Forget Flowers—This Is the Gift Moms Really Need

This special Mother’s Day episode is all about giving yourself a gift that matters: self-love. Many moms feel guilty and think they’re not doing enough. But what if the best gift this year is kindness to yourself?

Ben talks about how to stop the negative self-talk, how to feel better about being a mom, and how to show yourself the unconditional love you deserve. You’ll also hear a fun, simple idea for a Mother’s Day gift that means more than flowers.

If you’re a mom who wants to feel more peace, love, and confidence, this episode is for you.

Click here for the full episode show notes: benpughcoaching.com/257

Want a Simple Step by Step Parenting Debrief Guide?

Go download the FREE Parenting Debrief Guide.

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

Ben: 0:00

I'm Ben Pugh and you're listening to IMPACT! Parenting with Perspective. 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_1_05-07-2025_090911: 0:32

Hello. Welcome back to the podcast. Today we are going to be talking about unconditional love and how that starts with you, and this is kind of a Mother's Day message since we have Mother's Day this upcoming week. So that's what we're going to be talking about. Real quick, before we dive all in on today's topic, I do want to mention. The next podcast, I believe, will be about the most recent fan mail that I've gotten. So, um, if you're listening and you recently sent me some fan mail, I got it. I'll respond to it. this is about Someone who's got a son that's 13 and he is struggling with A DHD and ODD and has recently been expelled from school, and we're going to talk about that next week. So don't feel like I've forgotten you. We'll get to that. I just really want to do this Mother's Day message leading up to Mother's Day, so. First, thank you all for being here. I know that it takes time to listen to a podcast, and those of you who tune in every single week, I want to thank you. I love having you here. I love seeing all the downloads. I love it when people use the fan mail feature and they reach out to me. Uh, one quick thing about the fan mail feature. It just gives me like the last four digits of your phone number and tells me. Where you live and it's not even that accurate. So if you like, I love the fan mail, keep sending me that. But if you want me to be able to personally reach out to you, please also email me. You can email me at ben@benpughcoaching.com and I will personally reply to your email. Okay, so let's. Dive into today's topic, which is unconditional love and how that really starts with you. Now, this is a special Mother's Day message. Um, mother's Day is here and. The things that I see on my Facebook feed are either like advertisements for what I should get my mom or my wife for Mother's Day, or a lot of people talking about mom guilt. And so we're actually going to talk about mom guilt and I'm actually gonna give you a secret heads up for something that you could do with your mom. That would be a super cool Mother's Day gift. Anyways, I do want to. Briefly talk about like, obviously I am not a mom, but I really do admire moms. I do this podcast in large part because I gave my mom a run for her money. She had no idea how to deal with me. I was the oldest. I guess technically I still am the oldest though. I feel like I do look younger than some of my siblings. Anyways. I tell my teen clients all the time, this little secret, I'm like, your parents have no idea what they're doing, especially if you're the oldest. They're just making it up as they go. They're doing their best. They have no idea, and I really greatly appreciate the fact that my mother had no idea what she was doing, and I really didn't make it easy on her. So I just, I want to let her know that I'm grateful for, I. The patience, the effort, everything that she did. And I know that she feels bad for things that she believes that she has done wrong. And I can tell you that is the exact childhood, that is the exact experience that I needed. So don't feel bad, like we've made it through. We've gotten to this point. This is exactly where we're supposed to be, and we couldn't have made it here without the past. That's gotten us here. So, mom, thank you all my second and third and fourth and fifth mothers out there that had to take care of me when I was just too crazy. Thank you. Uh, my grandma was one of those big. Influencers in my life. So thank you to all of my mothers out there. And today's message is all about unconditional love, but it's not the kind of unconditional love that you usually hear about when people are talking about parenting stuff. Like, oh yeah, we gotta unconditionally love our kids. Now we're gonna start at a point that is much more important. I want to talk about the kind of unconditional love that we must give our ourselves, especially as moms. So I told you we'd talk about mom guilt. Let's unpack mom guilt just a little bit. We'll just be quick with this one. I know that sometimes this is an unpopular opinion. I know I'm a dude, and some people are like, oh, you're a man. You don't even have a right to speak on this. Well, here I go, just doing things that I shouldn't do. Mom, guilt is something that you create for yourself. And that's not very popular. I