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Focus More on What you DO Have Control Over · Raising Daughters

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Speaker 1: Welcome back, friends to another episode of Raising Daughters. Do't
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Speaker 1: your Tim Jordan, here are your host, and I appreciate
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Speaker 1: you stopping by Every week. I have a brand new podcast,
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Speaker 1: and I know these take a little bit of time
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Speaker 1: to listen to. Most of them are around thirty minutes.
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Speaker 1: When I interview authors, sometimes it goes up a little
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Speaker 1: bit higher. But today I'm going to just talk about
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Speaker 1: a topic that I address a lot with the girls
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Speaker 1: who I counsel, also with the girls who come to
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Speaker 1: my weekend retreat my summer camps, and the topic is
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Speaker 1: teaching them how to focus on what they do have
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Speaker 1: control over, because a lot of the girls I work with,
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Speaker 1: and I think this is also true of their parents
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Speaker 1: and adults. People and kids spend way too much time
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Speaker 1: and energy trying to blame other people and trying to
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Speaker 1: change other people and circumstances instead of focusing on what
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Speaker 1: they have control over. So what I'm gonna do is
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Speaker 1: offer you some I think are some very insightful stories
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Speaker 1: about how to take charge of your reactions to other people,
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Speaker 1: take charge of how you frame adversities, your emotional state,
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Speaker 1: and what you hold on to your attitude, your self confidence,
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Speaker 1: and finally a little short piece at the end about
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Speaker 1: being in charge of your thoughts. Let's start with your
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Speaker 1: how you react to other people. And I was thinking
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Speaker 1: about this recently because our president recently responded to a
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Speaker 1: comment from someone in the crowd as he was walking
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Speaker 1: through by giving them the finger and cursing at them.
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Speaker 1: I want you to contrast that behavior with the example
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Speaker 1: that was shown a long time ago by Buddha and
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Speaker 1: how he handled it antagonism a lot differently. One day,
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Speaker 1: Buddha was sitting preaching to his followers when an angry
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Speaker 1: general from the army came abruptly and started yelling at
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Speaker 1: the Buddha. And Buddha just sat there very calmly with
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Speaker 1: his followers without responding, which made the soldier more angry.
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Speaker 1: So this soldier started cursing. He threatened to kill him,
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Speaker 1: all to no avail avail because Buddha just sat there quietly.
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Speaker 1: This really made the general upset, so at one point
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Speaker 1: he unsheathed his sword and he threatened to kill Buddha,
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Speaker 1: who still sat there undeterred. The general finally gave up
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Speaker 1: and he stomped off. When he was gone, his disciples
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Speaker 1: asked the Master why he hadn't defended himself and why
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Speaker 1: he had let himself be treated that way, And Buddha's
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Speaker 1: response was important. Buddhist said, if someone offers you a
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Speaker 1: gift and you refuse to accept it, to whom does
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Speaker 1: the gift belong? And the followers answered, well, it belongs
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Speaker 1: to he who offered it, and Buddhist said, the same
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Speaker 1: goes for anger, envy, and insults. When they are not accepted,
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Speaker 1: they will forever belong to the person who holds onto them. Gosh,
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Speaker 1: I wish every girl could take that to heart and
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Speaker 1: to live that out, especially girls who I see in
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Speaker 1: middle school, which is such a hellhole, so much insecurity,
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Speaker 1: so may comment, so much criticism, so much comparing all
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Speaker 1: that stuff. Let me give you another quick example from
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Speaker 1: another good story. There are two men who rode the
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Speaker 1: subway every day together going to work, and one of
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Speaker 1: them always spot a newspaper from the very same vendor
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Speaker 1: every day, and the vendor was not very nice, He
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Speaker 1: was disrespectful, and so one day the friend asked him,
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Speaker 1: why do you buy your paper from the same newsstand
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Speaker 1: when the vendor is always route to you? And his
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Speaker 1: wise friend responded, I am not willing to allow that
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Speaker 1: man's attitude and disrespect to dictate where I buy my
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Speaker 1: paper brilliant. Our girls need to learn this because otherwise,
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Speaker 1: if they don't, they are constantly being at the mercy
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Speaker 1: of what their peers are saying to them, comments about them, teasing.
