Coaching with LDS values

Episode 96: Start Taking Action to Show Your Love I'm Bonnie Lyman, and you're listening to the podcast, Loving on Purpose, episode 96, Start Taking Action to Show Your Love. Welcome to the podcast, Loving on Purpose. I'm your host. Bonnie Lyman. If you're having trouble navigating through your relationships with your adult children, if you are struggling to connect with them or having specific challenges, you're in the right place. Hello, my friends. Welcome back to another episode. Thank you. For joining me, I want to welcome anybody that's new, and you may want to go back and pick up on some past episodes. My very first episode was called Loving on Purpose, and I truly believe with all my heart. That if we can intentionally be working on loving as many people as we can, life is going to be a lot more peaceful, content, and even have more joy than otherwise. So today we're going to talk about taking action to show your love. Now, in my coaching practice, I use a tool, a formula, whatever you want to call it, that in my coaching friends, colleagues, we refer to, and it was named by the creator, Brooke Castile, the model. And the model, if you learn to use this, which is simple and yet amazing beyond your belief, you can solve any So if you haven't already, I invite you to go back and hunt down in my podcast where, um, I believe I called it the model is a secret sauce. So go find that, but I'm going to, um, recap. I'm going to simply. explain it to you just to refresh your memory. And I encourage you to practice using it. So the model is a tool to show what needs to change in your brain to not only feel Now, I want to have the feelings you're feeling, but also to get the result you want in your life. And usually when we get the result that we want, I would say it's most often tied to a feeling. Um, then we live a well lived life. I like to call it. So we use the letters in the model C T F A R, and I'm going to go through and give you an example of a model and what each of those letters look like. stand for, and they do go in the order that I just recited to you. So the C stands for the circumstance, and let's say the circumstance is your Adult child doesn't come to family gatherings. So your thought could be they should want to come to family gatherings or something along that line. And with a case like this, my clients usually have a whole story they have written. about why this is wrong, and so the next one is the F, which is for feeling. The feeling is often with that thought, disappointment, and maybe even anger. So then the action or the behavior of the person having this circumstance and thought and feeling could be I am going to make, somehow, make them feel guilty. You may not even intentionally do that, but you, uh, you ride on them about not coming, and you may even stop inviting them. So what is your result? You're still feeling disappointed and angry that they don't come to family gatherings. And you, being not your best self, but your judgmental self, you've given them more reason Not to come to family gathering, who wants to be around someone they feel judged by for their decisions. So I kind of went a little bit further and made some assumptions there, but that essentially. is the model. And we often start with, um, what is the feeling I'm feeling, or you could name the circumstance. Circumstance has got to be true, it's got to be proven, where our thoughts are just opinions. So, Once my clients learn about this, they tend to spend a lot of time trying to come up with new thoughts that will give them a more loving feeling about the circumstance. And this is great, and this is what we need to be doing, but it's, it's simple to do, but there's more. That needs to, um, take place in that we need to be willing just to feel maybe disappointed or angry for a time, but we don't want to always stay that way because it's our feelings that cause our actions, how we behave, and if we're feeling disappointed or angry, then our actions are one that we In this case, um, example I gave you, we become judgmental, but I want to focus just for a little bit here on the behavior part of the model. So we may have tried. Feeling disappointed and angry, we may have tried to change our thoughts and we can't get to that loving place, but these are our children of anybody I want to Love with all my heart is my children, and I want to do that regardless of how they're acting, regardless of their behavior. I want to accept them and love them just the way they are. So here are some things where if you just only focused on your behavior. on the action part of this amazing tool, the model, you can start having new thoughts that will just come and in turn cause you to have more loving feelings. Which then affects your behavior as always showing up as a kind and loving mother or parent who ever, you know, may be listening to this. So these are just some suggestions. of things you could do. Make a list of all the reasons why you love this child. And in this list, write down all the things that you admire about them. In doing this, you're telling your brain what you want to focus on about your child, not their behaviors that you don't particularly like, but what you do like about them. Then make a list of why you want to feel that love that hopefully you were feeling when you were focusing on All the things that you admired and loved about this child, make a list of why you want to feel that love more often and what's getting in the way of not always feeling love for them. You'll, you'll find out it's your thoughts. You're going to want to blame them, but that's what kids do. It's, it's the thoughts that you're holding on tight to that is causing you to not have that feeling of love for them as often as... you want. Remember, loving them is not predicated upon them showing their love back to you. Now, feeling love for them, make a list of what actions you want to do to show your love for them. You don't wait to show love after they have shown some kindness and love to you. But if we get in the habit of us being the adult here, being the first one to show love, we're always