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8 Absolutes That Girls Need to be Happy and Fulfilled · Raising Daughters

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Raising Daughters, the podcast that helps parents learn
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Speaker 1: the best ways to support their daughters as they navigate
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Speaker 1: the high levels of stress, anxiety, pressure, and uncertainties so
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Speaker 1: pervasive in our culture today. Doctor Tim Jordan is a
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Speaker 1: developmental and behavioral pediatrician who has specialized in counseling girls
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Speaker 1: for over thirty years and shed's light on the realities
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Speaker 1: of today's young women in all facets of their lives.
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Speaker 1: This is your opportunity to learn how to better support
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Speaker 1: your daughters, making them feel safe, secure, and truly loved
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Speaker 1: in the midst of life's ups and downs. Here is
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Speaker 1: your host, Doctor Tim.
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Speaker 2: Hello friends, doctor Tim Jordan here with a very important podcast.
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Speaker 2: All my podcasts are important, I hope to all of
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Speaker 2: you who listen in this one was triggered by a
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Speaker 2: dad who who told me recently that he didn't care
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Speaker 2: if his daughter went to a top college. He didn't
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Speaker 2: care if his daughter, you know, won national championships. Well,
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Speaker 2: he wanted was to make sure his daughter was happy.
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Speaker 2: That was the most important thing. And I thought to myself,
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Speaker 2: how do you parent kids so that they are happy?
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Speaker 2: What are some things that parents can do? Where are
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Speaker 2: some absolutes that girls need in order to be happy
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Speaker 2: and fulfilled now and forever, so that they live happily
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Speaker 2: ever after, if you will. So I started writing down
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Speaker 2: some of those things experiences that I think are important
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Speaker 2: for happiness night and then with a large list. I
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Speaker 2: think I have eighteen of them in total, so I
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Speaker 2: thought I would break it down and do maybe half
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Speaker 2: of them in this podcast, and then do a part
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Speaker 2: too down the road. But these are what I call absolutes.
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Speaker 2: These are things I think are really important for any
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Speaker 2: of us, not just your eight year old daughter or
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Speaker 2: your eighteen year old daughter, also for you and I
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Speaker 2: the parents, adults. These are some things that I think
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Speaker 2: are really important to make sure that we are happy
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Speaker 2: and fulfilled. The first one I wrote down was to
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Speaker 2: make choices based on our intuition, making choices based upon
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Speaker 2: what's right for us, instead of doing things to please
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Speaker 2: other people or to not disappoint other people, or because
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Speaker 2: you're worried that people would judge you if you acted
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Speaker 2: a certain way or did something. And I see a
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Speaker 2: lot of girls who get caught up in that. I'm
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Speaker 2: sure you know some of those because they live with you.
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Speaker 2: So we've got to teach our daughters to learn to
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Speaker 2: get quiet and to check in with themselves. I've mentioned
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Speaker 2: this in a previous podcast by how many burned out
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Speaker 2: athletes I see in my counseling practice. Oftentimes the girls
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Speaker 2: are in late middle school, high school, burned out because
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Speaker 2: they hate their sport. They don't want to do it.
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Speaker 2: They've been doing it for years. Love them, It's been everything,
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Speaker 2: it's their identity. So I'll ask them, you know why
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Speaker 2: they're so burned out, and what they'll say is is
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Speaker 2: that's not fun anymore. And the reason it's not fun
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Speaker 2: most of the time is because the coaches are too intense,
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Speaker 2: their parents are too intense. It's all about winning. It's
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Speaker 2: all about winning a national championship, it's all about getting
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Speaker 2: a college scholarship. They lost their love of the game.
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Speaker 2: So I think all along the way, I think it's
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Speaker 2: good to have off ramps for our kids with the
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Speaker 2: activities that they do, be it theater or sports, or
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Speaker 2: wherever it may be, to make sure they know that
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Speaker 2: they ever get tired of it and they want to
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Speaker 2: try something different, that that's okay with you, and for
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Speaker 2: them to check inside about why would they want to
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Speaker 2: do whatever this they want to do? What are their
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Speaker 2: reasons for doing everything. I want them to become self motivated.
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Speaker 2: I want them to have the autonomy to pick the
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Speaker 2: things that they do, and to hopefully pick things that
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Speaker 2: fulfill them. I saw a nine year old my counseling
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Speaker 2: practice years ago. She's a dancer, and I will call
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Speaker 2: her Aubrey, and she told me and the reason they
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Speaker 2: brought into CINI was because she was so stressed out.
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Speaker 2: They had switched it from this kind of fun dance
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Speaker 2: squad to this competitive dance team, and they had lots
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Speaker 2: of competitions, and this girl, Aubrey, was so worried that
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Speaker 2: she was gonna make a mistake and mess up things
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Speaker 2: for her teammates and then get kicked off the squad.
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Speaker 2: So I asked her in the office, I said, why
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Speaker 2: do you like dance competitions? Why do you love to dance?
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Speaker 2: And she said, well, I love the costumes, and she
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Speaker 2: said being on stage, there's so much room for me
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Speaker 2: to dance, and I can just feel free. And I
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Speaker 2: thought that is a good reason to dance. Winning national
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Speaker 2: championships perhaps not so much. I read a story years
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Speaker 2: ago about a girl. Her name was Muriel, and her
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Speaker 2: family was from in the US, but they moved to
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Speaker 2: Europe when she was a kid, and that's where she
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Speaker 2: learned to play soccer. And Muriel became a very good
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Speaker 2: soccer player. She was at the top of the heap
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Speaker 2: when it came to her age group, and she started
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Speaker 2: playing up higher levels. They moved back to the States,
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Speaker 2: and she was oftentimes two years ahead of herself. When
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Speaker 2: she was twelve, she was on a fourteen year old team.
