Have you ever stopped and wondered how much influence you have in your grandchildren's lives? Have you ever been forbidden by your child to see their children? Do you feel guilty you don't always say yes to providing day care for your grandchildren? What about grandchildren that live far away; how can you connect with them better? Tune and listen as to why and how you are the most influential person/people in their lives. If you enjoyed this podcast and want to start finding out how to work with...
Jul 15, 2022•47 min•Ep. 29
Most mornings we wake up with the same feelings. I'm a morning person so I wake up excited. I sometimes find my concerns from the day before are not as bad as they were the day before. Others wake up grumpy....and that is okay. Did you know that you can form the habit of being happy? By managing our thoughts, we can decide when we wake up what kind of day we want to have that day. And our brain will help us find evidence that we will have that kind of day. Tune in to find out how to form the hab...
Jul 07, 2022•15 min•Ep. 28
Life was good....I was married to a wonderful husband with 5 amazing children. One night my husband said "We haven't gotten our licks yet". Not too long after, major challenges surfaced in our family's life. Challenges I would not sell to have them taken back but challenges I would never wish for anyone to experience. How did I survive? A lot of tears but a lot of giving love. I believe I was given the gift to love difficult people; from an upbringing, absent of support and love, I gained resili...
Jun 30, 2022•42 min•Ep. 27
I keep a couple go-to thoughts in my pockets when the the "stinging darts pierce" my chest.; those darts thrown at us by others, especially annoying when they come from one of our adult children. Sometimes it is just a sting; sometimes it pierces my heart. I feel the emotion and then I pull out of my pocket a default thought that brings me back to how I want to feel. I share 15 of them, but I most often use these three: Things never stay the same; People that hurt others are hurting; What would ...
Jun 23, 2022•42 min•Ep. 26
There are three parts to every relationship. 1. What you think others think about you 2. What you think about them 3. What you think about yourself. Guess where most our time is spent trying to change or figure out? Part 1. But we need to be spending our focus on the other two parts.....what you think about them and what you think about yourself. Those are the parts you have control over. "What someone else thinks of me is none of my business." Meaningful relationships with our adult children ar...
Jun 16, 2022•28 min•Ep. 25
We know seeking after perfection is not good for our mental health. But we really want that family with those adult kids to be a little more perfect. That image of what we thought life with adult children would look like is often crushed by their behavior and our perspective of something has gone wrong. But the messy parts of life are not bad; they are not only just the parts of life that didn't work out but also they are the parts of life that offer us wisdom.....our lesson in life. Did you kno...
Jun 07, 2022•45 min•Ep. 24
Nobody ever told us that being a parent to adult children could be challenging. Nobody ever talked about the responsibilities of this new job and that it was so different than when they were younger. This episode is all about the six ways we can show up as the best parent we can at this time, and then forever, of their lives; a parent that unconditionally loves and respects their children in all decisions that they make. Love and respect is all they need now from their parents. If you are tired ...
Jun 02, 2022•17 min•Ep. 23
When your adult child tells you that he/she wants no contact with you of any kind, it feels like death. It feels that you have been robbed of one of your most prized possessions. It is embracing the pain and the understanding of agency that will bring you to acceptance and peace. It is a process that you can do at your own pace to finally be able to forgive someone that might not deserve to be forgiven. Tune in to find out how to move forward in this difficult situation. I can help you stop feel...
May 26, 2022•29 min•Ep. 22
Comparing and disparing is viewing your insides as not as valuable or as good as what you view someone else's outsides (Kara Lowenthiel). When we look at another family with adult children and all seems to be going well and then look at our family and feel that the relationship is broken, it causes us to be unhappy. Tune in to listen to why we compare ourselves to others; why it is not harmful to our living a satisfying life, and some remedies to avoid comparing yourself to others. Figuring out ...
May 19, 2022•45 min•Ep. 21
Mother's Day is much too often the worst day of the year for a lot of women. But if we were to change our perspective on what Mother's Day is all about, it can be a very heartfelt, tender and loving day. My heart goes out to those women who wanted children and were never able to have any and to those women who have had children who died in their lifetime and to those women and to those women who placed children for adoption. If you are a mom and making Mother's Day about you, you are setting you...
