Coaching with LDS values

Episode 76 Stay in your own business 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. I'm Bonnie Lyman. And this is episode 76. Stay in your Own Business. Hello everyone. I wanna thank you for going on this journey with me of trying to have better relationships with our adult children. I just. Thank all of you that have given me feedback, that are listening to this podcast, that are sharing it. And if you go and, uh, make a review that it gets out to more people as people are searching for help with their adult children, but. I can't thank you enough for showing up every week and for you having the desire to have a better relationship with your adult children, as you know, and as I have talked about, there's so much of this that is out of your control, but what you can control is how you feel about it. You can love your children. Even though they are disrespectful or you, you can judge them for all the things that they're doing wrong. I always ask people, because people get really bent sometimes on not wanting. To give in. They feel like they're giving in. They feel like they're catering to their children's misbehavior, but that really isn't the case. We can't control them. We can't change them. We can't buy their love. I do feel we can influencing influence them by choosing to love them despite what their behavior is. But all we can do is work on ourselves and if we don't like the life we are living, Mainly because of our expectations that we thought it was gonna be different life we'd be living now that we had adult children, that there would be more involvement with their family and those grandchildren. I. But it doesn't always work out that way, and we don't have control over it. They're, they're not obligated to spend a certain amount of time with us. They're not obligated to share their life with us, even though we think it would be the polite thing to do. That is just our perspective. I like to assume that they are doing the best they can, and I always assume this has nothing to do with whether they love me or not. Life is just not happening the way we thought it would be, and times are different. Times are very different. I think our children don't even know sometimes what brings them the most meaning and the most joy. So they're out there. Tempted by worldly things or, uh, uh, it, it's easier to solve a problem, a disagreement with a parent than it is just to completely detach themselves. So it's our responsibility to feel the way we want to feel to live the life we want to live. And I would suspect that for many of us, it means creating a life that is outside of our adult children's life. Not completely separated from them, but not as involved as we thought it would be. So, I I ask you the question, why does it matter what they think? Why does it matter what they think about child rearing? Why does it matter what they think politically? Why does it matter? As to whether they practice and believe in the same religious beliefs that you do, why does it matter that they choose not to attend the family vacation? Why does it matter what they think? And I think we put way too much emphasis on making it mean something and what they think should matter. In my overall happiness. Yes, it's going to trigger us to have. A certain feeling about them, but I really believe love always wins. So if we can get to where we don't judge them, that we accept what is going on, except that they don't wanna come over every Sunday night for dinner. As much as we would like that, as much as we were expecting that. Why does it matter that they have a different preference, a different opinion about doing that? Because once we can figure out that, Then it makes our lives a lot easier to accept it and go on to plan B. So we, we need, I think, to stay out of our children's business more. I think they would like that. My last podcast addressed this in depth, but they don't like their autonomy, their ability to govern their lives and live the lives any way they want. They don't like it when it's threatened, especially when it's threatened by their parents. Who assume because they have lived life longer and gone through some hard things, that they know better, that they have more wisdom, which could be true, but that doesn't matter to them. They want to make their own choices and learn from their own own mistakes. The only thing that I can control in my relationship with my adult children is how I show up. So I ask myself often, what am I contributing to make this relationship work? Most of the time a lot of us feel. Our children's behavior has to change in order to have a closer relationship. But what about me or us changing our perspective of what a good relationship is? What if we tried. To view it from their point and accept that that might be the perfect way at this time in, in the lives of everybody, of all the social media, of everything that's going on, that their way might be the better way. And maybe that means seeing less of each other, not necessarily more. We get this fixed mindset that the more I see my child, the better connection will have. But that is a lie that I think not only our brain. But it is a lie. Satan wants to believe because he knows. That these children today are much more independent and they don't want to need their parents as much, and I don't think it has one thing to do with how much they love us If there is a need. They will be there. When I got sick, I had a daughter that would come and sit with me every Wednesday, but she asked, what can I do to help you? Mom, you need to tell me because I'm wondering at home, and I'm wondering at home. That I can't ask her for anything because she's too busy with her family and I don't want to inconvenience her. So if we can just be honest with each other as when my son said, mom, to come once a week to your house for dinner is too much for us. We don't have that much time to give. And still be able to do our jobs and still be able to give the time to our young boys that we want. So I said to my daughter, it would be nice when you could to come over and just talk with me for a little bit. So she would come every Wednesday. But she decided that, and she figured out a way in her life to make that work. The only thing I can control is, like I said earlier, is how I show up in the relationship and it can still feel wonderful. Because I am being true to myself. It is my thoughts that cause my feelings and my feelings cause my actions and I need to work on those being in alignment with what would love do for me to best love my kids and for them. To know that I love them, that I love and respect them enough to do it their way. And their way. May be not a phone call every week, not seeing each other every week, but just letting it happen more naturally. I can't control their thoughts. I can't control their feelings, and so that means I can't control their actions, but I can still love them for exactly the person that they are because they haven't done anything wrong. They