Moms often find themselves stuck in a cycle of negative thinking. With all of life’s demands it’s pretty easy to become overwhelmed and begin looking negatively at your circumstances. Unfortunately, negative thinking doesn’t just impact you personally, it can cause your entire family to suffer. If you feel stuck in a cycle of negative thinking, this episode is for you…
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
This Episode Discusses:
Negative thought loops
Martyr syndrome
Celebrating your wins
How to talk about yourself in front of your kids
Empathy and self awareness
How to get out of a cycle of negative thinking
DON’T HAVE TIME TO LISTEN? HERE’S THE EPISODE ALL TYPED OUT:
My guest today is Jessie Larson from The Positively You Podcast. If you find yourself stuck in a negative mindset this episode is going to give you the steps to break out of that for good.
Lets face it…Being a homeschooling mom who also works from home can be pure chaos! As you’ve probably already noticed, despite the occasional laugh track, life isn’t a sitcom and everyday struggles are rarely resolved in 30 minutes with commercial breaks to keep your sanity in check so the right strategies and mindset are vital for becoming more productive and less overwhelmed with all the things life throws at us. Enter the Simply Freeing Podcast…Episodes for the highly passionate, busy work at home, homeschooling mama ready to break away from cultural norms and raise life long learners. So let kick stress to the curb, throw chaos out the door and order in some peace and simplicity…with a cup of coffee, or 3.
I want to talk about negative thought loops and just having a negative mindset in general. I know that is a common struggle that I've had and depending on how you were raised a lot of us have had these this negativity that has surrounded us for so long and when you come to a place where you realize that has become who you are and your thoughts are constantly negative, I'd love for you to share some tips to help us get out of that mindset but before we do that, I want to hear about your story and share a little bit about what you do.
Thank you so much for having me on! I'm Jessie. I also host a podcast. It's called The Positively You Podcast so pop on over there whenever you want but as far as me, mindset is my big thing. I grew up loving personal development which is so nerdy for like a little kid but I really did. I liked understanding my brain a little bit but I also grew up kind of with the mentality of like not a victim mentality but a little bit of like a martyr, especially as a mom. I think a lot of us can relate to that where like we push off our needs to sacrifice for our family or sacrifice to our kids and I think that can really contribute to a negative mindset and if that's something that you've grown up with it can be really, really hard to break that cycle and that's something that I'm passionate about…helping women and moms step into a more positive mindset, not only for themselves but for their family and for their kids as well because that mindset it really is like the foundation for everything. The way you show up to any situation in life your mindset is either going to put you steps ahead or steps behind and so that's where I come in and I'm super super passionate about helping you break out of that negative thought pattern and into something that is more empowering and helpful for you and for your family
I frequently get stuck in a “it's just easier for me to do everything” and every time that I say “Oh well just forget it. It's fine. I'll just do it myself.” It doesn't actually help the situation at all. It doesn't help me and it doesn't help my children either to see that.
In the moment it might because you get the thing done that you need to do or whatever but it's like confirmation bias 'cause you're like, see, I am the martyr. See, I am the one that has to do everything and then you're just kicking the can down the road too because this situation is going to keep coming up. Your kids are going to have to learn how to do these kinds of things. They're not always going to have you and so it's such an interesting thing of like especially when we lean into like that, I'm the mom. I do everything. And then you start having issues with like resentment. Whether or not that actually like rises to the surface or if it's just something that's like boiling under but then your mind will look for those like little gems of proof of like see so they always do this and I'm always the one that has to end up picking up or doing these things and like it's that confirmation that's like a negative confirmation and we wanna switch that into a positive confirmation and that it takes work for sure.
If you know that you're stuck in these negative thought loops what would be your best recommendation to start getting out of that slowly?
Well first I would say, acknowledging that it's normal to be like that. Our brains first of all are programed to survive and in doing that from like going way back right? We would look for negative things and so our brains are programmed to do that from like a survival point so it's not like bad and I also think whenever you're wanting to change or improve something about yourself it comes with a huge dose of self-compassion and grace so those two things first. We're not gonna shame our way into change at all. We're gonna love our way into it so that would be my #1 thing.
And #2 is just becoming aware and there's a couple ways that you can do that. I like to go on walks. I call them walk and talks. I go either with like a best friend or I'll go with my husband and that helps me really get out of like what I'm doing, get me moving and then I can really like process and think. We'll ask ourselves questions you know? How was your day? How did you show up to this? What did you think? And you just kind of become more aware. Where I can say like I had a really stressful day today. I'm like I just snapped. I did all of this. No one wanted to help and then I can kind of like on the walk be aware and be like OK was it really that or like am I making up a a bigger story in my mind? And if it is really that like what can I do to change? So just that awareness where you have some sort of a practice doesn't have to be a daily practice but something that you do whether it's journaling, going on a walk, when you're in the shower and you can decompress and like have all of your thoughts there you know? That's a good one for us moms is that shower time, driving in the car you know?
