In this episode, host Laura Sexton explores the realities of marriage and parenting, contrasting them with the idealized versions often portrayed in the media. It delves into the importance of managing expectations, reevaluating narratives, and fostering positive communication within relationships. Throughout the podcast, Laura shares personal anecdotes and insights to encourage you to consider the impact of your words and actions on your loved ones.
In this episode, host Laura Sexton explores the realities of marriage and parenting, contrasting them with the idealized versions often portrayed in the media. It delves into the importance of managing expectations, reevaluating narratives, and fostering positive communication within relationships. Throughout the podcast, Laura shares personal anecdotes and insights to encourage you to consider the impact of your words and actions on your loved ones.
Hello and welcome to the Accelerate Your Legacy podcast. I'm Laura Sexton, your trusted financial coach and money mindset specialist. Join me as we explore the world of money and money mindset while also paving the way for a lasting legacy that extends far beyond money. Together we'll eliminate stress, amplify freedom, and ensure you stop paying for your past so you can start saving for your future. If you're seeking peace in your finances, more margin in your budget, and a legacy that inspires generations to come, you're in the right place. Hey accelerators, I hope that you are having an absolutely wonderful week. I'm curious, how many of you had dreams about what marriage would look like? Maybe you Decided that your marriage was going to look like some movie that you used to watch, where you just believed that things were going to turn out rosy peachy and be glorious. Maybe dating in the movies totally spoiled it for you and you realized quickly, I don't think it's ever going to look like that. So I'm never going to aspire to that. Maybe you had a dream wedding in mind that you had planned out from the time you were a young child. Maybe you expect coffee to be made and brought to you in bed in the morning. Maybe you have this beautiful image of your kids playing sweetly on the playground equipment outside. Whatever your dream about what marriage would look like, I'm going to go ahead and guess that that is not actually how it turned out. If you're anything like me, You have to reassess frequently about what your expectations are and what they should be. When I was thinking about this, I was thinking about the different stories that we tell ourselves about marriage and how they can be shaped by what we grew up with and what we saw around us. People who had parents that were constantly in conflict will oftentimes look for spouses that they are constantly in conflict with. That may sound counterintuitive and you're sitting here going, why would I want conflict? Why would I search for that? And the truth is because that's comfortable. That's what you know. And because that's comfortable and what you know, that is what your brain seeks out. Your brain is going to try and keep you safe regardless of what you're doing. And by safe, I mean comfortable. Your brain is going to have you do what you know, you fall to the level of your systems 1 thing that I've learned recently is that our thoughts are 80 percent repetitive 80 percent of your thoughts that you have a day and you have thousands things like 95, 000 thoughts a day. 80 percent of the thoughts that you have are repeat. of what you've thought before. So if you have a lot of negative self talk in your head, and you're constantly berating yourself and being negative, most likely you're just thinking the same thing you used to think, and you're allowing it to repeat. This is when you have to take those thoughts captive in your mind. By taking them captive, you decide what you think. You hear something negative about you in your head, you grab it. You take hold of it, and you lock that away, because it is not true. And if it is true, you need to change that about yourself. You are a child of God. Whether you want to hear that or not, it is true. And because of that, you do not deserve to beat yourself up. If we are constantly focused on our expectations, we will miss out on the joy of life that is set before us. You see, my expectations are rarely Rarely met. I had a day this last weekend where it's Saturday. It's supposed to be a day of being home and the kids are just relaxing and calm and everything went wrong based on what my expectations were. I had expected to during the first nap, get this here podcast recorded and I didn't get to. I didn't get you because my four year old decided to lose her mind over some flashcards. We were doing flashcards ABCs. She is trying to learn her lowercase letters. She knows all of her uppercase and she's trying to learn lowercase. So I got some flashcards out. Well, she was not prepared for lowercase flashcards. And she was very upset with me because I did not do it exactly how she expected me to do it. And it took me a good 20 minutes to calm her down. And in the process of her screaming and flailing and doing all of the things, She woke the baby up from a nap, so instead of the baby getting a good solid nap and me being able to do things like, I don't know, record a podcast, start lunch, whatever it was that I needed to get done, I didn't get to do any of that. I didn't get any time for me, which I had expected to have later that day. I had expected the baby to take a nap because the baby needs to be taking a nap. She had had a shorter