Speaker 2 (00:02)
And welcome everyone to today's episode of Let's Have a Chat. I have the honor of sitting down with Ms. The Beautiful Safna Rad. I got my notes here, you guys know I love my notes. She has a background in neuro-linguistic programming and parental coaching, lending science and psychology to help parents create deeper, more meaningful relationships with their children and Safna's journey in...
into parenting coaching began with her own personal transformation, shifting from traditional fear-based parenting to an approach rooted in connection, trust and mindfulness. Safna, thank you so much for being here. It's been a long time coming. We've been trying to do this for a while.
Speaker 1 (00:45)
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:47)
Absolutely,
absolutely. Now you point out one thing, fear-based parenting. Can you talk about what fear-based parenting is? Because I read that and I try to reflect on myself because I have four children and I'm like, I don't know if I kind of fall into this category or if I don't. Can you kind of give me your β definition of what you think that is?
Speaker 1 (01:09)
It's very reactive, the fear-based parenting, it comes from our own deep-rooted fears and it's pretty β unconscious. We are pretty unconscious to the way we react. Anytime we are reacting, reacting β in a way that's not connected, that's not calm, the way it is coming off or as if we are attacking, as if we are controlling,
Everything is based out of fear. We control when we are scared or we react to situations when we are scared. We get anxious and we try to glob on, hold on to something when we are scared. β It comes from our own baggage, our own past, our own cultural narrative that we have bought into and comes from a lot of what ifs in our minds. What if this happens? What if that happens? β It's,
more for future based and it's based off of our patterns from our childhood because that's what we know. This happened to me when I was da da da da. So I'm scared that this might happen again. That's the basis of it. So we try to control it, hoping and wishing and wanting to not repeat it again, repeat that same situation again. So what do do? We control the situation.
Speaker 2 (02:33)
We try to control the situation and it doesn't always work out that way.
Speaker 1 (02:38)
That's the problem. We try to control the situation. But the real question is, do we really have control, any control over how things are going to show up without knowing, without accepting that part of our lives or without doing our work in accepting or becoming stronger in feeling what those feelings were. We try to control the outside, hoping that we feel better when the outside of us is controlled, right?
So we try to control how we are feeling inside by controlling the outside, which is crazy. We do have a hundred percent, a hundred percent control of our insides. Like how do we feel, to be self-regulated, how to become mindful of what's happening, how to allow, how to feel. We have total control of that.
Speaker 2 (03:33)
That's really tough because you can like play the blame game. Well, this person did something which is making me feel a certain way. But you're saying that we have complete control of our feelings. So how do we navigate that? Another person's actions in order to β have an appropriate response in our own bodies that isn't controlling or aggressive or you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (04:01)
Yeah, it comes with self-awareness. We start with that. We become aware of what's happening in our bodies. Like, let's say, for example, somebody told me something this morning or shouted at me or told me something that's not aligned with my values or something that's triggering. First place to go is we become aware. Okay, something is happening within me. I'm triggered. Let's say something is happening. I'm feeling anxious about what we just spoke or I'm getting β
I'm hurt by what just happened. We start there and then we become curious about these feelings. Now you might think, who has the time when somebody has told me something?
Speaker 2 (04:39)
Hold
on, I gotta stop and go get curious for a minute. β
Speaker 1 (04:45)
The more often we do this and become curious, the duration becomes shorter. β We become, we get into a rhythm of it. Okay, this happened and I'm feeling this. I wonder why. And when we pause, when we step away, it just takes a few minutes. Okay, I'm feeling all this. Once we locate that spot and understand what's happening. Okay, I'm getting triggered by this.
What's happening within me? Am I scared? I'm feeling anxious right now. I'm anxious maybe about this person leaving me. I'm anxious of maybe I'm getting judged. Maybe something happening. Once we become curious and we solve that part from a more wiser perspective, like for example, let me show you like this morning my son didn't want to talk to me. He stormed out.
The reaction, the initial reaction in me was, how can he do this to me? Oh my gosh. And I am raising such a ungrateful kid. And my reaction was to fight with him, to control him.
Speaker 2 (05:49)
I had a similar situation this morning, so that's why I'm chuckling a little bit.