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Speaker 1: I saw a girl recently who was upset because her
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Speaker 1: grandma said something about her being fat. And this girl,
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Speaker 1: excuse me, as a cheerleader, and she is underweight of anything,
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Speaker 1: but she was taking it on. And that's something I
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Speaker 1: want our girls to work at, and all of us,
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Speaker 1: by the way, how we react to other people and
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Speaker 1: their words. Next up, how you view and frame adversities.
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Speaker 1: Here's one of my very favorite quotes of all time
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Speaker 1: by a man named Haruki Murakami, and he was describing
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Speaker 1: a positive way to frame adversities. And it goes like this,
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Speaker 1: And once the storm is over, you won't remember how
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Speaker 1: you made it through, how you managed to survive. You
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Speaker 1: won't even be sure whether the storm is really over.
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Speaker 1: But one thing is certain, when you come out of
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Speaker 1: the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in.
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Speaker 1: That's what this storm is all about. Beautiful, beautiful sentiment.
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Speaker 1: Another related quote that also gives us another way to
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Speaker 1: do our challenging times. It goes like this. Not all
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Speaker 1: storms come to disrupt your life, some come to clear
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Speaker 1: your path. When I think about versity and our attitude
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Speaker 1: towards a versities, I always think about Victor Frankel, an
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Speaker 1: author who was a concentration camp survivor in World War Two,
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Speaker 1: and he survived horrendous conditions. He was working on his
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Speaker 1: book a manuscript before he got captured by the Germans.
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Speaker 1: He was Jewish, and one of the things he found
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Speaker 1: in the concentration camps was important. He noticed that the
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Speaker 1: moment and if his fellow prisoners lost their reason to live,
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Speaker 1: they usually died within two to three to four days.
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Speaker 1: But the men who held onto something a wife to
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Speaker 1: find after they were out, a child to see again,
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Speaker 1: a book to write, a debt, a debt to repay,
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Speaker 1: a promise to keep. Men who did that were able
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Speaker 1: to endure unthinkable suffering. The difference wasn't physical strength, it
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Speaker 1: was meaning. It was meaning. So he began offering his
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Speaker 1: fellow POWs something the guards could never confiscate, a reason
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Speaker 1: to see tomorrow. Frankel himself survived by mentally reconstructing his
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Speaker 1: lost manuscript page by page, paragraph by paragraph. In the
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Speaker 1: darkness of the barracks. He was a bright light amongst
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Speaker 1: the prisoners because he was constantly encouraging people and giving
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Speaker 1: them meaning. In April of nineteen forty five, the survivors
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Speaker 1: were all liberated, and Victor Frankel, who weighed just eighty
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Speaker 1: five pounds, the first thing he did when he was
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Speaker 1: liberated was he sat down and began writing for nine days,
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Speaker 1: because that's how long it took for him to recreate
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Speaker 1: his manuscript from memory, the ones the Nazis had destroyed
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Speaker 1: three years earlier. His book was published about a year
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Speaker 1: later in nineteen forty six the title man Search for Meaning,
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Speaker 1: and it became an international bestseller. I've read it a
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Speaker 1: long time ago, and I remember how meaningful, meaningful it
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Speaker 1: was for me. Victor Franco proved something that Nazis tried
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Speaker 1: to disprove. You can strip away everything from a human being, freedom, family, food, future, hope,
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Speaker 1: and there will still be one final freedom remaining, the
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Speaker 1: freedom to choose what it all means, to choose one's
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Speaker 1: attitude in any given set of circumstances. That's a very
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Speaker 1: famous quote from Victor Frankel that I want all of
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Speaker 1: your daughters to live by and all of you as well,
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Speaker 1: to frame, to frame adversities in a way that doesn't
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Speaker 1: take you down, doesn't destroy you, but you learn from it.
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Speaker 1: Here's another thing I want our daughters to have control over,
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Speaker 1: and that's her emotional state and what they hold on to.
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Speaker 1: One of my very favorite stories of all time. It
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Speaker 1: is about these two monks who are traveling together and
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Speaker 1: walking down this muddy road. After some heavy rains had
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Speaker 1: come for three days. They walked down the hill to
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Speaker 1: a river and there's a beautiful young woman standing on
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Speaker 1: the bank, unable to cross. She had a long dress
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Speaker 1: on and she was standing there looking kind of helpless.