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Speaker 2: When she was fourteen, she was on a sixteen year
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Speaker 2: old team. Because she was so good, she ended up
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Speaker 2: getting a full ride to a college to play soccer,
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Speaker 2: and she started feeling a little bit burned out. And
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Speaker 2: at the beginning of her sophomore season in college, the coach,
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Speaker 2: as he was one to do, he called in each
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Speaker 2: of the girls one by one to though and to
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Speaker 2: talk to them about the upcoming season. So Muriel sat
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Speaker 2: down in front of her coach and he said, he said,
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Speaker 2: why why are you doing this? And she started talking
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Speaker 2: about why she wanted to be, you know, win the
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Speaker 2: national championship, she wanted to be on the US Olympic team,
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Speaker 2: she wanted to do all these things. And then he
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Speaker 2: stopped and he said, but why do you really want
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Speaker 2: to do this, and he also asked her this question,
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Speaker 2: what do you want? And she kind of repeated, I
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Speaker 2: want to be the best and and that meant, you know,
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Speaker 2: winning the championship and being on the Olympic team. But
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Speaker 2: then she kind of struggled because when she started to
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Speaker 2: think about it, she didn't really know what it meant
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Speaker 2: to be the best. Her coach walked over to her,
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Speaker 2: and he walked past her to the light switch in
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Speaker 2: the room and he turned it off. Then he turned
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Speaker 2: the lights twitched back on, and he said, being the
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Speaker 2: best is just a decision, but you have to make
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Speaker 2: it each and every day, and then he very wisely
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Speaker 2: left her to grapple with the truth for her, And
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Speaker 2: like most young adults, Mroel had never really taken the
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Speaker 2: time to get quiet, go inward and figure out what
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Speaker 2: she wanted. Why was she playing soccer, what was important
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Speaker 2: to her, what was right for her? So much of
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Speaker 2: her motivation had been about not willing to disappoint her
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Speaker 2: parents and her coaches and her teammates. So she did
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Speaker 2: some soul searching and she decided that she really did
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Speaker 2: want to be the best at her sport, and she
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Speaker 2: realized that she had a choose between mediocrity and excellence,
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Speaker 2: and that it was a decision that she was going
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Speaker 2: to have to make each and every day. And so
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Speaker 2: she rededicated herself and she started putting in more work
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Speaker 2: because she had gotten by a lot of her talent.
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Speaker 2: And she did attain her goals. She did make the
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Speaker 2: Olympic team, and she did make the US women's national team,
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Speaker 2: and she did make the women's World Cup team in
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Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one, in nineteen ninety nine, she took home
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Speaker 2: Olympic gold medals in ninety six in two thousand and four,
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Speaker 2: and when she retired, she held the record for the
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Speaker 2: most international goals scored. That record held for about ten
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Speaker 2: years until twenty thirteen, when her record was broken by
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Speaker 2: a fellow American soccer player, Abby Wambach Muriel. The name
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Speaker 2: she went by, by the way, was mia Ham. Muriel
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Speaker 2: was mia Ham. I think too many of our kids
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Speaker 2: don't take the time to think about why is this
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Speaker 2: important to me? Why do I want to be in theater?
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Speaker 2: Why do I want to play volleyball? Why? Why? Why?
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Speaker 2: Why do I want to go to college? So we've
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Speaker 2: got to give them a chance to learn how to
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Speaker 2: do that. We've got to teach them how to get
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Speaker 2: quiet and to access their intuition and their gut, which
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Speaker 2: kind of leads me to my second point about things
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Speaker 2: that girls need to be happy and fulfilled and live
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Speaker 2: happily ever after, and that is becoming internally motivated. I
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Speaker 2: think in our culture we've conditioned kids to need and
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Speaker 2: desire what I call the drugs of acceptance, the drugs
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Speaker 2: of approval, appreciation, that need to be applauded and praised,
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Speaker 2: that need to be popular and successful and rich and
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Speaker 2: good looking. That the belief that in order for me
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Speaker 2: to be happy, I need things like lots of money.
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Speaker 2: For me to be happy, I need to be famous.
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Speaker 2: I need a beautiful partner. I need a great job.
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Speaker 2: I need to go to an elite college. I need
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Speaker 2: to be popular. I need to be on the best
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Speaker 2: club team. I need to have lots of likes on
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Speaker 2: social media. For me to be happy, I've got to
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Speaker 2: be attractive and thin and hot. I think kids get
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Speaker 2: a taste for these drugs when they're young, and they
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Speaker 2: become a addicted to them. Not only are they wanting
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Speaker 2: those kinds of things even if they attain them, they're
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Speaker 2: constantly anxious because they dread losing them or they dread
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Speaker 2: other people getting more praise. We condition our kids to
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Speaker 2: compare themselves endlessly to other people, and today it's so
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Speaker 2: easy to compare ourselves not just to your peers and
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Speaker 2: your friends at school, but to everybody on the planet.
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Speaker 2: We've taught our girls to become so dependent on other
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Speaker 2: people for how they see themselves. We've taught them to
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Speaker 2: be externally focused and externally motivated, and their self esteem,
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Speaker 2: their self confidence rises and falls, and they're not in
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Speaker 2: charge of it. What's in charge of it is is
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Speaker 2: someone saying you're so great? Is there someone they're giving
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Speaker 2: them a trophy? Is it about winning? Is it about
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Speaker 2: someone mentioning that they look pretty in their outfit? So
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Speaker 2: we need to start at home, starting when their kids
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Speaker 2: are born. Avoiding all the endless praise comparing them to
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Speaker 2: other people, we just start valuing their interests and their opinions.