Speaker 1 (05:53)
It was to control, to go up a notch on the control part. But what I did instead was pause. Okay, this is triggering something in me. What's happening here? β I'm my subconsciousness was taking me back to those places where I felt abandoned in my own life, where I didn't feel heard, where I felt devalued. Those were showing up in that moment. So when I paused and I looked at
looked at those parts from a more wiser perspective. Okay, I see that. It's nothing to be afraid of. You're safe. It's okay. It's nothing to do with him. It's to do with your own past. And I self regulated at that moment. And then I could reach him from a different perspective. Now. Now I could ask him, what's going on? Why are you being so snappy this morning? And then
It switched. He's like, Oh my God, I didn't get good sleep or I I'm so worried about this application. You see it turned into a conversation versus a conflict. But the more often we become self reflective, then we can show up in our relationship with a different, um, different presence.
Speaker 2 (07:08)
What I love about this show is having people like you on as a guest. And we all have different stories and different journeys on how we got to turning our pain into our purpose and our passion and our mission. And I'm willing to bet you haven't always been this self-reflective, curious, I'm gonna take an outsider looking in kind of view. Can you go back to... β
where you can recognize it now, kind of where your beginnings of, β in your life, where you were having β these reflective moments and these reflective episodes where you're going back to like, I don't want to be that person anymore. Can you share a bit of your past?
Speaker 1 (07:57)
When I had my son, I was having these very frequent episodes of big tantrums myself, meaning I used to scream for small things, like maybe he was throwing up and I was sleep deprived, I was tired and my son would not sleep through the night and I would be like, my God, somebody help me, I these loud episodes. But as he kept growing, β
Speaker 2 (08:08)
Okay.
Speaker 1 (08:27)
Little things like he would have β an accident and I would have changed him like the third time. By the fourth time I would have lost it. And I would yell at him like, why can't you get this right? How many times to tell you all you have to tell is coming to, you know, just call me out when you have to go to the bathroom. As I kept doing this one time, I remember my house is really quiet. And I write about this in my book. β
and I went looking for him. Imagine a house being quiet when you have a three or four year old. I went looking for him and he was in the restroom taking care of himself. He had had an accident and he was doing it himself instead of coming to me. And the moment he saw me walking.
Speaker 2 (08:58)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Just gave me goosebumps.
Speaker 1 (09:15)
And that's the look I never wanted to see in his face again, because it broke my heart like this child instead of coming to me he's taking care of himself, because I
Speaker 2 (09:25)
when he really needed help.
Speaker 1 (09:27)
Yeah, I, should be coming to me. I'm the adult here. I'm the grownup here. β so I was turning into a three or four year old each time he was having an accident. And that's not a good thing. That was my wake up call. Like I need to do something, create that safety for him. No matter what went wrong that he came to me. That was a switch, but I didn't know how I knew I had to, to take control of my reactions, my reactivity, my loud reactivity. would yell on top of my, β you know, why
Speaker 2 (09:56)
Yeah, I was a yeller as well. Yeah
Speaker 1 (09:59)
Oh,
I did started, had a couple of episodes, but as I started doing the work, meaning reading, sitting, you know, getting better at my meditation practices, journaling, doing my own, having my own coaches, having my own support system, the gap between, you know, if I was yelling every day, the gap became, became wider and wider. It became once a week, once a month, I still yell, but it doesn't have the same charge like you used to.
be before.
Speaker 2 (10:29)
That's a good word, charge. Yeah, I can feel that. β
Speaker 1 (10:35)
It doesn't stick the β episodes or anything, the event that happens outside of you. doesn't stick like it used to before. Before it used to overpower me. Like I have no control. Like it's the other person's fault. The other person's blame. The other person is doing this to me. What's the gravity? But now I'm like, okay, I need to pause. Something has happened.
I need to pause and if this happened over this weekend and let me tell you, I am going to my own health issues right now. I'm feeling a bit vulnerable. I'm not as strong as, you know, certain days. And we were supposed to go to a movie and my son was late and I'm never late. I'm always on time. like to be on time. And that moment.
