I mean, there’s a lot of books and resources and videos that we can digest on the topic of parenting, but we’re gonna be coming at it from a complete mindset perspective. And I just find it fascinating, these resources and tools that we’re presenting have helped me so much as a parent. And we cannot wait to share it with all of you. So please come check it out, give it a shot. If you are already a master’s member, you know, the goodness that is coming your way, it’s gonna be awesome. Now this topic I’m gonna be presenting today from the perspective of, of our children, respecting us as parents. And I wanna share this to give you really a little bit of a glimpse, a little bit of a snapshot of how we approach a lot of these parenting topics, because respect comes up a lot.

And this is a really cool thing. This topic came up on a group coaching call and as we were really getting into it, a lot of our members were just sharing some really profound insights. And if you are a master’s member, you can go into the master’s log and you can watch that teaching respect. It’s so powerful. But what I’m gonna do on this podcast today is kind of do a synopsis of it because it just was so good. And I loved the insights that our masters members shared on this call. So amazing. So let’s do this. Let’s dive in. Now, one of the first things I asked our members is when they feel disrespected, kind of what are the thoughts that they’re having? And this is really important, cuz we’ll feel disrespected. And it always has to do, usually with what or one of our children says or their behavior, their actions, maybe they don’t listen to us.

They don’t follow our rules. They disregard us, roll their eyes. Talk back to us in a very demeaning tone. All of those things like we know what it feels like when our children disrespect us, whether they’re smaller, children, teenagers, maybe even adult children, right? So we all get that. We’ve all been disrespected. And in fact, even though I’m specifically talking about parenting in this podcast, everything I’m gonna teach you could be applied to any relationship in your life when it comes to respect. So that’s what’s really cool about all of this, but this is what I asked our members. I said, okay. So when we feel disrespected, it’s usually because our children do something or there’s some sort of scenario. And then we thought about it. And usually that thought is something around the lines of this child doesn’t respect me or this, these children, they don’t respect me.

And then it leads to the emotion of feeling disrespected. And when we play this out in a model, what we start to see is like, then we like to look at what we do? How do we act when we feel disrespected? And this is what’s so fascinating about this work that we do. And this work that we’re teaching to our members is that we really break it down piece by piece. And it’s fascinating. It’s absolutely fascinating to see what we do. So our child will act disrespectful towards us. We have a thought that they don’t like us. We feel disrespected. We feel it in our body. You know, maybe we feel tightness in our chest. Maybe we get warm, we tense up. And then we act in a certain way. And when I asked our members, like, how do we act when we feel disrespect?

This, these are the things that came up. We shared with each other that sometimes we shut down, we question our own worth, like our own self worth. Sometimes we storm off. Sometimes we just have thoughts like, oh my gosh, I just can’t parent. I’m not a good parent. Sometimes we lash out. Sometimes we yell, we scream. Sometimes we cry. Like we get frustrated, we even manipulate. And I even shared this example because this is something that I’ve done at times when I’ve felt disrespected. Like I will literally get kind of weepy or teary. And I’ll kind of say to my kids, you guys, you just don’t respect me. You, you know, like maybe cry or kind of get dramatic. Like why don’t my children respect me. They never respect me. And it comes across as very manipulative, even though in the moment, I might not be thinking to myself like, oh, I just wanna manipulate them.

But it kind of comes across as like, you know, just giving them a guilt trip or even just going into victim mode. A lot of times when we feel disrespected, we feel, and we act like we’re the victim. And so, or, you know, or we feel like we’re the martyr, no one respects us. No one cares. We do so much for them. We give them everything we give ’em the home. We give them the food, the school, you all, all of it. And yet, and then they act like this. They act like kids. They act like teenagers, right? And then we get really emotional about it. And it’s just fascinating to see this play out in a model because when you actually look at it, then you look at the things that we do when we, when we have those thoughts that I’ve been disrespected.