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Speaker 1: So one of the monks walked up and said, I'll
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Speaker 1: help you cross, and he lifted her up in his
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Speaker 1: arms and he carried her across and gently deposited her
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Speaker 1: on the ground. She thanked him, and she walked off
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Speaker 1: in one direction. The other monk crossed over and joined
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Speaker 1: his friend, and they set off in the opposite direction
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Speaker 1: as a woman. After walking all day, they stopped at
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Speaker 1: a temple to sleep, and the one monk turned to
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Speaker 1: his friend and freend and he said, I can't believe
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Speaker 1: what you did back there. We have taken a vow
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Speaker 1: of chastity that says we don't talk to women, we
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Speaker 1: don't go near women, much less touch them. How could
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Speaker 1: you do that? And the other monk replied wisely, it's
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Speaker 1: true that I did carry her across that river, but
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Speaker 1: I left the girl back there, But you still seem
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Speaker 1: to be carrying her. Oftentimes we suffer because we haven't
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Speaker 1: forgiven others let go of our past grievances. I saw
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Speaker 1: a quote one time, but I don't know where it
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Speaker 1: came from it and it goes like this, you can
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Speaker 1: forgive people without welcoming, welcoming them back into your life.
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Speaker 1: Let me say that again, because I butchered it. You
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Speaker 1: can forgive people without welcoming them back into your life.
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Speaker 1: Apology accepted, access denied. Good quote for your daughters to
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Speaker 1: live by. Another quick story about let him go and
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Speaker 1: letting go of things that we might hold on to
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Speaker 1: that might affect our emotional state and our happiness. This
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Speaker 1: is another story about a pow. He was a former
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Speaker 1: inmate of a Nazi concentration camp. This man, one day
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Speaker 1: he was visiting a friend who had also shared the
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Speaker 1: ordeal with him in the camps. He asked his old
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Speaker 1: friend if he had forgiven the Nazis, and his friend said, yes,
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Speaker 1: I have. But the other man said that he hadn't
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Speaker 1: and he was still consumed with hatred for his guards
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Speaker 1: and all the Nazis. His friend, who had forgiven them, replied,
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Speaker 1: in that case, they still have you in prison. Wow.
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Speaker 1: We are not always in control of what happens to us,
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Speaker 1: but we are always in charge of what we make
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Speaker 1: of it and what we decide to carry forward with us.
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Speaker 1: I always tell kids that forgiveness is less about the
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Speaker 1: other person and more about us. Forgiving for giving us
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Speaker 1: the ability to not carry negative, limiting, or angry thoughts
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Speaker 1: with us, because it might bring us down, It might
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Speaker 1: keep us in a state of anger, might affect how
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Speaker 1: we think about ourselves. It will affect us in ways
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Speaker 1: that aren't healthy. So forgiveness is one way that we
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Speaker 1: can control our emotional state and what we hold on to.
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Speaker 1: Another thing I want our girls to be able to
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Speaker 1: control and be in charge of and be responsible for,
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Speaker 1: is their attitude. A better story. One time about this traveler,
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Speaker 1: He asked a man who lived in this local area
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Speaker 1: what kind of weather was predicted that day and the
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Speaker 1: man answered, well, the kind of weather I like. And
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Speaker 1: the stranger said, well, how do you know it will
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Speaker 1: be the kind of weather you like? And the local
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Speaker 1: man said, having discovered that I can't always get what
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Speaker 1: I want, I have learned to always like what I get.
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Speaker 1: So I'm quite sure we will have the kind of
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Speaker 1: weather that I like. What a great attitude right that
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Speaker 1: our team camps. I will put on the board this
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Speaker 1: following quote, and I ask the girls what it means.