Speaker 2 (11:21)
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:25)
since I've done my work, I know my patterns, what trigger me, what upsets me. Being on time is something very important to me. But I felt this deep trigger, like yelling at him, like, how can you do this? It's a movie for God's sake. Yeah, instead of wanting to yell at him, I paused and I was narrating what was happening within me. I'm like, I can feel this overpower me.
Step away if you need to because I feel this urge to yell at you. I feel this urge to β lash at you. Step away if you need to because I can feel this burning sensation in my chest. I can feel this wanting to throw up. I was narrating to myself in a gentle way in the car.
Speaker 2 (12:09)
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:10)
narrating this. And my son, thank goodness, because I've told them this over and over again, whenever I'm having this, just think mom is sick. She's not feeling well. Don't take things personally. So he has been through this. So he knows and he putting my child was very calm. And he was like, I understand. It's okay. And he was telling him, I was narrating, it's nothing about you. I can feel this burning sensation in my chest and believe it, it did not last that long.
10 minutes.
Speaker 2 (12:43)
And he's watching you like throughout the years manage your emotions more and trying to get a grip β of what's coming in. Because this is like, I think it was probably Mel Robbins to be honest, who I heard her say that this is, she was talking about her parents and parenting, that this is our parents first time being parents, right? Like this is your first time being a parent to your son.
Right? And I think children, I've tried expressing that to my children, especially my 13 year old daughter, because we can butt heads sometimes. And I certainly butted heads with my mom, but to like compassionately explain to them, look, I've never been your mom before. You know what I mean? Like, this is my first time being a mom to a 13 year old girl. Like we need to like learn this together. Right? So.
I want to talk about your book, Yelling to Zening. Can you pull it forward? can see it. I can see it there. Yelling, it's a little... Okay, Yelling to Zening. How did this book come to be? Busy mom, entrepreneur, and then you're like, I want to write a book. I'm to be an author. How did this come to be?
Speaker 1 (14:07)
Well, I had to share my journey with other moms out there. First of all, we get stuck in a loop. We get frustrated with something that happens. We are overwhelmed. And then we scream at our child. We yell at our children and we butt heads. And then we feel guilty. This is common pattern. We women, especially, we feel bad, feel guilty and we overcompensate. And then we go back into the loop. And I've seen this in my practice over and over again.
So I wanted to teach women because there's no school for parenting. There is no school. Where do we go to learn all this? I wanted to put my story out there so women can relate to it. Women can see themselves in it. And I have so many clients come and tell me, yes, that's happened. I feel guilty. Be the small thing for screens nowadays. Is children not so addicted to...
Speaker 2 (14:59)
it's so bad.
Speaker 1 (15:02)
And we as parents, want to do the right thing. We are doing the right thing. We pull it away from them. Then there's this big tantrum. Then we feel bad. We feel guilty.
Speaker 2 (15:09)
And
then they hate you and then you're like, yeah, it's the loop.
Speaker 1 (15:14)
Where do we break that loop? We need to start learning how to draw boundaries. And women, we as women, we are so bad at boundaries. We need to learn how to build boundaries within ourselves and then with our children. That's all in the book about how we draw boundaries, how we learn about boundaries, how we break the loop of, know, and we get unstuck. So all that is in the book. And I hope the readers can relate to some of the stories I've written in the book and have those.
tangible tools that they can have in their toolkit.
Speaker 2 (15:48)
Absolutely. Now we have a webinar coming up on June 25th about addiction and parenting addiction to screens and addiction to alcohol. I'll be doing the alcohol component and you're going to be doing the addiction to screens component. How did you get so passionate about this, about β educating β addiction with teens and screens?
Speaker 1 (16:13)
That's the call of our times, right? Screens. We didn't grow up with screens. The TV was a big thing growing up and up and up.
Speaker 2 (16:22)
Yeah, and like the five channels.
Speaker 1 (16:25)
parents have the remote so we didn't have to draw big boundaries. But things are changing now and the screens have all the elements of any substances. It makes you feel good, it uses all your senses, it gives you that hit of dopamine and oxytocin that we get from other substances. It has that feel-good hormone just like any other addictive.
and we need to learn how to have that self-control when it comes to screens.
