Navy Seal of Motherhood

You have to want it. You have to look over there and go, wow. That is a different group of people. They’re doing something that seems very important to me. I want to be one of those So I think we can do the same thing in motherhood. We can say, hey, there’s this elite group of moms. Who practices emotional regulation. Right? That’s what today’s episode’s gonna be about, who knows how to stay calm and connect with their kids, right, calm and connection. And since most of us don’t learn that, at all. We don’t learn it in school. Our parents probably didn’t teach us. We have to first discover that it’s a thing. And then we have to want it. We have to want to be part of the group of moms who practice emotional regulation. Okay? And so just like navy seals, we have to decide that we want it then we have to go to school. Okay. You’re gonna have to go to Navy school, motherhood school. Navy navy seal motherhood school. And what’s harder for us than for Navy seals is that no one will be yelling at us.

There will be no timelines. There will be no boot camp week. Right? If we want to do this, if we want to be part of this group of moms, who we admire, and we think the work that they are doing is very important, we are going to have to put ourselves through school. Okay? So One of the ways that they train navy seals to be so amazing at what they do is they put them in more and more intense situations. Okay. And there are 2 kinds of intense situations. There’s psychologically intense situations, which are things that feel very scary to your brain. And then there are physically intense situations, things that create pain and discomfort in your body. Okay.

And so we know that it’s a very physically rigorous program. They make them run a ton. They make them do a lot of things. And they push the boundaries of what their bodies can do. And the job of the Navy Seal in training is to manage their mind, to pay attention to their thinking, to get themselves to exist in a high level of physical discomfort. Now, listen, you’ve already done this, my friend, okay, because there is a day. When you had a really bad headache and your kid still needed something. Okay. You had a really bad headache, and it was like a recital day, or you had to go to their school, or you were on a road trip visiting your mom. Okay, where your body felt pain, but you used your mind to coach yourself into getting stuff done.

Okay. And so We do this in motherhood all the time, but I want us to formalize this a little bit so that we can enjoy our lives better. And then, psychologically, there is perceiving danger. Your brain is just a giant scanner of the environment for danger. Its primary job is to scan the environment and go, Hey, is there anything dangerous here? And if there is, I’m gonna sound some alarms. I have a very sophisticated, although it misfires a lot, a very sophisticated alarm system, for when we perceive danger, Don’t worry. I’ve got you. I’m gonna look out for danger also on the alarm system. K? And so your brain can adapt. It can change. You can train your brain to see things that are threatening and delay or minimize how it reacts. Okay, I do this with my kids skiing. Okay? It totally totally freaks me out that my kids ski. I hate it. I don’t like it at all. I don’t like how it feels in my body. I’m like, for sure they’re all gonna die. Like, that’s just my brain thinks skiing is a very dangerous activity.

And it’s funny because my kids, you know, they camp and they hike and they do all these things, but for some reason, my brain thinks skiing is really dangerous. And so that comes up for my brain. I feel stress in my body. And like a navy seal, I begin talking to myself in my mind to calm myself down, saying this is not as unsafe as you are thinking it is right now. I don’t tell myself it’s fine. Navy seals don’t go on missions and go, this is totally fine. Everything’s fine. They don’t do that. Okay. They tell themselves, calm down. We can handle this. What’s next? Alright. Calm down. They know that they need to calm their body down. To think clearly. And then they tell themselves, I am safe right now. And then they make a plan. K? And so you can do this with a lot of things that you’re bringing right now in your life that are really dangerous. I think skiing is such a great example because some of you probably just don’t think that that’s dangerous. And so I want you to think about your life right now and the things that kind of make you catch your breath and the things that kind of make your heart rate increase.

What are those things? That you perceive are dangerous. And your brain is like, oh, this is serious. And it might be something broad like uncertainty. Or financial stress. Let’s think about financial stress for a moment. Usually, we’ll look at our bank account. We’ll see a bill come in, or we’ll just wake up and start thinking about money or a lack of money. And our brain goes, oh, no. This is really dangerous. Something bad is coming. Let me sound the alarms. And then it triggers your stress system, your fight or flight system, but the truth is, in that moment, You are safe. If you can begin to notice These thoughts, notice the stress in your body and just go, hey. Hey, Sterling. Let’s calm down. I notice you’re really stressed. Remember, we don’t speak clearly when we’re stressed. Let’s calm down. I love you, and you are safe right now.