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Speaker 1: And the quote goes like this. I feel good because
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Speaker 1: the world is right versus the world is right because
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Speaker 1: I feel good. Let me say that again. I feel
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Speaker 1: good because the world is right versus the world is
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Speaker 1: right because I feel good. The second one is where
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Speaker 1: you take responsibility. The first one puts you at the
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Speaker 1: mercy of the world other people around you, your family,
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Speaker 1: your friends, the economy, whatever it may be. The world
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Speaker 1: is right because I feel good. So if I can
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Speaker 1: do the things to take care of myself, then the
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Speaker 1: world will feel better to me. I don't need to
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Speaker 1: wait for it to change. I can change the way
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Speaker 1: I look at it. I can change what I do
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Speaker 1: to take care of myself. But also it's important when
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Speaker 1: it comes to girls and their self confidence. What do
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Speaker 1: they have control over when it comes to how they
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Speaker 1: see themselves? Knowing themselves, not letting other people cause them
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Speaker 1: to lose themselves, or their interests or their passions. Eleanor
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Speaker 1: Roosevelt's famous quote was, no one can make you feel
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Speaker 1: inferior without your consent. My wife and I tell that
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Speaker 1: quote in our weekend retreats and our summer camps and
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Speaker 1: our school programs. I want girls to know that no
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Speaker 1: one can make them feel bad about themselves unless they
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Speaker 1: let them. They're in charge. There's a wonderful story that
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Speaker 1: I read a long time ago. I can't remember where
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Speaker 1: I got this story, but it was a story about
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Speaker 1: James Whistler, the famous American painter, and this occurred in
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Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties. He spent a brief and academically unsuccessful
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Speaker 1: period at West Point, and one day the teacher assigned
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Speaker 1: everyone to draw a bridge. So Whistler drew a romantic
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Speaker 1: stone bridge with grassy banks. I had and he had
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Speaker 1: two small kids fishing from it. The strutch of I
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Speaker 1: came by and yielded at him to get those kids
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Speaker 1: off the bridge. This is an engineering exercise, so Whistler
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Speaker 1: redid it. He got the kids off the bridge, but
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Speaker 1: he had them. He drew them fishing from the bank
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Speaker 1: of the river. The instructor came by again and he yelled.
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Speaker 1: He said, remove those kids, get them completely out of
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Speaker 1: the picture. That really made Whisser upset, But the creative
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Speaker 1: force inside of him was too strong, so his next
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Speaker 1: drawing had the kids completely out of the picture, buried
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Speaker 1: under two small tombstones on the river bank. I don't
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Speaker 1: want your kids to lose or to give up their passions,
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Speaker 1: their creativity, the way they look at things, the way
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Speaker 1: they do life because other people don't like it, or
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Speaker 1: other people don't get it. Not everyone likes me, but
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Speaker 1: not everyone matters. That's a good quote to have for
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Speaker 1: your daughters to have in their heads. Another quote, Everyone
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Speaker 1: in your life is meant to be in your journey,
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Speaker 1: but not all of them are meant to st day
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Speaker 1: until the end. You need to let some people go,
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Speaker 1: especially the ones who picket you, who picket your interests,
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Speaker 1: picket your dreams, picket your emotions, picket the way you look,
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Speaker 1: picket the way you dress. Those are the ones you
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Speaker 1: might want to let go of. There's another quote, I
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Speaker 1: saw recently. Bees don't waste their time explaining to flies
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Speaker 1: why honey is better than poop. Some people just won't
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Speaker 1: understand you are your path. That's something I tell girls.
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Speaker 1: Sometimes their parents are just not going to get them
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Speaker 1: because their parents have different ways of looking at the world.
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Speaker 1: Their parents come from different places, different environments, they have
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Speaker 1: different backgrounds, different stories. Our stories will will definitely influence
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Speaker 1: how we look at the world and how we look
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Speaker 1: at other people and how we look at things. So
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Speaker 1: sometimes parents just don't understand their daughters, not because they're
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Speaker 1: bad people, because they're just looking through their own lens,
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Speaker 1: their own stories. But I don't want our girls to
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Speaker 1: lose themselves and their beliefs and the way they look
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Speaker 1: at things and their creativity and their passions and their
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Speaker 1: interests because their family doesn't understand because they're wired differently.
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Speaker 1: That's an important concept. Last thing I want to focus
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Speaker 1: on about what your daughters have control over that I
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Speaker 1: want them to grasp, and that is their thoughts. And
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Speaker 1: I've done some podcasts on this before, so I will link.
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Speaker 1: I'll put a link to those in my show notes.