get it. But mom, guilt is not something that society has put on you. It's not something that the patriarchy is putting on you, mom. Guilt is something that you put on yourself. Now, I've worked with tons of moms. I've worked with tons of dads who experience lots of guilt. It's part of the human condition. And when, like, I'll give you a specific example. I remember working with this mom, I won't tell you her name, just in case, this mom was talking about a lot of her mom guilt and I was like. You don't have to feel guilty like you feel a certain way based on how you think the stories that you're telling yourself. And it was really interesting to hear some of the stories that she was telling yourself. She was talking about how she's not good enough. How her children deserve better. And she was telling herself these crappy stories that made her feel guilty. And I was like, where are these stories coming from? And a lot of the stories were passed down from her mom. Some of'em she had picked up at like church or social media. But we still don't want to blame these external forces for how you're feeling. We want to take. Ownership and responsibility because when you can realize, oh wait, I create my own mom guilt, you now have the power to stop creating your own mom guilt. And I'll tell you, this is easier said than done. I am not dealing with mom guilt or dad shame or any of that, but I am dealing with this. Programming that I need to people please and I need to make people happy. It's super easy for me to be like, man, I can see myself really valuing how this other person feels. I can feel myself trying to people please. I'm so glad I know better than that so that I can intentionally not do that well. And then I didn't sleep well last night and I was having dreams about. This thing that I'm doing trying to make this other person happy. I know this is easier said than done, but I'm gonna give you some powerful tips to help you jumpstart your unconditional love for yourself and to start creating a real shift away from mom guilt and into unconditional love and something that is important to. And keep in mind, guilt is just a signal. It's just an emotion to, it's like a warning light that comes on in your car. It's just trying to convey information. It's not a death sentence that, oh man, you're a terrible mom. You should go to mom jail. No, it's just a signal when you feel mom, guilt. Explore it. Understand, Hey, I'm the creator of this feeling. What are the stories that I'm telling myself that is leading me to feel this way? Oftentimes, if and if you're like the moms that I work with, oftentimes these thoughts that are creating the mom guilt are going to be thoughts like, I'm not good enough. I'm, I ruin everything. I should have done this better. Here's the thing. You are not guilty for being imperfect. You are human, so give yourself permission to drop the guilt. It's okay to not be perfect. I'm not perfect. I did something just yesterday that I feel terrible about. It's okay. It's just part of being human. And when you can identify that, like the thing I did yesterday. I don't even wanna talk about it. It's embarrassing. At least I can look at that and be like, you know what? That is not who I want to be. Given that situation, again, I would totally handle it differently. I can chalk that up as a learning opportunity, not this death sentence or this. Badge of shame that I have to carry around with me the whole rest of my life. So let's talk about self-love, because this truly is the foundation. When I talk about unconditional love, we really struggle with that. Especially I'm noticing a lot of people in religion, they suffer with. This disconnect, like, I want to love you unconditionally, but if you live a certain way that I don't agree with, I don't know how I can love you anymore. The truth is, if you want to love your teen better, it starts with loving yourself better. A lot of people think that self-love is like a spa day or bubble baths, or you take a day off. It isn't necessarily these special things that you do to like treat yourself. It's more about how you treat yourself in your mind. And I. It's every day. People don't realize this. You have an ongoing dialogue with yourself day in and day out every single day. How you talk to yourself is going to greatly impact how you feel towards yourself. Those internal dialogues, those are just thoughts. Those are just stories. So if you want to develop better love. It starts with yourself. Connect to unconditional love by accepting yourself and changing the stories that you tell yourself. You can't give your kids unconditional love if you can't give yourself unconditional love. And typically when moms tell me, man, I wanna stop yelling at my kids. I wanna stop talking, so mean to them. The first thing I recommend is check your internal dialogue. Check how you talk to yourself. Start improving that, and it will improve how you speak to others. So just keep in mind, you can't give your kids unconditional love if you're constantly giving yourself conditional love. We gotta get into that unconditional space for ourselves. So here are a few practical ways to show self love. Go ahead, take a rest, take time out. A lot of moms are just go, go, go, go, go. And they're living according to this story, that, man, I gotta do more. I gotta be the perfect mom. I gotta take all the kids to like soccer and drama and all the things. Find ways to give yourself rest and do it without judgment and shame. Forgive your mistakes. There's something, it is not even that serious. If I told you, you would think it was trivial. Um, there's these dogs that when we walk past the house that they live, they just, we always walk on the other side of the street and these dogs just. Come outta their yard across the street, and they'll either attack me, my kids, or my dog. And I didn't handle it very well yesterday. I'm gonna forgive myself of that. It's okay. It was a learning lesson. I'm gonna handle it so much better the next time it happens. Also. Celebrate small wins. