They're Watching How You Treat Yourself

Speaker A: M. I'm Cheril Ann Schoolnicki, and this is Brilliant Balance the show. For those of us who still dare to want it all, who have big dreams and bold ambitions, I think we deserve to have a big, full life and the freedom to enjoy it. So let's design our next chapter together for brilliance, not burnout. Each week I'll bring ideas, insight, and a fresh perspective to keep you growing into a life that feels as good as it looks. Balance your life your way. Now, uh, let's get started. Welcome back to the Brilliant Balance Show. Today, we're talking about the idea that they're watching how you treat yourself, and we'll get into who they are in just a second here. Quick note before we get into today's episode. Registration is open for the coaching circle as we get ready for the July masterclass. And actually, what we're digging into today is really, like, a bit of a preview of why I think you should be there for the July class. The topic for July is called Being Strategically Selfish. And before you panic over the word selfish, I just want you to think about what might it look like if, um, paying attention to your own needs actually were strategic? In other words, if there were benefits to that, not just to yourself, but possibly to the people around you as well. So the link to register for the July masterclass, um, as part of my coaching circle is in the show notes. It's going to be a really good one, and I think July is the perfect time to do it, where lots of us have a little bit more space to maybe think about what would it look like to do the things that are really good for us. Um, summer's just a great time of year to think about that. So, again, link is in the show notes. I'm going to talk a little bit more about that class as I go through this episode, but I want to tell you first a little bit of a story about, um, something that happens to me every year in May. Okay? Every year around the first week of May, the second week of May, I end up in a store, and I'm in the card aisle. Lately, it'll be like Target used to be at the Hallmark store. And I do something that's probably not so great for my blood pressure, but has become, like, an important tradition, which is I read all of the cards. I walk down that Mother's Day card aisle and I read, uh, not exaggerating, like, literally almost every single card because I'm on a mission. Um, I started to notice this pattern a number of years ago. About the way we write Mother's Day cards. And once you see it, you really can't unsee it. Okay, card after card in this aisle, I want you to picture yourself there. You know, different fonts, different shades of pastel, but the same message lives underneath all of these cards. And it goes something like, you know, thank you for giving up everything for us. Um, thank you for putting yourself last every single time and not complaining about it. And there's always some version with a tired looking woman on the front smiling anyway, Like a cartoon version. Like, the smile is somehow proof that it didn't kill her, even if it took every other thing that she had. And there's always some version that's just beautiful flowers. And, you know, like, some of them are kind of poetic and some of them are kind of funny, but they really are in this same sentiment of, like, thank you for sacrificing it all on our behalf. And I started wondering early in motherhood, why do we do this? Uh, why is this the narrative that we have that we are not just acknowledging, but, like, celebrating women for? And I started to wonder, like, was I maybe being a little oversensitive? Which maybe I was. Um, but one year, I was looking at these in the aisle, thinking, these are, like, not thank you cards. Mother's Day cards are sort of like thank you cards, right? They're telling us how grateful they are, but they're like epitaphs. Like, we are thanking women for literally disappearing. And then we're, like, wrapping it up in glitter and charging 695 for it in the card aisle. And I started thinking about, God, I hope I never get one of these cards. Like, what? How would my children pick up one of these cards and with any level of sincerity, give it to me? Because that's not my goal. My goal has never been to just completely lose myself in the process of parenting. Um, I'm a pretty good mom. I think I'm a pretty good mom. My kids think I'm a pretty good mom. But I really felt like I had to maintain a sense of self through parenting. And so what started happening in my household is my kids started writing Mother's Day cards. Like, sometimes I brought a couple here. Sometimes they just look like this. They're just like little note cards. Um, but the things that get written inside are. Are amazing to me that there's, like, this acknowledgement of being seen for the way that I've actually parented. One of the little notes in this one said, thank you for making time to talk with me. And for helping me to make important decisions. Yeah, that's what I would like to hear. You know, in a Mother's Day card, um, one of them said, thank you. Hold on. Get this one. Thank you for being a trusted advisor and. And confidant. Um, you know, you always go above and beyond for me. And this one says, uh, you're truly an inspiration, not just in how to be a mother, but a role model in life. Love it. This was one of my favorites. This little book that said what I love about mom. And the three kids collaborated on this one. So they took. This is a number of