going to feel good. And I'll give you another little hint, sometimes it's easier, maybe to start on practicing loving people that you don't really know, maybe the grocery clerk at the store, or You know, somebody you've just met, but be focusing on what you love about them, and the more people that you love, and the more you love yourself, it's going to be a whole lot easier to love it. Those adult children that perhaps have disappointed you by their behavior. You've got to remember, love just loves. That's what love does. It's not dependent on anything. And loving another person always feels so good. So, why wouldn't we try to, um, love as many people as we could? And what I'm telling you in this episode... If you can't get your mind in the right place, just do loving things for people. I can remember when I was dating my husband that I, when we'd get in a little tiff or something, I didn't like how I was feeling and I would, there was a little, Like a Dairy Queen, it was called something else way back then. But I would go and buy him a diet cherry Coke because I knew he loved those. And I would take it to him and my heart would soften. And I, I would feel love here are some suggestions you can do to show your kids that you love them, and you're probably going to come up with much more, um, Many more suggestions that are more applicable to your children. I do know that these are ways that, um, can show love to another person. Tell them often. of the things you admire about them. Drop off at their house or send them some of their favorite cookies or a candy bar. They can even be store bought. It's not like you gotta make them, but you just know that You're telling them, I know this is your favorite, and so I want to do this for you because I love you. Sometimes showing your love for them is giving you space from them. There was a time, and I think I've talked about it in past episodes, where I triggered something in one of my children. That didn't make them feel good. And the best thing I could do for them was to give them space from me. Not text them a lot, not call them a lot, not visit them a lot. And it took about three years, but things are good. Thank them for being your child. Express gratitude that you got to be their parent. Another thing you could do is send them an... article or a link to an article to something you think they might be interested in. Not something you think they need to hear, but something you know they are interested in. Ask them for help. With some tech problem or, um, some chore around the house, such as hanging a heavy mirror, drop your timeline you have for them answering your texts or phone calls, listen, ask questions, talk less and don't voice your computer. Viewpoint frequently, and usually only when they ask. Don't ever give advice without their permission. Tell them what you do love about them. Tell them what great and wonderful kids. They are. I have a son who doesn't come often to family gatherings, doesn't instigate conversations with us. In other words, he never calls us up just to see how we're doing. He doesn't. Invite us over, very frequently, to his house. He doesn't call us unless he has a reason. And he doesn't like us to stop by his house unannounced. But I have chosen to focus on what a good man he is. His not including us more in his life has nothing to do with how much he loves us. He just has other priorities that he's dealing with right now, and he has his agency to run his life any way he wants. Being a member of my faith, it's important. To us, that our children remain faithful to that faith, and he didn't serve a mission because of something he had done, and he doesn't go or take his family to church, but I can't think of one reason not to love everything about him, the kind of love that makes me feel I'm so grateful that this person is even a part of my life. It's when we decide to love the whole person, that the flaws almost become a part of their wonderfulness. And one of the ways to get to that feeling. It's to do things for them that show that you love them. It was his birthday the other day, and so I made his favorite cookies, and I gave him a card with a little bit of money. And it was a blank card, and this is what I wrote. We couldn't be happier with a son than how happy you've made us. You're kind. You're generous with all your resources. You're honest. You give your mama the best hugs. You're a great, the best of the best, golfing companion to your dad. You're the best dad ever. It looks like you're a great husband, but we'd have to take Sarah's word on that. We know you have flaws and weaknesses, but we can't see any of them. You're a great and true to the end friend. You have your priorities centered in the right place. You're fun to be around. Love. Mom and dad, it's possible to love a person, that kind of love that makes us feel warm and whole and grateful that this person is in our lives. But we need to take some sort of action. Something needs to change. on what we focus about them. And then it will come where you will find what love is all about, that love just loves. I hope you have a wonderful week and I can't wait to talk to you again next week. If you like this episode and you felt it was of benefit to you, I ask you to share it with somebody that perhaps it could also benefit. But if you're still feeling kind of stuck in that you don't know how to apply what was talked about or where to start. On, on changing your thoughts, on changing your perspective, on bettering your relationship, get on a call with me and we can have a discussion and I can tell you how to apply it and where we start. And then you get to decide. What you want to do about this relationship that maybe you're struggling with, with your adult children. There is no reason to go on the rest of our lives struggling with our relationships, with our adult children. Let's assume the best. Let's assume that we all love each other. And we're just trying to figure out. How to maintain our own boundaries and respect another one's. But I can help you with everything. So just go to BonnieLyman. com and book a call. I can't wait to hear from you. .