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to be doing amazing feats and triumphs constantly. No, you got outta bed, you fed the kids, you got'em to school almost on time. That's a small win. Let's celebrate it and remind yourself I'm doing my best and that's enough. So let's. Talk a little bit more about this inner dialogue. The most important conversation you have all day is the conversation that you have with yourself throughout the day. A lot of moms talk to themselves like they're the enemy, like they're the problem. Like there's something wrong with them, and I get it. A lot of moms learned how to talk to themselves that way because that's how. They've been talked to. One of the things that's super important to me as a football coach is how I talk to my students because, or my football players, when I sat down and listened to my inner critic, um, I remember like my parents would be critical. That's not an indictment on them. That's just parenting. I do the same thing to my kids because I was taught that habit. Our teenagers are watching more than they're listening, and when I was a teen and I was watching, that was one of the habits that I picked up. But the thing that I noticed even more, one of the inner voices that really drives me and kind of tells me I'm not good enough. It's a voice that I learned from my football coach, so as a football coach myself, I want to be very intentional about how I talk to my football players. I want to talk to them calmly with kindness. With respect and with honesty, because if I can do that, there's a good chance that that will become their inner voice as well. Your teams are similar. They're going to pattern their inner voice off of how you talk to them, how their coaches and teachers talk to them, and they're going to talk to themselves based on all these factors. Because they're not gonna listen to my podcast, and they probably won't listen to you and improve their inner dialogue until they're older and it means more. The reason I bring all this up, a lot of moms talk to themselves in a very negative way, and I want you to explore when did I learn how to talk to myself this way? When I did this same exercise, I realized, man, a lot of that was in football. The way I would talk to myself was very much. The same way that my football coaches would talk to me, and I'm still talking to myself that way, and that is not how I want to talk to myself. Once you become more aware of this inner dialogue awareness, once you become aware, once you kind of accept like, oh, well this is what's happening. This is why you can now be intentional. So become aware. How are you talking to yourself? Notice your inner dialogue so that we can shift it. That way you can start replacing, I'm failing with, you know what I'm learning. You can replace. I'm not enough with, no, I'm worthy. I'm good enough as I am. You can practice speaking to yourself in a way that you would speak. To a small child. So I want to give you a simple self-love exercise, and this is gonna sound weird and that's okay. I've done this lots of times with lots of people and they tell me how powerful it is. So I want to invite you to try this out. This self-love exercise is going to involve you talking. To your younger self, and this is super simple, but it's surprisingly powerful and it's a practice that you can start today that can totally shift your self talk and deepen your self love. So. Step one, I want you to find a picture that touches your heart. And remember that little bonus Mother's Day gift that I told you I was gonna talk about? This could totally be. A super awesome Mother's Day gift. Go visit your mom. Let's see. This podcast comes out on Thursday. You could go visit your mom today, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. If it happens after Mother's Day doesn't count. Sorry, just joking. If it has to wait till after Mother's day, no problem. Mother's Day could be any day so. This bonus gift could be you just visit your mom and ask her to go through the old pho photos. Like, Hey, let's pull out the, I just forgot what they called the album. And let's look and let's reminisce and let's talk, and let's just spend time. Let it be a chance for you to connect with your mom and to share memories, but also let it be a chance to look for a photo of yourself as a child at any age where you feel. The spark of love and connection and tenderness, even a sense of like wonder and vulnerability for me. I remember I. I have a picture in my mind. I was