Summary
Joe Hudson, Brett Kistler, and Alexa explore the spiritual journey of parenthood. Joe shares that his decision to have children wasn’t intellectual but came as a clear calling — a shift from a definite “no” to an unmistakable “yes.” He describes parenting as a “deep tissue massage” that tears away identity and assumptions, offering one of the most powerful paths to self-discovery if you allow it to work on you rather than resist.
Joe credits his children with teaching him everything about emotional work. Watching kids process emotions naturally — welcoming every feeling without judgment — revealed that adult intellectual frameworks about emotions were “off.” Sitting in loving attention as his daughter threw temper tantrums in Whole Foods became the foundation of his professional coaching work. He shares the story of his teenage daughter coming to him for advice, and the profound healing moment of acknowledging “that’s me — you learned that from me” about a pattern he’d inadvertently passed on.
The episode covers practical parenting wisdom: the importance of Hand in Hand Parenting, treating children with the same respect you expect from them, holding boundaries gently while not shaming or punishing, the principle that children regulate through emotional connection with parents rather than words, and the advice to prioritize self-care first, marriage second, and children third — because you can’t parent well from an empty cup or a broken relationship.
Key Concepts
- Parenting is one of the deepest ego dissolution practices
- Children are emotional mirrors showing parents what they haven’t reconciled
- Children regulate through emotional connection, not rational words
- Prioritize self-care, then marriage, then children
- To not harm your children, love yourself
- Boundaries with children require closeness and mutual respect
Key Quotes
“I am 100% confident I could not do the work that I do in the world if it wasn’t for having kids.”
“The spiritual journey of being a parent is allowing all that stuff to be let go and to have it ripped from you so that you can find out what your essence is.”
“Sitting in loving attention as my children threw temper tantrums in the middle of Whole Foods — that’s what I do for a living today.”
“Every time I was triggered I was projecting onto my kid. If I wanted to go ‘you’re selfish’ it meant I was being selfish. If I wanted to say ‘why don’t you just listen’ it meant I wasn’t listening.”
“The most important thing in a marriage is to take care of yourself and then take care of the marriage and then take care of the kids.”
“Don’t want to mess up your kids? Love yourself.”
Transcript
[Music] for my daughter on her 21st birthday by Ellen bass when they laid you in the crook of my arms like a bouquet and I looked into your eyes dark bits of evening Sky I thought of course this is you like a person who has never seen the sea can recognize it instantly they pulled you from me like a cork and all the love flowed out I adored you with the squandering passion of spring that shoots Green from every pore you dug me out like a well you lit the Deadwood of my heart you pinned me to the Earth with the points of stars I was sure that kind of love would be enough I thought I was your mother how could I have known that over and over you would crack the sky like lightning Illuminating all my fears my weaknesses my sins massive the burden this flesh must learn to bear like mules of Love wow what was that poem who wrote that it’s for my daughter on her 21st birthday by Alan bass oh give me chills I love that oh yeah yeah wow well that’s a good as good of an intro as I could imagine there possibly being to this episode great uh welcome to the art of accomplishment do that again okay all right welcome to the art of accomplishment where we explore how deepening our connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease I’m Alexa and I’m Brett and and I’m Joe and I’m Overjoyed watching you too is great I’m so happy to see you today Joe my heart is still exploding from the other day yeah thank you that was a great day you’re welcome so if you if you haven’t discerned this so far today’s episode is going to be on Parenthood and we don’t yet know what we’re going to talk about but right now Alexa and I have been sitting for a little while in the question for a little while by that I mean a couple of years we’ve been sitting in the question of when kids how kids what does it mean ah identity Freedom how do we do it how do we do it in a way that serves the kids best takes care of ourselves what is parenting with view what is what is is life if we don’t have kids in view what what what are we missing if we don’t do One path or the other ah Panic yeah that’s kind of where we’ve been yeah and just to add to it I mean I didn’t ever consider that I might want kids until quite late in life likewise like until I fell in love with Brett and imagined what it would be like to raise a person with you um and so it it’s like the clock has been running out ever since we even thought we might want to do it yeah yeah similar for me I was not expecting to want that until until I imagined it with you so that seems like a sign and and it’s super scary yeah it’s super scary I didn’t I didn’t uh I didn’t spend most of my life thinking that all of the parenting things I was seeing applied to me in any way um yeah yeah so to kick this off I one of the burning questions for me is like one of the things that I notic that I’m in is it’s still around the what if we have kids what if we don’t what are those two completely different life trajectories and I’m curious for you how you experienced