Speaker 2 (16:56)
It's hard and it's hard not just for kids. It's hard for parents too, like the doom scrolling or you're running your business off your phone, a new contact comes in, you want to get back to them right away. And β I think you tapped on it earlier about setting boundaries and we have no boundaries when it comes to our phones, right? Can you offer some suggestions? Maybe you practice it in your house or with your children. β What we can be
encouraging our children, even ourselves, to do when it comes to screen time.
Speaker 1 (17:31)
if we don't have those boundaries ourselves, it's going to be hard to lay those boundaries on our children. So it starts with us because what they see, they're going to follow.
Speaker 2 (17:42)
But what about,
I'm going to challenge you on that. What about, well, I'm the adult, I pay for the cell phones. So if you're telling your children, okay, you can have three hours of screen time a day, which is a lot as I'm saying that. But then, well, I'm the adult, I pay for the cell phone and I have to do my work. And so I get six hours, seven hours a day. How can we, it's tough. Like how can we expect our children to do something that we're not willing to do?
Speaker 1 (18:08)
Yes, like I said, it's difficult for us to follow through with those boundaries if we don't have those boundaries ourselves, which means, okay, I have to work and we are very authentic about that. So I need my laptop, I need my screens and it's my work. I pay the bills. That's different from you wanting to play on your screen. And you're constantly modeling that, right? See, I don't have my phone when I'm eating. I don't have my phone when I'm going for a walk with you. I don't have a phone with me when I'm talking.
I'm listening, right? We are talking. And if I get my phone like this and I'm like...
Speaker 2 (18:43)
Yeah,
yeah, we're doing the podcast like this. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:48)
Yeah, you're No, you don't feel heard. So you are constantly putting the phone down when they are talking. The same thing. They're going to pick up on those cues. We have those rules. OK, how about we don't use phones from this time to this time? We both do the same things. when they are playing and you have rules like they can they get to play one or two hours, whatever the game time is.
while you get to do something yourself for you. So you have those negotiations, you sit and write down, you how about we do this and you can put it up. This is what I did with my son. I would put up all the rules on the fridge, which we both agree on. sit like lawyers and we negotiate. We write it down, we put it on the fridge and we always refer back to that. Okay, these are the rules. β
Speaker 2 (19:36)
That's good.
And then they are having a bit of like autonomy in their lives as a person with this responsibility of having the cell phone, right? And you're kind of there guiding and monitoring that and making sure that it's cohesive. really, I really like that. It brought me to a situation like, of course, I'm on my phone probably too much than I should be. And when children come into the room, I have four, when they come in the room, they just start talking. They don't observe.
the space, they don't see what mom and dad are doing, they just start talking. So I could be like writing a work email or something and they come in and then if I'm not giving them the attention right away, it's kind of rude, right? But you feel bad. But I've gotten to the point where I'll be like, one second or just pause for a minute. I'm not ready to talk to you yet. I'm just going to wrap up this email and then I can give you my undivided attention.
rather than trying to do the email half-assed like paying attention to them and then I'll be like I'll put my phone down and trying to continue the conversation and I have no idea what the hell they just said right so because they just come in and dominate the room and then blah blah blah I'm not ready to talk to you yet right it's like when you're answering a phone you answer the phone when you're ready to talk to someone so putting that
I've put that boundary for my children of, Kate, just pause. I really want to hear what you have to say, but let me just finish up this conversation and then you can have my full attention.
Speaker 1 (21:13)
That's perfect, right? You're honoring what you're doing, you're honoring them, you're drawing those boundaries. Those are such healthy ways to communicate with each other and being present with each other and you're teaching them, right? Like you're doing something, they can pause, what they want to say is important to you. Tell them to hold that space. You're doing it beautifully and you need to do that more often.
Speaker 2 (21:32)
Of course. Yeah.
Thank
you. What do you feel is, I think it differs for different age ranges, but what do you feel is like the appropriate amount of screen time for children, teenagers, toddlers? I mean, because the little babies are watching CocoMelen, right? So what...
Speaker 1 (21:59)
Well, if you ask, I would say don't give them the phone until they're teenagers, but things don't work that way. But you have to make that decision for your family. What is right for your family? Because children have to do their homework these days on their laptop. So you have to decide what's good for your family and have those conversations with your children. them choose. Doesn't mean if they say three hours, four hours, you know, you don't let them. But you can start with, know, how about we do 30 minutes.