years ago, but they took turns answering. There's, like, little prompts on the pages. So they took turns answering. Um, so, like, just a couple of things that showed up in this were, I, um, hope to be as. And there's, like, a blank. I hope to be as blank as you one day. And they wrote, financially savvy. Have you gotten a Mother's Day card that thanks you for your financial savviness? I love that. Um, you know, I love how you never quit was one of them. Uh, and this is one of my favorite pages. When I was little, I loved to watch you. And it's like, blank in the blank. Okay. When I was little, I loved to watch you blank in the blank. And they wrote workout in the basement. I mean, I could go on. This is such a treasure to me to have that card from that year. But the reason I'm sharing those examples with you, you can see the contrast between a card that's like, thank you for giving up everything, and, hey, I used to love to watch you work out in the basement, which is maybe, like, the definition of putting my own needs first. So the reality is, I didn't have to coach them toward this. I didn't say, like, hey, maybe make your own card for me instead of, you know, uh, buying a card, but these handwritten notes that are basically saying, thank you for showing us what it looks like to have a life that you actually want. Thank you for being someone that we love spending time with. You know, thank you for translating your knowledge to us. Um, but being someone who has her own thing going, who lights up about things that don't have anything to do with us. Sometimes somewhere in, um, my now 21 years of raising children, something got transmitted, you know, and it's kind of the opposite of what the card aisle sells. And I think it might even be one of the most important things that I've modeled for them. Even though I never once sat down to like, teach it. It's all something that got demonstrated through example. So the card aisle idea of abdication of self, as I think about it, it didn't come out of nowhere. It's, it's really the most visible symptom of a much older story that we hand women starting really, really young about what makes us good. Right? It's, it's, you know, be agreeable. Um, say yes before, you know, whenever somebody asks you to do something, say yes. Just put your own needs and preferences so far down the list that they're almost invisible. I think really, women do get praised for taking care of the needs of others. It's in our cultural narrative, it's in our religious doctrine, it's in our family stories. And I think women are caretakers. I think taking care of other people is an incredible blessing. And there are seasons of life where it does overshadow many, many of the other things that we have. But if it overshadows it completely and it overshadows it for too long, that's where I think we have a real challenge. So, I don't know. I've talked about this at least in one episode a million years ago, um, when I was interviewing Kathy Washburn on the show. But there is a name for this personality type that is like, really anchored in giving to others, taking care of others, and they've started referring to it as type C. So when you and I maybe were growing up, you heard type A personalities, kind of high strung, overachiever. Um, you know, this is like the type that we know is prone to heart disease. Like, there's a lot of stress that gets held by type A personalities. Very driven. This is me, put myself in this camp type B personality some of us heard about. That's kind of the chill, low key, like, everything's going to be okay. That's my dad. My dad has that kind of personality. So he's saying, don't sweat the small stuff. Um, type C personality is the type that really is a caregiver first and foremost. Right? They're conflict, avoidant. Um, they are the ones who can always be counted on because they're never going to say that they're at capacity or don't have time. Um, there's like this loss of self in the service of others. They will put themselves last on purpose. And every single trait in that pattern that I just described gets praised. Right? We talk about women especially, who have that personality as like, they're so giving, they're so loving. Um, they're always there for, you know, they're always thinking about other people. Um, she never makes it about herself. She's so easy to work with. And I think because we get praised for it, the behavior keeps going, and we hand out, like, those shiny gold stars that we all love so much for those behaviors. And then what we're teaching everyone watching is like, hey, by not having any needs of your own and taking care of everybody else's needs and just never needing anything at all, like, that's how you get praise. That's how you get accolades. So then that behavior gets repeated and rewarded. Like, that becomes sort of what a woman is for. And those traits, again, are not the problem. Being capable, being kind, being easy to be around. Like, those are good traits. I hope I have all of those traits, um, in some way. The problem is when they are the only side of you that anyone ever sees. When the accommodating version of you is the whole show, right? Every day for years on end. That's no longer a personality. That's a performance. Because nobody has no needs all the time. But that's just not how humans are wired. We actually all have needs and preferences and desires and things that we want to do. So it is okay. I. My assertion is it is okay to sometimes say, I'm gonna