that process like to what extent were you like oh man kids I really want the the love and the joy and the the growth and the having having kids of my own experience and I’m afraid of like not getting not accomplishing the things I want to accomplish not having time for friends completely changing and not having not being able to relate to like kidless people there’s a a lot of things that I hear people talk about in their journey and um a lot of it honestly is just terrifying for me I’m curious what that was like for you and what was unexpected about the journey for you for me it was just really clear I didn’t want to have kids Tera really wanted to have kids like when she hit like 30 she’s like I want kids I want kids I want kids and I was like no no no no and um and then there was a call there was just like it was just clear it was clear like oh this is the the the kid wants to come now so for me the the the odd experience and it feels kind of woo woo but I can’t deny what’s true is that like it I literally just felt like oh it’s it’s time this this wants to happen so it was more of a calling and less of a intellectual decision to okay now is the time to have kids it was like literally felt like it felt like okay now now is the time and and we I think we had sex like we had been having unprotected sex for years we were being as careful as you can being unprotected um but then we were like okay now it’s time I was like now it’s time to’s like yeah I feel it it’s time and boom like one one she was pregnant wow it was just like that it was so it was so clear so that that’s how it was for me it wasn’t wasn’t uh there was no intellectual decision that was being made it was just very clear no and then it was a very clear yes and I wasn’t really contemplating whether I should or shouldn’t I I definitely remember feeling like we’re not financially stable enough to have kids yeah but we sure as hell were not financially stable enough when we when we conceived Esme like um between the moment of conceiving Esme and her birth like I went from like out of like in from major debt just from like living because I was meditating all the time to completely out of debt in that nine-month period and making like the best salary I’d ever made you know that’s a great question there’s a saying that says that like um babies come with loaves of bread under their arms that like like you look throughout America and it’s like like most kids they like they show up and like there’re somehow or another figure out a way to be taken care of and so but I I think what happens is my experience was something hormonally probably kicked in for me teror was like I’m going to be the I’m going to be the bread winner you’re going to be the stay-at-home dad I was like yep and then as soon as she got pregnant all that changed like it was I was just like was like okay let’s make money and Tera and by the time the baby was born tera’s like yeah I’m not leaving this kid making money you go do that you know it was like the entire roles what we thought was going to happen didn’t happen which was like yeah the the biggest pain and and also the biggest love of having children especially in the early ages is it felt like it was a deep tissue massage right like the more you resisted you were just so you don’t resist you just like it’s going to tear parts of your identity away it’s going to tear parts of what you think is right away like everything just starts shifting and if you and I think that the the spiritual journey of having being a parent is allowing all that stuff to be let go and to have it ripped from you so that you can find out what your essence is I don’t see a lot of parents do that but if you do that it’s like an incredibly important journey to be on and that happened like right from the beginning right from the beginning it was just like you think this nope you think you control this nope you think you can control you think you control how you sleep nope it was just like everything was just taken yeah I’m curious to what extent that you know prior to Esme being born prior to conception even when you started to feel that call to what extent did you feel like that call was dragging you kicking and screaming through the through the field or to what extent you felt the call and you just dropped everything else you’re like okay I’m on this call now it was surprisingly it was surprisingly like Yep this is the time I can’t deny it it was surprisingly that it was like I would have expected Kicking and Screaming because I was so I was like no no no for so long and then when it hit yes it was just so clear and terara was going through her journey too and I definitely like in retrospect I see how like Tara and I met in a way that also like there was a she was doing her change she was very focused on work and she was changing that was moving in her to the point where we could be more connected and I think that was part of what made it like oh this is the time this feels right but it was without a doubt just felt like it was like knock knock knock knock it’s time let me in like that was the feeling wow I’m envious I have a lot of confusion that it was so clear but I don’t oh I feel like there are calls in both directions for me yeah yeah not wasn’t my was a very clear no and then a yep okay let’s do this now the third kid was like Tara was like a very clear yes and I was a very clear no and that was that was a different thing but both una and Esme was like a clear calling like this is it this is the time we’re doing this now yeah yeah I’ve been noticing shifting in myself I mean as we recently said on recently published