Real Happy Mom

Practical tips and encouragement for moms

Ready to Improve Your Parenting? This One Thing Will Transform Your Motherhood

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News Flash! Your kids don’t do want you to say, they do what you do.

My guest Victoria had this realization when raising her kids and almost treating them like a project. Meaning that she thought she had to get her kids to be awesome in school and raise them to be awesome adults that would eventually leave and go off to college.

The problem with this is kids have their own personalities and trajectories for life. The things that we push our kids to do may not be what they actually want to do. So instead of trying to raise our kids to be perfect versions of ourselves, Victoria has another method … model the behavior and things that you want your kids to do.

This includes having fun. Your kids want to see you happy! Check out this episode to learn how to transform the way you see parenting so that you can improve your motherhood

About Victoria

Victoria Anderson, an Executive Life Coach: With a focus on supporting parents to connect to their heart, mind, body, and soul to achieve their life dreams while navigating the challenges of parenting.

Victoria is a credentialed secondary English teacher and she lives in Silicon Valley with her husband and two teenage kids

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Transcript of this episode

Victoria 0:00
And that goes back to they, our kids do we do what we do, and what we want them to be doing. As you said, as you opened up, we want the best for our kids, we want our kids to be happy, we like to see that we like to see them happy. And so if both were modeling, oh, I just work all the time, and I do so much for you and I’m, I’m the martyr here, then they’re gonna, they’re gonna, they’re gonna, they’re taking notes, our kids are constantly taking notes, and they’ll and they’ll be, they’ll either fall into some kind of pattern like that themselves. Or they’ll be exactly that.

Real Happy Mom 0:40
Hey, there, I’m Tony and I have an overwhelming passion to help moms navigate motherhood without the overwhelm. I went from struggling with motherhood and losing my identity, to be productive and living out my version of being a happy mom. On the Real Happy Mom podcast, I interview real moms and experts to help you navigate raising children self care, time management, and so much more. So if you’re ready to get rid of the overwhelm, and start being a Real Happy Mom, join me inside the Real Happy Mom podcast. And welcome back to another episode of the Real Happy Mom Podcast. I am so happy that you are here. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If this is your first time, welcome, welcome. If you are returning back, I’m so glad that you’re back. Now today I have Victoria who is an executive life coach and focuses on supporting parents to connect with their heart, mind, body and soul to achieve their life’s dreams while navigating the challenges of parenting. And today, Victoria and I we really get into a great discussion about how we can improve our parenting. And it’s with actually doing something that we don’t necessarily think about. We think we need to take the parents in classes and do all the parenting courses and whatnot. But it actually starts with us. And I can’t wait for you to hear this episode and hear what she has to share about that. Now before we jump into this episode, I wanted to quickly let you know that I have started coaching. And I have some moms that I have been working with already. And I want to work with you. So if you are struggling with managing your time, just having too much to do feeling overwhelmed with everything in probably just need some accountability to get some things done. I’m your girl, I’m here to help you reach out to me and send me a message or go over to Real Happy mom.com slash coaching. And you can get some more information there. because let me tell you, you are not meant to do this by yourself. And I don’t want you to do this by yourself. So let’s do this together. Like I said, reach out to me at Real Happy Mom comm slash coaching so that we can get started. Now, let’s go ahead and jump into this week’s episode with Victoria. Now that we have that out of the way.

Real Happy Mom 2:47
All right, Victoria, welcome to the podcast.

Victoria 2:49
Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. toniann

Real Happy Mom 2:52
Yes, I am happy to have you. I love talking to you. So this is great that we get to have this conversation today. And I’m super pumped to talk to you because you are going to be helping us out quite a bit. But before we jump into our topic, I just wanted you to share a little bit about you and what you do.