nap before because of the screaming. So I laid her down, I let her take a nap, and a few minutes later, her older brother goes running in there and wakes her up, because he didn't want her to nap. My expectations of that day were high. I wanted to be productive, I wanted to get things done, I wanted to have time with the children, I had plans to spend time with each child, and none of my plans worked out that day. And I was so frustrated, because I had such high expectations. And after that second nap was ruined, I said, you know what my expectation for the rest of the day is to make it to bedtime. I lowered my expectations as low as I possibly could. And then I wasn't so frustrated, because if my only expectation was to spend the day with my children, making it to bedtime, I can meet that expectation. But if I'm constantly focused on what I expect to happen, or my to do list, or perfection, I'm constantly going to be disappointed. And I lose all the joy, and I don't want that, and I don't want that for you. I'm glad I went through this weekend experience where I was brought back into reality, and I hope that I'm able to share a little bit of reality with you today, too. I don't know why this is such a deep podcast today. I wanted it to be light. I wanted it to be exciting. I wanted to talk about the dreams that I may or may not have had about marriage and what that would look like. And for whatever reason, we're getting heavy. I'm going to tell a story that I wasn't planning on telling. I got married. At the Santa Barbara courthouse is absolutely beautiful ceremony with me, my husband, and six of our friends. That was a small, intimate wedding. Have I always dreamed of a big wedding in a church? Absolutely, but that didn't fit the situation. My husband and I cared more about getting married than we did about some big grand ceremony. Now, that doesn't mean that just because we had a small, intimate, beautiful wedding, that we can't one day renew our vows in a big ceremony. In fact, my sister and her husband celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary, which is insane to me. I cannot believe it has been that long, but they got married at the justice of the peace. And then 25 years later, they had the most beautiful wedding ceremony. Absolutely gorgeous on a Hawaii beach, right before sunset, it was just gorgeous. It was absolutely gorgeous. I don't think you could have planned a more beautiful wedding and it was all of our favorite people and they had the best time and they, you know, it took 25 years to get that dream wedding for her. But after 25 years, don't you think they deserved it? After 25 years, if you had a big, amazing, beautiful wedding, and you've been married for 25 years, go celebrate that, have another one. You see, we have to be careful about the stories we tell ourselves. I have clients that I work with, and they've been dating somebody for seven years, 14 years, 17 years, and they're just waiting until they get to the right place to go have a beautiful wedding. I'm like, y'all, get married. It's time let's go and you can have a big, beautiful ceremony later. But if our expectation is only the ceremony, what are we missing out on? If our expectation is only a perfect day where we get everything done? What are we missing out on? What beautiful things are around us that we are too focused in and narrow minded. To see what are you missing right now. So we have to be careful about the stories we tell ourselves. We also need to be careful about the stories that we tell other people. You see, I used to complain a lot. I used to complain about anything and everything because I just had this negative perception of the world. Everything was wrong. And I had somebody point out to me, his name is Chambers. He's amazing. It was my first acting coach out in California. And he just sent me this really short message one day and said, Hey. Maybe don't put everything you're complaining about on the Internet. I was like, why? He goes, because it doesn't look good. At the time, I was all about appearances. I wanted to make sure that I look good to anybody and everybody. And so I stopped doing that. I stopped putting complaints out on the Internet. And you know what? Started having a lot of people say really nice things to me. And so I said, okay, so what happens if I stop complaining in my real life too? The beauty around me compounded. And it's just amazing when we are so focused on the negative, we see the negative everywhere. But when we choose to be focused on the positive and the beautiful, we start seeing the positive and the beautiful everywhere. So if you are a person that complains a lot, try to take those words in your mouth captive. Don't go out and complain, only go out and praise and see how different the world starts to react around you. You also need to be careful who you tell your thoughts to. You want to make sure that you say things to someone who is supported and who will lovingly point you back in the right direction. If you're going off base. As a financial coach, 1 of my jobs is to say, hey, I don't know if that thing that you're doing is actually getting you to the result that you want it to. I can say, hey, I see that things are going sideways and what you're doing right now, and I want to point you back to the thing that you say that you want most. I don't know if you can hear my son singing in the background, but it's absolutely hilarious. We're just going to let this right. Okay. If you can hear him, please know that he is going to be a Justin Timberlake or an Usher 1 day