May 05, 2022•35 min•Season 1Ep. 20
It can become so easy to feel some self-pity when we are not having the relationship we would like to have with our adult children. We justify having these pity parties but they never help us feel better. They just add "fuel to the fire". Why? Because feeling sorry for ourselves keeps us stuck in the cycle of thinking negative thoughts, especially when it comes to our thoughts about our relationship with our adult child. Tune in to learn how to get out of self-pity. I help you stop struggling in...
Apr 27, 2022•23 min•Ep. 19
Have you ever done a zig saw puzzle before and you just knew when they cut the puzzle they left a piece out? Sometimes our problems in life feel the same. Sometimes we create problems that aren't even problems. It's so much easier to whine about a problem than to embrace it. We know they are coming but we still avoid or neglect them. What if we thought about them as being a part of living a full life? Did you know our brains love to solve problems so much that it will create a problem if they ca...
Apr 20, 2022•28 min•Ep. 18
Who do you want to be? This podcast will help you become that person. I will give you step be step instructions on how to become this person. It's one of the best uses of the Model you will ever use, but we work backwards. Action: Kind Person Feeling: Compassionate, loving Thought: People are doing the best they can at this moment in their life. You can reprogram your brain to default to this thought every time you are dealing with difficult people. (well, not every time: we after all human). I ...
Apr 13, 2022•33 min•Ep. 17
The land of being curious is safe, compassionate, and loving. We can be judgmental, or loving is best, but to get there we might need sometimes to go through being curious. Curious about our thoughts and whether they are good thoughts to focus on; curious about why our adult children make some of the choices they make; curious about who you want to be to your adult children and the world when unfulfilled expectations show up; and curious, genuinely curious, lovingly curious, curiosity that cause...
Apr 06, 2022•43 min•Ep. 16
Instead of hiding and running from adversity, why not welcome it. Adversity can teach us lessons, strengthen us, and show us how God is the the details of our lives like nothing else can. We are dependent upon having adversity in our lives to have those amazing moments be so amazing. It is part of living a well lived life so let us give a big welcome to adversity. After listening to this episode you may not seek it it but hopefully when it comes, you will not fear it. I help moms navigate life w...
Mar 31, 2022•37 min•Ep. 15
We are impatient beings, we human beings are. It is so uncomfortable being uncomfortable. What if we welcomed the negative emotions that come on a daily basis. Those negative experiences make the good experiences even better. It is when we are feeling discomfort that we go to work to solve some of our most important decisions. It is in the midst of hard things that we grow strong and resilient . Even learning to manage our thoughts to feel the feelings we want to feel can cause us to feel some n...
Mar 23, 2022•17 min•Season 1Ep. 14
It upsets our lives when our children stray from what we tried so diligently and purposely to teach them. We grieve over our heartbrokenness ..... which is a very healthy and repairing thing to do. But then what? Sometimes we get so stuck in our despair and disappointment that it has a major impact on our lives. We want to accept what they have done and move on with our lives but we don't know how to. If we can view what's going on in our children's lives from a different perspective, we can beg...
Mar 16, 2022•37 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Our brains do not like change. So it hangs on tight to thoughts that often times don't serve us. They hang onto thoughts that want us to keep believing that when our adult children make choices contrary to our values, they are making the wrong choice. But maybe exercising their agency the very way they choose to, offers them opportunities to figure out who they want to be in this life. Our job is not to judge them because judgement only brings pain to us.....Our job is to figure out who we want ...
Mar 10, 2022•26 min•Ep. 12
I am excited to be interviewing Jodi Schilling today. She is a certified Life Coach who works with moms who are navigating raising children with neuro diversity. A neuro divergent child is a child that is born with significant challenges in learning and in communicating their needs. She doesn't view being neuro divergent as being negative. After all, we all struggle with learning and communicating. These children were born with more severe neuro disabilities, jeopardizing their ability to learn ...
Mar 02, 2022•40 min•Season 1Ep. 11
This has been the most influential, amazing concept I have learned from being trained as a life coach. I need to give credit where credit is due, to my mentor and instructor Brooke Castillo. Responsible adults do not intentionally wake up in the morning with the intention to make someone feel bad. When your adult children say things to that are unkind, do things that are hurtful, or seemingly ignore you, they are not intentionally wanting to cause you to have thoughts that cause you to feel hurt...