probably five, maybe six. I had broken my arm for the second time playing Superman, and we were at a family reunion and I don't know if you remember the Big Wheels bikes where they had one big wheel on the front and two little wheels. Anyways, I had turned that thing upside down and I would. Move the pedal with my right hand, trying, uh, getting the will to spin, pretending to cut off my cast on my left arm. I was super cute. I was super innocent. I was just full of hope and love. I. I would talk with complete kindness, with complete respect, with hope. Love admiration. So step one, find a picture of yourself that touches your heart. Step two, make this picture of yourself visible. Once you found this picture, take a picture of the picture with your phone so that you can set it as your phone's wallpaper or screensaver and just make this young. Cute version of you visible in your daily life. Step three, I want you to practice loving self-talk. Every time you see that picture of that little girl, I want you to speak to her with love. You can tell her things like, man, you are so brave. You're doing your best. You are enough. I love you just the way you are. You can offer encouragement, you can ask what she needs, or you can just sit with her in kindness and love and appreciation for everything that she's done to get you to where you are today. I. The goal is to start having ongoing positive conversations with this younger version of yourself, because the truth is that younger version of you, that's still a part of you. Any conversation you have with her is still a conversation with yourself. And then step four. Let this overflow into your daily life. Use this image as a reminder throughout the day. When you notice your inner voice turning harsh or critical, I want you to pause and I want you to ask what I say this to this cute little girl. Would I say that to my best friend? Would I say that like there are so many people that we wouldn't say these mean things to, and yet we say them. Our own minds. And what we want to do is we want to practice this new way of self-talk, this new dialogue so that we can be more intentional. We can make this shift and start choosing words of encouragement, of patience, and of love. And by doing this, you will rewire your brain for self love. One kind word at a time. And seriously that exercise, you can kill two birds with one stone. You can go get a picture of yourself while spending quality time with your mom. That's awesome that she'll probably be more grateful for that than whatever gift you're gonna give her. So I want to just quickly recap. We've talked about. Self love. We've talked about mom guilt. We've talked about your inner critic. The number one takeaway I want you to take away is that you have the power to shift your inner dialogue. A lot of mom guilt is just created by how we talk to ourselves and our minds. Stop it. Be willing to. Talk to yourself like you would talk to that cute, innocent, lovable, hopeful, naive little girl that you used to be. And when you can start talking to her differently, you can then start talking to yourself differently. I promise you, it's a simple, simple exercise, but it has the power to completely change how you think about yourself and how you feel about yourself. Unconditional love. Starts with you. Most of the other parenting experts. I just saw a post the other day. It's like, oh, we gotta give our kids unconditional love if you don't love your kid, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, yeah, that's important. But it will come naturally if you first give yourself unconditional love, because how you treat yourself is how you will treat others. So rather than having to like force yourself to give your teen unconditional love, go to the roots, if you change the roots, if you give the roots the proper nutrients and the proper soil and the proper watering, you'll improve the fruit that comes from this metaphorical tree or. I don't know, tomato, plant, whatever we're talking about, address the root of the problem, not the symptoms. So unconditional love starts with you, and it's okay that you're not perfect. Nobody is, but you are doing something beautiful and brave by showing up and being willing to do it imperfectly. That's, that's okay. So here's your call to action for this podcast. This is your takeaway. If you do this, it'll be transformational in your life. This Mother's day. Give yourself the one thing that you've been withholding. I. Give yourself unconditional love. Give yourself support and approval. I promise. Not only will that improve your relationship with yourself, it will also improve your relationship with your team. Alright, with that, I'm gonna let you go and remember to come back next week because we're gonna be talking about this fan mail about this. Teenager who's been expelled from school, and as a former high school principal and as a former teen knucklehead, I guarantee you I have a different take on it than most parenting gurus. And if that was you who sent me that, I want to give you. As much support as I can so that you, uh, the person who sent me that, I believe that's their niece's son. Anyways, I want to give you the best support that I can so that you can support them as well. I'll see you guys next week.