And then the result ends up being something very fascinating. The result becomes that we’ve created more tension in our relationship with that child or the children there’s distance. There’s, you know, maybe disconnection, but there’s two other really powerful things that we see play out. One. We are not respecting them back. And two, ultimately, when you look at all those things that we do, whether we yell or storm off or give a guilt trip or, or, you know, act like a martyr, whatever, like we are acting in a way where we’re not respecting ourselves, we’re not acting from a place of self respect. We’re actually acting from a place of emotional childhood. We’re act in a lot of ways, our children might be at acting disrespectful, but then we kind of model it back. We mirror it back to them. And then instead of actually teaching them how to be respectful, we’re actually modeling what it looks like to not be respectful and to not have self respect.

It’s absolutely fascinating. The stuff just, it kind of blows me away and I, I can see this play out in my own life. So then I asked our members, I said, okay. So I want you to think about someone that you really respect, like somebody, you know, and somebody that you respect, what are some of their qualities? And I want you, as you’re listening to this, like, I want you to picture someone in your life that you really respect, maybe as a parent, a grandparent, a really good family friend or a teacher or somebody that has had a big impact on your, in your life. How did they, or how do they treat you? And this is what we came up with. These were some of the key points of people that we respect. How do they treat us? And it’s a lot of things, but one they listen, they listen to us.

They show kindness. They treat other people with respect. They value other people’s opinions. They don’t overreact. They don’t act from a, you know, emotional childhood place. They don’t interrupt. They’re peaceful. They’re people, their word, their people of integrity. That’s why we respect them. So those are things that they do. Those are their actions. They listen, they’re kind, all of those things. Those are the qualities that we respect in others that we find respectful. So this is kind of key. We wanna be thinking about this, because then when we, when we start to think about being women who are respected, these qualities, give us a guidepost on how we want to act in a very intentional way. Now, this is the really powerful thing about respect. Respect is one of those qualities. Some might say it’s like a virtue or a quality or characteristic that cannot be forced.

Like you cannot force someone to respect you. You can’t yell at someone and scream at them and, and demand that they respect you. But how often do we do that? As parents? I am so guilty of yelling at my kids and saying, you need to respect me. As I’m screaming at the top of my lungs, you can’t force someone to respect you. You can’t scream at someone and have them do something to respect you. We can yell at our kids or demand that they do things and they might do it because they’re afraid of a consequence. Or maybe they’re just afraid of you yelling at them, but that’s just coming from a place of fear or fear of being punished. But that’s not respect. We also know that we can’t buy respect. We can’t, you know, you can’t force respect. You can’t buy respect.

The only way you can get respect is if you earn it, respect can only be earned. And this is a powerful thing. So the people in our lives that have earned our respect, they earned it by acting a certain way and treating us a certain way. So this, again, this is the guidepost for how we want to act in order to earn our children’s respect, our spouses, respect our friends, respect all of it. And so this is where we move into an intentional model of like, how do I wanna show up as a mother who earns her children’s respect because it’s not just gonna, we don’t just respect people just because they’re an authority. I mean, sometimes we do. We wanna try to teach our children those types of things, but especially in today’s age, we really have to work hard to earn people’s respect.

And so when we have this thought, I am a woman that is her children’s respect. How does that make us feel? And what we came up with on this group coaching call was it makes us feel hopeful and makes us feel empowered, which again is fascinating because when we have the thought that we’re being disrespected or that our children don’t respect us, it usually feels very hopeless. And it also feels very much like we’re getting over our power to them. Like we feel powerless when we feel disrespected. And so when we shift our thoughts and we shift to a place of being very intentional about earning people’s respect, then we decide how we wanna show up. And it is very empowering. And then we get to decide, okay, like when I feel empowered, when I feel like I’m gonna show up as a woman who is respectable and is earning people’s respect, then these are the things I do.

And so that’s what we talked about. That’s where we treat our children with kindness. We talk to them, we listen to them, we show respect towards them. We can even discipline from a place of calm and peacefulness. We can set expectations, we can set consequences and we can follow through with those expectations and consequences from a place of emotional adulthood where we’re not screaming, we’re not crying. We’re not manipulating, we’re calm, peaceful, loving, but we’re also firm. We can set boundaries and we can follow through with discipline, from a place that’s very respectable where we respect ourselves and we respect them, but also hold them accountable. And when we do this, when we show up in this way, whether we’re just spending time with them, we’re being present with them, or even disciplining them, we will be gaining their respect because they will see us acting in a way that is gonna naturally make them respect us, just like the people in our lives, whom we respect and admire because of how they act.