Turn off like the music and the noise and just kind of like be with your thoughts a little bit and be able to think and notice…Are my thoughts going immediately negative? Are they neutral or are they positive? And none of those are like good or bad. I think it's just becoming aware of like where your starting point is and where your tendency kind of naturally is like glass half full kind of person, glass half empty. And you know there's a practice that like a lot of families do. I'm sure you've heard of this like where you'll ask your kids like what was your day like? There's like all these different sayings for it. Like what was your cherry and what was your pit for the day right? Or like what was your happy? What was your sad? And I think that's like cute and fun to do with our kids but I think it's actually a really good practice to do with ourselves too 'cause it just gets us thinking and asking ourselves really good questions and just becoming more aware.
When we do sit down for dinner, we actually do that. It’s a new thing we've implemented and it's good from a parent perspective to see which things your child comes up with you know? So it's been really good to get to know them in that way. I also like that you're not talking about the negative thoughts as a negative thing. It's just here's where you are and here's where you have to go and that alone kind of shifts my thinking because I think of negative thought loops as just being really bad and you have to get out of that as fast as possible you know because it can really just bring you down and make you kind of spiral out of control.
Absolutely.
It's not the end of the world. And I think that's where a lot of anxiety and depression comes from because that's what ends up happening to so many women when they get stuck in that cycle. They end up just feeling depressed because they give up. Like there's no way that I can get out of this. This is just too heavy. This is too hard so to show some empathy for yourself and show love to yourself and find ways to get out of that by giving yourself a bit of free time per day. I know that's huge for me. I'm constantly running upstairs. My kids follow me immediately and literally every single time I go to my room and close the door, the door opens and I I'm like please…I need 5 minutes. Just five minutes alone and they know when I get like that that they need to like go away so and they're like well what is 5 minutes? How many Peppa pigs is that? They know already the answer. They just have to like get clarification that I'm going to be back. I just need a couple of minutes to decompress.
I get it we're moms like sometimes it's not like you're gonna have an hour of zen time that you can just process through everything but but yeah I think honestly the biggest thing is that self compassion component and kind of being able to view everything as like data. Like it's not good or bad like don't attach like a worth or value to like the thoughts that you're having. When you're trying to just kind of like figure out where your starting point is, a way that I like to think about it is like almost like try to like step outside myself and like view myself as like separate if that makes sense? Where I can be like OK this is just data that I'm collecting and I can say OK there's a couple negative thoughts here. This is what's happening. These are the scenarios and it's just gathering information so that in the future I can make better decisions and when I’m able to take that like emotion out of it that allows me to be more compassionate to myself because it's not this like you're a bad person kind of thing that I’m putting on to myself so self compassion, all the way.
Is there a step after that? After you're becoming more aware and you're collecting all this data is there anything else that you can do to continue? Just giving yourself that awareness time can change a lot.
Absolutely! Yeah. I think I'm really big on like baby steps and building on to that so once you've got that data you'll just become more and more comfortable and you'll recognize you won't have to like take a second to like at the end of your day decompress and be like OK well how did the day go? How did I react here? What was this? You'll be able to do it more in the moment and kind of catch yourself the more practice that you do. And then once you're there and you have those thoughts, I like to be able to reinforce more of the wins and more of the positivity. So celebrating your wins is huge to just bringing in more of that positivity. And I don't care like how small the win is. Like I made my bed today. Walk out and tell your kids be like look at how good that bed looks. I made that today. Like I'm not even kidding. That sounds ridiculous or like I was actually early to pick up my kids from school. Like whatever. And I know yours is more homeschooling but like anything. Just like these little wins where you're just slowly building yourself up your kids need to see you celebrating yourself and celebrating your wins because that's modeling to them how they can do that as they grow up too.
You know we talked about seeing our parents or growing up and feeling like martyrs or feeling like you know victim like things always happen to me or all of these things and if you can take that and shift it into these are the good things that I actually created that's huge for our kids. I mean I high five my kids all the time. I picked him up the other day and I was like guess what I did today guys and I like I was super excited and it was like something really silly was like I had a really good phone call or something. I don't even know and they're like, that was really cool and like super silly super simple but like it just fosters this environment of like wins and you're proud of yourself and that's such a higher energy to like be living in than like chaos and negativity and always like pointing out your flaws. We're so good at picking out our flaws but it's like let's just shift that and celebrate the crap out of all of our wins.
Yeah and that picking out flaws…as a mom those threaded or oh my hair it's disgusting today or I don't like my weight and how I look and I you know it's something that our children take in. They see the way you talk about yourself and then they end up doing the same thing they are mini versions of you. It’s scary to think of that because we don't want them to take all the negativity on themselves but if you've been living a certain way for so long it there's still a way to change, even if your kids saw that version of you, it's OK because they will see the change that you're going through even if you start today you know and absolutely you know 'cause my children have big age age span and my almost 15 year old has seen my progression and I'm super thankful for that because I think it's helped her 'cause she's definitely seen me go through a lot of I guess positive mindset transformation and it's helped so do you have any suggestions on how to help kids and how you can model better for your children?