are just doing it their way. Why have you ever asked yourself, why do I take it? So personally, when they think and feel and their actions are different than mine, it's so easy to go to the place that they don't like my way. They don't because they don't want to do it. It, we, we go to the extreme to take it personally that we're not important to them. What our business is, is to figure out how to love them when they don't show us that they love us in the way that we were expecting or hoping for. True freedom is not needing to know why they do what they do or say what they say. True. Freedom is not having any thought about it, except this is what they do. Let it go. Don't hang onto the rope so tight that it should be done a different way. That everything has gone wrong. That this is not how families are supposed to connect with each other, that love each other. If we let it go. Sometimes we feel. That we're losing all ties with them, and so that means we're developing a relationship with them out of fear, not out of love. When we went on our mission to Africa and we were in the M T C A speaker told us, you're going to think about your kids and miss your kids far more than they are going to miss you. And that's exactly what happened. We had spent. 18 years with each one of our children being the center of their life. And now that has changed. So maybe it's time to find the. A new life to get a new life, to find other things that float our boat, that make us feel like we're contributing to the world than just trying to raise responsible children. We put more into that relationship when they were growing up than they did. We were intentional moms. They were unintentional children. They just showed up and just went with whatever mom or dad said until they got into their teen years, and they figured out that. They did have some say they could at least feel different feelings and see things from different perspectives, and yet they knew that they were still tied to us and that's why there's so much turmoil when they're teenagers. They are still tied to us and need us, and they so badly don't want to be. We never appreciate all that somebody does for us. We never know the sacrifice that anybody puts in on our behalf. And the same is with our children as they were being raised in our home. It was just a given that that's what a mom and dad did, and hopefully they'll make those same sacrifices to their children. But I think these kids today are much more mentally healthy and they recognize I can't have my entire life being a mom. There has to be growth that comes. Socially, spiritually, physically, intellectually than just from raising kids. And my kids are seeing that and addressing those needs and they're waiting or they're figuring out, they're not waiting for somebody else to fulfill those needs. They are figuring out how to fulfill 'em. Our children are not entitled to treat us a certain way. They don't have to have us over for dinner a certain number of times. They don't have to spend Christmas with us, equal times between themselves and their uh, spouse's home. They don't have to confer with us before they make vacation plans as to whether that's conflicting with any family vacation plans we may be making. But in our minds, we think they do. We think it would be the polite thing to do. Yes, it would. But sometimes they're just trying to figure out how to squeak that vacation time in that best fits for their family, their friends, and their. New little family are a whole lot more fun than we are, but that doesn't mean they don't love me with all their heart and they wouldn't do anything for me. If it was necessary for them to do, they're in the habit of figuring out things themselves because of all the uncertainty in the world. This pandemic was a surprise to everybody. They had to figure out how to socially adapt just as we had to figure out all the isolation adaptations that we had to make. So they have just had completely different experiences and different experiences cause us to have different perspectives on our life. If, if they disapprove of me, that means something about them, how people view us, what they say to us. What they don't do or do for us tells us more about how they're feeling about themselves than how it means they're feeling about us. Those who love you, it also means something about them. That they are comfortable with themselves in their own skins. Something that we could learn from. We could all learn to praise ourselves more. Sometimes we wanna go to the land of that is arrogant or that is not humility. We're supposed to lose ourselves in the service of others, but I'll tell you, those that like themselves and think well of themselves are able to give a whole lot more service than those that don't value the person that they are. So who do you want to be? And do you want to improve on who you are? That's your work to do, not to try to correct your kids, not to try to help them be better children, adult children, to. They're parents now not to get others to be more like us, or for them to get us to be more like them. But our work is to accept ourselves that we are amazing and we have flaws, and to love our children with all their greatness, despite their weaknesses. If we will just stay in our own business of. Being a better me of bettering ourselves, of loving, expanding our circle of who we want to love and graciously uplift and try to make life better for them rather than spending so much time. Wondering why our children aren't treating us more respectfully or aren't giving us more attention. We all are going to live a much happier life. There is still. So much to do out there that can bring satisfaction to our lives. It's maybe different than what we thought it was going to be, that our lives at this time of our life, when our children got older and started having their own families, that our service would be given to them. And in return, we would be included more in their lives. We have to get past that. We need to focus more on our own business and what we are doing to better our lives instead of putting that responsibility upon our adult children. I hope this has meaning to you. If you need further help in getting past the hurt, the disappointment of unfulfilled expectations, I suggest you get on a strategy call and let me tell you about my eight week program of how to default. To love on purpose and of all the feelings there is out there to feel of all the feelings that feel best. It is love. It's always available. It's always. An option, but you have to make the choice to love on purpose. I hope you have a great week. I hope you get to do fun things this week. I hope you tell each of your children something specific that you admire about them and just see how you feel. So take care and I'll see you next week. If you like this, be 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 ones. But I can help you with everything. So just go to bonnie lyman.com and book a call. I can't wait to hear from you. .