And you know, we can do this later and we can do this before after you do the 30 minutes. And here's another thing. Sometimes they're in the middle of something, Chanel, and then they don't want to get off. And it leads to lot of conflicts. If you trust your child and work off of the trust that you have, you're raising a good child. Your child doesn't want to take advantage of you because sometimes they're in the middle of a game and they want to finish it.
And imagine even us as adults, if you're in the middle of something, you want to finish it. Now, if it's over 30 minutes, you can go stand by them and say, come on, finish it. Five, 10 minutes maximum. If they're finishing in the middle of the game, can allow them to get off of that. But what we do, like, and I'll share the story with your audiences. one time I came back from work and I didn't have such a good day, you know, and there was a lot going on in my head. And I entered the room and then I...
see my son playing some games, sitting there playing fully engrossed. My first reaction was to grab that remote off of his hand and send him to his room and yell at him and scream, what are you doing? God knows how long have you been playing this? You should be doing da, da, da, da, da. Why you didn't do this? I know how that would have turned out. He would have slammed the door, his bedroom door. He would have said, I hate you. It would have gone down really bad. But I passed before I entered the room. I took a few...
I collected myself and the tools which I teach, the tools which I practice, I brought them all in at that moment and I could feel this urge, this ego, this thing wanting to just...
Speaker 2 (24:05)
Ego. Yeah, ego plays a big role.
Speaker 1 (24:09)
How can he and all that? after a of breaths, I walked up to him and asked, how long have you been playing? He said, mom, I've just been playing for an hour. That's what his time limit was at the time. And I'm done. I'm just finishing up that game. And I saw that he was in the middle of it. And I just stood there. Believe it or not, five minutes, he wrapped up the game and he said, I'm done. And the whole atmosphere changed. He's like, how was your day? And we started chatting about it.
But had I listened to my mind, five minutes would have gone down. The do-over would have taken hours. Me feeling guilty, β asking him to forgive me and the makeup. my gosh.
Speaker 2 (24:55)
And you know, how many times have our children come to us and were like, five minutes, one second, just a minute, hold on just a sec. And your son was literally just like, can I have five minutes, like 10 minutes and my game will be done. So I think I really love that you shared that with us because I think that it's important to honor the humans that were
that we're trying to raise and respect their time too. We're all on different times. There's six of us in my house, right? We're all going different places all the time and we're not all on the same time schedule, right? Whether it's going to the bathroom or playing a game on the phone or finishing up at meal time. My two youngest, they take forever to eat supper. My husband is done in 30 seconds. So he's the first one, maybe not 30 seconds, but like he's...
pretty much done supper in six minutes. And I'm like 30 to 40 minutes. So he's like always really quick to be on the little ones of finish your supper, finish your supper. And I'm gonna like, but what else do they have to do tonight? Like they don't need to go grocery shopping or you know what I mean? Like they're just kids.
Speaker 1 (26:09)
Do you know the story as to why he wants them to finish supper in a certain time?
Speaker 2 (26:17)
think I was.
That's a great question. going, I think it's because food waste, because they'll sit there forever and then they like, they just start picking their food and like they'll sit there for an hour and a half, two hours because it's finish your supper, finish your supper. And I've gotten to the point of number one, I don't want you to waste the food, but number two, if you're not hungry, you're not, if you're hungry, you're going to eat, right? And if you're not hungry, you're not going to eat.
And if you choose not to finish the supper that is put in front of you, then there's no snacks before bed. That's just kind of where I'm at now. And I have made their portions smaller to see if I was feeding them too much and I'm like trying to stuff them. But β no, I'm going to ask him.
Speaker 1 (27:07)
And that's important too, like you were saying, right? You are attuning to them. How much are they eating? Am I giving them too much? don't want to... See, it's not one thing and done. I like the way you're saying you're trying to find out what is working and what's not working.
Speaker 2 (27:21)
Yeah.
And like I messaged the day home gal and I was like, what time do you have snack? Right? Because supper is 530 every single day on the table, 530 days, no ifs, ands or buts. And if my son is having snack at 330 at day home, he's not going to sit down and have a full meal. Right? So this is what I'm saying like earlier that our kids have different lives and different schedules. He's eating throughout the day.
that I don't know when, right? So I can't have this expectation on him. Maybe I need to push supper to six o'clock.