Feb 24, 2022•27 min•Season 1Ep. 10
If you or any one you know, goes through life with generally a poor attitude, you'll want to tune in to this is episode... You can train your brain to look at situations, relationships, or even past events from a different perspective. A perspective that serves you; that enables you to find peace in having a well lived life. Practice. You just need to know what to practice; the more you practice the easier it becomes to see the glass half full. If you have a comment or question, I would love to ...
Feb 17, 2022•22 min
Do You feel you have to “walk on eggshells” when you’re around your adult children? Do you worry if you don’t say and do the right thing, you’ll lose the relationship? You can be YOU if you can figure who you want “you” to be and how does that person not only act but also WANTS to act when they are around their adult children. Tune in to learn how to make this happen in your life. I offer an 8 week 1:1 coaching program if you need help in applying this to your life. Contact me. Options listed: I...
Feb 02, 2022•30 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Why do some people see the glass half "full" while others see it half "empty". The ones that see it half full have different thoughts when they look at the glass of water than those who see it as half full. In this episode you will find an amazing way to solve any problem. It really is the magic sauce, sometimes referred to as the secret sauce. To contact me , email me at bonnie@bonnielyman.com Go to my website bonnielyman.com to book a call or sign up for my email. I'm on instagram at bonnielym...
Jan 27, 2022•38 min•Ep. 7
Having a manual with lists of how loving, responsible adult children should treat their mothers belongs in the garbage. If we have expectations of how people should operate we are setting ourselves up for disaster! Tune in to find out how to have our needs met that are not being fulfilled by our children. Have you received my new resource "3 Steps To Be Yourself Around Your Adult Children?" Click HERE to receive it. You'll be amazed what life offers you when you take back the power to be yoursel...
Jan 20, 2022•28 min•Season 1Ep. 6
The natural man wants to default to judging another person for causing him to feel hurt. Some of us know that other people don't have the power to make us feel hurt; our thoughts make us feel hurt. Compassionate thoughts never cause us to feel hurt; they cause us to feel the most amazing of all emotions.....LOVE. We have the power within us to default to feeling compassion rather than hurt. Tune in to find what you can practice to find compassion for everyone in your life. We all just want to fe...
Jan 13, 2022•26 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Do find yourself more often than not focusing on the negative outcome of circumstances instead of being hopeful that everything is going to work out? It's just your brain trying to protect you from future disappointment. But what if you trained your brain to give some "air time" to it could all work out? In this episode I give you some ways you can start reprogramming your brain to see a more positive perspective to what is happening in your life. Have you received my new resource "3 Steps To Be...
Jan 05, 2022•26 min
Do you have some painful feelings that keep surfacing in your life? Are they getting in the way of living the life you want to live? If you are having negative feelings that are surfacing often, or are very intense, or seem to turn up in certain situations, I teach you how to de-intensify those feelings. Turning to alchol or drugs or donuts or even running is not the fix. Too often we want to change our thoughts or perspective but first we need to just "be" with that annoying feeling for a while...
Dec 29, 2021•20 min•Season 1Ep. 3
It is ten days before Christmas. Are you feeling stressed, tired, frazzled? Are you worried about all the details Christmas brings with it? How about that crazy uncle with all his corny jokes that bores everyone to tears? STOP.......take a deep breath, grab your favorite beverage and sit down and take a listen to the suggestions I give to have a merry Christmas. What if I guaranteed you would have one of your best Christmases ever? A simple assignment to your brain can make this Christmas full o...
Dec 16, 2021•20 min•Ep. 2
We know that loving everyone is something we have been asked to do. Christ asked us to love everyone, not to show Him respect, but for the benefit to us. All any of us really want is to feel good. Love always feels best, just every time. Easier said than done. I talk about how to choose to love someone even if they are difficult to love or who might even reject your love. When we choose to love, we are the beneficiary. Have you received my new resource "3 Steps To Be Yourself Around Your Adult C...
Nov 24, 2021•28 min•Ep. 1
