Episode 145: How Gratitude Can Change Your Life with Stef Tousignant
/This is a time of year where we are meant to reflect with gratitude on all that we have, and I just want to express how grateful I am for this beautiful community! And as a token of appreciation, every year for my birthday I put all of my courses & programs (and this year coaching) on sale for the week, STARTING NOW!
Check out my Birthday Sale here !
In keeping with the theme of gratitude, this week's episode digs into how consciously and intentionally cultivating gratitude can make parenting easier, lighter, and more enjoyable. To help me in the conversation on gratitude, I have brought in Stef Tousignant, a parenting expert and gratitude nerd.
Here's a summary of our conversation:
Gratitude, what it is & why cultivating it matters
How do you stay grateful despite being stressed or burnt out
How gratitude can help you become a better parent
If you wish to learn more from Stef, you can check out her works on parentingwithgratitude.com and visit her on Instagram @parent_differently .
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello everybody, this is Dr. Laura Froyen and on this week's episode of The Balanced Parent Podcast we're going to dive deep into gratitude and how we can use gratitude practices to help us become more conscious and fully healed parents. To help me with this conversation and I'm welcoming in a colleague who I'm so excited to meet and share with you today, Stef Tousignant. Did I get your name right? Yes?
Stef: Yes, totally.
Laura: Okay, Stef, welcome to The Balanced Parent, we're so happy you're here with us. Will you please tell me a little bit more about who you are and what you do?
Stef: Sure, so kind of you to have me. So I am Steph and I have two kids. They are 10 and 14 and I live in Northern California. I am actually a professional nanny and caregiver of 20 plus years. So I've been caring for children for a lot of my life, more than half. I also have the oldest of five kids and I come from a family who we actually owned child cares and so from a very young age, I was always around kids, even if they weren't my siblings, which they were generally, I was always caring for children. And I went through the process of becoming a certified teacher in Massachusetts when I was like 16, very early taking college classes and doing the child development, child psych. All the requirements that are necessary to be a good child care teacher.
And then I worked every single job, every single one of them. I've done school age, I've done preschool, I've done younger toddlers, older toddlers, babies, very new babies, everything. And it was a joy actually because I found out that I actually am a very empathetic caregiver. And that could be because I'm the oldest of five and I came from a very chaotic household and things were very stressful a lot of the time and I had to kind of walk carefully from time to time. But also I think I was just born that way too. And so caring for these children that weren't mine was always easy and I really enjoyed it.
And I came to discover that what really happened was I would care for people's children and then they would come to me and they would ask me all these questions. And even when I was a nanny, the parents were so interested in what I knew. And what I knew about child development, but also what I knew about their child and always so worried. And I'm sure you get this a lot where we're normalizing everything, right? Oh, that's normal. That's typical. That's totally okay. Oh, you gave your two year old ice cream this weekend and you feel bad, that's fine. Do you consider it a mistake? No. Okay then, you know, let's roll with it. And so I learned how to support parents and be a cheerleader.
Laura: All before you were even a parent yourself?
Stef: All before I was even a parent. This was like high school and college.
Laura: Yeah, I can feel a lot of folks, you know, listening thinking like where was a caregiver like this for me? When my babies were little, we were lucky enough to have some college nannies when my babies were little. And I had to do all the training for them. What a gift to be able to have some, a caregiver who knows so much about child development and can be that source of information and support.
Stef: It was. And I felt really like it wasn't even that big of a deal, like it was kind of like I wanted to help. And that's my, you know, that's been my goal, my whole life is to help parents. My mother was the mother of five children and she was always stressed. She had five child cares, she was running a business we had. I mean my, I'm the oldest and my youngest sibling is 10 years younger than me, so we had every age and stage in our house and it was just crazy. And so the need to help came at a young age, and so talking to parents and helping them realize that they were doing an amazing job already really was fulfilling for me. And it really made me feel like I was making a difference.
And so that was through college and then we moved to San Francisco, my husband and I. And I started nannying in San Francisco and I nanny for many years and about a couple of years into nannying, I had my first child. And as you said, I was one of those nannies that you don't want to lose. And so I got to bring my kids to work. And it was a beautiful experience because the children I typically cared for were single, like solo children and their parents were thinking about having another kid and they really wanted to like see how it would go, you know? And for me, I knew the benefits of my child being around other children growing up in childcare and so it was really great, but at the same time it was really, really apparent to me. The difference is in how I parented versus caregive.