episode probably by now we were just at a grief ceremony for somebody in our community who recently lost a child and yeah one of the things that I might have expected hearing the story of all the medical complications hearing the story of all the Judgment from side hearing the story of how rough it was and how difficult and much of a challenge it was for their relationship my expectation might have been that it would have made me less likely to want kids and also in witnessing it and witnessing the love even despite various levels of potential hopelessness just witnessing the love that was there actually I feel like made me more likely to want kids which is kind of freaky CU that that feels like a process that is not what I would have expected or like what my intellect would do or like it it doesn’t seem like I’d be better off putting myself in a position where I’m in hospitals all the time caring for someone who’s very likely to die before they become old enough for me to know them as a personality and yet that story just all of it has done unexpect ly Indescribable things in my system that make me feel more likely to lean into whatever that is and I’m a little bit bewildered by that right now yeah just waitting if you have one like like yeah it’s it’s an undescribable it’s an Indescribable you know like one of my kids is is about to go to college now and you know I used to count her life in months and then I counted her life in years and now I count her life in months again like yeah I I like the how much I’m going to feel a part of me ripped away when she leaves home it’s a you’re you in Parenthood you are opening yourself up to Unlimited heartbreak whether you lose the kid or not lose the kid if you actually allow yourself to feel the thing of there there’s just like and and it and like we like I’ve said like the the the breaking of the heart is like breaking it open it just increases your capacity to love like I I am 100% confident I could not do the work that i’ do in the world if it wasn’t for having kids wow yeah like all the emotional work came from raising children all that all that emotional work came because seeing just kids and how they process emotions and how that’s our nature and and how like all these intellectual ideas of emotions were off like all of that like sitting in loving attention as my children threw temper tantrums in the middle of Whole Foods like that’s what I do for a living today that’s what that’s what I do you know so yeah it’s like yeah the the whole my whole capacity to Love Has Changed deeply because of my children and they constantly are constantly teaching me that is beautiful and really deeply compelling there’s yeah I don’t there’s no regrets right it’s meaning like I have I have a story that’s the other day Esme and I were Esme was coming to me asking for advice I’m lucky I have teenagers who come and like ask me for advice from time to time and she was telling I can’t remember all the things about it but she was telling me that like she was having this issue with this boy and I remember looking at her and saying that’s that’s me like you learned that from me like that that’s a when you were three years old I did this I did this you know I was not able to be with you in this way and this way emotionally and that created this fear in you of getting hurt and I see that happening now and I’m so sorry for so sorry for teaching you that and like I don’t like I remember that in that moment I remember thinking wow I wish I would have messed up a little bit more so I could have more moments like this right because like when you’re when you’re like when you’re you’re when the kids are like two years old you’re like oh my God I’m I’m messing it up and you are like like there’s no perfect parent so you’re definitely messing up your kids here and there and um but I never thought that like we could actually have like such a deep moment of connection over me messing up my kids right so it was this really yeah amazing thing that it’s not just like one moment it’s kind of like the unfolding that is it’s a large part of the power of having kids yeah what I’m struck with there is also the gift that that was for her because oh yeah so many of us have we have whatever upbringing we have and we come to love our parents as they are and wherever wherever they’re at and also we often go and do the work on like okay these are the patterns that I adopted and now I’m going to do the work on freeing myself of those patterns and as I free myself of those patterns I can love my parents as they are but I don’t necessarily expect them to in their context in their generation having different access to these tools or like the culture around self-exploration that they’re going to that we’re going to have a healing moment in that way but to the gift for her as a teenager to be able to have that experience with you where you’re owning your peace shamelessly and with love is a really cool thing yeah makes me feel a lot less concerned about whatever ways we might impart our patterns on our kids because those are just opportunities for that experience yeah I also remember like going oh it’s heal like as soon as I said it and as soon as she accepted it I’m like that’s that pattern is healed in her and which is like something that I don’t see very often like oh if there’s actually that acknowledgement like you can like it actually heals really quickly which is which is a cool which is a cool piece yeah that’s amazing yeah yeah it hasn’t that was three or four months ago I haven’t seen it come back up again so y that’s the opportunity of having kids like they they will they will