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Speaker 2: We need to ask them why something made them feel
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Speaker 2: good or why something made them feel proud. For instance,
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Speaker 2: if your four year old comes to you with a
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Speaker 2: drawing and say, Mommy, Mommy or Daddy, day you like
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Speaker 2: my drawing? Instead of immediately gushing about how great the
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Speaker 2: drawing was, and how it's the best drawing they've ever done.
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Speaker 2: I'm so proud of your such a great drawer. Instead
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Speaker 2: to reflect back to them, what do you think about
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Speaker 2: your picture? And then listen, listen in to why they
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Speaker 2: like to draw or what that picture or that drawing
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Speaker 2: meant to them. I would guess that most of the
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Speaker 2: times they would say something totally different than you would
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Speaker 2: have said, because you might have said, gosh, look how
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Speaker 2: good you're doing staying in the lines, whereas your daughter
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Speaker 2: might say, I like it because I use all the
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Speaker 2: colors in the whole crayon box. I painted her face
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Speaker 2: purple because that's my favorite color. And then they will
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Speaker 2: go on and on about why they love to draw,
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Speaker 2: and you listen and you reflect that back because it
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Speaker 2: sounds like what you like is and then they learn
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Speaker 2: to internalize those good feelings for why they love to draw,
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Speaker 2: or how they feel about scoring a goal in soccer
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Speaker 2: or getting winning an audition for the lead in a play,
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Speaker 2: whatever it may be. I want them to become internally motivated.
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Speaker 2: They have that motivation from the day they were born.
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Speaker 2: So in a sense, we've got to stay out of
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Speaker 2: the way of that. By not interfering with it and
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Speaker 2: distracting them with all their praise and all that sort
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Speaker 2: of thing. We also need for them to be internally
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Speaker 2: motivated by giving them autonomy to choose their activities, to
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Speaker 2: choose the things that they want to do that they're
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Speaker 2: drawn to, that their gut and their hardest tilling them
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Speaker 2: to try. Because when they have the autonomy to choose
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Speaker 2: the things that they're doing, they become much more engaged
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Speaker 2: than whatever that is because it was their choice and
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Speaker 2: they're doing it because they like it, because they have
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Speaker 2: a passion for it. And if they had the autonomy
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Speaker 2: to choose it and they become fully engaged in that
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Speaker 2: thing because of that, then they're much more likely to
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Speaker 2: feel fulfilled because it was their thing. And if you
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Speaker 2: had the autonomy and the engagement and the fulfillment, that's
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Speaker 2: what leads to mastery. That's what allows kids to persevere
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Speaker 2: and to plow through when things get tough and to
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Speaker 2: overcome adversities. And the reason they're willing to do all
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Speaker 2: that is because it was their choice and they love
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Speaker 2: what they're doing and they get fulfillment from it. So
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Speaker 2: becoming internally motivated is really important if you want your
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Speaker 2: kids to be happy and fulfilled. Number three in my list.
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Speaker 2: I don't want our daughters to buy into the cultural
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Speaker 2: unrealistic standards that the culture is putting out to them.
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Speaker 2: We've got to teach them to be meet and image savvy.
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Speaker 2: That's one place where they start to pick up all
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Speaker 2: those unrealistic standards about how they're supposed to be, how
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Speaker 2: they're supposed to look, that things are supposed to be
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Speaker 2: interested in, the kind of people they should be hanging
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Speaker 2: out with. All those advertisements and all that stuff on
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Speaker 2: social media, all those photographs, they're selling a message that says,
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Speaker 2: you in and of yourself are not enough. You need
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Speaker 2: our product, You need our makeup, you need this lotion,
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Speaker 2: you need this shampoo, need to be drinking this soda,
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Speaker 2: you need to be drinking someday this beer. Do you
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Speaker 2: want to have friends who are beautiful like the people
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Speaker 2: in this ad and this commercial, then you need our
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Speaker 2: stuff because you are not enough to get that on
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Speaker 2: your own. And those standards are unhealthy and they're unrealistic
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Speaker 2: because nobody can look like that, because nobody does. They've
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Speaker 2: been air blown, and they've been photoshopped, their pictures have
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Speaker 2: been altered to look like they do on social media.
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Speaker 2: But our daughters buy into that and they feel like
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Speaker 2: they should look that way, even though the person in
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Speaker 2: the picture doesn't even look that way. They become driven
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Speaker 2: by a culturally fueled conviction of being insufficient, you are
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Speaker 2: not enough, and so what they end up becoming is consumers.
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Speaker 2: They become addicted to consumption to mute the pain. The
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Speaker 2: pain I'm not good enough, I'm not enough, I'm not
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Speaker 2: popular enough, I'm not pretty enough. So we've got to
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Speaker 2: make sure that we are giving the our daughters a
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Speaker 2: different message about what's important, allowing them to guide them
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Speaker 2: to establish their own standards for how they want to
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Speaker 2: be and look and act and the things that they're
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Speaker 2: interested in. That cultural unrealistic standards that the media and
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Speaker 2: social media is putting forth is so unhealth healthy, and
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Speaker 2: it leads to so much dissatisfaction, so much unhappiness because
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Speaker 2: the girls compare themselves and they almost always compare themselves unfavorably,
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Speaker 2: and they internalize that message that they're not enough. So
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Speaker 2: that's a really important part about growing up. If you
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Speaker 2: want your daughter to be happy and fulfilled and feel
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Speaker 2: good about herself, she's got to learn to sift through
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Speaker 2: those messages and understand that it's unreal unrealistic, and that
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Speaker 2: they don't have to buy. In number four my list
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Speaker 2: of absolutes, that girls need to be happy and fulfilled,
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Speaker 2: a happily ever after, and that is having healthy intentions
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Speaker 2: for why they're doing what they're doing. A number of
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Speaker 2: years ago, I was writing in a van in Colorado.
