I realized the other day that like attracts like. Sometimes I think that Seth and I couldn’t be more different and then it struck me. Seth signed up for a four day Tony Robbins virtual seminar. Seth is always reading self improvement books. He works on himself and he works on his business. He is always learning and growing and trying to become a better person. “We are both self improvement junkies,” I realized as I was driving around town the other day.

I remember laughing at Seth when he asked me to do this seminar with him. Four days at home all morning, afternoon, evening, and late into the night. He wanted me to sit down and do this seminar with him. I was the person who was going to make it happen for him to be able to do that for himself. We have three children and if he thought our three children were going to let me attend this with him, he was fooling himself. I realized after the fact that we absolutely can find ways to make things happen. I could have told the kids to let me do this and they are old enough to understand. I could have sent the kids to my parent’s house or a friend’s house. There is always a way. Throw away all your excuses and find a way to make something happen.

Seth told me that he was staying home to do the seminar for four days and I found myself so excited. He was going to sit in the kitchen and turn Tony Robbins up so that I could hear what was going on. Was I interrupted a million times? Yes. Did I get everything out of it that Seth did? No. I didn’t have the workbook. I didn’t listen for four days, but I listened a lot and I absorbed a lot just by being near it. When I did sit down with Seth and listen with him, we really loved “going” to a seminar together so we will definitely do more of that. We bond over this stuff. It is our language. We speak a more similar language than I thought. What did I learn? So much! Let’s dive in and take the adventure together.

Let’s start with the very awesome point that what we focus on is where the energy goes. Have you heard of the expression, “What you focus on expands?” It couldn’t be more true. If you tell your child not to spill the milk, they will go spill the milk. If I focus on being calmer, I’m calmer. If I focus on drinking more water, I drink more water. Find something you want to focus on and watch your success with it! Use this power for good! We can focus on bad things too and then watch bad things stack up.

Three decisions that shape your life:

  • What are you going to focus on? What you focus on will lead to your feelings. I just posted about girls being mean to Ella about her height so I’m feeling really sad. I’m going to change my focus now to the great things I am writing because I want to feel better. I am going to change my focus to how I’m going to use this experience to make my family even nicer and stronger.
  • What does it mean? I’m focusing on a girl upsetting Ella yesterday at school. What does this mean to me? What it means to me as I type this is that words can be very hurtful and powerful.
  • What am I going to do? I am going to use this as an opportunity to teach my children how to stand up for themselves. I am going to use this as an opportunity to make my family nicer and stronger. Let them hear how much this hurt Ella. It will make my family think twice before they say something mean to someone. Role playing and practicing are great ways that I teach my kids what to say in a given situation. My girls often tell me that they don’t know what to say. I felt the same way as a child. Max needs practice too.

Use those three decisions to help you work through situations in your lives.

We can focus on good meanings and magnify the good. We can also head in the other direction. I prefer the good direction. When I was younger my aunt told me that we all write our stories. We are writing our lives and our realities every day. I don’t know about you, but I’m writing a happy story.

Let’s move on to three questions to ask yourself:

  • Do you focus on what you CAN control or on what you can’t control? Focus on what you can control! I can’t control what girls say to Ella. I CAN help her deal with it better. I CAN encourage Ella to use it as fuel to be even nicer. I CAN practice with her.
  • Do you focus on what you HAVE or on what you are missing? I can focus on the fact that my current house doesn’t have an office, a master bathtub or a pool or I can focus on everything that it does have. It’s a beautiful house and I’m lucky and blessed to live here.
  • Do you focus on the past, PRESENT or future? The past and the future can make us feel very anxious. If we bring ourselves into the present moment, we can ease a lot of our stress. If we take it day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. I will go off to the races with everything going on this week and Seth will say, “Woah, stop. What do we have to do today? What is going on today?” He brings me back to the present. The past is over. The future hasn’t happened yet. The more we stay present and mindful the better off we will be.

 

If we focus on what we can control. If we focus on what we have. If we focus on the present. All three of these things makes us much happier people. If we can focus on these three patterns. If we can change these three things, we can change our life!

There are SO many lessons. I bet Seth has pages and pages of notes. Something Tony Robbins said really struck me as something important we all need to hear. He said, “Big actions get big results.” Such an excellent point. He talked a lot about athletes and how much they train. We see people’s ultimate success, but we don’t see everything they put into it to get that success. We don’t see all the failed attempts. He also said one of my favorite lines which is, “It’s only failure if you don’t learn from it.” If we are learning and growing, then how can that be labeled as a failure?

Cara Harvey is a successful coach. I’ve been listening a lot to her podcast, “The Purpose Driven Mom.” In one of her podcasts, she spoke about her journey. I really appreciated that she did that for people like me to hear her story. We have to start somewhere. I started with my blog almost 8 years ago. It grew into a success along with my Vlog and now my podcast. It has evolved through the years. I didn’t start out having this be my business and neither did Cara. Cara went from making $6,000 for the year to now making six figures a year with her business. She spoke about the growing pains. We all start somewhere. What can we do? Where can we start. We can keep going. We can build our momentum. Momentum has a lot of power and I can’t wait to see where it can take you and I.

Hard is good. Why do we think hard is bad? We choose our hard. Being fat is hard. Being thin is hard. We choose which hard we want. We have to work for both. Being successful is hard. Being poor is hard. Choose a good hard. Easy doesn’t make us better. Hard makes us better!

I’m going to tell you a line that I want you to read over and over again. “You are enough.” You are already enough. Why do we all feel like we aren’t enough? Why would we think that? I’m here to tell you that you are. If you don’t take anything else away from this blog, I hope you will take this away. I promise you that you are enough. You don’t have to be richer, prettier, more successful, thinner, or wiser to be enough. You are already enough just how you are. Now try to argue that with me and I will win.