Speaker 1 (27:58)
That's so important. First thing you said.
Speaker 2 (28:00)
I'm having these revelations here as we're talking.
Speaker 1 (28:04)
What you said was they are their own human beings first. I love that. And it has to be underlined in red and they have their own lives. we are red. But we often forget that in our day to day lives because we already have so much going on and we are overwhelmed and we have so much going on in our head. We forget in the moment when things hit us, when
Speaker 2 (28:18)
Highlight it, yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:33)
Let's say you come back from home, a tired day, and they're saying, I don't want to eat this, what you made. Those are the moments you need to pause and say, β my gosh, what's happening? But we become reactive. Why can't you eat? I made this. You're being uncomfortable. Those loops, those get in the way of our relationships, the relationship that we truly want.
Speaker 2 (28:55)
Absolutely. And you know what else I've started doing? Not all the time because cooking for six people, it's a lot of work, but I'll bring my four year old in and I'll ask her to help so she can see what I'm creating in the kitchen and be a part of it, right? Rather than just, I just made some random food and I'm throwing it in her face. She's being a part of β the creation or I've done this. What do you want me to make for supper tonight? Right?
And if it's pizza, okay, I'll do a homemade pizza if it's spaghetti like I Home make Do the sauce homemade right so to Even if like cuz they're away during the day even if they can't be involved What do you want for supper tonight because our palates are totally different? Right, like I don't eat the same way or I don't enjoy the same foods that I did in my 20s even or when I was a teenager So imagine with their little mouths
They probably don't want asparagus or scallops or shrimp, even though we know it's healthy, right? So to have that.
Speaker 1 (29:56)
pretty much ahead in this journey. won't hear a lot of moms say that, but it comes from a nice place too. Even moms who want to feed their children healthy, they forget the part which you just mentioned now that they have different palates, they have different body. They have their whole other person. We often forget that. And we bring in our raising the way we were raised. you are going to finish your plate, finish your piece.
Speaker 2 (30:21)
Yeah,
and like when you sit down like are there sapna are there foods that you don't like like that's legit You don't have to like that's a real thing. You don't for me. It's pesto I despise pesto and sun-dried tomatoes like you cannot get those close to me and So yeah, I'm just thinking of my little kids now β My daughter hates mashed potatoes, but she loves chips
Right? Even though they're potatoes. So yeah, that's interesting. Maybe I'll do like a food list. I'll sit down with them and be like, what foods do you really not like? Right? And then I just won't serve it to them anymore. Why try to like, this is like childhood torture, trying to feed them foods that they really, really don't like. Cause if someone did that to me with pesto or sun-dried tomatoes, like game over, I'm out.
Speaker 1 (31:19)
See that comes from lot of awareness. have you're aware of that part in you. But most of us we are like we make it personal. We take it personally. I made this wine to eating. β
Speaker 2 (31:33)
I spent
so long in the kitchen. Yes.
Speaker 1 (31:37)
That's the problem. That's when we get into trouble when we personalize things, we take things to heart, we think they're doing it to us. That's when we get into trouble or the relationship suffers.
Speaker 2 (31:51)
of having like revelations and epiphanies here. And I'm gonna take some of these tools and strategies that we've been talking about. Now, before we wrap up, do you have like three, let's go with three, three, four, two, whatever, pick a number, I don't care. β Tips, tools, strategies that can really like upscale our parenting game so we can move forward in confidence to... β
be able to just like grow and just try to be the best parent that we can. I'm sure you got lots, you got a whole book about it.
Speaker 1 (32:30)
about it, but it starts with self-awareness. Become aware of the parts that are not working, the parts where you're constantly stuck in a pattern, the parts where you're constantly yelling, the parts that constantly meaning it bothers you.
Speaker 2 (32:45)
And you'll feel that, like it feels off.
Speaker 1 (32:48)
It feels, you feel certain way for, like I said, for example, being on time is so important to me. So when I started doing my work, it's one thing to have a value of being on time, but I had this charge, this pain of being on time. When I tracked down, it came from my own β shame of being late and I was punished for being late and made to stand outside my classroom where other people would see me.