I love it that you brought that up because I think that's so cool for kids to be able to see that progression and that change in this. A lot of times it's like parents, we wanna come at our kids like the authority. We wanna be like 'cause you know we wanna seem like we know what we're doing right? But how cool is it for them to be able to see us showing up even imperfectly and letting them be a part of that. One of my big things is being able to apologize to my kids when I've snapped or done something and been like, hey I'm new at this you guys. You know and allowing our kids to be able to see being a beginner. Seeing us be able to make improvements and know that there's not an end point 'cause I think sometimes especially when we come you know we grow up and we get into the adult world and we realize we don't know what the heck any of us are doing. A lot of you know we can kind of panic and be like crap I'm supposed to have everything together. I'm supposed to do this and I think if we can free ourselves from that expectation and know that we're all here. We're all learning. We're all going to be improving every single day that we're here on this planet like that's so freeing to our kids and so just allowing them to see you as human is huge.
And reframing the idea of failure I think is a big one. I mean I hate the phrase failure is not an option because I think that can lead to like perfectionistic tendencies where you it's all or nothing. Failure is not an option where it's not gonna do it but in a different sense of saying there's not the option of failure because again. It's data like we're learning we're going to take that and we're going to say, this didn't work or this is what I would do differently. Like now that I know that that was a total dumpster fire we're going to take that as a learning thing and it's again just filled with so much grace so much empathy and if your kids can learn that like why are they going to be so many more steps ahead of us than where we are like trying to get with it now.
You want to be approachable as they get older and troubles start coming into their life and they need your advice you are so much more approachable when you show them that you make mistakes and you should and you tell them stories and so much of what I see is parents saying is it’s my way or the highway you have to follow my rules and of course that puts up this big barrier because the child never really wants to approach them because they don't want to show them that they struggle you know? And they it’s just inot good overall to do that so that the approach you know you really want them to be comfortable enough to come to you as they get older.
So there's a delicate line being just like your kids best friend and like no rules or whatever and then like you're saying you know afraid to be approachable and all of that and if you can you know have it be we'll figure this out together kind of a thing and asking your kids questions too like well what do you think? like what would you do in this situation? And just kind of coming at it more of like a team mentality like, I'm on your side. I don't want you to struggle and to fail. I want you to grow and learn and be your best and have a really good experiences and how do the two of us do that together it it makes that parent child and parent teenager relationship just so much more like collaborative which i think is really beautiful.
Yeah! Absolutely. This is so good! So helpful! Do you have resources to share? I know you mentioned your podcast. Do you have anything that you offer that I could put in the show notes?
Absolutely! So there's a lot of behind the stuff going on behind the scenes stuff going on right now so you'll definitely want to pop on over Jessielarson.com is where everything kind of lives but I do have the podcast I have weekly episodes that come out with guests and we're always just diving into anything in your life that you can strive to be more positive about whether it's raising your kids, whether it's your marriage, whether it's keeping your home functioning we cover it all over there. I do have something coming up in the next couple of months on affirmations that's gonna be really fun so hop on over there and follow me on Instagram and it positively dot Jesse and there's a lot of fun stuff over there as well.
Thank you so much! This has been really good!
I’ve had so much fun!
Yeah and I love that you're talking about this topic in a way that doesn't make you feel down. You know you can start wherever you are and collect the data and get going. Get moving instead of just feeling stuck you know? That's so so important so thank you again for coming!
You're so welcome!
I’ve now have spots opened for homeschooling clarity calls. I KNOW from experience how much your mindset as a homeschooling mom can make or break your homeschool. I also know that if you feel overwhelmed with homeschooling your kids can sense it.
If you’re a current homeschooling mom that’s feeling overwhelmed with or a brand new homeschool mom on the fence about beginning, these clarity calls are for you. There are so many different opinions out in the world around homeschooling philosophies, curriculum and scheduling and it’s common to overthink the way your homeschool is set up b/c of that.
If you find yourself feeling like you want to give up, need someone to help you with accountability, scheduling and organizing your day based on your children’s needs light of your family’s priorities or If you’re someone that love the idea of a laid back unschooling lifestyle but are struggling with opinionated family members or thoughts of “I’m going to fail them” these clarity calls are designed in a way to give you some major breakthroughs in your mindset and help you TAKE the right ACTIONS going forward. Homeschooling is amazing and if you’re feeling anything other than excitement about what the future holds for your kids, I can promise to make homeschooling feel simpler for you going forward.
Book a Homeschooling Clarity Call Here
And as always please email me Jackie@whole9family with any questions.
I’ll see you next time friends.