Going Beyond Good Intentions

Can you imagine setting a New Years resolution, watching healthy living content and going to a class where they teach you why you should exercise and expecting to lose weight without ever working out?

NO! We know getting stronger requires taking action.

In the same way, working on your parenting requires implementation, not just intentions.

IN THIS EPISODE I SHARED:

• Ways immersive learning experiences transform parenting skills
• Why it's impossible to grow stronger while "malnourished" and what to do about it
• The role of structured support in achieving parenting goals 

DON'T MISS:

• How to pour gasoline on your good intentions to *actually* become a stronger, more confident parent

// CONNECT WITH DANIELLE //
Website: parentingwholeheartedly.com
IG: @parent_wholeheartedly
APPLY: parentingwholeheartedly.com/apply

Chapters

• 0:04 Implementing Parenting Techniques
• 9:39 Accelerated Parenting Transformation Program

Transcript

Danielle Bettmann  0:04  
Ever feel like you suck at this job? Motherhood, I mean. Have too much anxiety and not enough patience? Too much yelling, not enough play? There's no manual, no village, no guarantees. The stakes are high. We want so badly to get it right, but this is survival mode. We're just trying to make it to bedtime. So if you're full of mom guilt, your temper scares you, you feel like you're screwing everything up, and you're afraid to admit any of those things out loud - this podcast is for you.

Danielle Bettmann  0:38  
This is Failing Motherhood. I'm Danielle Bettmann, and each week we'll chat with a mom ready to be real, showing her insecurities, her fears, her failures, and her wins. We do not have it all figured out. That's not the goal. The goal is to remind you, that you are the mom your kids need. They need what you have. You are good enough, and you're not alone. I hope you pop in earbuds, somehow sneak away, and get ready to hear some hope from the trenches. You belong here, friend, we're so glad you're here.

Danielle Bettmann  1:14  
Hey, it's Danielle. Your Positive Discipline Certified Parenting Coach for strong-willed kids ages two to 10. I help defeated parents find validation, support, and proven techniques to parent their strong-willed kids with composure, connection, confidence, and cooperation through a four-month group coaching program based on the Wholehearted Framework I've developed over years of working with families one on one, and if you just found the podcast, go to failingmotherhood.com to view a playlist of our most listened to episodes, as well as where to start if you have a strong-willed child. 

Danielle Bettmann  1:45  
Now today we're talking about working out. But this is not a New Year's resolution type thing. This is not actually about how much you work out at all. It is an analogy. But I'm gonna need you to bear with me a little bit, and I am racing the clock right now. I procrastinated on writing this, and I need to pick up my kids in 29 minutes. So let's do this.

Danielle Bettmann  2:11  
So let's say your goal is to get stronger or lose weight. You know, however, you want to word that, but that is what you have set out to do. You not only need to, you know, walk more or do some cardio, but you really want to get stronger. Okay, so you start watching workout exercise-related content, to be inspired and to feel like you're in the world, and get lots of reminders. And that's great. And then you go to a class where you sit down and you learn about different ways to lift and different exercises to do, and kind of the science behind the heart muscle. And you know what cardio does for your health and it's just very, very informational, and that's fantastic. Then you meet with a personal trainer, and together, you go to their office, and you discuss your own workout plan, and they customize it for you, and they write it all down, and it's fantastic and they answer your questions, but the whole time, you're never actually going to the gym, you haven't actually picked up a weight, you haven't actually gone for a run or a walk. You haven't done anything to change your body, to get any stronger, or to challenge yourself in any way. You have talked about it a lot. You have learned about it a lot. You are more inspired and maybe a lot of the content is making you feel guilty a lot. You're starting to be really, really hard on yourself about why you haven't worked out yet, or why you haven't gotten to the gym, and you should be going to the gym.

Danielle Bettmann  4:16  
You really think about that a lot. It's on your mental load a lot, you write it on your calendar a lot, you have reminders on your phone, and yet you haven't done one workout. That is similar to what it is like to want to be a better parent.

Danielle Bettmann  4:46  
You follow all the content creators and watch and listen to a lot of parenting content experts, and you order and read one or more parenting books or watch a course.

Danielle Bettmann  5:02  
Yeah, you need a new perspective. Yes, you need new tools to be explained to you. Yes, there are a million topics that you have curiosity and interest in and those tools can be useful.

Danielle Bettmann  5:16  
But if you don't go to the gym, you don't get any stronger. If you don't pick up weight and you don't go for the run, you don't get to the class, you don't get any stronger.