Victoria 3:09
Well, I am Victoria Anderson and I work for the handbell group. I am an executive life coach. And I got into executive life coaching back in 2012, when actually when I was actually coached so and I I sought out a coach or I actually was given a coach by my husband, he introduced me to a coach after a 10 year plus journey with Crohn’s disease. So I had been diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and I was had tried multiple things like acupuncture, you know, diets, all sorts of things to try to heal myself. And coaching was something that I hadn’t tried. So I thought well, I’ve tried everything else I might as well try coaching. And I was amazed after working with my coach. I worked with her for a year but just even in the first few months, the transformation not only in my health, but in my marriage and in my relationships with my children and in my relationships with my with my own family of origin. So and then after as we were coming to the end of our time together my coach asked me would you like to become a coach? And I said yeah, I’d love to become a coach love to help people, you know, find get find their their passion or dreams and find happiness in their lives and be happily happy, proud, inspired and because it’s infectious, especially in a family unit

Real Happy Mom 4:48
or initiative particular when it comes to parenting because that is one thing that you do help your clients with when it comes to coaching and I just know, for us as moms, we want to do the best They want to make sure that we’re giving our kids the best. And with good intentions, I think we tried to help our kids and steer them in the right direction. But you have an approach to parenting that is just a little bit different, at least from some of the other people that I’ve talked to. And instead of focusing on our kids, and you encouraged us to focus on ourselves as parents, so I wanted you to tell us about how you got to this point, and what this actually looks like.

Victoria 5:28
Right? So I, I really got to this point in my parenting journey when my kids are teenagers. So a little late, but that’s okay. Like, this is on the job training parenting, right. And it was I had the realization I had, I had three major realizations, and one is that I was treating my kids as a project. And I was, you know, okay, we’ve got to get we’ve got, I’ve got to get these kids to, you know, do the right thing in school, and get them off to college so they can leave the nest. So that was how I was looking at it. And what I realized is how little control I actually have, no matter what I do, or say, they’re going to they’re going to do their they’re going to do what they’re going to do. And they have their own personalities, they have their own soul, they have their own trajectory, no matter what I did there. That’s that was it. And then the other thing I had a had a real realization with is that my kids don’t do what I tell them to do, or do what I say. So all the lecturing, and all that time wasted telling them Well, here’s, here’s, here’s what you should be doing in life. They don’t do what they do. They don’t do what I say they do what I do. And so and that really hit me when I saw my daughter starting to meditate. And my son went off and did a yoga training, which I never told my kids to meditate. I never told them to do yoga, but I have a daily practice. And they see me do it. They’ve walked in on me doing it many times. And and now they’re doing it. And then the other thing I realized is that our kids actually like seeing us happy. They really do. They like to see us proud, inspired, having fun. You know, I was down in my husband’s from New Zealand. So we we go usually at Christmas time. Usually, I don’t know that we’re not going this year, but we usually go at Christmas. And last Christmas, we were down there and we were boogie boarding. And my 18 year old at the time, son looks at me and he goes, my mom is so cool. And he was just watching me laughing and getting pummeled by these ways. And and that really reminded me how much they love. They love seeing your happy.

Real Happy Mom 7:57
Yes. When you said that I was like, Yes, amen. Because I feel like a lot of times, I don’t know what it is about us that we build like, oh, we’re not supposed to have fun, or they’re not supposed to see us have fun and and I was reminded to when I was I think I posted something on social media. And I said something like, you know, oh, my son is making me feel sad again, because I want to go out and do like, some fun event or something. And he and someone responded back and was like, you know, it’s okay for you to have fun. And for him to see you having fun. Not like merch, like, think about that. Like, yeah, like, I feel like, for some reason we need this permission, like to be happy and have fun in front of our kids. Like, I don’t know, it’s just the latest thing. Yeah, I

Victoria 8:43
think. And it’s it is interesting. I think there’s a paradigm there where, you know, we as women, we have to be suffering, we have to be marred. We have to be the martyr, we’ve got to carry the weight, we’ve got to do all the work. And I think it’s just it’s not, it’s not true. You know, it’s I mean, you know, yeah, we do a lot of the work, but the fact that we can’t have fun with it, it’s just, it’s just not true. So, yeah, and I think and that goes back to, they, our kids do, what do what we do, and what we want them to be doing. As you said, as you opened up, we want the best for our kids, we want our kids to be happy, we like to see that. We like to see them happy. And so if both were modeling, oh, I just work all the time, and I do so much for you and I’m, I’m the martyr here, then they’re gonna they’re gonna, they’re gonna they’re taking notes. Our kids are constantly taking notes, and they’ll and they’ll be they’ll either fall into some kind of pattern like that themselves, or they’ll or they’ll be exactly that. So it’s, you know, do we want that for our kids? And you know, of course not.