put this aside and do what you want. Right? I feel like sitting down and reading a book, and you have a kid who wants to go out and kick a soccer ball around, and you're like, yeah, let's go. That's a good thing. When it is cadenced in. With sometimes being able to do the thing that you wanna do when you never get to do the thing that you wanna do, when you never advocate for it, you never ask for it, you never make space for it. You. Your sense of self kind of shrinks and shrinks and shrinks. Um, and. And that is where we hear women say, I think I'm losing myself. And losing ourselves is one of the things that I know women are particularly worried about. Right? It is not aspirational to say, you know what I want to do when I grow up? I want to lose myself. Like, nobody says that. But we do it because we do it where everyone else's needs usurp our own, and we don't know how to protect just enough space to still have that sense of self. When you are raising children, can it be all day, every day? Absolutely not. Right? Absolutely. It cannot be. So the key is not how do you go, like, all or nothing. The key is how do you find what is just enough for you to maintain a sense of self. And I want to anchor this in the way I titled this episode, which is they're watching how you treat yourself. Because I think for a lot of us, the benefits to us are not going to be enough to change behavior. There are benefits to you of taking care of yourself. Sorry to tell you, many, many benefits of taking care of yourself, but that may not be enough to change your behavior. So I want to talk about the benefits to the people who are watching, to the. Especially those little people in your house, because those kids are always watching. And you know this is true. If you've been a parent for more than five minutes, they don't listen to what you say. They watch what you do. So anytime that your behavior is at odds with your desires for them, they are going to pick up on that dissonance and they are going to call you on it, okay? So what you do with yourself when you think no one is paying attention is what determines whether there is a self there that they can see. That they can see you being a, uh, fully expressed human getting to do things. They notice when you're running on fumes, right? That's not invisible to them. They notice when you say, I'm fine, I'm fine, right? It's, I'm fine, it's fine, everything's fine. In a voice that doesn't match your body language. And if the main thing that they're absorbing is, you know, mom's a woman who's depleted, who's treating her own needs as, like, an inconvenience that she has to apologize for. They're like taking notes for their own future. Hey, rockstars, if this podcast has been speaking to you, but real life keeps getting in the way of actually doing anything differently. The coaching circle is your next step. It's my monthly membership. Live masterclasses on the core brilliant balance skills, coaching calls, practical tools, and a community of women who just get it. This is where insight finally becomes action. Check it out@brilliant-balance.com coachingcircle. I'll see you inside. So. And I hear what those notes produce all the time in coaching conversations, right? I hear them in audience questions. If I'm speaking, I hear them in messages and DMs that I get after podcast episodes. And something that I am starting to hear at an increasing level from younger women especially, is I'm not sure that I want kids. I'm not even sure that I want kids. And when you sit, really to understand why, where is that Coming from part of it, a real significant part of it is that they watched what it looked like, like they watched their own mother or mothers near them. And they're like, that does not look very appealing. I don't know if I want that. It looks hard, right? It looks like it, it, you know, it looks like a warning label saying, hey, don't end up like this. And I'm not saying that they're not saying that to us to put us on a guilt trip. Uh, they're just observing the information that's being transmitted to them. And I'm not saying it to you to put you on a guilt trip, but I think it's a wake up call on, do we want to paint a picture of adulthood that is aspirational? And if so, what's in there? What does that look like? Where is there the ability to structure a life where we're actually enjoying our life? And they go, yeah, I want that. Right. And how does that differ when you are raising children at the same time? So I think the reason I feel so passionately about this particular audience of women, and I coach women who don't have children. I coach women whose children have already grown and left the house, and I coach a lot of women who have children at home. And the reason that that audience is so special to me is because I think it's the torture test for this very thing. The ability to do work in the world that is big and important, and you are really proud of it in whatever way that is defined, whether there is depth with a small audience of people, whether there is, you know, you're affecting a lot of people, you're working on a product that makes a difference. Whatever it is to do work in the world that's like, big and important to you, takes up a chunk of your life and to take care of your people in your family in a way that is big and takes up a chunk of your life and still have room for yourself to have the life you get, one that you are meant to have to do the things that create joy for you, that