Laura: Yeah, stuff I was gonna ask you about that because you know, so I was a longtime babysitter, loved kids. I did, you know, as a grad student, I did research on kids, love spending time with kids. and I was very surprised as I transitioned into motherhood, how different it felt to spend time with my own child. And I thought about this a lot about why it's so different? You know, because I thought, you know, I grew up always wanting to be a little mommy. Like, I mean there's pictures of me when I was three holding my one year old cousin because I was so obsessed with babies, you know? And then, I never expected in a million years that transition into motherhood would be hard for me. I always thought it would be easy and breezy that it would be natural. Was it the same for you?
Stef: Yes.
Laura: Yeah. Tell me about it.
Stef: It was a nightmare to be honest. I mean, they always tell you that that parenthood kind of makes you grow as a human and I didn't really understand that until yeah, I was, I had even a newborn and I was just like, no, I was supposed to know how to do this. I'm supposed to know.
Laura: It was a feel different about this. It was to be confident.
Stef: Oh my God. And it was just like all of that regular, like, I don't know for parents that don't have experience going into newborn hood must be like, wow, I know nothing. And this is like a mess. For me it was like, wow, I know everything and it's still a mess and now I feel so bad.
Laura: A failure.
Stef: I have this horrible mom guilt. I am like beating myself up every turn because I know better.
Laura: And knowing better, you know, we always hear that like once, you know better, you do better. But knowing better and doing better, like the knowing of the thing and the doing of the thing are totally separate processes right there. They're like, it's like a railroad track, right? Than, the knowing better is on one track and doing better is on another track and they don't necessarily always meet, you know? They're not, they're moving at different paces and…
Stef: And sometimes, the knowing better is actually really restrictive. It's sort of like, like the ??? what is right? It's sort of like, well, my baby should be sitting up. Like, I know, like I've seen other babies sit up at six months, right? That should be happening. And I'm like, why isn't it happening? And it's this funny thing where almost like when, you know more then it's like, you're like more worried.
Laura: Yeah, it restricts curiosity, right? So, if we are, you know, in that cultivating curiosity for your experience as a parent, for your experience and, like, witnessing your children is one of the most beautiful things you can do. Bringing that beginner's mind to your experience of parenthood and the experience of your child. But when, you know a lot that can really get in the way of beginner's mind, right?
Stef: Yes.
Laura: Yeah. I feel like nothing go ahead. So, no, I mean, I was just gonna say like, I feel like the other piece for me, I don't know if it's true for you, but in moving into parenthood, it was just so much easier to be fully present with another person's child because I was being paid for the most part to be present, fully present with a child. I wasn't being paid to do all the housework and managing the home, and my identity wasn't wrapped up in the outcome of this little being. My… Like, it was completely separate, right? I don't like that identity piece. I feel like it was really important for me. I don't know. What about for you?
Stef: Yeah, you know, you don't have the resentment of, wow, now I can't go to brunch, right?
Laura: Yeah.
Stef: Yeah. I mean..
Laura: There’s the days off…
Stef: Yeah. You get to go home at the end of the day and that really does help with maintaining your identity. And as a new parent, I was like, oh this is my entire world now and I'm gonna do it right because I was a type A. I was a perfectionist and I knew what I was doing and so I was gonna do it right. And so I went all in and…
Laura: How did it go for you?
Stef: Not well.
Laura: I can see on your face you're watching, can't see it, but I can see. It wasn't, I didn't go well.
Stef: I mean I definitely overdid it. And what's interesting is that reading all these like ages and stages books and all the child, like tips and tricks books out there really actually furthered my career, right? I had so much great information. In fact, like I started a blog on the side answering like parenting questions. But at home it just made me feel more like a failure because when they didn't work, I was like, what the heck is going on? Like I really like I'm trying, I'm trying and nothing's working.
Laura: And I should be able to do this.
Stef: Yes.