Real Happy Mom 9:55
Yes, I’m so glad you brought that up though because yeah, you had yummy thinking. For a second, I’m like, well, like, we do like to see me happy. So yes, yeah, we definitely want to do that more. And one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about is that we want to start doing better about this, but I know that it takes some, some inner work. To be honest, it’s not something easy, like, oh, let’s just go out and have fun and be happy. So I wanted you to talk to us. Because, like I said, I know it’s some things inside of us that we have to take care of, so that we can be better and happier for our kids, instead of projecting that negative energy and negative emotion. So how do you suggest we get started with this?

Victoria 10:41
Well, you know, in, in our candle, we have a method that we take people through. And the the first step really is getting honest with ourselves, and learning and learning to articulate what it is we actually want. And keep in in different areas of our lives. So we we take, we take a view on 12 areas of life. And some of those key areas are your relationship to time, your body, your relationship with yourself, relationship with your partner, your money, your career, we look at all these different areas of life, and you see where you are, you take an inventory, and then you know where to go to work. So if you’re not happy, at work, or you know, in your career, it takes, you know, it takes you not only articulating what you want, but figuring out telling the truth, and then figuring out what’s in your way. So the first step is to really get honest, okay, so if you want to make a career change, be honest about that, tell the truth to yourself, and then articulate a dream of what would it look like if you were to make that career career move. And because everything is created with using language, you cannot imagine something without articulating it. So everything that we you know, when we look when I’m you know, when I look at the building that I’m in, it was articulated through language. And so this is a very important step for, you know, getting on that path toward happiness is figuring out what that looks like for you. And then being able to write it No, not just have it live in your head kind of swirling around. But get it out of your head onto paper or on the screen, where you can really go through it. And be very precise about what you want. Because if you think about your, you’re aiming toward that you want it to be precise. You want you want to know what it feels like, smells like tastes like you want to invoke that feeling of what it’s like to be have that dream here and now. So when I did that with my health, I literally would go to bed at night and imagine myself walking into my doctor’s office, checking in having them take my vitals waiting for my doctor, and her coming in and saying, wow, you know, you had you had ulcers three millimeters deep, and they’re gone. What What happened? And it after a couple of months of doing this and getting very precise about how I wanted how I wanted to feel in that moment. It actually happened. I actually went Not only did it happen once that happened twice in two weeks, where I went to two different specialists and they went what happened. And it was like such It was such a great feeling. So it was a very long answer to your question. But that’s, that’s that’s the first step.

Real Happy Mom 13:45
Yeah, no, no, that was good. That was really good. Because I was just thinking like, okay, yeah, I know, a lot of times, but let me back up. Because when you’re talking, I was thinking about a couple of things. One, I was thinking about a lot of times, especially the mom that’s like overwhelmed and just feeling like all the pressures, like sometimes we don’t even know like, where they’re like really get started. We just know that there’s just like so much going on. And we just need someone to kind of like, take the kids away. And like, let us just breathe for a second. And so I think that goes back to, like you said, just being honest with ourselves, like what do we need right now? And I like those simple questions that you brought up about, you know, what do we mean? And what does it look like? Because a lot of times I think we get a little make it too complicated. Put it like that. And so I like how you keep it simple and just saying like, Okay, wait, let’s just like really think about it like what do you need? And, and that’s another thing too. Like, I feel that we try to do what other people are doing or what we see others doing to make themselves feel happy. And that’s not sometimes isn’t that truly what makes us happy. So I like that getting honest with ourselves first.