make you feel fully alive. That's kind of this trifecta that I think we're all trying to solve for. Okay? And I am not going to shift here into like the permission slip to take a bath or go to the spa. Although, like, those are great. And I hope you do those things whenever you want to. Right. That's not really what I want to talk about here. What I want to talk about is what are the things that really matter to You. And are you willing to stand up for them even when other people are pulling at you to get their own needs met? Right. Are you willing to stand up for those needs, for the things that you genuinely want to do? I don't want to kind of use the self care escape hatch as the like. It's convenient to tell women to go to the spa, to go get your nails done, to go get a pedicure. Like, that's actually something that they're not really seeing you do. If you just disappear for a day, um, they don't even get to see that you're advocating for your own needs. I think it's the value, visible meeting of your own needs that is what your kids are going to learn from. They don't learn from the exceptions that, you know, once a year for Mother's Day, we sent mom to the spa. They learn from the pattern of behavior. What I said in this little book of, like, watching you work out in the basement, that's what they see day in and day out, okay? They learn from what's normal. So I'm going to refer to this idea as something more akin to micro dosing. I know, not that kind of microdosing, but this is like small, regular amounts of the things that keep you steady and alive and vibrant and excited about your life built into an ordinary day. Right? Where you don't have to hide them, you don't have to apologize for them. You're not, like, pretending that they don't happen or trying to do them, like, before anyone gets up or after they go to bed so that it's all invisible to them. At that point, I want you to think about what can you do right in front of everybody, right where they see you being a full human who has needs. Because that's what actually changes the story that your kids are absorbing. Right? It's not you occasionally disappearing to take care of yourself. It is taking care of yourself as something that they just see you do. Let me give you a couple examples of what this might look like. Okay? One example is, for me, writing, um, has become important. It was important for a long time. It sort of, like, took a backseat for a while. I'm doing a lot more writing lately, and so some days I will be. I write on our porch whenever I can because it's like my very favorite place to be at this time of year. So if I'm writing, um, sometimes I'll be right in the middle of a sentence, like, really in it. The kind where, like, I'm chasing the Next train of thought. And one of my kids will just pop in and sit down and want to talk. And for a long time, I think I would have just dropped everything immediately and said, like, okay, they came into my space. I have to, like, put this down and give them my attention. And I've learned that sometimes. And by the way, sometimes that's still the right call. It depends. I can kind of see the look on their face on, like, how important is this to them? But sometimes I can say, hey, I'm on a roll. Like, can we talk in 15? And. And often their answer is like, sure. And they'll just wander out, and then they come back in later. It's nothing dramatic. It doesn't have to be a big, like, conversation about it. But being able to just kind of put up a boundary to hold a little bit of space because I'm on a roll, um, is important. And by the way, that's easier to do if I'm not right in front of them. Right. I could go right at a coffee shop. I could go to another space, but then they wouldn't see me doing this thing that is so important to me. So I'm using this example of when it's happening on the porch because I want them to see that this lights me up. Right? We already talked about the working out. My kids grew up watching me work out most mornings, um, or knowing that I was doing it. And when they were really little, I did. I wanted to get up before they were up. And we had a home, uh, gym in our old house. And I would want to go down to the basement. And I was like, if I could just get this in before they even wake up, that would be optimal. And often I could. But if they did wake up, rather than say, well, I guess I can't work out today, right? Or have to cut this short after 10 minutes, I would say, okay, come on down. Guess you're coming down with me. And they would end up in the basement with me. So we had a finished basement, a little area of it for the gym. And, you know, I would give them a little bowl of Cheerios to pick at, or they would have their toys down there. Or sometimes they would be climbing all over the equipment and me. But there is this drumbeat of a shared experience in that it wasn't like I had this peaceful Zen workout because of it. Right. But, uh, it, you know, so it was a little chaotic sometimes, but it was going to happen anyway. And they got to see that that was something that was important to Me and that I wasn't going to, like, put up a stiff arm and say, you have to completely stay away from this. I had to find a way to integrate that. Right. And to do it at a time where it was, I could still get that minimum dose that was helpful, um, for me to keep in my life. Okay. So I wasn't able in that era to go to, like, take a Pilates class or a yoga class or whatever, like, out of my home to