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Speaker 2: I was at a training and I had been doing
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Speaker 2: the training process with my wife and these other people
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Speaker 2: to teach some weekend retreats, and most of the training
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Speaker 2: was our own personal growth. It was the first time
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Speaker 2: in my life I had done something like that. So
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Speaker 2: in my life at that point, I was giving lots
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Speaker 2: of talks in front of audiences. I was teaching a
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Speaker 2: parenting class, my wife and I were facilitating weekend retreats
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Speaker 2: for adults, and I became addicted and needing that external
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Speaker 2: praise that people gave me applause at the end of
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Speaker 2: the talk, people coming up to me after a retreat saying,
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Speaker 2: oh my gosh, you were so great. You changed my life.
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Speaker 2: Thank you so much, You're so awesome, and that filled
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Speaker 2: me up and I needed that at that point in
17:42
Speaker 2: my life because I didn't feel good enough. Growing up
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Speaker 2: in the home that I grew up with, I had
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Speaker 2: sort of incorporated that belief system into me that I
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Speaker 2: wasn't good enough, and so the applause for a while work,
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Speaker 2: but after a while it wasn't working as well. And
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Speaker 2: I was talking about that in the van ride at
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Speaker 2: that day and then my mentor Bill, I remember leaning back.
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Speaker 2: I was in the back seat, he was in the front.
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Speaker 2: He leaned back. He said, your problem is not what
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Speaker 2: you're doing. Because I'd been talking about maybe stopping the
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Speaker 2: talks and things because it just wasn't doing it for me.
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Speaker 2: He said, the problem isn't what you're doing, it's doing
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Speaker 2: it's why you're doing it. If you're doing things to
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Speaker 2: get applauded, if you're doing things for the external stuff,
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Speaker 2: it's never going to fill you up. You're always going
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Speaker 2: to need more. He said, if I was you, I
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Speaker 2: would do is I would shift your intention for why
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Speaker 2: you're doing those things. And that snapped me to attention.
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Speaker 2: And at first I think I was like internally like saying,
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Speaker 2: that's bs and all. But then I realized he's right.
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Speaker 2: I realized that those external intentions, those external reasons for
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Speaker 2: doing things were unhealthy, and it was never going to
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Speaker 2: fill me up. And so I shifted my intention and
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Speaker 2: from being the best and being better than other people
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Speaker 2: and getting applauded to being of service. That's when I
19:08
Speaker 2: incorporated a mantra. Like before I gave talks, before I
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Speaker 2: ran retreats, and before I did our parenting class. My
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Speaker 2: mantra became, Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
19:21
Speaker 2: which is the first line of the prayer of Saint Francis,
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Speaker 2: which told me before that talk, don't worry about the applause,
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Speaker 2: don't worry about people signing up your class. What's important
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Speaker 2: is just be of service. And by me shifting my intention,
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Speaker 2: it made all the difference in the world, and I
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Speaker 2: got a lot more fulfillment out of what I was doing.
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Speaker 2: And I have kept that intention with me for the
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Speaker 2: last oh gosh, probably forty years. And I still say
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Speaker 2: that prayer before I give talks and things, because it
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Speaker 2: keeps me focused on what's important. Same thing can happen
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Speaker 2: for your kids. Keep asking them those questions about, you know,
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Speaker 2: why they love to do what they're doing. They say
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Speaker 2: that they like dancing, Ask him why, Ask him why
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Speaker 2: they love theater, Ask him why they loved playing volleyball
20:13
Speaker 2: and listen to their reasons were their intentions. I remember
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Speaker 2: one time I asked a girl who I will call Caitlin.
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Speaker 2: She was seventeen years old at the time and she
20:23
Speaker 2: was a big musical theater kid. I said, what do
20:26
Speaker 2: you love so much about the theater? Because when she
20:29
Speaker 2: was talking about the plays that she was in the
20:31
Speaker 2: place she was in, she was beaming. I'll never forget
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Speaker 2: Caitlyn said this, and I actually wrote down as she
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Speaker 2: was talking. She said, I love musical theater. I love
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Speaker 2: to sing, I love to dance. I love to tell stories.
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Speaker 2: She said. I'm out there acting. It's like I'm taking
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Speaker 2: the audience on a journey. I also love the close
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Speaker 2: relationships I have with all the people on my team.
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Speaker 2: So that's why she loved doing what she did. Those
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Speaker 2: are her intentions to take the audience on a journey.