Victoria 14:54
Yeah, because we have these voices in our heads that should on us. Tell us what we what You know what? Well, my, this is what my mother would say. And this is what my partner would say, and this is what my friend would say. And, and, and those what we collect those voices, and they start to dictate what, you know what, what we do. And that’s one of the things we work on is identifying those voices. And those, those are some of the obstacles that get in our way to getting to having what we want. And, and, and knowing that, okay, that voice that tells me I shouldn’t make that career move, or I shouldn’t go for that.

Real Happy Mom 15:34
House,

Victoria 15:35
you know, that’s not that’s not me, that’s not my voice. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s an important, this, you know, making that those distinctions is really important. And then I think you’re right about I think, I think especially as women, we, you know, we, I think there’s external pressure, societal pressure to fit into a certain mold. And, and it, it can be suffocating. I felt like for me, I mean, part of why I believe I ended up getting sick to begin with was, I was living a fake life, it wasn’t really who I wanted to be. It wasn’t, you know, I was trying to, you know, be in the Catholic school with the kids. And it all look very nice on the outside. But on the inside, there were ulcers, and my marriage wasn’t great. And, you know, my relationship with my kids was strained because I was I was also trying to fit them into this, this paradigm and this picture of what it should all look like, should look like, rather than what do I really want?

Real Happy Mom 16:37
Yeah, and that’s one thing that I’m really big on is just like being real to yourself, and being authentic to yourself. Because I know, it’s easy to look and see, like what we should be doing, or someone telling you what we should be doing. But really taking that time to be honest. And I like what you said in the beginning about being honest with ourselves and excellent ourselves as questions. And then to the other part is just imagining, because I think that that’s another thing that we could do better as, especially as adults period is just like sitting down and like closing our eyes and just dreaming and imagining what these things would look like. Because I feel that’s one thing that we lose as we get older, like kids do all the time, like my son’s always telling me some crazy stuff. Do I sit down and like actually dream? Like, do that a little bit more? So yes, definitely sit down and imagining because I love how you said like, all of these things are created using language. We can’t even like imagine what it looks like. Like we can’t even you know, use language to speak what it will actually look like. So I love that. Oh, yeah, yeah,

Victoria 17:38
I mean, I think, you know, as we’re growing up, you know, it’s a little kids. Yeah, you know, what, dream and fantasize and makeup, all kinds of crazy stuff. Right? But then, you know, as we get older, people start going all you know, you gotta be realistic. You want to be an artist or musician out? Yeah, you know, you probably should think about getting a real job. You know, you start, there’s a lot this, there’s, again, societal pressure, and you’ve got to fit into this certain, you know, to go on this certain path, it’s very linear. And it just puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on people.

Real Happy Mom 18:12
Absolutely, for sure. Now, I just wanted to see if we can take it one step further. So we’ve done honest with ourselves, when we’ve identified what is frustrating us what’s overwhelming, that’s why we aren’t really happy. So we figured out what it is that we want, and what it looks like. So what would you tell us to do next?

Victoria 18:32
So then you look at where you are. So let’s, let’s say you want to, let’s say you want to buy a bigger house, not surgery. So you look at where you are now. And then there is a bit of Okay, well, what what what do we have room for here financially, and, you know, like that kind of stuff. That’s the kind of getting getting real part. And then creating a path for how you’re going to get there. So we use I use promises. So you know, like, so we have a product that’s an online, it’s our program, completely online, it’s self guided, and there’s a promise tracker in there. So let’s say and so you we you know, so we would take it, I like to take it in steps with something big

Unknown Speaker 19:17
like that.

Victoria 19:18
So what would be the first thing you need to promise? Okay, well, we need to, you know, do some research on the area where we want to live, or maybe we need to get in touch with a realtor, realtor, and you know, so you start making promises for how to get there, and a coach would help you break it down, because it might feel like a really, you know, overwhelming big task. But if you break it down, and then and then you start making these promises to actually to start getting there. And then you start to you start you start building the bridge between what you have and what you want. So and that’s where and that’s what, that’s where those come in.

