall in the tar pit and die.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And so that causes us to stop up short.
Speaker: It immediately trains that voice in our head to realize, okay, I got the outcome.
Speaker: And so I managed to get this person to stop what they were doing and to pivot and save our lives.
Speaker: And we did it in a negative way.
Speaker: So that is the way we're going to repeat for the rest of her life.
Speaker: And that might work when we're five.
Speaker: It doesn't really work when we're, you know, 30, 40, 50, 60, because if it did, let me just tell you, we would all be reaching our dreams, hitting our goals and millionaires.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because we all have that inner critic telling us what's wrong all day long.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: And so I actually support women to understand where that voice originated from.
Speaker: What is the message underneath the message that that voice is really saying to you?
Speaker: And then I help them to learn to, for lack of a better analogy, change the radio station so that we can start listening to the inner cheerleader or the side that is giving us the positive feedback so that we can drive forward.
Speaker: Now, when we look at what is the message underneath the message, when our inner critic is saying, oh, my gosh, you know, you're so fat.
Speaker: Laura, what do you think the message underneath that message might be?
Speaker: It would be I'm not good enough.
Speaker: I'm not worthy.
Speaker: I'm not lovable.
Speaker: Things like that.
Speaker: What if I told you what your inner critic is actually saying to you?
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: Are you ready for this?
Speaker: I am ready.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Cause not a lot of people understand this.
Speaker: Are you really ready?
Speaker: I'm very ready for it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: What your inner critic is really telling you is that I realized that you have a goal of health and a value of health.
Speaker: You are not at the standard that you have set for yourself.
Speaker: And I want to see you hit that standard.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: However, our inner critic doesn't know how to say that to us.
Speaker: So instead it says you're fat.
Speaker: Holy cow.
Speaker: This is blowing my mind.
Speaker: Like, I think that's so cool.
Speaker: Like it's like, it's literally turning a negative voice into a positive voice.
Speaker: Like you just said, your inner cheerleader.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: So when we understand what the message underneath the message is, then we're able to empower our inner cheerleader.
Speaker: And that helps us get us to our goals.
Speaker: Now, another thing that I really help people to do is it's called, you know, or referred to as inner child healing.
Speaker: But I really go back with people and discover, like, where did that inner critic start from?
Speaker: When was she born?
Speaker: What is the primary belief system that she's created that is actually holding us back?
Speaker: Because we can say all the positive things we want all day long.
Speaker: But if we have a primary belief system that says we're not good enough or I don't deserve this or whatever it might say, it doesn't matter how much we incantate, we can only go so far.
Speaker: But when we go back and we look at what is our primary belief system, now we can start to debunk that and ask, is that really true?
Speaker: What would my life look like if that belief were not in existence?
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Do you find that this always comes from your parents, that inner belief system from your childhood, or is it from other places as well?
Speaker: It's from other places as well.
Speaker: It depends on what your childhood was like.
Speaker: Maybe those belief systems happened as a result of you modeling your parents.
Speaker: Maybe those belief systems came from a caregiver that you had or a primary person in your life.
Speaker: Maybe some of those belief systems were then supported by a peer group that you had.
Speaker: But the reality is that's just a support.
Speaker: It's very rare that that peer group is going to actually create the system.
Speaker: It's the, that belief system is usually already in place and it's a result of some trauma and what we perceive as a trauma that happened in our childhood that does not blame a parent.
Speaker: So if you're a mom thinking, Oh my God, I screwed my kids up.
Speaker: Just go ahead and release yourself from that blame because, uh, the reality is you have no control over what your child perceives as a trauma.
Speaker: Mm.
Speaker: So your child might believe that it waited 10 minutes in its crib for you to come in and pick it up and, you know, take it out to socialize.
Speaker: And you thought you were being a great parent, but that was a trauma to your child.
Speaker: You have no control over that.
Speaker: Or maybe you just said something in passing to your spouse or to a family member and your child overheard it and created a story about it.
Speaker: You have no control of that.
Speaker: It doesn't mean you are a bad parent.
Speaker: So I am giving each one of you permission to release yourself from the agony and pain of blaming yourself for your child's development there.
Speaker: I love that totally because that is what kind of was forming in me, you know,
Speaker: emotionally, because that's what I find every mom I ever talked to, we, we have some form of guilt and blame on ourselves at all times about our kids.
Speaker: Like it's very hard to find a mom who feels like they've done everything perfect.
Speaker: And that's the thing.
Speaker: There is no such thing as perfect, but if they have a hard time kind of accepting their mom mistakes or forgiving their own mom mistakes.