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Speaker 2: I thought, that's magical. That is so cool. No wonder
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Speaker 2: she's beaming, No wonder she's thinking so happy and fulfilled
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Speaker 2: doing what she's doing. Think about why you're doing all
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Speaker 2: the things that you're doing. Encourage your daughters to also
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Speaker 2: get in touch with where their intentions for doing what
21:17
Speaker 2: they're doing, why do they want to do? However well
21:20
Speaker 2: they do in school? If they tell you they want
21:23
Speaker 2: to get a's, ask why, what's so important about that
21:25
Speaker 2: to you? What's your intention? If they say they want
21:29
Speaker 2: to go to college, just say why, what's your intention
21:31
Speaker 2: for going to college? What's your intention for not going
21:35
Speaker 2: to college? I think that kind of internal work is
21:39
Speaker 2: so healthy for them all along the way. Teach them
21:43
Speaker 2: how to become aware of their intentions and to make
21:45
Speaker 2: sure they're healthy. Number five ways to help make sure
21:52
Speaker 2: your daughters become happy and fulfilled people. Teach them how
21:56
Speaker 2: to focus on what they have control over. So often
22:01
Speaker 2: girls who I work with are spending way too much
22:04
Speaker 2: time focusing on things that they don't have control over,
22:07
Speaker 2: i e. Things like other people, what other people are
22:10
Speaker 2: saying or doing. I remember I read a story a
22:15
Speaker 2: long time ago about a fifteenth century art form called
22:20
Speaker 2: kinsugi k i n t s u gi. It's about
22:26
Speaker 2: turning scars into beauty. These artistic masters in fifteenth century
22:34
Speaker 2: Japan would take plates, cups, things that they had made,
22:38
Speaker 2: and they would oftentimes break them, or they would take
22:42
Speaker 2: broken plates and cups and bowls and repair them, and
22:45
Speaker 2: they would repair them by fusing the cracks and the
22:49
Speaker 2: chips with real gold, like a gold filament, and it
22:55
Speaker 2: ended up creating beautiful pieces of artwork with all their
22:58
Speaker 2: gold filming. In that there's a way to turn the
23:02
Speaker 2: scars of a break into something beautiful. And that's not
23:07
Speaker 2: just true for broken plates and cups and bulls. It's
23:12
Speaker 2: also true for your daughters when they have things that
23:15
Speaker 2: they would consider to be scars. It might be a birthmark,
23:20
Speaker 2: it might be having been ditched by their friends. It
23:26
Speaker 2: may have been a kind of adversity that made them
23:29
Speaker 2: feel differently about themselves. I want your daughters to learn
23:35
Speaker 2: and grow and become stronger from their adversities. There's an
23:41
Speaker 2: old saying that we're not always in charge of whether
23:44
Speaker 2: or not a bird lands on our head, but we're
23:47
Speaker 2: always in charge of whether or not we allow the
23:49
Speaker 2: bird to build a nest. I think reframing old, limiting
23:54
Speaker 2: beliefs is a huge piece of becoming happy and fulfilled,
24:00
Speaker 2: something that we do have control over. We don't have
24:02
Speaker 2: control over some of the things that happened to us,
24:06
Speaker 2: experiences that happened just because things happen, but we can
24:11
Speaker 2: learn to reframe them. Because a lot of the girls
24:14
Speaker 2: I work with had made some really unhealthy beliefs about
24:18
Speaker 2: what happened if their friends ditch them, then they make
24:21
Speaker 2: it mean that they're not good enough, that they're ugly,
24:24
Speaker 2: they're not prete enough, they're not popular, they're awkward, they're weird,
24:27
Speaker 2: they don't fit. I had a girl in my office
24:31
Speaker 2: not that long ago who was really sad because her
24:36
Speaker 2: dad had an addiction problem starting when she was a
24:39
Speaker 2: little girl, and so he became more and more negligent
24:42
Speaker 2: and absent, to the point where now she hadn't seen
24:44
Speaker 2: him for several years, and she had let that mean
24:48
Speaker 2: about her that she wasn't good enough, that there was
24:51
Speaker 2: something wrong with her, and she was unlovable, because if
24:56
Speaker 2: she was good enough and lovable, of course her dad
24:58
Speaker 2: would be spending more time with her. Now, of course
25:02
Speaker 2: that's not true, but that's what she decided inside of
25:05
Speaker 2: herself back when she was a little girl trying to
25:07
Speaker 2: make sense of it. So, again, she didn't have control
25:12
Speaker 2: over her dad's behavior, but she does have control over
25:16
Speaker 2: what she believes about it. So I taught her like
25:19
Speaker 2: I teach other girls. What else could that experience mean?
25:24
Speaker 2: What's the truth about why your dad stops seeing you,
25:27
Speaker 2: and why he's been why he's been negligent, And in
25:30
Speaker 2: her case, the story was, he's got an addiction. He
25:34
Speaker 2: is not himself, he's sleepwalking through life. Nobody, this is
25:39
Speaker 2: something I told this girl. Nobody in their right mind,
25:42
Speaker 2: no dad in their right mind, would not want to
25:44
Speaker 2: spend time with you. You're amazing, I said, So easy for
25:49
Speaker 2: me to say that to you. But the important thing
25:51
Speaker 2: is what are you going to start saying to yourself.
25:54
Speaker 2: That's one thing that you have control over what you
25:57
Speaker 2: could say to yourself. You're always in charge of the
26:01
Speaker 2: story in your head that you make up about experiences.
26:04
Speaker 2: They're always in charge of your story. Girls who've been
26:09
Speaker 2: ditched by a group and the girls start talking about
26:12
Speaker 2: them or spreading rumors about them, they can let that
26:15
Speaker 2: mean that they're not good enough and that they're awkward
26:17
Speaker 2: and weird and all those things. Or what else could
26:22
Speaker 2: that mean? It could mean they're just insecure girls. They're
26:26
Speaker 2: trying to get power. They're being really inappropriate about it.
26:30
Speaker 2: It's an inappropriate way to be powerful by making fun
26:33
Speaker 2: of other people or leaving people out. But sometimes that's
26:37
Speaker 2: what people do when they're thirteen it means nothing about you.
26:44
Speaker 2: That part you can learn to believe. I'm not going
26:47
Speaker 2: to take it on. Those mean girls are just being
26:49
Speaker 2: mean because they've got issues. They've got problems. Then somebody
26:52
Speaker 2: may be being mean to them at home, and they
26:55
Speaker 2: come to school and take out another people. Blah blah blah.