Real Happy Mom 19:57
Yes, yes. And I like how you explain that as the bridge. There, because I think a lot of times we, you see this big dream and get overwhelmed and think like, I can never do that I can never have that. But when you say it like that, like breaking it down, like I’m like, Oh yeah, I can go and research, you know, you know, the the community I want to live in or I can, you know, find out what my credit score is so that I know what my budget will be like, I can do those little steps. And that doesn’t seem as overwhelming. So I like that you were able to break that down so that it doesn’t feel so big and so unreachable, because that’s such a huge goal, because I will be honest with you. I do want a bigger house.

Unknown Speaker 20:38
Right? Good.

Unknown Speaker 20:43
I was like, Yeah, go ahead.

Victoria 20:47
Yeah. And the other thing that, that I do with clients, as, as we’re going through that process is we we start so we as I was talking about those voices. As we go through life, we start to collect theories, traits and beliefs. And theories are things like, Oh, yeah, I could never live in that neighborhood. Because, you know, I could never afford it. So that’s a bad theory. Right? every negative theory that’s going to get in the way of you having that dream, and then maybe, maybe, and then, and then we have beliefs about, oh, if you know, if I get a bigger house, you know, you know, my mom always said a big house meant bigger work or something like that, like a firm belief in that. And then, and then we have, we have traits. And these are kind of like a goodie bag we get from our parents, where we have ways of being and showing up in the world. And those are those those are part of those little voices, that have us not acting in alignment with what we actually want in life. They have us going sideways or somewhere else instead. And then and then we go well, how did I end up in this house? Yeah. So and so it’s, so it’s identifying those and working with them to sort of, you know, to some of those traits have a glimpse have a good side and a bad side. So for example, if you have a frugal trait, and it shows up in let’s say, your mom or your let’s say it shows up in your mom. Okay, so that frugal trait when you’re trying to save up for a house can be really good. But let’s say you’ve got a hole in your shoe and you’re like, Nope, not gonna, then it’s now it’s like going too far the other way. So it’s just making sure that those that the traits that are that are not helping you that they’re handled, and that and that you’re building up positive traits to help you and get to where you want to go and have that new house. The bigger house.

Real Happy Mom 22:58
Yes, yes, definitely. Because it was funny that you said that, because I’ll be honest, I remember when we were looking for the house or wanting to build the house that we’re in now. We looked at one model house, it was so big, it was like, well, it’s so big to me, but it’s not that big, though some people but I think it was like 4500 square feet. And it was like so many toilets. That’s all I could think of all these toilets. I have to clean. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Give me how to get like that’s like what I was thinking about. Like, instead of thinking like, Oh, this is like my dream like this is what I want. I’m thinking about how many toilets I gotta clean like, this is terrible.

Unknown Speaker 23:39
comes from some belief of yours or some Yeah, some theory that to me, Joy’s it’s too much going on? Yes. Yes, exactly. I

Real Happy Mom 23:47
was just thinking this is too much to clean. So yes, I’m glad you checked me on my beliefs on that one. Because, yeah, how to do better if I do want to buy your house. Now, you have kind of guided us through this process. And I feel like this process is definitely better if we have someone to hold her hand and walk alongside of us, especially having a coach too. So I just want you to share with us how we can either get in contact with you or other members of the handout group so that we can get some help with doing better on ourselves so that we can be better for our kids.