with a big knife poke at everything everything that unreconciled in you I mean I remember early on when we found hand inhand parenting it was it was the first time that I felt like I was doing it right it was the first time that I felt like oh this is how I’m supposed to parent and so one of the things that I just discovered through parenting was like that listening to oh does this feel right because when I had such a clear understanding of like oh parenting was and then when it went oh that feels right there was this moment of oh this is how you do life like is not like you keep on iterating until you go oh that feels right and Har in hand parenting and that part of parenting was the first time that I had really felt that it was another big lesson for me personally and I and I can’t say enough good stuff about hand inhand parenting or about Tara who insisted that we use it so I was a little reluctant at the beginning yeah I really enjoyed that at the beginning of our 18-month course that was the first reading it was was like I presumed it to be a business course and the first book was listen from hand-in-hand parenting and it was about how to be with kids it’s like oh I see this is also how to be with CEOs totally is yeah um but I’m also curious at what ages did that for for asme and Uno did hand inand parenting come up and prior to that what what are some of the patterns that you were in what were some of the ways that you were parenting that ultimately imprinted on them and that you’ve learned from yeah so una Got Hand inhand parenting pretty much from birth as May didn’t get it till like two and a half years old and so that’s actually what I was apologizing for was stuff that had happened before that moment um with her I think the so for me I was very much in that I like the right way to parent is the way that I was parented which is like I think most people most people 90% of what they’re doing is what their parents did to them and then 10% is something that they had a problem with their parents and so they are overcorrecting like I just see a lot of that happen in society um and so so I was you know I mean I at the beginning of parenting I was more quick to shame I was I more quick to abandon more quick to punish more quick to have her listen to my voice rather than her own voice right like through compliments or through anything like that and so through the hand inand process and they don’t talk about any of this stuff it just happened through the hand inand process like we don’t shame our kids they might feel shame sometimes but like we actively make it a practice not to shame them we don’t punish them and you’ve met our kids it’s not like they’re like full mayhem out in the world they’re you know doing great cool things in the world and they’re they’re amazing yeah selfs self-sustained and so like none of that was required but I was definitely doing that kind of stuff at the beginning you know getting very frustrated and yeah yeah resisting the deep tissue and massage they were trying to give you yeah exactly exactly yeah and and thinking thinking that it like there’s a weird way in which like children can raise themselves like that’s the weird part is like if you can be in loving witness of children and you can draw boundaries like which is often challenging like the rest of it they can almost all do themselves is it it’s when you start like taking away their excitement Settle Down Johnny when you start taking away their sadness when you start taking away their temper tantrum then you stop them from being able to actually navigate the world and I think that’s one of the biggest things that I see in parenting generally is that people treat twoyear olds and fivey olds and seveny olds and 12 year olds and 16 year olds and 18 year olds like adults and they’re not it’s like like you don’t intellectualize with a 2-year-old their brain isn’t online they’re prefrontal they can’t do imaginary thinking what’s actually happening like you’ll see this you’ll see these um parents and they’ll be like okay Johnny well you shouldn’t do this and you should do this and the kids two years old but the kid is just 100% responding to the emotional presence of their parent yeah they’re not responding to the words they’re responding to like and that was the amazing thing is to watch kids just respond to how you are emotionally is it’s amazing like you get wound up they get get wound up you calm down they calm down it I remember unaa like if I was non presentes un would come over to my lap grab my face and like point it towards me and make me have eye contact with her and maybe she would say I love you Daddy it was like she was she was like this our field is not is not coherent right now our field is not not relaxed right now and so I my job as a kid is to get us back into connection wow and I I see that with kids all the time like they’re constantly looking they’re like they feel safe when there’s that connection between their them and their parents and if they don’t have it they freak out a little bit and and then need to regulate through emotions wow that that breaks my brain cuz my my perception is always of like parents are just just trying to be well regulated and the kids are like ah milk on the floor cry and the picture you just painted is much more of like that of an emotional support animal which like just is totally not my perception of kids but I can see it it’s that they are relating on in the early years only an emotional or physical or embodied level and yeah that would be such a beautiful invitation that’s constantly there to like a mirror that if you’re listening to it is a