Danielle Bettmann  5:29  
For parenting, going to the gym is implementing and I don't know about you, but that is so much harder in real life than having good intentions and learning about it and writing it down and having reminders.

Danielle Bettmann  5:51  
Actually implementing and then getting feedback on said implementation and then tweaking and troubleshooting and repeating and doubling down and adding weights and doing the work, and it's sinking your teeth into it and actually becoming the person who has the routine and does the routine. 

Danielle Bettmann  6:19  
The personal trainer says that is so much harder. So if we're still staying in this analogy, for me, if I really want to be sticking to a fitness plan, it is 1000 times easier if I just actually get to the gym to get myself into the zone and push myself, whether that is going to a yoga class or just showing up for the yoga class, and then I can challenge myself once I'm there, getting on the towel next to a bunch of other people and then trying to outrun the person next to me, or just being next to people in the gym and being that like community vibe, it is so much easier for me to do it once I'm there, than to tell myself that I'm gonna do it at home when there's no energy, no accountability around it, and I'm just trying to will myself to get off the couch or stop doing all the other things I feel like I need to do, like laundry, and actually, you know, do push-ups or sit-ups or something?

Danielle Bettmann  7:24  
Rarely is that ever, ever, ever, ever gonna happen, no matter how hard I intend for it to, and if I hired a personal trainer and, like, set up appointments with them and showed up, that would be even more accountability. They would be asking me if I did my homework. They would be literally watching me do the exercises, and they would be helping me understand why this muscle is hurting really bad and what to do differently so that doesn't happen next time.

Danielle Bettmann  7:58  
Are you with me so far? To add on to this, if you are trying to become a better parent and you are trying to get stronger, imagine having a workout plan, getting to the gym, and even trying to implement doing it all while malnourished,right? You have the plan. You get there. You even have a personal trainer, and you have nothing to give, your body is in a deficit. That is what it's like trying to become a better parent. When you are sick, over, tired, hangry, really stressed, and overall, in a season of not having your needs met. Maybe that's the postpartum period. Maybe that is in a really, really, really heavy season of work projects. 

Danielle Bettmann  8:59  
Now, that doesn't mean you can't become a better parent at all. It just means your body isn't physically capable of getting stronger if you are malnourished, it has to get the needs met, and it's taking the vitamins and minerals it needs from other places. It is literally depleting you.

Danielle Bettmann  9:18  
That is what it's like to beat yourself up for trying to implement and then being surprised that it's not working, or that you can't do what the people say to do, because your brain won't think of it in that moment, because it is too on fire, because you have nothing to give. Agreed?

Danielle Bettmann  9:42  
And

Danielle Bettmann  9:43  
I'll apply this to one more analogy, so similar to how you learn a language. I mean, I've done Duolingo for French for a couple of months. I learned Spanish in high school and college. You can read books about that second language. You can watch content about it, where people are showing you how to order something in a restaurant. But that is nothing compared to going to that country, where that language is spoken and immersing yourself in that world, hearing it, seeing it, reading it, and then needing to use that language to actually get what you need and order at the restaurant yourself. That is an accelerant like no other for you actually learning that language, right?

Danielle Bettmann  11:07  
Now, the reason why I do what I do, and I recommend what I do, is because it's designed incredibly strategically and comprehensively to be an immersive experience to offer personal training inside of an established gym full of people who have made the same commitment and are showing up in the same ways and bouncing their good vibes off of you for motivation, and then being able to tweak and troubleshoot and prescribe certain ways around things, how to solve the problems you're experiencing, and giving you exactly what you need to unlock the capability you had the whole time to actually do it and work out and use the new scripts and transform your mindset and interpret the behaviors differently, and parent as a team for the first time, and just be the parent that you always have wanted to be.

Danielle Bettmann  12:19  
So it's like being in this immersive environment and having all of that support, that high-level support, pours gasoline on good intentions. The way I designed things is accelerated progress for the parent who wants more than just watching others working out. They want an approach that's comprehensive and immersive. They want to digest it and do it not just think about it.

Danielle Bettmann  12:51  
It offers the ability to have tools and coping mechanisms for your stress management first, that then become the foundation, like eating the protein bar and being able to not be malnourished, so that your muscles have what they need to repair and become stronger so that you can manage behaviors, strengthen your mindset and unlock connection.

Danielle Bettmann  13:20  
It provides an unlimited amount of individualized solutions and ca ommunity like no other. I really feel like the questions where parents run into walls and they say, okay, bedtime, last night was a nightmare, or this is the note home from school. How do we handle it? Or I tried this and it didn't work, and I am not sure why. Can I break down what I tried or, you know, what do I do when I keep running into this? Why do I keep saying no, or why do I keep bribing or threatening? Or why does my kid keep yelling no in my face? I don't know what to do when they do that. 