This is what’s so extraordinary and fascinating. And even in my own life, this is what I’ve been practicing with my own children. I’ve been trying to do this and it’s not always perfect. And sometimes I don’t do this perfectly. I mean, for sure I don’t, but when I am more aware of it, when I’m more aware of this mindset and thinking and acting from a place of intentionality and in a where I really do want my children, whether they’re my 17 year old boys or my four year old daughter, like I want them to respect me. I want them to know that I love them and that I, that I’m coming from a place of wanting to respect them back, that we have a very respectful relationship. And when we do this, the ultimate result when we act this way is a couple things.

One, the result is that we do in fact earn their respect. And two, we respect ourselves in a powerful way. Like we earn our own self respect and that’s ultimately like what I wanna get to in this podcast. Cause I kind of have some secrets about all of this respect thing. Like we all so badly, like we want to be respected by others, but this is the secret. This is like the big deal here. We will only be respected by others to the degree within which we respect ourselves in a lot of ways. This is very similar to that phrase, that, that we hear a lot where we, where we hear that we teach other people how to treat us. It’s the exact same concept that we teach other people how to respect us by the way, in which we respect ourselves. So that’s the really key thing here.

And you know that if you think about the person that you really have a lot of respect for chances are, you would say that person has a lot of respect for themselves, that they live from a place of integrity, that they show up with a lot of self respect. And that’s powerful when we meet someone like that, when we are around people like that, you feel it, you sense it, you sense a confidence in them. You sense that they show up in a way where they’re gonna really respect themselves. And it just automatically causes other people to respect them as well. So I’m gonna share five or six insights of, of what I think a woman who has high self respect, like what does that look like? And of course this is not an exhaustive list. We could probably spend an entire hour talking about this, but these were some things that I’ve been thinking about.

When I think about myself and wanting to grow my own self respect, these are some of those areas. So number one, let’s do this. I think that a woman who respects herself first and foremost, talks to herself in a respectful way. She is kind to herself. She doesn’t speak negatively about herself. She doesn’t shame herself. She doesn’t constantly tear herself down. Now, ladies, if you’ve heard some of my podcasts, you know that for me, this has been a really major thing in my life because I have spent so many years talking badly to myself, tearing down, shaming myself on and on and on. And this is probably one of the things that we coach on most in masters. Like this is a really big deal that we as women do. And for me, thankfully, because of this were because of these tools and the effects that I’ve seen on myself, like I’ve been able to change this.

I have been able to grow a lot in my own self respect that I don’t nearly tear myself down. Like I used to now, am I always perfect in this area? No, I’m not. But I think this is probably why I put this as one of the top ones because when, like when we respect other people, we would never tear them down. So if we wanna, if we wanna cultivate self respect, we have to practice that very intentionally with ourselves. So that leads me to the next thing. So I believe that a woman that has a lot of self respect is a person who honors herself. She sees herself as a precious gift from God. And because of this, she knows her value and worth. She knows that she is a priceless gift. And so again, for a lot of us, this concept might be really hard, but this is one that we need to work on because as we build our own self respect, our children are gonna be watching this, particularly our daughters, like, but both our daughters and our sons, like, and if we wanna model what it looks like to have to have and to cultivate and to build self respect, we like we have to model it for our children so that they will do the same for themselves.

This is such powerful and important work that we’re doing it ourselves. But that honor piece like recognizing who we are and who we are, that we are the daughter of a king and that we are his priceless and precious gift. Now, number three, I think a woman who has a lot of self respect is a woman who learns and who practices managing her thoughts and emotions. We talk about this a lot and masters, this is primarily what we are teaching and masters is how to manage our thoughts so that we can show up in a very intentional way that we wanna show up by managing our minds. Meaning that no matter what the circum, or no matter how our children or our husband or anyone else is reacting or responding, that we choose what we’re thinking and how we’re feeling.

And we are in a place of self control. It’s so incredibly powerful, but a woman that has a lot of self respect for herself is able to work on this by striving to learn how to manage her thoughts and her emotions, how to manage her mind so that she can show up how she wants to. She’s not out of control, but in control. And she lives with a sense of security control for herself. Now, number four, I believe that a woman who has self respect is a woman who has her own back. What do we mean by this? Cuz we talk about this a lot in our podcast, we talk about it in masters. What does it mean to have your back? This means that you are a person that like, if you make a decision and you move forward, that you have your back, like you’re not gonna second.

