The Four-Part Process for Navigating Insecurity

We are all put in situations in which we lack confidence. Perhaps we are taking up a new hobby, meeting a new group of people, or embarking on a new career.

In today’s Self-Care Sunday tip, we take a look at how we can show up as empowered, positive versions of ourselves, even when we feel uncomfortable. After all, how we show up in these situations can determine whether we ultimately enjoy the experience or walk away feeling awkward and even embarrassed.

Showing up as our best possible selves is a skill, one that we teach in our Resilience-Based Parenting™ course, and one that all adults and children can benefit from learning.

Consider, for instance, what people look like when they do not have this skill. They can come across as combative or defensive, when really they are just feeling insecure. Oftentimes, they laugh at themselves, but not in a good way. Rather, their self-deprecation makes people around them feel uncomfortable.

The good news is, we can learn and...

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Self-Care Sunday: Ask for Specific Help from Specific People

self-care sunday Sep 19, 2021

Resilient people know that asking for help is a strength and not a weakness, so in this week’s Self-Care Sunday tip, we encourage you to reach out and ask for support when faced with a challenging situation.

But don’t just ask for any ol’ help. Ask for specific help from specific people.

Many people have a belief that asking for help—or even disclosing their troubles—is a sign of weakness. They think they should be able to handle their problems on their own. They don’t want to seem needy or broken, so they suffer in silence, pretending they are fine when, in reality, they are not okay and need help.

Everyone needs help sometimes, and often, we need specific help from specific people. We might need advice from someone we admire. We might need our sister to pick up our children from school. Or we might need financial support from a family member.

Disappointments, setbacks, failures, and obstacles that feel overwhelming are part of the human...

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Self-Care Sunday: Check With Your Gut

self-care sunday Sep 12, 2021

Resilient people know that their minds can get cluttered with negative thoughts and limiting beliefs, so in this week’s Self-Care Sunday tip, we encourage you to check in with your gut feelings when making decisions.

If no one tells you how important your gut feelings are, you might forget to listen to them. In fact, when we are kids, we are taught to abdicate our own feelings and instead listen to our teachers, our parents, our babysitters, and our coaches. And while sometimes this is appropriate, the danger is that we lose touch with this powerful tool.

We can feel in our bodies when something is the right decision for us, and we can feel in our bodies when it is not. We learn to think our way through decisions instead of feeling our way through decisions, which means we can overlook or intentionally ignore the welcoming and warning signs our gut feelings are trying to give us about the choices and decisions we need to make in life.

But whether we listen to them or not, our...

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Self-Care Sunday: Avoid Judging the Moment

self-care sunday Sep 05, 2021

Resilient people know that events that seem bad in the moment can pave the way for good things in the future, so this week’s tip is to avoid judging the moment, and stay hopeful instead.

If you look back over the course of your life, you will be able to identify things you consider “good” that could not have happened without something you consider “bad” happening first.

Realizing this can help you choose to stay hopeful, even when things in the moment do not feel great.

This is perhaps best described using The Parable of the Chinese Farmer …

Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, his neighbors came to commiserate.

“We are so sorry to hear that your horse ran away,” They said. “This is most unfortunate.”

The farmer replied, “Maybe, yes. Maybe, no.”

The next day the horse came back bringing seven horses with it.

In the evening, everyone came back and said, “Oh,...

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Self-Care Sunday: Take Care of Yourself When You Feel Stress

self-care sunday Aug 29, 2021

In today’s Self-Care Sunday, we encourage you to consider the ways that you take care of yourself when you feel stress.

Most of us have, at one point or another, used coping techniques that are dysfunctional. We deny. We avoid. We blame.

And perhaps, during a global pandemic, we lie around eating pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

We use these dysfunctional methods of self-soothing (or self-destruction, depending on your perspective) for three reasons:

1. We all have stressors.

Rich, poor, single, married, old, young, happy, or sad: No one is exempt from stressors. Daily, weekly, or monthly, most of us have moments in our lives when the stress of trying to hold it all together becomes overwhelming.