Danielle Bettmann  13:58  
That is the meat, that's the fuel, that's where the rubber hits the road, because you finally get to work one step at a time through the hottest fire, and literally, I call it, reckoning with the tools and the process to a place where it doesn't just become something that you implement in the short term, but it becomes your way of being. It becomes the new default way of thinking for you as a parent, it becomes much deeper ingrained strategies because you have tried them so many times. You have asked questions about them. You have brought up fears or hesitations with them. You have individualized them so you find what works for your personality and your kids' personality, that is like your muscles needing to actually break down every time they work out so that they can be stronger.

Danielle Bettmann  15:01  
If you just pick up a weight that you already can pick up and do it once, you don't get any stronger. You have to challenge yourself. You have to reckon through the scaffolding up and doing one thing that's a little bit harder today than you did yesterday for any change, any self-development that you want to work on, right?

Danielle Bettmann  15:29  
So what I do inside of a group coaching program, that type of technique, workout, whatever is best for if you as a parent, you check the boxes of the worrying warrior parent that I lay out in my Master Class, being Calm and Confident, and your child checks all the boxes for the strong-willed temperament that I describe within that Master Class. And if you have not listened to that yet, and you've been listening to the podcast for a while, and you know you need to get up, get off the couch, and start working out, then go listen to that Master Class. And that will be the last, probably springboard you need to figure out how to get through whatever you're struggling with. 

Danielle Bettmann  16:19  
So you have to check those boxes. You also have to have the majority of the stress in your marriage be related to parenting, where you know you want to support each other. You have a lot of communication and mutual respect, but you are just still fall short, because neither one of you knows how to handle these objectively stressful, challenging moments, and the majority of the behavior challenges that your child struggles with are at home and or worse, with one parent than the other, because then we know that that it is relationship based, and there's a lot that we can influence at home.

Danielle Bettmann  17:01  
So if you're a parent who knows that they don't need more generalized info, and they want to get in the game and have individualized support, and if you know your time is precious and you need to be able to learn on the go and make most of the time you have, and if your parent partner is an engaged parent, and they want to get their questions answered too, and they're kind of a tell me what to do parent, and you as a family, crave connection and community, and you care about your relationship with your child, if you have at all in the past, valued working with a mentor who has been there, done that, and is able to hold your hand and push you more than you're going to naturally push yourself. And if you're willing to put in the work when it's actually proven to work and you can trust your coach and trust the process, and you want to surround yourself with uplifting and powerful conversations with other really vulnerable, honest committed, cycle-breaking parents. Ultimately, you really, finally, just want to go from 10 meltdowns a week down to two. Go from dreading pickup to feeling like besties and strengthening your personal confidence your family's resilience and your marriage along the way, then my group coaching program is for you if you are one of those few parents, and I only accept about four a month, but if you check all of those boxes, then you are my people, and if you are ready to make better days inevitable, then go to my website, parenting wholeheartedly.com, watch that Calm and Confident Master Class with your partner, then hit the Apply Now button and share a little bit more about your family, and then you will schedule a time that works for all three of us to chat and learn more and answer all your questions prior to making a commitment and investment in your family and like anything else, like weight loss, like working out a really impactful short term investment hack, you can reap the rewards of for years and years and years to come.

Danielle Bettmann  19:34  
So it's never too late, but always better sooner than later. I'm so glad you're here. I hope that this has been convicting in a good way. I hope you're able to find where you're at on kind of that pendulum of that analogy. And I hope you feel inspired to not just talk about working out, but get in the game and implement, and if you can't seem to break through your own good intentions, then when you know more, you can do better, right? Everyone deserves a high level of support when parenting, especially if you're taking parenting seriously, and we are here to cheer you on support you, and help you break through to better days.

Danielle Bettmann  20:26  
So, I made it less than 29 minutes just by the buzzer. I believe in you, and I'm cheering you on See you next week.

Danielle Bettmann  20:39  
Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Failing Motherhood. Your kids are so lucky to have you. If you loved this episode, take a screenshot right now share it in your Instagram stories, and tag me. If you love the podcast, be sure that you've subscribed and leave a review so we can help more moms know they are not alone if they feel like they're failing motherhood daily, and if you're ready to transform your relationship with your strong willed child and invest in the support you need to make it happen, schedule your free consultation using the link in the show notes. I can't wait to meet you.

Danielle Bettmann  21:19  
Thanks for coming on this journey with me. I believe in you, and I'm cheering you on you.