Laura: I would like to just pause for a moment and offer some compassion to younger stuff, just like, oh that new mom trying to figure it out. Having read all the things knowing all the things and it's still hard. Uh, just a little bit of compassion and just a little bit of like me too, like she's not alone. There's hundreds and thousands of us in that same position.
Stef: Yeah, it was really hard.
Laura: Yeah.
Stef: And so, I'm trying to decide where to go with the story, there's so many ways.
Laura: Most of the time in many of our stories, there's a point where it was enough is enough. The kind of that breaking point, the point where it stops now.
Stef: So I had been recruited to work at a startup in San Francisco because I have my child care experience. It was a startup that was helping moms open their own family, childcares in their home. And so in addition to nanny, in addition to parenting now, two children and I'm working this new job and I'm getting really, really stressed out. And if you caught my foreshadowing, it was very similar to how my mother used to live her life. But for me…
Laura: It's funny how we do that to ourselves, even when we recognize like it wasn't ideal, we still, it's what we knew and so it's what was comfortable as we seek, we seek what we know, right?
Stef: Me working in the childcare industries felt successful to me.
Laura: Yeah, that's what success looked like.
Stef: Yeah. That is, it's how they put us all through private school.
Laura: Yeah.
Stef: You know, my mom worked her butt off.
Laura: The hustle and the grind. Yeah.
Stef: Yes. And so I'm working for this startup and I'm doing all the things and let's be clear, I haven't had the conversation about the mental load or the invisible load with my husband yet. Okay, so the full load is on. And I'm not sleeping and my arm is starting to really hurt like really shooting pains down my left arm every day like throughout the day just shooting pains and I'm like this is really not normal for me. I don't know what's going on, I'm getting really really worried so I decided to splurge and get a masseuse. So I was like I'm gonna get a massage and I'm gonna see if that helps. And I was so blessed because the masseuse that I got was another mom and she worked on me and she was like Stef you need to breathe. And I'm like I am breathing and she was like no, no you are not breathing. You are tight and you are holding. You’re not breathing.
And I was like I don't know what you mean. Like I'm trying my best but I'm not, you know, I don't understand how to relax in a way you want me to and so at the end of the massage I felt a little bit better but not really. And she was like I really think that more than a massage, what you need is you need to go to yin yoga. And I was like interesting, what's that? And I was like I don't want to do exercise yoga and she was like no, no, no. Yin yoga is yoga in which you take a pose and you hold it for almost a minute and it's about almost meditating in that pose and I was like, oh, that's interesting. That feels more something I could do. And so I started going to yoga once a week and she was right. It was like this little like respite in the storm, I was just like, oh my God. I didn't even know that I could pause. Right? And breathe. Like..
And then on top of that, all of a sudden doing that, I realized all this, you know, crap underneath the surface was coming up and I was like, oh I'm sad and I'm really angry and I'm really resentful, and like all this stuff started coming up so much so that I was afraid of it. Like it was too much. And I was like, I need to get a therapist, I need to start talking about this. And this is when it's funny because it's like in the story, I always think that getting the masseuse was to choose myself moment. But really it was getting the therapist because that was the brave moment. That was the moment where I knew I was gonna have to walk into my vulnerability and had, and deal with stuff and it was scary. But I, the way I made it unscary was, I looked for a therapist that had a buddhist background because I thought if he, if that therapist meditates then at least we can start there. And I did and he was three blocks from my house.
Laura: It was meant to be.
Stef: It was totally meant to be. And meanwhile at home, I still had like, you know, a six and nine year old and it was just nuts. It was not good. It was yelling every day. I was full of …
Laura: You say you had the middle ages.
Stef: Yeah, at that point.
Laura: Yeah. My kids are nine and seven.
Stef: Okay, yeah.
Laura: You know, I'm in the thick of the middle and there's hardly anything out there. I feel like parents, for parents of the middles, there's so much for the littles and some for the teens in the middles.
Stef: Yeah, I find that’s true. I find that’s true for ten.
Laura: Yeah.Yeah.Ten. My nine year olds almost 10. And I feel like it just, they just get glossed over because they're not teens yet and they're not toddlers anymore.
Stef: It's true. It's a very different age…
Laura: But it still has its struggles.