it's just happening. You need to have people in your life that are willing to go against the grain and tell you, Hey, I don't think what you're doing is right. Hey, I don't think that what you're doing is serving you. You need to have people in your life that are going to say, Oh my goodness, I'm so excited for this new thing that you're doing. Who can I tell to help you? How can I help you grow your new business? If you're starting a new business, you want people around you who are going to try and share that business with other people, people who are going to say, yes, I see that in you. And I can't wait to encourage you on forward. I have a group of women that I can reach out to if I'm having a bad day and they will lovingly support me. And I have a group of women, that same group of women. If I reach out to them and I say this amazing thing happened, I'm so excited. They will celebrate with me. I can go to them and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they have my back. Do you have those people in your life? I have a coach that I go to when I have financial struggles or business struggles or emotional struggles. I have a coach in my corner that I can go to and share things with and she's not going to judge me. She's just going to love me. She'll lift me up in prayer if that's what I need and she'll kick me in the butt if I'm not doing what I need to be doing. She points me in the right direction and helps me go towards the thing that I say I want most. Not what she wants most, not what would benefit her, but what benefits me. You need those people in your life and you want to make sure that you're never telling something to somebody who's just going to kill your dream. We all have those buzzkill people in our life. Do not go to the buzzkill person and say, Hey, I've got this really great idea because you know, they're just going to try and tear it down. So the, the point of this podcast was to talk about marriage and children and our expectations of what marriage would look like, what. Being a parent would look like and the stories that we tell ourselves about marriage and the stories that we tell ourselves about our Children, and I think we have to be very careful about what we say. We need to be very careful about how we say the things that we say. You need to speak truth and life over your spouse and your Children because the power of life and death are in the tongue. You can very easily kill someone's spirit just with your words. And you can very easily bolster somebody's spirit with your words. The things you tell your kids today are the stories they will repeat to themselves later. I've heard it from my children. You remember when you said this to me, Mommy? You remember when you told me I was beautiful, Mommy? Do you remember when you told me I was smart? Do you remember when you told me I could do it? Look, I can do it, Mommy. I tell my husband I love him every day, without fail. If he goes to work before I wake up, the first thing I do is I roll over in my bed, grab my phone, and I say, Good morning, my love. It's the first thing I do because it is so important and powerful for him to know he's the first thing on my mind and that I love him. And if I don't do that, he's going to go, what's wrong? Why, why didn't she text me to say she loved me? What's, what's happening? It's happened before where I just started the day because the kids woke up early or somebody was sick and I just, you know, didn't get to do my normal morning routine. And he was like, is everything okay? Because he is comforted to know that I love him as I'm comforted to know that he loves me. Sometimes at night I'll go, I love you, honey. He doesn't respond. He thinks he does, but he's like asleep, kind of, on the edge of sleep and I will wake him up and go, I love you. And he's like, yeah, I love you. And then like, rolls over and goes back to sleep. It's important to say the important things out loud. It's important to make sure your children know that you love them, not just in your words, but also in your actions. It's important that you watch over the stories that you tell them, the stories that you think about them. How do you want their lives to be? How do you want your marriage to be? Are your words and your actions lining up with that? It's a really weird thing to be talking about on a money podcast, isn't it? But this podcast isn't just about money. It's about your legacy. And your legacy, if it's just financial, doesn't mean that much. Your legacy is the people that you leave behind and the way that you make them feel. Take a look at the stories that you're telling yourself, the stories that you're telling your friends. Are you telling the right people these stories? The power of life and death are in the tongue. Be careful, little eyes what you see, be careful little ears what you hear, be careful little mouth what you say. Alright my friends, that's it for this week, go out and make a difference. Thank you for investing your time with us today on the Accelerate Your Legacy podcast. Remember, your legacy isn't just measured in dollars and cents, but in the tools, habits, mindset, and reputation you leave behind. Don't just listen to the show, but take action on what you've learned. Share this wisdom with a friend who can benefit and help us spread the word by rating and reviewing the podcast. For questions or encouragement, reach out to me on Instagram at Accelerate Your Legacy or explore the resources listed in the show notes. I will be back with you next week. Until then, build your legacy with intention.