Speaker: So, um, that would be a perfect way to, you
Speaker: you know, talk to them about it, which would be, well, you have no control over what, how your child interpreted, you know, that incident or that event or those words, right?
Speaker: Whatever you said.
Speaker: So would there be any other advice that you could give moms to kind of release themselves from that guilt and shame or whatever the feeling that they are having about their, you know, because moms, we all screw up, right?
Speaker: We all do it.
Speaker: And we, some of us might do it,
Speaker: you know, much worse, not as much, you know, depending on kind of the models that we, how we were parents and all that stuff, but we don't need to go into that.
Speaker: So like, what would you say to a mom right now today?
Speaker: First and foremost, if you are feeling those feelings of guilt or shame, ask yourself where else do those feelings show up from?
Speaker: What other situations, where do those feelings originate from?
Speaker: Because I'm pretty sure that this isn't the first time you felt it.
Speaker: It's not the first situation.
Speaker: You've had other situations in your past where you've also felt that.
Speaker: So there's an originating belief there.
Speaker: And when we look at what is our originating belief about that, and then we can start to ask ourselves these questions like, is that true?
Speaker: How do I know that's true?
Speaker: What would my life look like if I didn't have that belief?
Speaker: But the second thing that I found for myself was the most crucial was just to remember two things.
Speaker: First, I did the best I could with the tools I had available at the time.
Speaker: And the second was that I was exactly the type of parent, exactly the person I needed to be in order for my child's soul to get what they needed on their journey in growth.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: So that releases me from any guilt or shame because if I didn't provide those opportunities with my mistakes, my child wouldn't then at a later date have an opportunity to grow into an even better human.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I, so letting go of those things, but then how do you add in the positive?
Speaker: So adding in the self-love and the self-acceptance, like how do you, it's kind of like getting rid of the negatives or it's not getting ready, but it's more like releasing, you know, in my word, you might have a better word for it.
Speaker: And then kind of like adopting or accepting a new mindset.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like what would, what would you say about that?
Speaker: So going back to the two needs of the soul, which are growth and contribution.
Speaker: And when we look at growth, if you're not growing, you're dying.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So if I handed you a plant and I said, you know what?
Speaker: I'm going to be gone for two weeks.
Speaker: When I get back, I want this plant to be alive.
Speaker: What would you do?
Speaker: I'd take care of it, water it, put it in the sun, whatever it needed.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And some people might say, okay, well, I suck at taking care of plants, so I'm going to take a picture of it.
Speaker: That way you have a picture of it when you get back because it's probably not going to be in such great condition.
Speaker: Other people might run out to the store and get a brand new plant to replace it with because they killed it, whatever it was.
Speaker: Other people might hand back the plant and the plant is blooming even bigger.
Speaker: So the reality is that if you're not growing, you're dying.
Speaker: I don't want my plant back in the same condition that I got it.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: I wanted to have some type of growth, that growth I may or may not be able to see, but there's going to be growth.
Speaker: And so when we think about that, like, am I growing as a mom?
Speaker: Am I doing the things every day to make me better?
Speaker: And as long as I'm making me better, I cannot help but to make my child better because they are watching me and I'm their biggest role model.
Speaker: So that I feel like is probably, um,
Speaker: one of the most under, I don't know if it's valued or under misunderstood kind of concepts or ideas, because I see, you know, lots of moms really at all ages and stages, but I find this a lot in like the elementary moms or the preschool moms.
Speaker: So, you know, my youngest is in fifth grade, so I'm still in elementary school.
Speaker: I've got middle school or I've got high school.
Speaker: So I, you know, I've seen them all and I've seen them all at different stages.
Speaker: And
Speaker: It's like this preschool and elementary school mom.
Speaker: It's like this feeling of like almost like servitude to our kids.
Speaker: Like I need to be the room mom and I need to have this type of birthday party with this cake and I need to have this play date and that Pinterest little party favors need to be like this and bubble.
Speaker: And it's like, whoa, you know, like it's funny because then, you know, you get to the high school mom stage and everybody's like, they're fine.
Speaker: We're just going to, you know, we'll show up to their games.
Speaker: They're good.
Speaker: You know, we don't like have that like indentured servant situation going on anymore.
Speaker: And so, you know, I just feel like it is doing our kids a disservice when we are kind of role modeling that because we're lacking that like self-love, the self-care, the nurturing, that would be the perfect thing to show our kids.
Speaker: So, you know, how like would you help a mom just like,
Speaker: you know, let go.
Speaker: It's almost this like anxious attachment it feels.
Speaker: And maybe we go back to the needs, like maybe her need is significance.
Speaker: Is that what you would say?