26:57
Speaker 2: There's so many reasons why that maybe happening. They have
27:00
Speaker 2: nothing to do with who you are as a person.
27:04
Speaker 2: So no matter what's going on in a girl's life,
27:08
Speaker 2: she can always step back and say, what do I
27:11
Speaker 2: have control over? A girl who I saw about a
27:16
Speaker 2: year ago whose parents were separated, she started wondering if
27:20
Speaker 2: there was something that she had done wrong. Maybe if
27:23
Speaker 2: she had been a better person or a better daughter,
27:25
Speaker 2: maybe they wouldn't be arguing so much, because sometimes they
27:29
Speaker 2: argued about her. So I had to her help her
27:32
Speaker 2: look at it in a different way that her parents
27:36
Speaker 2: were arguing. Because her parents did not have a better
27:38
Speaker 2: way to handle their disagreements. They were angry at each other,
27:42
Speaker 2: They had all kinds of issues with each other. Now
27:45
Speaker 2: they were arguing about something that one parent did to
27:48
Speaker 2: the daughter. Disciplined in a different way. That's true, but
27:53
Speaker 2: they could have handled the issue in a very peaceful way.
27:57
Speaker 2: I tell girls, even if you robbed a bank and
28:00
Speaker 2: your parents were both visiting you in jail and they
28:02
Speaker 2: started fighting over what happened, that still is not your fault.
28:07
Speaker 2: They could handle the incident and the issue peacefully. So
28:13
Speaker 2: you're in charge of you have control over what you
28:15
Speaker 2: make of it. It's a really important piece for anybody
28:19
Speaker 2: who wants to be happy for the rest of their lives.
28:22
Speaker 2: Number six, Focus on the journey versus a destination. A
28:29
Speaker 2: lot of the girls who I work with who are
28:30
Speaker 2: struggling with pressures and stress from school, are stressed from
28:36
Speaker 2: their sports teams, are stress about the whole college application process.
28:42
Speaker 2: Their focuses on the destination, i e. Their grades, their GPA,
28:47
Speaker 2: winning the championship, getting that acceptance into a top college,
28:51
Speaker 2: getting a college scholarship. I've seen a lot of girls
28:56
Speaker 2: who are miserable because they didn't get into a certain college,
29:01
Speaker 2: or because they didn't make a certain club team, or
29:05
Speaker 2: they didn't win the lead in a play. They got
29:09
Speaker 2: so wrapped up in the destination that they forgot about
29:12
Speaker 2: the journey. They even forget about enjoying the journey. They're
29:16
Speaker 2: miserable all the way through high school because they're so
29:18
Speaker 2: focused on being better than everybody else and getting straight
29:21
Speaker 2: a's all those things. So that is the source of
29:25
Speaker 2: a lot of their stress and the pressure. So I
29:28
Speaker 2: teach them instead to focus on the destination. I'm sorry,
29:32
Speaker 2: focus on the journey. Focus on the process, like for instance,
29:36
Speaker 2: with their grades, focus on what ca do you today for
29:41
Speaker 2: me to do well in school. I'm not gonna worry
29:43
Speaker 2: about my GPA. I'm not gonna worry about the grade
29:45
Speaker 2: in this class at the end of the semester. I'm
29:47
Speaker 2: just gonna focus on what can do you today? To
29:50
Speaker 2: prepare for class the next day, to prepare for the
29:52
Speaker 2: test that's coming up in a week, to start on
29:54
Speaker 2: my paper. If I can focus on the process, if
29:58
Speaker 2: I focus on the journey, I can enjoy that instead
30:01
Speaker 2: of just waiting to hopefully get the destination that I
30:04
Speaker 2: want and then celebrate. But sometimes you don't make the
30:07
Speaker 2: destination and then you're miserable. Focus on the journey. I
30:13
Speaker 2: read a story one time about Kyle Snyder. He was
30:17
Speaker 2: a twenty year old Olympic wrestler who who won the
30:20
Speaker 2: gold medal in the summer of twenty sixteen. At ninety
30:24
Speaker 2: seven kilograms at the Olympics, and he became the youngest
30:28
Speaker 2: Olympic wrestling champion in US history. This is his quote
30:33
Speaker 2: when they asked him about his secret, he said this,
30:37
Speaker 2: I think, if anything, my secret is that instead of
30:40
Speaker 2: thinking about winning and thinking about gold medals and stuff
30:44
Speaker 2: like that, I try to value just my effort. I
30:48
Speaker 2: value my improvement. I value the love that I have
30:51
Speaker 2: for my sport. I want every one of your daughters
30:56
Speaker 2: to have that in their mind as opposed to straight
30:59
Speaker 2: a's college scholarship, all those kinds of things that sucks
31:03
Speaker 2: the enjoyment and the fulfillment out of what they're doing.
