Stop Holding Yourself Back

As we get close to the end of 2024, it's time to think about our lives and ask ourselves: are we stopping ourselves from being the best we can be? In this episode, we talk about how our goals and dreams are all connected, and how the choices we make in one part of life can change other parts too.

We'll talk about:
 • Seeing the places in your life where you might be holding yourself back
 • How goals and dreams that seem different are actually connected
 • The power of being the person you want to be
 • Why blaming others, making excuses, and acting like a victim is bad
 • Easy ways to take responsibility and control your life
 • How being the change you want to see can make your relationships and life better

Whether you want to be healthier, make your business better, or have a better relationship with your teen, this episode will help you break free from the things that are holding you back and start living as the best version of yourself.

As we go into the New Year, let this be your chance to stop holding yourself back and start being the change you wish to see in your world. Listen now and find out how powerful it is to be your best self!

Want a Simple Step by Step Parenting Debrief Guide?

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It’s simple and quick. It will help you uplevel your parenting. And, it’s completely FREE!

1. Go to benpughcoaching.com/debrief
2. Download the debrief
3. Start with your own internal debrief.

Transcript

0:00

I'm Ben Pugh, and you're listening to Impact Parenting with Perspective, episode 238. This podcast is all about helping parents manage the mental and emotional drama that comes with parenting teens. So they can focus on what's most important building rock solid relationships and having a powerful impact on their teen's life Join me each week as I dive into real tools to help you and your teen Turn struggles into strengths

