Hello everyone and welcome to the Sex, Love and SuperPowers podcast show. I’m your host, Tatiana Berindei and today I have with me a lovely, lovely woman, Ryann Watkin, and we are going to be discussing successful mothering. Let me tell you a little bit about Ryann before we get started. Ryann Watkin is a success mentor, happiness expert, professional speaker and host of the Happy Moms Show, the number one podcast for moms on a mission to raise a conscious generation of heart centered, emotionally intelligent, innovative leaders. Ryann believes positive change comes from within and that family life is one of the biggest catalysts for growth. Her signature course, The Align Success Academy teaches a holistic approach to success and challenges her clients to recreate their lifestyles from the inside out while finding their happiness and abundance amidst the sometimes messy journey of life. Ryann’s mantra is let’s change the world by starting at home, and that’s exactly what she’s doing through embodying the lifestyle shifts she teaches. She’s a happy mama of two fierce girls and a loving wife to her best friend, Nate. Welcome to the show, Ryann.
Thank you, Tatiana. I’m so happy to be here.
Yeah, happy to have you. Before we dive in, will you tell our listeners what your superpowers are?
Yes. Curiosity, connection and choice.
Okay, a triple C. I like it.
Like iteration.
Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. I’m curious about the choice one. You don’t want to say a little more about that?
Yeah. There came a time when my older daughter was very young and I kind of came to this realization that everything in my life, up until that point I chose in some form or fashion, whether consciously or unconsciously. And so, from that place, I decided, well, I’m going to be as conscious as I can in my power of choice and owning radically that which I choose every day.
Yeah, and that’s a big one. And that is a tricky one for a lot of people because of many, many reasons. Oftentimes we talk about, or you hear people talk about victim blaming and that bad things happen to good people and how do you measure that against this understanding that we are making choices every single day. I think it’s a conversation we’ve had a lot on this show and it’s a powerful one and really in my world as well for me, empowerment really means understanding that we are making choices every single day, in every moment of every day.
Yeah. Completely. And I realized that bad things do happen in this world and that’s one of the things that I am always evolving into is that polarity between good and evil, just the good old fashioned good versus evil debate and bad things do happen but it’s up to us and how we choose to process those things and …
To respond.
… to respond, to grieve. The emotional capacity that we have as humans is just infinite and it makes us who we are.
Yeah, agreed.
Yeah.
So I chose this title today of successful mothering kind of on purpose because I feel like it’s a little bit of an edgy title and I chose it because I want to make this public service announcement right now to all of our listeners that nobody can tell you what success in your life and in your mothering should look like. And I really wanted to center that and put that upfront that there is so much pressure on moms these days to be perfect in every arena. To have the perfect Instagram feed, to have the perfectly clean house, to have children that are being fed all organic everything all day long, who never throw tantrums, who are going to Ivy league schools and to get your body back after your baby is born within three weeks, it’s endless.
And then on top of that you have to also be a successful business woman. So, I just want to lay the foundation and the ground for this conversation for moms who are tuning into this and listening that I believe that you determine what success looks like for you and no one else does. I’m curious to hear your take on that as someone who’s in this field of mompreneurs and success coaching and mentoring and public speaking and all of these things, I’m just curious to hear your take on that.
Yeah. I mean I love how eloquently you laid it out there that it’s up to no one except for us to decide what it looks like. And I was talking to someone earlier and we’re so in that era of vision boarding and visualization and looking on Instagram for inspiration and all of that kind of stuff that we have going on externally. And for me, the most successful thing you can do, the biggest thing you can do for yourself to be successful is to look within no matter what that means for your mothering decisions and it’s to take care of yourself first.
We can’t show up full for the ones we love unless we are full first and to do that it means a lot of different things in our life. It’s getting really, really clear on what’s important and what we need to work on and healing the trauma that we’ve gone through because everyone has trauma. In this day and age we know that everyone has trauma, whether it’s big T or little T and it’s just really tuning into our idea of how we can show up in the world that feels really aligned for us.
Yes. And I want to expand that a little bit because something that I have noticed in my own life and that I’ve seen just kind of perpetuating itself, they say that comparison is the thief of joy and I really truly believe that it is, right? And we’re constantly on these social media connections that are kind of designed to have us comparing ourselves to other people. And like I said, I have this PSA that no one should tell you what success is supposed to look like for you. I think what happens more often than not is that we tell ourselves stories of what success is supposed to look like. We set ourselves up for failure internally …
Mm-hmm.
… all the time by comparing ourselves to other people and thinking that we should be able to be doing what they’re doing and that until we are or unless we are, we are somehow failing at life, right?
Mm-hmm.
So, the other thing that I kind of wanted to just tack onto that is chasing after someone else’s dream I think is often what can happen in that dynamic when we’re in that comparison mode is we think that we’re supposed to be doing something that’s not actually our authentic desire. It’s a desire that’s been fed to us that we’ve absorbed through observing others, but it’s not actually what our hearts and our souls are asking for, right? How do you go about with your clients helping them to really determine what is true for them on the inside that’s not some storyline that they’ve been fed through social media or a collective culture, what have you?
Yeah, I love that because it all starts with curiosity. So asking yourself, hm, why am I feeling this way today? Why am I feeling pressured to start this business or stay in that career or go to that school to get a law degree, why? And when we turn the arrow back pointing at ourselves and we allow ourselves an opportunity to answer the question from within that we’ll uncover so much for us. And oftentimes it just takes us going, hey, that’s a belief I had from growing up in my house. The values growing up in my house where X, Y, and Z and I am a 30 something year old woman now and I’m choosing a different way or I’m choosing a different value. So really asking yourself, why did I get here? Why do I want this? I still ask myself all the time, why do I want this? Is this coming from a place of ego? Am I trying to be recognized? And my hustling for my worthiness or is this really coming from my heart? Is this really coming from a place where I know I can serve with my God given gifts?
Awesome. So, we are talking with Ryann Watkin about successful mothering more when we get back, stay tuned.
Additional Resource: https://lifengoal.com/discipline/
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Music Credit: All instruments played by Amanda Turk. Engineered and produced by Tatiana Berindei and Daniel Plane reelcello.com
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