Finding Balance: School, Mindfulness, and Respecting Others Opinions

As the summer sun sets and the school bells start to ring, we all feel the rush of emotions that come with the changing seasons. This week on Steel Roses podcast, I'm opening up about the whirlwind of feelings parents experience during this transitional period and why it's okay to feel overwhelmed. We'll also give you a sneak peek into our exciting fall series featuring powerhouse women who are redefining the conversation around women's roles in society. Plus, I am sharing some profound insights on the practice of meditation—how it helps us sift through the noise in our minds to find our true selves and some practical tips to get you started on this journey of mindfulness.

Ever wondered how siblings raised under the same roof can come away with such different outlooks? My brother and I dive into our own childhood experiences and how they've shaped our divergent views on organized religion. Despite our differences, we've learned to respect each other's beliefs and find common ground. This episode underscores the importance of dialogue and understanding in maintaining strong relationships, even when opinions differ. Whether you're grappling with differing beliefs in your own family or just curious about the dynamics of sibling relationships, this episode is packed with heartfelt stories and valuable lessons on peaceful coexistence. Tune in and join the conversation!

Chapters

• 0:00 Elevating Women's Voices Through Meditation
• 12:17 Differing Perspectives on Religion and Family
• 16:52 Respecting Differences for Peaceful Coexistence

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello everybody, welcome to Still Rose's podcast. This podcast was created for women, by women, to elevate women's voices. Happy Thursday. It's funny because yesterday, while I'm recording this, on Wednesday, and this whole time, my husband and I kept saying to each other gosh, it really feels like a Friday. It's not, it's Wednesday. Wednesday, but something light in the air and at first I thought to myself I can't put my finger on it. What could be lightening us up a little bit? Oh wait, it's because school starts next week and there is a light at the end of this tunnel. I'm gonna laugh about that for days and weeks and I am so excited. But it's interesting because it is slightly bittersweet, because I'm now, I'm having these moments with the kids, or we're, you know, goofing around together and everything, and I do enjoy that quite a bit.

Speaker 1: 0:57

It's just, it's it's been a roller coaster and you everyone who's been listening through August knows the many breakdowns that I've had because guess what? Everybody? That's normal. It's normal to feel overwhelmed. It is normal to feel like you don't know what you're doing. It's normal to feel like you're doing everything wrong. It's normal to question yourself. All of this is normal. It's normal to cry If you feel like that's what you need. I'm gonna say it until there's no breath left in my body that it is normal what you're going through, everything you're going through. I don't even really need to know it, I can just tell you it's probably normal Because we've built, we build up this image in our head of like, oh, what we should, it's the shoulds, that's a real S word what we should be doing, versus like what we are doing. And then it backfires because that's never really meant to be for you. But in any case, now that I think about it, it's probably because we know school's starting next week. My daughter's just got their shipment of new little school outfits for them, so they're upstairs exploring and hanging things up in their closet and I get to record with you guys. So, yeah, last week of August it's making it happen.

Speaker 1: 2:17

So if you're not already following on social media, please make sure that you're following the Steel Roses Instagram and or Facebook account. You can also follow me on LinkedIn. Everything's linked in the description of the episode so you can easily find what you need. And we're starting the fall series September 8. And I've already started the promotion for it, so you'll see that online.

Speaker 1: 2:37

But when I tell you that the guests for September are just rock stars. I mean the whole fall, september, october, november into December like the caliber of guests that we have is humbling to me, because these are these amazing powerhouse women who have really worked to try to change the game and change the conversation, and the honor I feel just engaging with them is. I mean, I can't even I can't even express to you how honored I feel that these people reach out and want to be involved in the podcast. So it just subscribe if you, or tell your friends to subscribe or you know, like, follow us on social so you can see what's what, um, okay, so all that aside, I had a couple thought starters for today's episode that I wanted to just run into um, so one of them is, um, a quote that I thought about meditation.

