What's In Your Toolbox?

Hi. Hello. Hello, everyone. It's Tuesday, and we are usually talking about tools in your toolbox. Tuesday, but we have tea today, so we figured another tea, tea time with Mary and Jo while we talk about tools in your toolbox. I just. All the tea. Love a good alliteration. We love it. Good opportunity to alliterate. Mary's a little under the weather, so she came over and we gotta just fuel her with all the goodness to nourish her body. It's allergies. It's allergies. So when she's sick, so am I. So I'm equally.

I'm equally getting in on the tea time. You can tell who's a mom here, which is so wonderful because she took my temperature right away, you know, started the tea. I'm in good hands. I'm in good hands. Good hand. Well, we're happy to be here with you guys today. And later this evening, Mary and I get the opportunity to go to a private school nearby, and we get to speak specifically to parents around how to cultivate courage for their kiddos and. Oh, hi, Carrie. Hi, junk food junkie. Good afternoon.

Hello, Carrie. It matches my skirt really well. Maybe I'll stand up and give you a fashion show after. Hi, Luke. So, in thinking about what we wanted to say this evening for the parents around courage, what we both came to the conclusion of, and I know this isn't going to come to a shock to anyone or as a shock to anyone, but courage, just. Courage is not just for kids. Courage is for everyone. So today we also wanted to spend some time with you talking about courage. And what is courage? Courage is the ability to face your fears and take action despite the challenges and risks involved.

And this is very poignant because we just had a guest on our podcast who wrote a book called fear is my Homeboy. And she's got this whole incredible talk around what it takes to face your fears. And it's leaning in, right. It's doing the actions over and over and over again. So you get less, almost more numb to those feelings of fear. And on the opposite end of that spectrum, you're not only dulling your senses in terms of what fear does to you, right. That fight, flight, or freeze, you're also building your courage, because when you can start to prove it to yourself that you can do the things that you're fearful of over and over and over again, you can start to do more things that you, quote, unquote, are scared of.

So the benefits, like, what are the benefits of courage? And there's four of them that we're going to talk about tonight, but I think it's very poignant to bring to this conversation today. So one of them is increase self confidence and self esteem. So the more that you can lean in to the things that you're fearful of, the more you're going to grow in your confidence and self esteem. And truly, this is one of the biggest things that we get asked all the time when we work with our girls is I want to grow more in my confidence.

And it's like, well, if you do want to grow more in your confidence, you got to do more of the things that scare you. Yeah. What steps are you taking in order to make that happen? The next one is improved decision making skills. When you can tackle your fears or face them head on, you start to see what you're capable of, which helps you really define that. My mom always called it a pros cons list. I'm sure if you're like me, your mom was like, if you've got a decision to make, pros cons and you can really start to cross out, like, what's holding you back based on what you know you're capable of.

And I think that's really cool in terms of facing your fears, is based off of that increased self confidence and self esteem. You're also increasing your self awareness. So what are you truly capable of versus where are you sitting down on yourself? The next benefit is greater resilience and adaptability to change. And we speak all the time about resilience, the art of bouncing back. So if you fall down and you mess up, you are not your mistake. The mistake allows you to look at it as a lesson, and it also teaches you how do you rebound faster so it doesn't slow you down on the path of the direction of your goals and going after what you want.

Because show of hands, if you feel brave enough to put this in the comments, how many of you have let a bad morning turn into a bad day turn into a bad couple of days to turn into, like, ruining somebody else's day and experience? How about you let it ruin an entire week or month or year? And one of my favorite, favorite, favorite people books podcasts, all of it is doctor Joe Dispenza. And he talks about how if you let one instance really sit with you and take over your body, it turns into a mood, right?

Then that mood really turns into a temperament. Then that temperament turns into your personal reality, and then that personal reality turns into your personality. So that one thing happened 30 years ago when it left a bad taste in your mouth. And now you're known as the girl who just has a bad taste in her mouth because who knows why you couldn't get over the one thing that happened to you 30 years ago. And that happens if we aren't self aware. In terms of our bounce back effect, the next one is greater leadership abilities.

This is also something we really hone in on in terms of our girls, because the younger and younger we can teach, teach our girls to be leaders of their life, the more they will. I'm sorry. The less they'll succumb to peer pressure. They're their own person. They'll be able to make their own decisions. They know who they are and what they stand for. And that is so important at such a young age when we're so impressionable. Let's look at some of these comments. I know where we go to number. Luke, you started.