Stef: Oh my God! Like me, if you decided to just grit your teeth and bear it through the first six years, then when you get to those middles, it's like, I don't know, I was like not well prepared to then have conversations that I needed to have with my children. I felt, like so much self doubt when I would sit down with them just to even talk about like, you know, it's time to like start brushing our teeth after lunch on the weekends. Something random. You know what I mean? And it's like they would just come at me because they like, because I was just, so this is gonna go badly. Right? So I totally get that. And so I worked with my therapist for a while and I also started to work on this side project that was journals. And these journals, I was like, I'm self reflecting now. I am a person who self reflects. And so I'm gonna make a journal in which I answer prompts and I self reflect, and I kind of, I added like, you know, three things I'm grateful for. Like it was just kind of a way for me to stay on track. Being a type A, I needed a system.
And so I started making these journals and like all my besties still have like there like data copies, you know, floating around their house. And I started to notice that I really enjoyed thinking about the things that made me grateful. Because it kind of took the spotlight off of the things that I had done wrong. And so every morning I would list a couple of things that I was grateful for and I was just like, oh yeah, oh yeah, I did that yesterday. I'm not like horrible. I'm not a bad mom. And it kind of reminded me that. And I did, I did that for a few years. I really kind of started adding to the list until I got to like 10 and I was doing 10 things I was grateful for every day. And then the pandemic hit. And I was like this first of all being type A, being someone who really values her alone time. All of a sudden my husband's home, my kids are home, everyone's in my space. I had gotten to a place where I was balanced, like balancing we should say right? And I was like, all right, I got, I've got my life together, I feel good and then they're all there.
Laura: I think probably, a lot of us had that experience…
Stef: Yes.
Laura: …of shifting and realigning that needed to happen.
Stef: Wow. And every day around 3 o’clock, I was crying on my bed. It was so overwhelming. It was just the worst. And I kept going because of course that's what you do as a mother you have to do. And I kept doing the journaling, and the journaling in that hard time was almost better. It was so interesting.
Laura: Can we talk for a second about, about gratitude? What like, what that word means to you? How do you define gratitude?
Stef: Sure. So when I look at gratitude, there's obviously, there's the traditional definition of the give and take right? The altruistic. Someone gave me something, I feel really good inside and I kind of want to give something back to you or the next person. I actually defined parental gratitude a little different. Because when you have kids, you're grateful just for them being there at all. Like just their presence alone.
Laura: Right. It's not a transactional relationship, right? So they don't aren't obligated in any way to give us anything back. I think a lot of us go into parenthood thinking like we're gonna get a lot out of the relationship with our kids and we are. we do, but we're not entitled to it. We're not entitled to their politeness or to their gratitude or appreciation, you know? But I think a lot of us feel entitled to those things. I think culture tells us to feel entitled to those things as parents. I do so much for you. You should be grateful to me. I don't spank you, my parents spank me, you should be grateful that I don't do that. I don't use time outs on you. You should be so grateful, you know, to me down the street, gets put in time out if you talk to me like that. You know like Yeah, yeah. I love, I love that. That it's kind of, there's no pressure for it to be transactional or bidirectional.
Stef: Not at all. I think that there is a level of awe that we add in and then there's this sacred connection that we have. And it's sort of like I'm not gonna feel bad about you in any way. Like this is… I made you, you're part of me. And so, and even if you haven't, it feels that way and so I really do look at it as mixed with awe.
Laura: Mixed with awe. Okay, so if you are a parent who's in that place of kind of parental burnout, feeling overwhelmed, feeling like they're doing everything wrong. Where do you start?
Stef: So I have a few different ways that I suggest to start. So the first one is obviously you make a list of 10 things every morning. But that's a lot.
Laura: Ten is a lot.
Stef: Not a toddler. We can talk about why do 10 in a minute, but if you have a toddler like and they jump on you in the morning and like that's your alarm, you're not gonna do a list of 10 things. So I say that you do the 3:33 pm alarm and that's when you just set the alarm on your phone for that time and then you list three good things. And you can do three things that are going well, three things that you're grateful for or you can do three things that make you a good mom. And I think we should do that during the podcast. So I think you should think about it, we can talk about it at the end and maybe the listener can think of three things that makes him a good mom too because once you do it, you'll see that your brain needs a little bit of exercise. And so it's really important to do that every day at least five days a week because it gets easier.