Change your rituals and you will change your life. I’m going to give you a couple examples. After school we tend to go get treats. What if I changed that and brought healthy snacks in the car? Every morning I workout and walk my dog. That is a positive ritual. What if every night my family mediated together before bed? We are creating positive or negative rituals. Every morning Lillie and I were fighting about her clothes. What if I changed the dance? Now I just don’t care what she wears. Not worth the fight. Not worth the battle. Not worth the daily fighting ritual.

The next point I noticed years ago. Did you notice that you feel better when you focus on others? Have you noticed that suffering stems from being self-focused? If we can get out of ourselves and focus on other people, we find ourselves feeling better.

Brain and heart alignment leads to the flow state. Have you ever wondered why something was so easily done? As I pound out on my laptop I often wonder where it all came from. It is because my heart and my brain are aligned in my writing. When you can align the two you can make great things happen. It’s like when my heart and my head were telling me to marry Seth. What can you find alignment with?

He asked us what two emotions tend to make you suffer. I would say anger and overwhelmed for me. What triggers you? Having a ton to do and feeling alone in it is my trigger. Needing to get multiple children in multiple directions can also trigger it. How can I change the pattern? What can I say instead of the angry words I say? Be silly and curious to get yourself out of the negative state. Tony used the example of someone losing a lot of his money. He tends to get angry. Instead of getting angry he could say, ”That’s really curious. Where could it be?” Instead of getting angry about how much I have to do and feeling alone, I could say, “Who wants to help me,” really loud and silly. Change your pattern and change your state. I’m most definitely going to work on this!

What is FEAR? Fear is false evidence appearing real. Have you ever thought about it that way? It’s like we are looking for the reasons to be fearful. Planes always crash is an example. Is that true? What data do you have? If we actually look at the stats it’s not true and is safer than driving. Challenge your fears with actual data. Challenge your fears by going for it. I was afraid to do my podcast and I am loving it. When we take risks, we get awesome rewards!

What are our 6 needs?

Certainty – how do you have certainty in your life? My husband, my kids, my pets, my house, my car, my job all make me feel a level of certainty and stability.

Variety/Uncertainty – we find this even if it’s a variety of problems. I find variety in that my days never look the same. I also find variety in reading a bunch of different types of books.

Significance – we find this in many ways. Our house is super clean. Our appearance. Our clothes. What we drive. Where we live. Having a problem to discuss with others is the number one way we find significance. That is so sad to me. I find significance as a wife, mother and social worker.

Connection/Love – This is most important to me. I get this most from my husband and children. I also get this from family and my friends and we can’t forget my three awesome fur babies too.

Growth – our growth goes up or it goes down. There isn’t a plateau. I listen to a lot of podcasts and read a lot of books to help me feel I am growing as a person. I also attend continuing education classes to better my skills.

Contribution – I find I contribute to my husband, my kids, my family, my friends, my work, as a girl scout leader and as a school volunteer.

What are your top two needs and how are you getting them met? For me it’s connection and contribution. Being with people and feeling connected is most important to me. I feel like love is the word for me if I was to pick a very favorite word. I feel here on this earth to connect with people. I also feel better when I feel like I’m contributing. This can be achieved as a wife, mother, friend, parent at school helping, social worker doing work for others to help them and lift them up. Think about your top two needs and how you can meet them better to help you feel more fulfilled. I would love to hear what your top two needs are and how you are going to get them met better if you don’t feel they are being adequately achieved.

I want you to ask yourself what limiting belief could be holding you back? What do you tell yourself? Examples from me are, “Losing weight is too hard. I have to eat so little to lose weight.” How is that serving me? It’s actually holding me back from reaching my goals. If we can breakthrough and change our beliefs, we can make all our dreams come true. What are the consequences of your current belief? My consequences are not being as healthy as I can be. The healthier I am the longer that I get to be around for my family. That’s a big consequence. Don’t I think that changing my belief is important to be able to breakthrough my barriers? I hope that you can identify your limiting beliefs and breakthrough them to give you a better life.

How do we master something?

  • Model someone who does what you want to do. I see moms all over social media doing what I do, and I have learned from a lot of them. Find someone succeeding at what you want to do. You can learn from them. When I was learning to be a therapist, I was happily surrounded by really talented therapists. We talked about our cases and I listened to them on the phone with their clients and I learned so much!
  • Immersion! Immerse yourself into it. I dove in and I keep swimming laps around myself and passing my expectations. We are capable of more than we think we are. Immerse yourself in it so you can learn and master it! Being a therapist daily meant jumping in feet first and learning more every day about how to be better for my clients.
  • The more we do something the better we can get. It takes practice. The more I write the better I get. The more I do podcasts, the better I get. The more I did therapy the more I improved as a therapist. If you practice the piano every day you get better. If you practice your back handspring every day you get better. Practice makes perfect but you never have to be perfect.

Ella and I were driving in the car together and I asked her if she had any suggestions as to what I should write about next. She tends to have great suggestions and sometimes she even asks me to write about something which completely melts my heart. This time she told me that I should write about the Tony Robbins seminar. She heard Seth and I listening to it and she told me that I should write about what I learned. I didn’t give it justice. I didn’t listen to all of it. I didn’t really attend. Seth will give it more justice at his mastermind event. I encourage you all to attend. Join Seth by registering here:

https://bit.ly/March2021Mastermind

 

I encourage you to sign up for seminars. Whether it is Tony or someone else that you respect, learning and growing and becoming the best version of you is the best gift you can give yourself. Thank you to Ella for her excellent suggestion. I hope that you take at least one thing away from this blog that can give you a better life because you deserve it.

Laughing, Learning, Loving,

Rebecca Greene, LCSW-R