31:07
Speaker 2: Focus on the journey, Focus on improvement, Focus on your effort,
31:11
Speaker 2: Focus on having fun with your teammates. Focus on your
31:14
Speaker 2: love of the sport that will bring you happiness and fulfillment,
31:20
Speaker 2: not stressing about the destination. Number seven. Number seven ways
31:27
Speaker 2: to help your daughters become happy and fulfilled. They need
31:30
Speaker 2: to learn how to have regular quiet alone time. They
31:36
Speaker 2: need to learn how to be alone without being lonely,
31:39
Speaker 2: and to use that quiet alone time to check in
31:42
Speaker 2: with themselves, to check in with their thoughts and their feelings,
31:47
Speaker 2: to reflect, to contemplate, to soul search to access their
31:52
Speaker 2: intuition and their gut sense to know what decisions they
31:56
Speaker 2: need to make, to know what they want, and to
31:59
Speaker 2: know what they needed to know themselves. If they don't
32:07
Speaker 2: learn how to do that, they're gonna be making decisions
32:09
Speaker 2: based upon looking outside of themselves. What are other people doing,
32:13
Speaker 2: what their parents want them to do, what's popular, what's
32:20
Speaker 2: popular on social media. They're gonna use those kinds of things,
32:23
Speaker 2: and that's not gonna lead to happiness to fulfillment because
32:26
Speaker 2: it's not for their reasons. They need alone time to
32:30
Speaker 2: do that. It's a wonderful story I heard a long
32:33
Speaker 2: time ago. I may have missed it in a previous
32:36
Speaker 2: podcast a while back. Anyway, this man decided to go
32:39
Speaker 2: to Africa and to run the Safari to go to
32:43
Speaker 2: some diamond mines, and so he hired some sherpas, this
32:47
Speaker 2: group of surpass and he had them working really hard.
32:50
Speaker 2: Those first several days. They were forced marches, very few rests.
32:55
Speaker 2: At the end of each each day, the sherpas would
32:58
Speaker 2: follow the ground, just exhausted. After about four days of that,
33:02
Speaker 2: on the fifth morning, this man got up and he
33:06
Speaker 2: found the sirp was asleep, and so he woke up
33:08
Speaker 2: the leader. He said, get the man up. We gotta
33:11
Speaker 2: get going. And the leader said, ah, my men won't go.
33:15
Speaker 2: He said, why will they not work? And the leader said,
33:20
Speaker 2: their souls need to catch up with their bodies. I
33:25
Speaker 2: think our daughters need to go buy that recipe. Sometimes
33:30
Speaker 2: they need that quiet, slow down time for their souls
33:34
Speaker 2: to catch up with their bodies and their schedules and
33:36
Speaker 2: their activities. They need quiet alone downtime so valuable. It
33:45
Speaker 2: can be for things like journaling, drawing, listening to music,
33:50
Speaker 2: playing an instrument, taking long walks. They need to learn
33:55
Speaker 2: how to cultivate their down alone time and that would
33:59
Speaker 2: help a lot of the things we've already talked about
34:02
Speaker 2: about knowing what's right for them and being able to
34:06
Speaker 2: trust their gut because they've been able to access their
34:09
Speaker 2: gut to be internally motivated to get clear about what's
34:13
Speaker 2: right for them as opposed to following the unrealistic standards
34:17
Speaker 2: that the culture has been pushing on them. To focus
34:20
Speaker 2: on what they do have control over. That regular quiet
34:24
Speaker 2: alone time is invaluable for girls to learn to be
34:27
Speaker 2: happy and fulfilled. Last for this podcast, and then I'm
34:32
Speaker 2: gonna have a part too. I have about another nine
34:34
Speaker 2: ways to help your daughters become happy and fulfilled. Last
34:38
Speaker 2: one for this podcast is an obvious one, and that
34:42
Speaker 2: is for your daughters to learn to love and accept themselves,
34:45
Speaker 2: which sounds so easy and I know it's not. Everything
34:51
Speaker 2: in their life will flow from this, their self acceptance,
34:55
Speaker 2: their self love, and things like self Oftentimes we tell
35:02
Speaker 2: girls you need to practice self care, but before they
35:05
Speaker 2: practice self care, they need to first love themselves. Because
35:08
Speaker 2: if you love yourself, you're much more likely to take
35:11
Speaker 2: good care of yourself. If you don't like yourself, you
35:14
Speaker 2: probably won't. If you love yourself, you're also probably much
35:18
Speaker 2: more likely to set healthy boundaries for yourself because you
35:22
Speaker 2: know you deserve to be treated the way you want
35:24
Speaker 2: to be treated. We can teach our daughters to practice
35:28
Speaker 2: self compassion. Instead of being in their heads and beating
35:33
Speaker 2: themselves up and criticizing themselves and having all that negative
35:36
Speaker 2: self talk, they can learn instead think about what someone
35:40
Speaker 2: who loves them unconditionally would think about them and would
35:45
Speaker 2: say about them, like their dad or their mom, or
35:47
Speaker 2: their best friend and their best friend their mom their
35:51
Speaker 2: dad would be saying really lovely, you know, positive things,
35:55
Speaker 2: encouraging things, and once they have a sense of what
36:00
Speaker 2: their mom would say to them, then they can say
36:02
Speaker 2: those same things to themselves because that's the truth. They
36:08
Speaker 2: also can think about some of the things that make
36:10
Speaker 2: them not love her except themselves, and oftentimes that's differences.
36:15
Speaker 2: They may feel different for so many reasons. Girls with
36:19
Speaker 2: their way they look so many ways that they judge
36:22
Speaker 2: their looks, their interests, things that they're good at, things
36:26
Speaker 2: that they're not so great at, like schoolwork, maybe the dyslexia.
36:31
Speaker 2: They may be the tallest kid in the class. I
36:34
Speaker 2: remember a girl I saw years ago thought she was
36:37
Speaker 2: ugly because when she was in fourth or fifth grade,
36:41
Speaker 2: she was the first girl to go through puberty, and
36:44
Speaker 2: she grew really tall, and in fifth grade she was
36:47
Speaker 2: the tallest one in the class, girls and boys included,
36:51
Speaker 2: which was also true all the way through sixth grade
36:53
Speaker 2: and through seventh as well, And so she started being teased.