Carrie, thanks for raising your hand. I've definitely let a bad morning ruin an entire week. You too, Luke. I've let it ruin a day. Push my craft, my days into quarters. I love that. Right, you. If you have a bad first quarter, you can totally turn it around for two, three, and four. Hi, Chris. It's. I wouldn't say it's spring here. We went from winter to summer. It's 96. Gonna be 98 today. And yes, carry resentment built up leads to bitterness and defensiveness. Holy moly. Ain't that the truth?

Junk food junkie. Acknowledge your fear. Never try to sweep your fear under the rug, because what happens? Pile gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and it trips you up. You were not Aladdin. I wish it was like a whole new, whole new going on. That magic carpet ride. No. Ruins your entire day. Okay, so what's that last one? The last benefit is deeper connections and relationships with yourself and others. So courage allows you to walk into rooms that you might not feel comfortable being in. Especially with children, though, too.

We don't teach our kids how to be friends, so we also see on the flip side of girls that we work with, they're dying to make friends, but they just don't know how. Because in their mind, they feel like they don't fit in or they don't know what to say. So it holds them back from connecting with people that might actually end up being their best friend. And something that I'm seeing more and more through the lens of social media, albeit, so I take it with a grain of salt. But kids aren't the only ones that struggle making friends.

Adults do, too. Cause we're really set in our ways, and we think we can't teach an old dog new trick. So it's like one of those things where we don't even put ourselves out there anymore because, quote, unquote, we are who we are, right? How many times have we said that about ourselves? For me, it's too many. So something that I am really keen on is just questioning why I'm doing what I'm doing every day and putting myself in really uncomfortable situations. And really uncomfortable is subjective, by the way.

It doesn't have to be this zero to 60 type thing where you go skydiving. You don't have to do that. Don't jump out of a plane. You didn't hear it here first. My. My scary thing. My scary thing. I signed up to volunteer at my local church. Who am I to do that? What do I. I've never done that before. I'm terrified. I start Saturday. I don't know anybody there. I usually go by myself. Like, that is scary for me. But I also know that it's something that I've been drawn to want to do. So if I don't do it, don't you think it's still gonna keep knocking at me?

Hey, hey, hey. Yes, it absolutely will. So it's one of those things. Like, Carrie, you're saying you've struggled making friends for most of your life, and we hate to hear that. You are such an incredible person. You're a wealth of knowledge, information. You're such a bright light. So what are the things that you could do to get over that hump? What rooms can you put yourself in where your people might be? And I think it's that basic question, right? We can answer those questions, but what about the action that follows?

That's actually putting yourself in the room, right? So we hope, we hope, we hope. We hope that you take some courage today and you do something that maybe you've been fearful of following through with. Or the next time you're faced with a, should I do it or should I not? You can revert back to this conversation, especially the benefits around what taking courageous action will do for you. So let's read it. In my many years of playing sports, it taught me how to make friends with teammates. We are such big advocates for youths in sports.

There's something going on in this day and age where parents don't give a lot of pushback if their kids don't want to do something. It's kind of like an okay, but sports is such a beautiful place to learn how to be on a team, how to make friends, how to overcome hardship and loss and failure. So one of our biggest pillars is making sure that the parents and families we work with consider putting their kids in some sort of a sport or team activity if they're not right following their passions. Because those passions lead to you putting yourself out there and trying on new things and succeeding and failing.

Because we don't say, especially, like me as a mom, but also what we teach our girls, you win or you learn. You don't win or lose. Yes, losing is part of it, but how do we flip the script to say that losing is okay? Because you're learning. So we either win or we learn. And it all is about stepping into that uncomfortableness so you can tap into that courage and. And literally allow that to guide you to whatever you have on your heart, your goals, your dreams. So, hey, here's a cup of courage from the both of us.

A cup of courage and let us know. Thanks, you guys, for being so interactive in the chat. This was really great and curious. Type it in the community feed or come back to us and let us know what scary conversation you had or what was the thing that you did that was uncomfortable, but you did it anyway because that is what's going to continue on to propel you forward. And it's like a muscle, right? You have to utilize it in order for it to grow stronger. We didn't just. We didn't just wind up here.

This wasn't on our goal board 20 years ago to be a part of this community, this app have a company where we teach these type of topics to girls. It took falling down, experimenting, sticking with it, and I think that's a big mess going on today. We just give up. If we don't love it right away, we just give up. We don't put in the reps in order to see what outcomes could possibly be. So if it's not you, who needs a cup of courage? Who else in your inner circle needs a cup of courage? Where could you inspire somebody else to take that leap of faith that they need to be taking?

All right, you guys, with the best. You're the best. You guys. You are the best. We will see you in a week from today. We'll actually pop a little something in the community feed as well around this topic, so we'll see you next time.