Laura: Yeah, let's talk about the brain because my audience loves getting out about the brain. So I mean one thing like you, you said like it needs exercise. So our brains are by definition efficient, they love to be efficient. They don't want to have to work extra hard for things. And so if we do things repeatedly, our brain will be like, okay, I guess we're doing this now and we'll just, they'll just keep doing it. What you look for is what you find and what you notice. They are driven by efficiency, they're beautiful and so helpful. The problem is that most of the time we have spent our lives training them to look for negative things. Look for, I mean if we're being positive about it, our brains, we kind of task our brain with, looking for opportunities to improve, right? If we're gonna frame that in a positive light, you know, and then our brains are scanning the environment of our daily lives for ways that we're failing right?
And what you're asking them folks to do with these 3:33 practice with where they write down three successes or three things that they're grateful for. Three things, you know, that they're doing well that day. You're asking them to refocus the brain and task the brain to be scanning. And if we give the job to the brain regularly. So the brain knows like, okay, every day I'm gonna have to find these things, it will start scanning your environment, your daily life for those things proactively. So that they're right there and ready, right? You know, I, I mean, I think the brain is flipping awesome. Yeah, all the time. They'll be looking to heal your brain in the background will be collecting them throughout the day because it knows it's going to be asked for it later, right? Brains are so cool.
Stef: And that's what I love about gratitude, is because what it's doing is a baby step before mindfulness, it's just noticing. So as parents were always so concerned about this idea of mindfulness, it sounds important, it sounds like well studied and it could be very beneficial. But I can't do that. I don't have time for that. I don't know how to incorporate into my life. And it's this very simple thing for me. It's like if you make a list and that's why I make a list of 10, it's because I sit down every morning and when I get to three I go, okay, well now what? I don't know. Now I have to. I force myself to look over my yesterday and I start at the beginning of the day and I work all the way through. And what's very interesting is I might have been focused really, really strongly on that one tantrum and target. But then I'll remember, oh my God, like my, my son came and he brought me a book and he sat down with me and we read it together and then he like said thank you. And can you imagine like forgetting that as a memory, you know what I mean? But then we always, we do.
Laura: We absolutely do.
Stef: How it works? And of course we feel like bad moms.
Laura: Right. Of course. Or even just like if we're so focused on this tantrum and target where we, our thoughts were focused on how are people perceiving me and what's happening? How do I get out of the situation? We don't even notice the grounding breath that we took before we abandon our cart and calmly scooped our kid up. You know, we don't even give ourselves credit for that. Like that intention to touch your child with soft hands that we did, right.? All we remember is wrestling them into their cursi, you know? Yeah, we don't give ourselves any credit for those moments. It's just like those little micro moments that are evidence of change and growth.
Stef: Yes. And that's why I always say that if you have a very like committed practice of gratitude, mom guilt becomes a lie. So I don't believe my mom guilt anymore because it's not true. Because I am a good mom. Even if my, even if I say to my husband tonight, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna read a book, can you please put the kids to bed? In the past in those very beginning years when it was just crazy, I would have felt so guilty for missing their bedtime for not being there for that moment. You know when they asked for me or what have you, I would have ended up saying forget it. I'm gonna put my book down, I'm gonna go in there and we'll do a family one, you know, a family bedtime. And that's cute and fine. But the feeling of guilt that is motivating me to go do that is not fine. That's not helping me in anyway.
Laura: And that’s not the energy you want to bring to your kids either.
Stef: No.
Laura: Or the motherhood you want to model for them.
Stef: Modeling. Exactly. And so now when I sit down with that book and my husband's putting my kids to bed and I hear her, she doesn't go away. Mom guilt, she doesn't go, she's there. I acknowledge it and I say I see you and I understand what you're trying to do, but it's not true. And you know why it's not true because I made my list today and I know I'm a good mom. and taking a break doesn't make me a bad mom and asking for help doesn't make me a bad mom. And so what you're saying to me is not true. It's a lie.