Guess yourself, you’re not gonna tear yourself down. You’re gonna, you’re gonna be someone that has your back. You’re gonna follow through with things. You’re gonna be a person of your word. You’re gonna say something that you’re gonna do something. Even if it’s for yourself and you’re gonna follow through with it, you’re gonna have your own back. Even if you make a mistake or you fall down or you do something that you’re not, you know, exceptionally proud of a woman who has her back is gonna be someone like that’s not gonna beat herself up, but instead pick yourself up kind of dust yourself off and just be your greatest cheerleader. Your biggest fan, your best friend, a woman that has her back is truly like her best friend. And I want you to think about this. When we think about our friendships. If we have a friend that’s struggling or going through a hard time or has even made a mistake, we don’t just tear her down.

We don’t kick her when she’s down, we don’t shame her. What do we do? We love her. We hug her. We, you know, like to build her back up. We pick her up, we support her. We tell her, what do you need? What can I help you with? How can I love you at this moment? And a woman that has her own back does that every single time when I have my own back and I have a tough day or I make a mistake, cuz we all do right. Every single day we’re making mistakes. But when we have our backs, we’re like, okay, okay Lorissa. Yeah. Maybe, maybe you didn’t handle that so well, but what can we learn from this? How can we move forward? You’re doing a good job. You’re doing the best you can keep going. Like how are we talking to ourselves?

How are we cheering ourselves on? How are we supporting ourselves throughout the day, throughout the week? How are we building ourselves up? Now? This is so important because so few women are doing this for themselves. We don’t have a lot of models of women that have their own backs. But when we do, when we meet someone who really has her back, it’s so inspiring. It’s like, oh my gosh, that woman, like she loves herself. She cares about herself. She values herself. She has her back. And so to me like that is like a woman’s self respect. That’s how I want to strive to be. And that’s how I wanna strive to treat myself. That’s how I hope my daughters will grow up. And my sons, as human beings that have their backs that believe in themselves, that are doing the best they can and that they are supporting themselves along the way.

How powerful is that? Okay. Number five, a woman that has self respect is a woman that really takes care of herself. A woman who is taking care of her body, her heart, her soul, her mind, who’s getting enough sleep, who takes time to, to take care of her needs and is looking out for herself. Again, that kind of goes back to having her own back. But so often how many times do we put ourselves on the back burner, right? Where we just burn out on both ends and we have hardly anything else to give, but a person really respects themselves, sets boundaries and takes care of themselves and asks for help and is willing to advocate for themselves. This is so incredibly powerful. And finally, the last thing I wanna wanna say is that I believe that a woman who really respects herself is a woman.

That’s proud of herself, a woman that can actually proudly say like good job. Look at the things you’re doing. Look at your accomplishments. Like I’m proud of you. Like for me to like to say to myself at times is to take a moment to pause and say, wow, Lorissa. Yeah, you’re doing a good job. You’re a good mom. You’re working really hard. You’re making an impact in people’s lives. Like it’s like that. I kinda like patting yourself on the back and, and taking a moment to be proud of yourself. Now for me, this is a new concept because I’ve never really done this in my life. For some of you that are listening to this, you’re gonna, you might like to have this negative emotion to what I’m saying, cuz you might feel like, oh, well I don’t wanna be prideful or boast or you know, I don’t wanna think too highly of myself.

And that’s true. Like, you know, I’m not saying we need to walk around like we’re Beyonce, like you know the queen of the world, but we need to stop at times and tell ourselves I’m proud of you. You’re doing a good job too. And that’s okay. It’s not boastful. It’s honest. And we need to do it. We need to practice doing that with ourselves, for ourselves because it counteracts all the ways that so often we are. So self-critical of everyone, when we pause and we tell our brains, like when we look and say, okay, well what am I proud about myself? It’s amazing what our brain will start looking for. And the more we do this, the more we practice it. And the more our brain starts paying attention to the things that we do, right? This is how we earn our own self respect.