really beautiful guide and grounding to to emotional presence and if you’re not listening to it it’ll be everything that I described in the previous frame yeah yeah and and they do it what’s what’s really weird is to know that they do it when they feel feel safe or they have no choice so like our kids would like hold it all together when they were like somewhere else and then like when they get home they’d be like blah and it’s like to me be to be able to interpret that to learn to interpret that as oh they feel safe now they feel safe enough where they can like get back into emotional regulation through releasing a whole bunch of emotions and to see it as oh they’re releasing emotions so they can get back to connection instead of they are releasing emotions because they’re out of control or because they’re bad or because they’re um naughty or because they you know can’t control themselves to see like oh they know exactly what they’re doing they’re releasing a whole bunch of emotions so that they can get back into connection and they would do it consistently you if you just sit in loving attention of their emotional experience they will come back into connection it’s you know so they just know how to do it and and and the the bigger problem is that we don’t like I didn’t you know the bigger the bigger problem was that like they would do that and I would get disregulated by their emotion because I feel responsible or because I would feel overwhelmed by my own version of that that I wasn’t letting out and that was like the big blessing of Parenthood for me was that like every single emotion that I was not okay with I saw that in my kids and I leared how to be okay with it I leared how to release said I learned how to love it because of my children because I could see my children they welcomed every emotion oh I want everyone to hear this yeah one thing that’s bringing up for me is common tropes that I’ve seen out on social media or common advice people are like enjoy your kids while they’re in the stage where they love you because eventually they’re going to hate you or they’re gonna eventually they’re going to be 16 they’ll despise you and they’ll move out and it’s just like oh that that’s such a common reality that’s that is not my reality not only that like I noticed that like all my kids friends who know us want to be around us like oh yeah I believe it I yeah what I want to say is something I don’t know if it’s true but like what what comes to mind is like hey don’t hate your kids and they won’t hate you yeah there’s there’s something about like like when what like like when the kids hit teenage years which hand inhand parenting doesn’t really go into but when the kids hit teenage years there’s something that happens where like their job is to push against the pool there like their job is to push off against the edge of the pool and you’re the edge of the pool and it’s like their job and if you give them the the kind of the lane to swim in that’s all that’s really necessary and the lane is like you know you treat people with respect you contribute around you know you you contribute you treat people with respect and when you show that you can take responsibility you can have the freedom that’s all that seems to really be necessary I if you haven’t like completely emotionally messed them up by telling them that they can’t have certain emotions as kids and then they’ve never learned to regulate themselves that’s all that seems to be really necessary about it but most of the time the kids who are like hating their parents or have been told their whole life that they there’s some part of them that’s not okay it’s not okay for you to be sad it’s not okay for you to be angry it’s not okay for you to be scared it’s you know and so they they’ve been told that they’re not okay and why the should they want to be with or not hate somebody who’s been telling them that they’re not okay on some level for for years yeah not that any parent not that any parent is logically saying you’re not okay I mean some parents are criticizing all the time but like that’s the weird part is that the parents actually love the kids but they’re sending the signal that they need to be adjusted mostly because the parent is sending themselves the signal all the time that they need to be adjusted and so to not do that to your children requires you to love yourself you don’t want to mess your kids up love yourself yeah and that that’s sort of the trick for most people huh but and it also seems like uh there’s this there’s another way of putting it something about um not feeling ashamed of yourself yeah cuz I I got to say one of the ways that all of this is landing for me is like oh yeah this actually sounds amazing I want to do this but uh it seems easier if I could just be away from everybody else during this time right like if um like it seems no problem for me to be in loving awareness with my kid having temper tantrum in my own bubble but if I’m in an airport or something like that I I don’t know how I don’t know how to handle that yeah yeah those are the those are the best moments too those are the best moments yeah oh my God yeah I mean one of one of my favorite stories was in the Whole Foods as I mentioned and Esme just kicking and screaming and I’m containing her so she doesn’t knock things off the the the the shelf so I’m not I’m not holding her tightly but I’m like kind of like being a blocker to this three-year-old so she doesn’t rip things off the house and this like B me I live in a kind of hippy community and so this like little Old Hippie lady she’s like are you okay dear and Esme just stops dead looks