This is particularly true now, when we are worried about health, finances, and the state of the world.

2. We are not taught resilience skills.

Though all of us will suffer, few of us are taught the skills that help us not only cope with our stressors, but also use them to...

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Self Care Sunday: Make Your Home Life More Relaxing

Truth be told, most of us have a few pet peeves around the house. And, chances are, your family members have a few pet peeves of their own. Some of them are big. Some are small. Regardless, your home should be a place for relaxing, for feeling loved, and for giving love.

Why not take some time to address these pet peeves in a way that is funny, engaging, and easy to resolve? Here is an activity sheet to help guide your conversations with your family members to resolve these irritations and make your home culture more joy-filled.

 

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Self-Care Sunday: Be a Floater

In our parent community, Resilience-Based Parenting,™ we help kids develop a strategy called “floating.” 

This strategy is equally as valuable for adults as it is for kids, so in today’s Self-Care Sunday tip, we encourage you to be a floater. 

Being a floater means that you float amongst various social groups. You have friends from work, friends from college, and friends from the rock-climbing gym. 

This resilience skill helps kids avoid friendship drama and adjust when friendship dynamics become difficult or unpleasant, or when certain friends simply are not available. 

By the time we are adults, the friendship drama is (hopefully) resolved. But being a floater is helpful for adults for other reasons. 

First, different friends “match” different parts of our personalities. You might have friends who love to exercise, and this encourages the part of you that wants to stay healthy. You might have friends who are highly...

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Self-Care Sunday: How to Show Up When You Feel Insecure

self-care sunday Mar 28, 2021

We are all put in situations in which we lack confidence. Perhaps we are taking up a new hobby, meeting a new group of people, or embarking on a new career. 

In today’s Self-Care Sunday tip, we take a look at how we can show up as empowered, positive versions of ourselves, even when we feel uncomfortable. After all, how we show up in these situations can determine whether we ultimately enjoy the experience or walk away feeling awkward and even embarrassed. 

Showing up as our best possible selves is a skill, one that we teach in our Resilience-Based Parenting course, and one that all adults and children can benefit from learning. 

Consider, for instance, what people look like when they do not have this skill. They can come across as combative or defensive, when really they are just feeling insecure. Oftentimes, they laugh at themselves, but not in a good way. Rather, their self-deprecation makes people around them feel uncomfortable. 

The good news...

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Self-Care Sunday: Move Toward Desire, Not Away From Fear

self-care sunday Mar 21, 2021

In today's Self-Care Sunday tip, we encourage you to consciously move in the direction of what you desire rather than away from what you fear.

When making decisions, we have a tendency to either move toward desire or away from fear.

Moving toward desire can be scary.

After all, if you do not achieve your desires, you might feel embarrassed or rejected.

And yet, leaning in the direction of what you want is the only way to achieve your dreams.

If you are constantly moving away from something out of fear, you will almost certainly never get what it is that you actually want.

Moving toward a desire is always the path for an authentic life.

Moving away from fear is always the path for a life of unspoken and unrealized dreams.

So many people talk themselves out of their dreams because they think it feels better to not want them than to want them and not achieve them.

But this is not actually true. Pretending like we don't want things only makes us feel disempowered and apathetic about...

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Self-Care Sunday: Are Your Labels Helping ... or Holding You Back?

self-care sunday Feb 28, 2021

In today's Self-Care Sunday tip, we take a look at whether the labels you have given yourself are helping you or holding you back.

We all have certain stories that we tell about ourselves, and some of them are truly empowering. I am an entrepreneur. I am an athlete. I am a family man.

These are all labels that we might use to help us establish our values and the boundaries around who we are and who we want to be.

But sometimes, labels stop us from growing in ways that can be small or big.

You can see how labeling yourself a "bad dancer" will likely stop you from getting on the dance floor or taking a dance class with your partner and gaining experience. Saying that you have a "block" when it comes to learning a foreign language or a musical instrument will cause you to stop trying. After all, if you believe these to be true, why would you even try?

And while these might be small examples—heck, you might not want to dance, play an instrument, or speak a foreign...

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