ben_2_12-26-2024_103026: 0:35

Hello. Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for joining me. This is going to be the last episode of 2024, and I'm actually a little bit excited about this. We just had Christmas yesterday and I'm a little bit late getting this podcast to you because I was having so much fun with my family. Anyways, as I thought about. The new year and this past year, I've been exploring my life and I've been kind of thinking about where am I going? Where am I currently? What values are driving me? What values have gotten me here? And I've also explored. What changes would I like to make in my life? And as I was doing a lot of this contemplation, and as I thought about the podcast that I wanted to record for you today, I came to the realization that I am holding myself back in my life. And one of the things that I would like to invite you to do is to explore, are you holding yourself back? Now, the truth is, if you're anything like me and the other parents that I work with and the tons of parents who listen to this podcast, you're probably holding yourself back and more than being a question of, am I holding myself back? The question might more appropriately be, How am I holding myself back now? Let me just give you an example. I have goals and I have dreams when it comes to my physical health, when it comes to my business or my family. And this morning as I woke up, I was kind of laying in bed half awake, half asleep. I'd had this dream that we'll talk about later, but I was exploring as I was in this waking state, my life and where I was and where I wanted to be. And I was able to see specific areas in my life where I am holding myself back. And if you're like me. You're probably holding yourself back in areas in your life. Now, here's the crazy thing about your life, your dreams, and the goals that you have, they're all connected. For example, I have goals of being physically fit and returning to the athleticism that I enjoyed. In my twenties, even into my thirties, I also have dreams of being extremely successful in my coaching practice. I have dreams of having other coaches who work with me and where I help hundreds of thousands of parents and teens. Now. So those two things, my physical health and my life coaching business, they may seem unconnected, but the truth is that they're extremely connected. They're connected by me and by me being the me of my dreams. Lately, I have been feeling this pull to start being the man that I want to be when it comes to my physical health. Now, I'm not exactly sure. How this is going to impact my dreams that I have for my business, but I know that I'm holding myself back in the realm of my health and this is holding me back in my business, which is holding me back financially. So this. I want to have my focus be on setting myself free and being the me of my dreams. Now, here's the thing, I don't want you to like, wait until Monday or December. January 1st, 2025. Start small and start today. Start being the you of your dreams. Start being the mom of your dreams and what this will do. This will help you stop holding yourself back. So let's talk a little bit. I told you I had this weird dream this morning as I was waking up and it's kind of one of those. Weird dreams where you start waking up, but you're like, wait a second. Let me just stay in the dream because I want to see how this plays out. But as you stay in the dream, you realize I'm more aware than I was before. I know this isn't real and you like have the power to observe more and to even change the dream anyways. So this morning. As I'm waking up, I'm in this dream where I was reffing a little league football game. Now, this is super similar to a real life experience that I had this summer where I was reffing. I reffed, I think one day I reffed three games and I feel that part of the reason. I was shown this dream was number one for my own life so that I would take the teachings that I learned from that experience over the summer and better apply them to my life, but also so that I would share it with you. So this summer while I was reffing one game in particular, uh, this was one of the days where I had reffed three games straight, but anyways, in this one particular game, this coach kept blaming the reffs. Meaning me and the other ref for bad calls or no calls. And I tried to explain to the coach exactly what I was looking for as a ref, which was why I wasn't making the call that he wanted me to make. Now, and to give you some backstory, the reason I do this, there is. One ref in particular who I really, really like. I've been a head football coach at the little league level. I've been an assistant football coach at the high school level for years. And sometimes as a coach, you try and get calls out of a ref. You're like, Hey, look. That's holding right there. That's this penalty or whatever. And my favorite ref at one point, he came over to me and he's like, look, dude, I'm not going to call that. And here's why, here's exactly what I'm looking for. And as I, Oh, well, now that I understand that, let me coach up my players. So anyways, back to the game that I was reffing over the summer. Um, This coach wanted me to call holding on the other teen. The problem was the other teen. Wasn't really holding. And if they were, or if they weren't like, it would have made any difference because the player that was supposedly getting held did absolutely nothing. Like he just stood up and didn't like fight the whole, didn't try and get the kid's hands off of him, any of that. And so when this coach is like, Hey, that's holding, you're not calling the holding. I was like, look, dude, it's not holding because. He's not trying to get away. The player isn't keeping him from making a move from doing something. And I tried to explain to this coach, here's what I'm looking for. I want him to work his hands. And if he like clubs, the other guy's hands, and I see a tug on the jersey. I know that's holding well, rather than coach up his player and. Actually, this was several players that he could have coached up. He just wanted to continue blaming the refs. Now, as he kept blaming the bad refs. And the more he just kept blaming the refs, the more his players started blaming the refs. And then the parents started blaming the refs. They eventually lost this game. And they did not play a very good football game at all. I wasn't there to like judge how well he coached or how well they played. Um, there was no way that they're going to win that game. They just weren't as well coached. They didn't play very well. And after the game, I overheard part of his post game speech where he told his players, Hey guys, this loss. It's not on you. It's on the poor officiating, on the poor officiating. Those guys sucked. Those guys are terrible. And the parents are like, yeah, these are the worst refs ever. We'll go complain. The problem is when you blame the refs or when you make excuses, it takes all responsibility away from the person doing the blaming. Or making the excuses. And in the case of this football teen and this football coach, rather than embracing the opportunity to coach up his players and help them get better. He told us players, no, no, you have no responsibility here in this loss. You're just a victim and you're at the mercy of these terrible refs. If you want to reach your goals and your dreams in 2025, and guess what? If you're listening to this today, Thursday. The day after Christmas, there's still time we're still in 2024, but if you want to catch or if you want to reach your goals, catch yourself blaming, making excuses, complaining, or criticizing when you do this, see it for what it is. It's disempowering, and it's you focusing on someone or something outside of your control, and it's holding you back. One of the things when I coach football, I tell my kids, I don't want to hear you complaining about the refs. You can talk to the ref if you can be mature and responsible, and you can say, Hey, this guy's holding me. And if the ref is like, man, I didn't see it, ask, like, what are you looking for when it comes to holding? What are you looking for? Like, what do I need to do so that you will notice it? When you can take responsibility, you will be able to start being the change that you want to see and you will stop holding yourself back. But if you continue to blame. Or make excuses or criticize or complain or any of these things that indicate that your focus is on something outside of your control. You will continue to hold yourself back and you will never be the parent of your dreams. So I want to invite you be the change that you want to see. If you're anything like me and the tons of parents that I work with and that listen to this podcast with you, there are things in your life. That you would like to change. Also, if you're like me and the other parents here, you're probably guilty of seeing the changes that you'd like to make in your teen and focusing more on that than on being the change that you want to see, I want to invite you to be the change That you want to see. I know it sounds simple and I know it sounds like it won't actually change anything, but I promise if you start being the change that you want to see, it will change everything. If you feel. Pulled to improve your health. Like this is a big one for me. I ignored it way too much all throughout 2024 and this year, especially with Christmas and like eating junk food, I've been waking up just not even feeling good in the morning and I know it's my blood sugar that's out of whack and I know it's from eating crap, not literally, but like eating like candy and sugar and all sorts of stuff that I don't need. So for me. The poll that I'm feeling is this poll to improve my health. Now you might think, well, improving my health, that's not going to change my relationship with my teen. Or maybe you think something like that's not going to change my financial situation. I invite you to trust that pull that you're feeling, trust your inner wisdom, take control of the little things that you can control, and then just wait and see how they impact these bigger things outside of your control. I've worked with countless parents who wanted me to somehow change their teens, but when they took it upon themselves to be the change, they were amazed at how much their teens then changed. Be the change. You've got this. It doesn't matter what the poll is right now for me. The poll is man I don't want to eat junk food anymore. I don't want to feel this icky yucky sick feeling that I keep on feeling because of all the junk that i'm Eating, by the way, that's part of the poll. When you have to experience the negative consequences of your choices and your actions, oftentimes you'll catch yourself being like, man, I wish I wouldn't have eaten all that junk food last night. Then I wouldn't have to feel sick. Guess what? That's a poll that's telling you, Hey, let's learn a lesson here. Let's be different. Let's create new results. So the invitation. It's still 2024. Like you can apply this and completely change this whole year. And then you can apply it going into 2025 and completely change that year. Start being the change that you want to see, and that will start you on this path to being the parent of your dreams. I'm going to change my health, and I promise you that's going to change my business. It's going to change my parenting. It's going to change everything. Stop holding yourself back. And be the change you want to see with that. Um, well, actually, before I let you go, let me just ask you if this podcast has helped you in any way, would you be willing to go leave me a five star review on iTunes or wherever you listen to this podcast? Especially if you'd be willing to leave me a written review, some of the most beneficial things like a lady who just started listening to my podcast, she's like, man, I started reading some of the reviews on your podcast and I was like, Oh my goodness, that's what I need in my life. If this podcast has helped you at all, and if you're the type of person who likes to help other people. Go leave me a positive review where you talk about how this podcast has helped you be the parent that you want to be. You can share how this podcast has helped you in your parenting and made parenting more simple, or it's helped you improve your relationship with your teen. If this podcast has helped you in any way, please help me help other parents just like you by leaving me a review. And while you're at it, go ahead and share this podcast with any friends that you know who might also be raising teens. With that, I'm going to let you go, but I'll be right here again in the beginning. Let's see, man, January 2nd, I'll be right here with a brand new episode for you. I'll see you then.