at her and goes I’m just having my emotions and then she went back and did like her tempers handum like this awesome so yeah I say that they’re the they’re hard no out like to like okay we’re doing this right now in a Whole Foods or an airport on an airplane uh like I and you’re like worried that everybody’s going to be like and they are there’s people anybody like yeah like have a kid cry on an airplane then just look around you can tell who was told they couldn’t cry as kids they’re the aggravated ones in the in the airplane and um and and those are the places that erode away like that like that caretaking that erode away the co codependence it’s the thing that erodes you protecting your uh your reputation yeah yeah you are never going to parent and not have people tell you that you’re a bad parent like like there’s like people told Tara and I were bad parents and the people who told us that right now will say to us wow you got really lucky with your kids like we had nothing to do with it it just hilarious yeah in some way you had nothing to do with it you just submitted to the deep tissue massage that they were offering lovingly yeah that’s not what they mean by it but yes that is true but there’s also yeah yeah in here there’s the all the times that I’ve seen somebody in public with their kid and saying like no one wants to hear you cry I’m just imagining them saying I don’t want people to see you cry I don’t I wouldn’t let people see me cry like what are the different statements that they’re actually making there and that’s where like one of the things I think people get hung up on so much saying this as a non-parent aware of that is that people will insist like no no no I love my kids so much and that’s true and as we talked about in the episode how love gets confused what that means can mean a lot of different things and for a lot of people loving their kids means controlling them yeah managing them in the way that they were controlled and managed and or or the opposite or the opposite right yeah or or being un boundar with them that’s love love is to be un boundar and let them do whatever they want that’s another version of the same thing yeah this is the second time you’ve brought up boundaries as being something that can be pretty challenging I would love to hear more about that yeah so in general I find that the boundaries are a little bit harder for the mom than they are for the dad generally that’s not always true but that’s what I noticed to be the case um that like deep maternal thing like I think it’s a more challenging thing kids don’t like the way I would say it is that there’s like a part of a kid that’s like I want to be independent I want to do my own thing and there’s a part of the kid is like I want to feel safe and I need boundaries to feel safe and those two things create friction inside of the child and if you don’t give the boundaries they feel feel unsafe and so they start acting out more and more and more to try to get the boundaries and so the boundaries can be really gentle and they’re not and and not to be done at a distance like they it’s like stay close and insist so I wouldn’t be like okay brush your teeth I’d be like we’re brushing our teeth now we’re gonna go brush our teeth now right so it’s not like you need to go and do this it’s like we’re going to like there’s like a support and a gentleness in the boundaries I think one of the places that boundaries don’t get held in our society a lot with kids is like kids start yelling at their parents and like you wouldn’t let your kid yell at anybody else like that so what makes you what makes it okay that they’re yelling at you and so to be very clear like oh I see you’re angry let’s go get angry cool great no problem and we treat each other with respect and so this this is like I I’m not letting you do this and but the strange part is is that if you’re doing that then you also have to not you have to treat them with that same respect like imagine imagine like for me I remember this moment of imagining like oh imagine if there was some like 1,000 PB 10ft man or 20ft man yelling at me at the top of their lungs like what would that do to my system like a grizzly bear just being like respect I’d be freaked out and yet this is what this like and that’s what this little two-year-old’s dealing with if I’m like if I’m getting angry like that I am huge I am loud like and then to like like you know we leared this one thing about when the kids were really small that that like I would always nibble on them and it was all cute and everything but then they would start nibbling on me but it was biting and I’d be like I they shouldn’t be biting me but I was biting them and so to like if you want your kids to treat you with respect like treat them with respect if you know so it’s it’s a very boundar thing but it’s also a very respectful thing and that that balance is a little hard to find at times but that’s the that’s one of the big tricks is to treat them the way that you want to be treated treat them the way you want them to treat others they will mimic you way quicker than they will do what you tell them to do oh yeah definitely I’ve seen that in kids for sure I’d love to get like an example boundary like if your kids are yelling at you what are what are different ways that that boundary could be drawn that’s not forcing them to stop somehow in some control way or abusive way but also drawing clean respectful boundary yeah it would be it would be hey so that’s not how we talk to each other but if you’re angry let’s go get angry I really want you to be able to be pissed and then let’s come back to or if you