36:57
Speaker 2: They were calling her cyclops and giraffe and and she
37:00
Speaker 2: got acne, and she got curvy, and she had hips,
37:03
Speaker 2: and she had breasts, and so the boys were making
37:06
Speaker 2: fun of that. So that meant to her that she
37:08
Speaker 2: was ugly. She felt different in that way. So we
37:12
Speaker 2: helped her reframe that belief about herself that what was
37:17
Speaker 2: happening was she did look different because she was she
37:20
Speaker 2: had gone through puberty, and those curves and things were normal.
37:24
Speaker 2: The acne was normal, the height was normal. The rest
37:26
Speaker 2: of the class was going to catch up with her.
37:30
Speaker 2: Any kind of difference that girl that kids feel, kids
37:34
Speaker 2: who have problems in school, kids with learning disabilities, kids
37:37
Speaker 2: with dyslexia. I see so many kids who struggle. They
37:40
Speaker 2: think they're stupid. Instead, we can help them to learn
37:44
Speaker 2: to reframe that into they have a learning issue. They
37:48
Speaker 2: learned differently, doesn't mean they're dumb, doesn't mean they're gonna
37:50
Speaker 2: have a crummy future. It just means they learned differently.
37:54
Speaker 2: They can learn to accept that they're different in certain ways.
37:59
Speaker 2: There's a famous quote by Wayne Dyer, and he said,
38:03
Speaker 2: you cannot be lonely if you like the person you're
38:06
Speaker 2: alone with. So, whether it's the way they look, whether
38:10
Speaker 2: it's their athleticism, their interests, no matter what it is,
38:16
Speaker 2: how hard are easy school is for them. There's so
38:20
Speaker 2: many ways that kids need to learn to accept themselves
38:22
Speaker 2: for the way they are. There's some things you can
38:26
Speaker 2: change if you're out of shape. Then you can exercise
38:28
Speaker 2: and get in shape. You can work harder, you can
38:31
Speaker 2: have a growth mindset. You might be able to get
38:32
Speaker 2: better at math, but you may never be a math whiz.
38:36
Speaker 2: You may never be able to make the varsity soccer teams.
38:38
Speaker 2: Some kids are just not the athletic. You can work
38:41
Speaker 2: your butt off and practice and practice, and some kids
38:43
Speaker 2: just don't have that. But they have other strengths, other
38:48
Speaker 2: things that they have aptitude for. They can learn to
38:52
Speaker 2: appreciate their strengths, their aptitudes and maybe different than their friends,
38:58
Speaker 2: but that's okay. They can learn to love and accept themselves.
39:08
Speaker 2: I think in our culture we sow overvalue grades, school
39:12
Speaker 2: smarts and also athleticism. You know, let's youth sports has
39:16
Speaker 2: become such a gargantuan issue, and every kid's not gonna
39:23
Speaker 2: be able to look good in those realms. But there's
39:26
Speaker 2: lots of intelligences, not just sports, and not just school intelligence,
39:30
Speaker 2: music and dance and theater, problem solving, street smarts, people's skills,
39:36
Speaker 2: artistic ability, being able to have original thought. There's so
39:41
Speaker 2: many ways that your kids can shine. So they can
39:45
Speaker 2: learn to figure those things out, love and accept themselves
39:48
Speaker 2: for those things, and then and then be happy and
39:51
Speaker 2: fulfilled and doing the things that they love to do.
39:55
Speaker 2: So these are eight ways that you can help your
40:00
Speaker 2: to become fulfilled and happy. And if they can do
40:03
Speaker 2: that throughout their childhoods, they can learn to value themselves
40:07
Speaker 2: and focus on the journey, and to have quiet alone time,
40:11
Speaker 2: and to focus on what they have control over, and
40:13
Speaker 2: to have healthy intentions for all the things that they do,
40:16
Speaker 2: and to not buy into the cultural unrealistic standards, and
40:19
Speaker 2: to become internally motivated and to make their choices and
40:23
Speaker 2: decisions in life based upon their gut intuition. If they
40:26
Speaker 2: can learn to do those things, they will be happier
40:30
Speaker 2: and fulfilled as kids and teens and adults, and they
40:34
Speaker 2: can become and live happily ever after. So that's part one.
40:41
Speaker 2: Part two. We'll be here soon. I'll work on that
40:45
Speaker 2: in the next few weeks. Thank you so much for
40:48
Speaker 2: listening in. This might be another one of those podcasts
40:51
Speaker 2: you listen to with your daughter passes on to your friends.
40:55
Speaker 2: If you have comments, questions ideas about future podcasts, please
41:01
Speaker 2: email me at ann A n n E at dr
41:04
Speaker 2: tim Jordan dot com. I always look to my show
41:08
Speaker 2: notes too for other resources. I will be back here
41:12
Speaker 2: in a week with a brand new topic and a
41:14
Speaker 2: brand new podcast. Thank you, as always for stopping by.
41:17
Speaker 2: I really appreciate it.
41:26
Speaker 1: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Raising Daughters.
41:29
Speaker 1: Hopefully you've learned something useful about girls and young women
41:32
Speaker 1: and how to help them navigate the pressures, challenges, and
41:35
Speaker 1: opportunities of modern life. If you want to become a
41:38
Speaker 1: more effective parent, keep listening to the show at doctor
41:41
Speaker 1: Tim Jordan dot com and let the conversations shape you.
41:45
Speaker 1: Build that one of a kind connection with your daughters
41:47
Speaker 1: in the most profound and meaningful ways possible, shaping them
41:51
Speaker 1: into strong, confident women of the future. That's all for now,
41:55
Speaker 1: see you next week for another episode of Raising Daughters.