Cause we start paying attention. And then this is the really powerful thing with all of it. The more we strive to build up and cultivate our own self respect. Then we are able to give respect to others in an even more powerful way. All of these things I just mentioned about building up our own self respect. When we start doing that on a consistent basis with ourselves, we will naturally start giving it to others. We will start to naturally pay more attention in building up our children and building up our spouse and recognizing the good in them. Because the more we recognize the good in ourselves, the better we feel, it makes us feel better about ourselves. And the more we feel better about ourselves, the more we start to see the good in others, we start building other people up. It’s just like this perpetual effect of goodness and respect.

We start to have other people’s backs in a more powerful way. We start to speak kinder to other people. We start to feel more proud of our children and their accomplishments. The more we feel proud about our own and it’s absolutely amazing. And the more we are able to manage our own thoughts and manage our own emotions, the more we model that for our children and they will naturally learn these skills from us by us modeling it. Just think about it just for a moment. Let’s play out this scenario. Let’s say your toddler or not even your toddler, let’s say like a five or six year old kind of is tired and they have a meltdown. They start screaming and then you start screaming. Like you lose your mind and you start screaming and yelling back. What does that do? That just escalates.

And then they’re screaming louder. And then your husband walks in and he starts screaming. And it just leads to everyone in a state of emotional childhood and everyone feeling like no one respects each other, but let’s play out that same scenario. Let’s say your child melts down and starts screaming and whatever. And then, but you decide like I’m gonna stay calm. I’m not gonna allow them to control my emotions. I’m completely in control of my emotions. You stay calm, you respond from a place of peacefulness and calm even in the moment. It might not exactly, you know, just make this situation go perfect. But you know, that child will calm down. Then you can address, okay, why are you acting like this? What do you need? Are you tired? Are you hungry? Are you hurt? Are you sad? How can I respond as a parent from a place of respect and, and show up as a, as a respectable parent in this situation and really help my child from a place of emotional adulthood is just so powerful.

And finally, I wanna conclude with kind of like this last concept when it comes to respect and, and this is it being respected or earning someone’s respect does not mean that we have to be perfect. And this is probably one of the biggest deals for me because I like probably many of you that are listening to this. Like we, we struggle with perfectionism or, you know, trying to be perfect. And we obviously fall short because that’s not attainable, but this, like, this is what I love about respect is that to earn someone’s respect doesn’t mean that you have to be perfect. In fact, a lot of times the people in our own lives that we have a lot of respect for. We know they’re not perfect. Sometimes they’ve made really big mistakes, but what we respect about them is the way they’ve owned those mistakes or the ways that they’ve maybe asked for forgiveness, or they had their back, even in the midst of making the mistake and they got back up and they continued to work hard and to do better.

That’s why we respect them. We don’t respect them because they’re perfect, but we respect them because they keep going. They get back up, they own their mistakes and they keep striving to move forward and to do better. And this is what gives me so much hope. What this means for me is that I can earn my children’s respect and I don’t have to be perfect. I can make mistakes and I am imperfect and I can have bad days and I can, you know, mess up, but I can get back up and I can ask for their forgiveness and I can own what I did wrong. And I can say, yeah, mommy made a big mistake here. I’m sorry. I acted this way, but I love you. And then, you know, we can ask for their forgiveness or we can seek out reconciliation. And in doing that, we actually end up earning respect more.

Our children can say, Hey, yeah, mom’s not perfect, but she loves us. She’s doing as she can. And I admire her. I respect her for that. That’s what gives me so much hope. And that’s what helps me to realize that we’re all in this journey, in this path of, of being imperfect and yet striving to be the kind of mothers that we want to be. And so my sister’s in Christ. I’m gonna leave you with this. And if this has been at all helpful for you or has given you maybe some, some thoughts to think about around the topic of respect, I wanna just invite you to share this podcast episode or are made for greatness with others who, who may also benefit. And again, I wanna invite you to come check out masters. The month of April is gonna be fire. It’s gonna be amazing and you’re not gonna wanna miss it. And of course, as always remember mama, you are made for greatness.

Thank you for listening to the Made for Greatness podcast. Come join our Catholic life coaching [email protected] that’s made for greatness.co have a less day.