drive to the gym and be there, because if the kids woke up, I wanted to be there or somebody needed to be there. But so this way of doing it allowed me to, like, stay more integrated. And then I think the side effect was it was visible, um, you know, and I think another example would be, uh, what I refer to as thinking days. So when I travel for work, um, and I've traveled for work in various ways through my whole career, but I used to always be like, what is the absolute minimum amount of time that I can be away? Like, how can I just take the latest possible flight, you know, to just minimize my number of minutes away? And again, sometimes you're still going to do that to get back for a key event. Um, and I'll do it. I rarely take red eyes. I mean, I just have just decided I've retired from red eyes. But I, uh, booked a red eye because it's going to put me back in time for my daughter's birthday. And there's choices in all of these things, right? There's not like a right all the time answer. But travel is something where typically I was like, okay, this is a place I really have to minimize until I discovered the power of thinking days. And thinking days for me are like booking a, uh, one extra day at the end of a trip often so that I can integrate everything that just happened during that experience. And actually, it is often some of my most creative time. So when I'm really working on an idea or a model or something for the business or trying to get an idea on paper, knowing that I've just been out of my normal routine for a while and I'm not really rushing back in, like, allowing that return to be a little bit slower and to purposefully put some thinking time in, man, when I look back over the last number of years, so powerful to have those days to think, and then I come back a better parent. I'm more regulated, I'm more patient. I'm more like, genuinely present because I've had the time. I don't feel like everything is A rush all the time. So when they see that, they get the benefit of, wow, look at what it looks like when she comes back in. Not, like, frazzled from the whole trip. Okay, so here's the through line. The through line in this whole episode is that I want you to think about, where are you shortchanging your own needs? Because everyone else's needs always come first and are getting met first. And can we level the playing field just a little bit? We don't have to go all the way to the point where nobody's needs are getting met, but can we level that playing field just a little bit so that you take up space on purpose in ways that the people around you can actually see? Okay. And this is important not just to you, and I would hope that is enough, but it is also important that we model this for the people who are watching. And if you don't have children at home, I bet you have, uh, people that you work with who are watching how you treat yourself. I bet you have extended family that is watching how you treat yourself. I guess there are people in your life for whom you are modeling. What does it look like to be a whole human who has needs of her own? So this is the topic for the July coaching circle masterclass. In the coaching circle, which is something that I run, um, on an ongoing basis. So when people are in the circle, they get access to every single month's masterclass. This month's class is all about this idea of being strategically selfish. And I am purposefully using those two words just to kind of shake it up a little bit and redefine what we think about as selfish. Um, in fact, next week, my episode is going to be all about that idea. I'm taking some listener questions about being, uh, selfish, like, is this selfish or not? So we're going to really dig into this topic, and if you know that this is a challenge for you, if you veer more toward type C, if you have put your own needs on the back burner in, um, service to everyone else, and you're trying to figure out how, how am I actually going to make some time? What would I even do? Right? Like, what would it even. How would I even decide what I was going to do? And then how would I sort of shuffle things around in my life to make space for it? That's where you want to be in the masterclass. So this episode, I think if you're head nodding, going, yes, this is important, but, oh, uh, I don't know how. Get yourself into the masterclass so we run those classes for about 90 minutes. And then, um, two weeks later, I do a coaching call where once you've had a chance to apply what you learned in the class, then you come back and we get on a zoom call and we, we talk about what did it look like in the real world, Right? Putting these practices out into your life. And then I have the opportunity to coach you and kind of make sure that it gets better and better over time. So I think this is going to be a great one. And again, once you join the coaching circle, um, you can have access to these classes every single month. And there's a new topic every single month. Okay. Link to join is in the show notes and the dates are there. And I hope that you decide to join me. Registration is open now. Also, if something landed in today's episode and you have somebody in mind who needs to hear it, you're like, I know exactly who needs this episode. Be a good friend and forward the episode to them so that she can also listen along. I always love it when you do that. It means so much to me when you share this work. That's all for today, friends. Till next time, let's be brilliant.