Laura: I love how, like, compassionate and assuming the best of that part that you are in my, one of my programs that I run all parenting from within, I teach about something called Internal Family Systems. Have you heard of that phrase? That type of, It's an approach to therapy but you can easily do it with yourself. And it's a lot about stepping into self leadership, understanding that all of the parts of us, the mom guilt part have a story, have a background and have good intentions for us. And so I love that you were talking that you're talking to your parts. It's so beautiful. What a beautiful practice acknowledging, Hey, I see you, I understand you are trying and the only way you know how to help me and you can trust me to be your leader. You can, I've got you right here. I know you're afraid. I know you're worried because I know motherhood is so important to us and I'm actually in taking this time for myself, I'm actually being quite a good mother right now.
You know, you got ideas about what a good mother does that weren't true. You learned what it takes to be a good mother, watching our family growing up and I want to be a good mother in a different way. You know? Just so much compassion and love. I think I feel like I, I don't know about you, but I see so many things out on like Tiktok and instagram where people talk pretty harshly to their inner critics pretty, like pretty harshly to those negative voices in our heads. And I just think it's counterproductive. I think we have to meet those critical parts with so much grace and compassion. Understanding they're doing the very best they know how. They're trying to enact change and the best way that they can. You know?
Stef: And a lot of the times they're just protectors.
Laura: They're just protectors. They're just trying to figure out how can we keep this system safe. How can we keep this, this person loved and connected and okay. Yeah.
Stef: And that's what the negativity bias does for us too. Right? That needing to always learn from our mistakes and really keeping them front and center. And so we train our brain to notice the good by doing these kind of everyday practices and picking what works for you is going to be the best method because you're gonna stick with it. And so I do the list in the morning. Maybe someone will do the 3:33 in the afternoon. Another one that we do as a family is we list three things we're grateful for every morning. And so you can do that with a toddler, you can ask them and you can write it on a white board or a little post it you put on the wall. My kids do it independently at this point. It's part of their morning list. And then they just, they write their three pieces of gratitude and I do request no repeat. Because I like to make it a little hard for them. But they do it, they do it every week and I don't criticize it. I don't really look, you know, I look at it from time to time, but I don't really mind if they are silly about it. Sometimes they're eight socks. You know, it's not the point, the point vocabulary of gratitude in our life.
Laura: And the brain practice.
Stef: Yes, in the brain.
Laura: We have a gratitude journal that we do at dinner time that I've so it's just like it's a perpetual journal. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't have any dates on it and so, and it's, you know, it's nice and thick and we don't do it every night, you know, because life happens. And we've never required any kid to participate because there's, I have two spirited kids who like the more you want them to do something, the less likely they are to do it, you know, and so we have to be unattached to the outcome sometimes. Sometimes it's just me and my husband participating in it, but we've kept it since I was pregnant with my second and they're, you know, they're seven and nine, almost 10 now. And so we have their whole childhood worth of gratitude in like one little book.
And so I mean like we have like my youngest when she was six months old signing that she was grateful for water, you know, like doing the, like the water sign. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I just like, and it's just sometimes I just sit down and read in. So normally when we get it out and do it, we also go back to that date in the previous years and read. you know, like when my oldest was potty training, she was grateful for poop, like pooping in the potty pretty much every day, you know, a big fixture in her life at that point in time. It's just, it's I don't know, it's so lovely and I know as I say this and described this practice and as you were describing your practice with your, your teen and preteen because your your son is for your oldest is 14. I don't know if it's their son or daughter. Yeah, both boys.
I know that somebody will be listening and be like, they will take this on as this is the right way to do things. This is the good way to do things. And it will be another thing that if they aren't doing it, that means they're failing and and I just want to just acknowledge that that process might be happening in the ears and in the heads of some of our listeners right now as they're hearing this. And that at this moment in time we can like put a hand on our hearts and be kind to ourselves and actively choose something different. Like we're not gonna take on this gratitude practice as another thing that we're gonna fail at, right? So how do you do that? Like how do you take on some practice that's meant to be good for you and not bring it into that kind of negative way of, if I don't do what I failed. Do you know what I mean? How do you do that?