You’re safe right now. It is almost always true. If it is not true, we actually do want those overriding brain systems to be working to get us out of there. For example, if you’re in a car accident, right, or if there’s like a predator around, or weather is really bad and scary, and you need to be really alert to get things done. There are moments when that stress system is really useful, just not most of the time that we use it, right, most of the time. You’re just totally safe. I think money is a really good example. It literally is not hurting you right now. It’s just your projection of the future that your brain thinks will be very, very unsafe. And so like a navy seal, you can increase the amount of threat that your dang that your brain perceives and still stays calm. Okay. And one of my favorite things about navy seals, they have this thing called sugar cookies, And basically, what it is, is just at a random time, the person in charge I apologize. I do not know their names, like their ranks. And who’s in charge of the Navy Seal Program, but someone in charge will just say Sugar cookie, and the guy he says it to, the Navy Seal and Training, in his full gear has to, I think, go in the ocean, get wet, and then roll around in the sand, adding a ton of weight and discomfort to what he’s wearing and then continue to do whatever the exercise was for no reason. Okay. So Navy SEALs if they don’t complete things and they get in trouble, then there are consequences. So sometimes it’s like, hey. You didn’t do that. Give me 100 push ups. Right? But the sugar cookie is for no reason, and it trains them that sometimes you can do all the right things.

And then pain will show up. Discomfort will show up. There will be a setback. And how many of us feel that way? How many of us feel like this? I did all the right things. This shouldn’t have happened. We might feel it in our marriages. We might feel it with the behavior of our children. We might feel it with our finances or our home. I did all the right things, and then this bad thing happened. We can train ourselves to handle that. We can train ourselves to be navy seals of motherhood, and I think we should. And I think this is what God wants for us is to have peace in more situations. Where he’s like, yep. Sugar cookies happened. Can you trust me? Can you show up calm to this moment? And so I want you to know that you can in your brain by talking to yourself, calm yourself down, and convince your brain that you are safe in both physically uncomfortable situations and psychologically uncomfortable situations. Where your brain starts sounding the alarm, and it says, woah, woah, woah, we’re not safe. Something’s wrong. K? But you say, you know what? This is happening right now, but I’m safe, and I’m okay. And once you think about it like a fire alarm, okay? Fire alarms are supposed to go off when a fire happens to tell you to leave the house Right? That’s what the system is for. But fire alarms also go off when you burn your food. And in your brain, that’s what’s happening. And you can say brain. It was just toast. I love you.

There is a little bit of smoke here, but it’s just toast. It’s not a fire. We don’t need to leave the house. That’s what we want to do in motherhood. And this is how you enjoy it more. You want to enjoy those kids more. You want to enjoy the journey more. You don’t want to get to the end of the day and be like, wow, I didn’t connect with anyone, and I was grumpy, and I felt frazzled. But Navy SEALs go to school. You need to go to school, to learn how to calm your brain down. Okay. Listening to this podcast is a form of school for you. I’m so glad you’re here. Reading my new book, Catholic mom calm, that is a version of school. Okay. This is exactly what I teach, how to calm yourself down, how to analyze the situation, how to connect with the lord, and make a plan. And if you wanna do it live with me and lots of other Catholic moms, I am hosting a free book study, because I designed this book to be a 6 week study that you could do with your friends, I’m gonna be hosting that live. Every Monday starting September 18th. So on September 18th, at 10 AM Pacific time, 1 PM, eastern time. For 6 weeks, we will go through the 6 chapters in my book. And, listen, you guys, the book is 99¢ on Kindle.

Everyone, everyone, and their mother and their sisters should be buying that. And don’t need a Kindle to read a Kindle book. Okay. Kindle has a free app that you can put on your phone or your iPad or your computer. Get this book. Go to navy seal motherhood school. Decide that you want to be one of the moms who stays calm. I think that is the best thing besides having faith that we can do for our kids. And I think it is because of our faith that we should do this because God asked us to. So I want you to go to catholicmomcom.com, click on book study, scroll down, sign up. It’s gonna be a Zoom meeting. We’re gonna do a meeting style, which is fine. I haven’t done a public event meeting style before, where we can see each other. We’ll have breakout rooms, and you don’t even I’ll be honest. You don’t even need to read the book to come to the book study because I will recap it, but It’s so easy to get. I think everyone should have it. It’s like a school manual, and I really just am on a mission to help moms enjoy motherhood more and have more peace. I think it’s absolutely what we have to do. Alright, ladies. I love you and am praying for you. Have a blessed day.