Speaker: I would totally say that, Laura.
Speaker: That's exactly where I would head with this is, is it goes back to what is our human need?
Speaker: What is the driving force?
Speaker: And, you know, because so many moms, especially at that stage of rearing children,
Speaker: looking to be the perfect mom and we're now in a comparison fishbowl of social media so I have to compare myself to Susie's mom over there and see who's better as if there's actually a better and what does better look like and that brings me to the point of what kind of mom do you really want to be and
Speaker: what is the experience that you want your child to have?
Speaker: Because if you want your child to have the experience of mom being everything to everyone,
Speaker: you can do that and run yourself ragged.
Speaker: And then you'll be, you know, by the time they're out of the house and you're an empty nester, you will have forgotten who you are.
Speaker: And then by the way, you'll be coming to me because I can help you with that.
Speaker: Or, or you can start helping yourself now.
Speaker: And just remember that, you know what, as much as I want to be the perfect mom, the super mom,
Speaker: Did my kid have a great experience today?
Speaker: Did my kid feel loved?
Speaker: Did my kid feel important?
Speaker: Did I provide for my kids' human needs?
Speaker: Did I provide for their materials?
Speaker: And if those boxes are all ticked, it doesn't matter whether you were room mom or you brought cupcakes that were homemade or cupcakes that were store-bought.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Because your child is going to look back and remember, did mom show up with love and care or did mom show up frantic and biting my head off because she was stressed?
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: Um, that's so awesome.
Speaker: And I have found that I've been able to kind of release myself from that comparison trap that mom trap, because I tell myself that nobody knows what it's like in my household, except for my kids.
Speaker: So I really, you know,
Speaker: this is not a bragging moment, but it's a moment of pride in myself that I feel like I provide a really nice atmosphere.
Speaker: It's a loving atmosphere, it's caring, it's calm, it's relaxed.
Speaker: Like it's very laid back and there's not a lot of like pressure or yelling or anxiety or anything like that.
Speaker: There's never a hurry up, let's go.
Speaker: There's not that because I've worked to become just like calm and present.
Speaker: And anytime we do face a snag, I let it roll off my back.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: And we solve for the future if there is an issue.
Speaker: So it sounds to me like you shifted a certainty need to an uncertainty need.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm just bringing that calmness.
Speaker: You've brought more uncertainty in and let go of the need for certainty.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is so crazy.
Speaker: You're right.
Speaker: Because when the kids were younger, you know, it's exhausting getting them buckled in their car seats and this and that.
Speaker: And I think there's something about that that you really need certainty.
Speaker: And maybe it's because the kids temperaments at that age are so unhappable.
Speaker: uncertain and volatile.
Speaker: And so as the older they get, I'm more able to be like, okay, they're self-sufficient and you can kind of let go a little bit.
Speaker: Do you, do you think that's true?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Okay, so we are about to run out of time.
Speaker: And before we do that, is there any, actually, I did want to guide our audience to, I created a little quiz online for anyone who wants to try to figure out a little bit more about their human needs.
Speaker: So if you go to positivelyhealthy.com slash human needs, you will find that assessment there.
Speaker: And it's just a free gift to the audience to just kind of help themselves, you know, figure out and get a little bit more connected and familiar with their human needs.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So last words, Jodi, what would be your last kind of bit of tidbit advice for the moms today?
Speaker: I would actually just say, love yourself because the more you pour into you, the more you have to pour into others.
Speaker: So take time for you.
Speaker: And how, you know, you just said take time.
Speaker: What would be the last bit of advice about how you do that?
Speaker: Because that's what I found.
Speaker: I know you can't put it in that quick, but how do you do that, right?
Speaker: Some moms don't know how to do that.
Speaker: Close the bathroom door.
Speaker: Take a five-minute time out.
Speaker: Go for a walk around the neighborhood.
Speaker: Take a hot bath.
Speaker: You know, do something that's just for you to fill your cup up at some point.
Speaker: or just go put on a nice pair of bra and panties that you feel like a woman again, instead of just a mom and allow that to fill your cup.
Speaker: That's beautiful.
Speaker: Okay, Jodi, how can people find you after today?
Speaker: So you can visit my website at www.soulamazing.com and find out more about me, my programs.
Speaker: I'm launching a brand new weight loss program because I've lost like 105 pounds in the last year, all because of mindset.
Speaker: And so I would love to support people on that journey as well.
Speaker: Or you can find me on Facebook.
Speaker: I have an amazing group called Empower Your Inner Cheerleader.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: And we'll put the links in Facebook after this so that everybody can have something clickable.
Speaker: That's perfect.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, this about wraps it up.
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.