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Speaker 1: And there's a couple of quotes I'm going to tell
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Speaker 1: you about this, and then you can go to the
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Speaker 1: previous podcast and get a full podcast about this topic
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Speaker 1: of being in charge of your thoughts. The quote I
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Speaker 1: love is You're not in charge of whether or not
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Speaker 1: a bird lands on your head, but you're always in
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Speaker 1: charge of whether or not you allow it to build
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Speaker 1: a nest. Who what? What a very insightful quote. I
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Speaker 1: tell it the girls all the time, and they get it.
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Speaker 1: You're not in charge of whether or not a bird
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Speaker 1: lands in your head, but you're always in charge of
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Speaker 1: whether or not you allow it to build a nest.
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Speaker 1: What you do with those thoughts, whether you ruminate them
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Speaker 1: to you till tomorrow and whether you make them big
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Speaker 1: and huge and overwhelm you, or learning to let those
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Speaker 1: thoughts go or shift them or seem in a different way.
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Speaker 1: There's another good quote. It says, never give your negative
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Speaker 1: self talk a ride, because it will always want the reins.
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Speaker 1: Oh isn't that great? Never give your negative self talk
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Speaker 1: a ride because it will always want the reins. There
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Speaker 1: are a lot of things that girls can do to
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Speaker 1: take charge of a negative self talk, to learn to
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Speaker 1: reframe things, look at things in a different way, to
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Speaker 1: be in charge. So go back to that podcast and
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Speaker 1: listen to that. I'll give you lots of suggestions in
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Speaker 1: the previous podcasts. So there are a lot of things
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Speaker 1: that we have control over that we sometimes forget about.
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Speaker 1: So I want girls start focusing more of the things
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Speaker 1: that they do have control over versus the things that
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Speaker 1: they don't. So I want them to be in charge
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Speaker 1: of things like your reactions to other people, to comments,
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Speaker 1: to what people say about you or what people think
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Speaker 1: about you. Want them to be in charge of how
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Speaker 1: they frame their adversities so it doesn't bring them down,
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Speaker 1: it doesn't make them think badly about themselves, are to
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Speaker 1: make their futures seem worse, are negative, or to lose
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Speaker 1: confidence in their futures. I want your daughters to be
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Speaker 1: in charge of their emotional state and what they hold
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Speaker 1: on to. Want them to be in charge of their
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Speaker 1: attitudes and their self confidence and their thoughts. If they
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Speaker 1: can start focusing on taking responsibility for those things and
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Speaker 1: being in charge of those things, it'll affect their life tremendously.
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Speaker 1: They'll be much happier, much more confident, and they'll be
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Speaker 1: much more likely to get what they want because they're
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Speaker 1: not blaming other people and they're taking responsibility. Check out
19:02
Speaker 1: my website at www dot d r Tim Jordan dot com.
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Speaker 1: I'll have my show notes listed there below this podcast link,
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Speaker 1: and on the show notes I'll have a link to
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Speaker 1: those previous podcasts that have to do with self talk
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Speaker 1: and other things, and also maybe a couple of resources.
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Speaker 1: It has some good stories that if you like stories
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Speaker 1: as much as I do. You can see behind me
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Speaker 1: all the bookshelves if you're looking at this visually. I
19:30
Speaker 1: have so many books, and I have so many bookschefs.
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Speaker 1: That's just one of many. And I love books about people.
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Speaker 1: I love biographies. I love stories because I like teaching
19:40
Speaker 1: with stories. I think it brings things to light in
19:44
Speaker 1: ways that people can oftentimes here. I hope you enjoyed
19:47
Speaker 1: these stories. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. Thanks so
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Speaker 1: much for listening in always, thank you so much for
19:54
Speaker 1: passing mes on to your friends or people that you
19:56
Speaker 1: know that you think would like them. Check out the website. Also,
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Speaker 1: I have three weekend retreats coming up this semester, one
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Speaker 1: for high school girls, one for middle school girls, one
20:06
Speaker 1: for grade school girls, and also the dates for the
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Speaker 1: summer camps and those sorts of things will be on there.
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Speaker 1: I'll be back here with a brand new topic in
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Speaker 1: a week. Thank you, as always for stopping by.