just can talk to me with respect let’s do that it’s so sweet and then how would you how would you help your kid get go get angry I might even get angry with them we might go pound on a bed together or yeah get yeah we’ve yeah we’ve definitely gotten angry together and or sad together yeah like it the the otherness of it is like something that really hit me about that morning ceremony like this new idea that’s been coming to me is that like people want to be um like people want to be know that people are with them in it they don’t want to be like given advice or told what to do or judged or anything like that people want to oh like you’re here in this with me and and and it’s a basic principle but that’s very true with kids too kids want to know that you’re in it with them and if they feel that if they feel like you’re in it with them they have a lot of respect for you but if they feel like you’re doing it to them giving them advice I see that a lot with teenagers like I see a lot of teenagers shut down to their parents because the parent isn’t in it with them the parent is telling them what to do the parent is giving them advice the parent is worried about their choices the parent is trying to control what they’re doing through influence or whatever instead of just like oh yeah that sucks that like all your friends have just like gone to a party without you like you know again I I was on this hike recently where I just watched these two young college students talking and then like the adults just talking to them like I know something and instead of like listening to the wisdom of these two young kids and yeah it’s just something it’s something in that too there’s like a like when you were a college no college student wanted to be spoken to like that by you know no teenager like when you were a teenager you didn’t want a whole bunch of advice from your parents unless you asked right you know especially if that advice came with like I told you so or you have you done that yet or anything like that yeah yeah I love how much this is some you know different reflection of um how I see you with people in so many different scenarios situations and how I think how your coaching is yeah yeah yeah I’m in view with my kids a lot yeah one of the things that that does is it creates the space for them to be also your teacher yeah them to be issuing a deep tissue massage on your rough edges you’re nuts yeah we were this morning tera’s like do you remember that time when hesme said to somebody she said hey just let me have my feelings it was like six months ago do you remember that I’m like yeah it was me she said it to me we were around the dinner table I was trying to fix something you know yeah definitely then that’s the that’s the beauty of of having kids and and there is this weird piece about like also realizing like they can’t have like theoretical thought until they’re usually like whatever it is like I think that I think it’s like 15 16 years old but par but parents talk to them like that or they like their intellect isn’t really even online until they’re like eight they still believe in like Santa Claus and that we’re talking to them rationally and they’re just like full feeling machines they’re like in a dream state so it’s just it’s an interesting thing because you have to like part of parenting well is that you have to like live from their point of view you can’t live from your own point of view on them and that’s like a that’s a deep lesson in itself too yeah and circling that back around to one of my original fears and resistances around kids is but I’ll have to grow up or something something along those lines and there’s actually this other other frame of that like I’ll have one or more baby Yodas opening me up into into my emotional and that dream state like reality to the extent that I can meet them there yeah that’s beautiful that definitely yeah yeah and don’t make any mistake about it like you will be exhausted and you will be pushed to your limits and you will not have time for yourself and you will lose yourself and you will all that stuff happens too that’s part of the that’s part of the deep tissue massage yeah you’ll be judged you’ll be I’m also afraid of what it will do to our relationship I was 20 five six years old before I met Tara I went out drinking typically the way I would like pick up women at the time very dysfunctional I would just like sit down early on a bar and I would drink until somebody hit on me and uh and so I sat down and there was and there was a couple and they were an older couple for me at the time so I think they were probably like 35 and they just had this really great marriage and they were drinking and partying which was interesting but they were just so and I found out that they had kids and and I was like give me your advice like tell me what like how do you have such a great marriage because clear you guys love each other and you have a great marriage and you’re intimate and and you’re partying which you know 27 you’re like cool partying is married couple I could do that you know and um and they’re their response I has stuck with me for my whole life which is the most important thing in a marriage is to take care of yourself and then take care of the marriage and then take care of the kids sometimes you have to sacrifice yourself for taking care of the kids or taking care of the marriage but the priority is always take care of yourself first take care of the marriage second take care of the kids third because you can’t be in a good marriage if you haven’t taken care of yourself and you can’t be a good parent if you haven’t taken care of