Speaker 2 (33:13)
So this goes back
a few decades.
Speaker 1 (33:15)
Yes. So I have to work backwards to understand why being on time was so charging to me because I was scared of being late because being late meant what? Da da da da da.
Speaker 2 (33:27)
But you're safe
now. You're safe.
Speaker 1 (33:30)
Yes, it's work. Each time I felt that coming up in my body, I had to tell myself, it's safe. You're okay. And then it's a value. I like to be on time, but it doesn't have to be so charging, so triggering if I'm late. You see the difference. I can be late and say, you know what? I tried my best. I got stuck in the traffic versus, my God, why do I do this? I could have done this, self blame,
Speaker 2 (33:56)
I mean, you spiral.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:58)
So that's the difference. Start with the self-awareness. That's the big tool. Look at the areas that's not working and become, β start mindfulness, become aware, learn the tips and tools. There's so many tips and tools. If you spend two minutes a day becoming conscious, becoming aware of what's happening within you, what are the sensations within you and you build on that, you're going to be a more calmer person, more less reactive, self-regulated.
and then everything is going to be easy breezy after that.
Speaker 2 (34:31)
Easy peasy lemon squeezy. β And can I add communication? I think communication is so important. Communication with yourself. We don't have to be right all the time. β We can tend to put ourselves on like these pedestals or these pillars of I know everything. when you can take a step back and be like, no, I don't know everything and I'm sorry. I shouldn't have reacted that way or to even say you are right.
not in a sarcastic way, but to be able to like literally step back and acknowledge that someone else was right, can be really, really empowering for the relationship. Even like a child, children could be right above their parents.
Speaker 1 (35:16)
Yes. And then it's not so much about the words, right? We can be very well meaning, but the words might not land the same way we intend to. So more than the words, I would suggest everybody listening, even for me, it's a lesson to focus on the energy behind the words.
Speaker 2 (35:37)
and the charge
that that that word is sticking with me the charge behind the words.
Speaker 1 (35:42)
That matters because I can say I love you and I can keep slapping the person. doesn't mean I can not like the person. You know, I could not stand the person and I can say I love you. It doesn't mean anything. But if I can really love and have the compassion for the other person, words are just, you know, just sprinkles. I don't even have to use. So it's more on the energy you bring to the conversation and the words.
Speaker 2 (36:07)
I think I'm going to, I'm going to use this word. I'm going to use charge and it's going to be my overused word for the next month. But as I'm navigating parenthood with my children and even my relationship with my husband is I'm feeling really charged about the situation right now or why are you seeing, or how could I say it back to them? You seem like really charged up about this, right? I really like this word. I'm digging it. So I'm going to, I'm going to use it. β Thank you.
so much for being on this episode today. I have learned so much, like I said, lots of revelations and epiphanies as I'm going to move forward in my first time being a parent to four kids, right? So can you leave our audience and me with one quote or saying that you've heard over the years that has really kind of stuck with you for me?
I like to say every journey begins with a single step. So that's one that's, yeah, that's one that's that has stuck with me. Do you have anything?
Speaker 1 (37:14)
I love this quote by Dr. Shafali, love without consciousness becomes need and control in the name of
Speaker 2 (37:25)
Can you say that again?
Speaker 1 (37:27)
love without consciousness becomes control and need in the name of love.
Speaker 2 (37:38)
That's powerful. What a beautiful send off. Thank you so much, Sapna. And β do you want to close this out with β our event that is coming up?
Speaker 1 (37:48)
So excited about this event, everybody listening, this is going to bring two big expertise that we need, we need in this today's life, addiction and screens and who better, who live it, who have been through it, come out of it. So please join in and it's going to be lots of fun and value. It's not just going to be teaching, teaching, teaching. It's going to be fun. And I hope to see everybody there.
Speaker 2 (38:02)
Yeah
and it's called Raising Kids, Raising Standards, Parenting and Addiction, June 25th, 2 p.m. Eastern with Sapna Rad and myself, Shaleigh. And thank you for tuning into this episode of Let's Have a Chat. Thank you, Sapna, for being here. And as always, I hope you have the best day ever. Until next time.