Victoria 24:22
Right? Okay, so we have so you can find us at the handle group.com we have a website and we have we have different divisions, you’ll see that if you go to the landing page, you’ll see we have a corporate division. We have a life division. We have a media division and sport division and education division. So we’re starting to teach this in schools which is really exciting. So teaching this method to young young, young people is really to me a very exciting and then you can find me at Victoria, Victoria, Victoria at handheld group.com that’s my email. And then we have our I’d mentioned before, we have our Are you online, it’s a self guided 1212 sessions, an online course that gives you the tools that you know what I was talking about to hone your life and, and really hone in on your dreams that you want. And you can and you can do that wherever you are, you can do it and and once you buy it, you own it for life so you can keep going. So I have some clients who do it for a little while and then they they go off and make their dreams happen. And then they have more dreams. So they come back and they keep they keep going back into it. So it’s really great. So in the 12 modules, there’s 12 coaching sessions with our founder, Lauren Zander. So she does, you can listen to the audios and then there’s 14 homework assignments. And there’s a promise tracker. And there’s lots of tools and tips in there for how to how to have make make your dream really juicy so you can feel into it. Like I said before, you get one free private coaching session with a handle coach and you get access to enter you University. So we have different courses. We have two courses coming up. We have one coming up with Marnie near. It’s a love masterclass. And that starts as for six weeks, and that’s, that starts on October 26. And then there’s a life masterclass. Coming up on December 1 through January 5, with Laura crew lock one of our coaches. And then with so with the promise tracker, and with as you’re doing the work, you get lots of analytics and prizes and stuff like that. So, and right now with your coupon, Real Happy Mom listeners get 50% off. So it’s normally 650. And your listeners will get it for 325. So and we have lots of group coaching calls and people on the website, you can click into one of those was one with Laurie Gerber every morning at 9am. Eastern, wake up with Laurie. So there’s those are, it’s nice because there’s a real community created that’s been created. And so it’s fun to be a part of all of that.

Real Happy Mom 27:09
Awesome, awesome. And I will definitely include all those links in the show notes as well as that coupon code, because that is definitely a big one. So thank you for sharing that.

Victoria 27:21
It’s actually a really good deal.

Real Happy Mom 27:22
Yes, Yes, for sure. Now, there’s one thing I asked all of my guests before we sign off, and that is to either give us some words of encouragement or a motivational quote for us Real Happy Mom of motivational quotes.

Victoria 27:37
Gosh, I hadn’t thought of it. That’s one thing I had. But But I, one of the things I tell like to leave people with is just this idea of we were talking earlier about getting truthful with ourselves and knowing what we want. And I think it’s really important to be able to sit with ourselves, just you know how you were talking about, you know, the daydreaming, I think that, you know, we crowd ourselves with so many things. And so many activities in a day is just whether it’s meditating or just sitting and staring at a tree or staring out the window, just giving ourselves that breathing time, so that we can hear our true higher self with a capital S. Of what what we really want and what we really desire and how we’re really feeling and checking in with ourselves. Because I think, I think not enough of us really tap into that often enough. Especially when we’re when we’re keeping humans alive.

Real Happy Mom 28:40
Or I will raise my hand and say I’m one of those. So yes, thank you for saying that and reminding us of that. Now, Victoria, this has been a really awesome and I’m so excited that I got to chat with you. I really appreciate your time and taking some time out to really help us with and getting back centered and being honest with ourselves so that we can be better for our kids. Great. Well, thank

Victoria 29:01
you Tanya. Thank you for having me on.

Unknown Speaker 29:03
This was fun.

Real Happy Mom 29:05
Now that does it for this week’s episode of the Real Happy Mom podcast find the links in the show notes make sure you head over to Real Happy Mom comm slash 114 and now you’ll find the links that were mentioned in this episode as well as a summary of what was going on in this week’s episode. Now do me a favor and reach out and let me know if you’ve enjoyed this episode and it’s been helpful to you. You can send me a DM at Real Happy Mom on Instagram or you can leave me a rating a review and let me know how much you’ve enjoyed this episode there this it means so much to me and I would be super grateful if you’ve done that now. Make sure you tune in next week for another full episode I will be coming again with some more wonderful goodness and if you are not already listening, there are mommy talk Thursdays that come out every Thursday and this month. I am doing a bonus episodes on Saturday too. So UBC in me in your podcast player three times in a week. So make sure you tune in for all of that I have some really great things coming up for you and I don’t want you to miss it. That’s all for today. Take care and with lots of love

 

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