the marriage and that advice sticks with me I love it and it’s such an inversion of what most people say right yeah yeah it it reminds me oddly of like a Southwest Airlines thing where they say employees first customers second shareholders third because if the if the if the employees are happy the customers are happy the customers are happy the shareholders are happy yeah love it yeah it has always struck me that inversion and it’s very true and it’s very hard to execute like it’s very hard like especially in the first two or three years to prioritize yourself it’s really really hard but I remember when like I I remember when our I don’t know I think the second one was like 18 months old was really hard because we had been sleep deprived for years at this point and we were like questioning the marriage and Tarn and I were like oh I don’t know like we can’t fix anything and and some friend was just like you need a weekend you have not had a weekend together in like five years you just need a weekend so we figured out how to like get a weekend which we were not good at and it was like at the end of the weekend all of our problems were gone like we slept like 18 hours like three days in a row and we just connected and it was like wow really it was just about like connecting and getting sleep that was it was just like that practical yeah there’s the part of me that’s like oh if if you could do it after if you hadn’t done it for five years but you were able to do it why not be able to do it once a quarter if you actually prioritized it and planned for it but then I hear everybody with kids be like oh it’s been three years since we did any travel without our kids and also people don’t want to I imagine there’s like I don’t want to leave my kids the moment I leave I miss them so there’s some question in there there’s there’s there’s some part of my brain that I was wants to be like oh there’s a way to hack this and and there is there are people who are really good at hacking it that like I like I’ll tell my clients like get somebody if you can afford it get somebody 20 hours a week to help just in any way that you can like that makes a huge difference and or have a grandmother you know or somebody who’s always wanted a baby but how however you can get help I think it’s like really really important I think the other some other like really cool little hacks are take turns like I’ve noticed like you know there’s there’s been people that we know who have kids they get overwhelmed and then they they get divorced and somehow or another now they they used to both be working full-time and now they’re both working halftime and if they would have been working halftime when they were married they might not have gotten divorced right so there’s this thing that happens where you’re just so tired and all you’re focus on is like is the other person doing as much as me like it’s like that kind of it’s and and then everybody has to be working all the time instead of like take the day off I got today tomorrow I’m gonna take off like that is a far healthier to give each other both a day off you know tricks like there’s like there’s just tricks like that where you can fully get your yeah but yeah it doesn’t matter you can do all that stuff and you’re still going to be overwhelmed by your kids it’s times yeah what one other question came up for me just a moment ago and then evaporated it was really I wanted it um guess I don’t know okay there’s one other thing that I just yeah there’s one other thing that I just noticed is that like one of the coolest things that like that made uh being a parent such a strong spiritual practice for me is to notice that every time I was triggered I was projecting onto my kid if I wanted to to go you’re selfish it meant I was being selfish if I wanted to go why don’t you just listen it meant I wasn’t listening if I was saying you need to calm down it meant I needed to calm down to see that every single time I was triggered I was making that child into my trigger I wasn’t just like projecting it onto them I was making it them like you need to calm down tells a kid that they’re not calm you’re naughty tell kid they’re naughty right so you’re defining them and and so you’re it’s like literally the mechanism to make them into you to hand over your patterns and if you really see that it’s such a cool thing because it’s like every time you get triggered you’re like that’s me that’s me that’s me yeah yeah uhuh I see how all I see how raising kids um was such gold for your journey In This Moment it’s like yeah what an amazingly tight feedback loop immediate immediate yeah W yeah yeah I can’t wait for our kids to listen to this call us out on how far we have fallen and you can be like yeah and I’m sorry that’s not how I wanted to be with you oh yeah and then you’ll cry together my favorite that sounds like a joke but I cry all the time that sounds like that feels like a good end yeah yeah really beautiful thank you so much yeah thank you Joe thank you for coming on again Alexa yeah good to have you here more Alexa please it’s so good to be with you yeah okay and thank you everybody for listening and I’m gonna say that with more feeling and thank you everybody for listening thank you for laughing over me Joe one more time with I’m going to leave that in good one more time with feeling thank you thank you okay I am really grateful that people listen to this and I’d love to hear how it impacted you and if there’s somebody that you think would enjoy it please send it their way or don’t or shoot us a question or leave us review one star five stars whatever love you all take care bye bye