Stef: Because I have had those times where I stopped doing it and I felt with failure and then I was like, I had to go back and lean on my intention. So everything and it's kind of funny that we skipped over it, but it's really in my life story where everything is dependent on your intention or your why. and for the longest time my why was to be a perfect parent, right? To be that parent that I was to other kids. And then I softened it a little bit and I just wanted to be a better parent. And so I lived as being a better parent for a while and it was okay, but it got me to these same places where it was like, well, if I wasn't being a better parent than I was being a bad parent, I was worst parent, not good enough either way, I was not good enough.
Laura: It is still grounded and solves judgment.
Stef: Yes, so when I swapped my intention from being a better parent to being a happier human, everything changed. Because it was focused, I took the focus off my kids. Put the focus on me and then I said, Stef, what makes you happy? Then I said, wait, why am I not doing that? Right? So it's sort of like, if gratitude makes you happy, you're gonna keep doing it, right? If you like to do journaling in the morning that you're gonna keep doing it, it's not really about the product, it's more about the process, you really have to find the thing that works for you, I was doing these like high intensity workouts for exercise forever and I hated them. And then I wrote one day, I was like, I'm gonna write my ideal day, I think my therapist asked me to do it. And my ideal day started with walking and it was like wait a minute walking, so I started walking and I love it, I love it. I look forward to it. And I don't need to worry about if I'm doing it well or not well or you know, it's the intrinsic motivation of just feeling good that keeps me coming back. And typically when we do gratitude and I'm sure this is the case for you too. At around two weeks we start really do we start feeling the effects and it feels good.
Laura: Yeah,
Stef: It feels really good. Yeah. And I actually had the double effect where my husband said something's different. And I was like excellent! Alright, it was good to me and like people are noticing that I'm like just happier. That's why I'm always talking about gratitude because I feel like it's the fastest and simplest way for parents to feel better about themselves.
Laura: Yeah. You know, it's so funny, I feel like, you know, I feel like there is a fast and simple way for everybody and for some folks that will be gratitude. For me, like my starting point was finding self compassion, you know? And really practicing that, you know, in a way that was deeply painful at first, because there was a lot of disbelief that I was worthy of it and like moving through that, that like those were the like self compassion is the thing that saved parent, like motherhood for me, you know?
And it sounds like gratitude was the thing for you, and I feel like we're all just called to find that thing, you know? And here we are like offering you know, these opportunities to discover what it is and to try on gratitude. And that's the thing for folks who are listening great and if it's not just confidence and trust, knowing that it's out there for you. And it's okay that it's okay that a listener might not resonate with compassion or not resonate with gratitude, but just the knowledge that it's there for, there's something there for them. That a regular practice, a regular moment that allows them to see themselves more clearly.
Stef: Yeah, Self-reflection is really like, whoa, eye opening sometimes.
Laura: Right. In whatever form it takes too, you know? Yeah, I love that. Okay, well Stef, I would love to have my folks know where they can, can find you and learn more from you, would you share?
Stef: Of course. So I have an awesome opportunity or just you know, email list on my website and it's 12 weeks of gratitude. And each email you get has a different skill, so empathy, creativity, curiosity and then it has a gratitude practice that you do that week with it. And I find that 12 weeks seems like a lot. But there are at least 60% of people still opening that email at 12 weeks. So those moms really are committed to the process because for them the process is working and so it's really a nice thing to see. And so I would encourage people just to go to parentdifferently.com and just sign up for the 90 day gratitude challenge. That's what I call it. And then of course you can find me on Instagram and Tiktok with Parent Differently.
Laura: Parent differently and listeners, you heard it here first. She's starting a new podcast too. That's coming out soon at the time of recording. So by the time this comes out it will already be live. Right? So Parenting Differently with Gratitude is the name of the podcast. Yay! Okay. Welcome to the podcasting world war. So grateful to have you with us.
Stef: Yeah, it's been a great journey. I actually really love it.
Laura: Yeah, it's podcasting is so much fun. Alright, well Stef, thank you so much for sharing with us. We really, we really appreciate what you're putting out into the world and that you're sharing your story and your experiences so that we can all benefit. Thank you.
Stef: All right, thank you.
Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review that really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from.
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All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this!