Speaker 1: 3:36

You guys know how I feel about meditating. You know how important it is to my life and how much it's made, it's changed the whole trajectory of my life. When I tell say, I can't say enough how important it is for you to meditate and do affirmations and visualizations. It's crucial, it's literally critical to your life. You have to start doing it and, as I said, it changed mine. It changed my whole world. We went from I went from struggling and angry and bitter and just going into a place that was not good, to really living a very fulfilled life and really feeling lit up, more lit up than I've ever felt before since I was young, just lit up and excited. So you have to do it. So, anyway, I saw this quote and it made me want to mention it to you guys, because the quote is meditation isn't about trying to clear the noise of your mind. It's about reminding yourself that the noise isn't your identity, and then this clears the mind.

Speaker 1: 4:46

The reason why this struck me is because this is something my stepson had said to me too, when I was talking to him about meditating and how important it is and trying to get him to do it. I, by the way, I do this to everybody Like this is like my shtick, anyone who's interested anyway. So he expressed interest in meditating and I was giving him a couple of tips, like how to get started, what to do, what are the first steps, because there is a process to it. For a really long time, I thought I was meditating and I was, but there's more powerful ways to do it.

Speaker 1: 5:23

But one of the biggest things that people say is well, I can't quiet my mind. I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to stop the thoughts. I don't know how to. I just don't know how to completely silence myself. And the big thing here is you're not supposed to really silence yourself, but you're supposed to be able to bring your focus back. So there's loads of noise in all of our minds, including myself. I meditate every single day and I always. My mind always wanders. I start to think about work, I start to think about my kids, I start thinking about the podcast, I start thinking about doing things like that's all of us, that's everybody. Everyone does that. The goal here is not to completely eliminate all the thoughts, but it's to know that. Imagine as if meditating is like turning on a flashlight. The longer you get to focus in on whatever the flashlight is pointed at, the bigger the light stream gets right. So let's say, your focus is the light stream. So in the beginning it's really slim because it's noisy and you're trying to get yourself settled.

Speaker 1: 6:26

I strongly recommend meditation music for this, like I will. Youtube free music. Apple has music you can look up. I mean, there's specific megahertz that you actually really do want to listen to when you're meditating, because it actually does help put you into alignment, which is incredibly interesting. Musicology one of the guests is going to talk about it September 8th. There's literal music waves that help to get you into a better spot.

Speaker 1: 6:59

Sneak, peek Nurse Blue. Check out her playlist on Spotify. It's good. So, anyway, nurse Blue's playlist on Spotify check that out. That's just a side note. But so when you're meditating, you do want to put some music on to help you kind of get yourself centered, and then it's okay if your mind wanders just like a flashlight in a dark tunnel. You're going to take your flashlight, bring your focus back to your breath or to the feeling of your hand on the chair, bring your focus back to this feeling of your bottom sitting.

Speaker 1: 7:36

And the reason why I got distracted is because there's a lot of noise outside and it's like a giant airplane. Nevertheless, I wanted to point that out. So that's a big worry, for most people is like when they try to meditate, I can't do it, there's too much noise. Yeah, there's going to always be noise, but you just learn how to bring your focus back quicker, which is what I inevitably end up doing so. I do 10 minutes of meditation, straight meditation, where I'm just getting myself into the zone, and I've told you guys this before when I meditate, I focus on what it feels like when I'm in a pool and I'm floating In my mind, jenny getting closer to, I let go completely and I let the alignment carry me. That's what I focus on and my mind always wanders and then I bring it back.

Speaker 1: 8:40

It's okay, you know visual affirmations. Write two or three down that really resonate with you. Vet them. You can look up affirmations online, but you want to word them a little bit. You know, specifically, I'm here for that. By the way, if you guys are trying to figure out affirmations but you want to word them a little bit, you know, specifically, I'm here for that. By the way, if you guys are trying to figure out affirmations and you want to send some my way like I'd help, I'd be happy to help you out, but it's really just a matter of practice.

Speaker 1: 9:03

But I again, like I cannot stress enough like, do it, you have to do it. Like you'll change your life, and if you're concerned about, you know, your partner in this and you're like, well, I'm going to be doing all this meditating. I'm trying to get us into, you know, alignment with a better path, but my partner is really negative on this. What is that going to do for me? Maybe I should just not do it at all. Well, yeah, I guess, but you don't have to both be doing it. You yourself could be doing the meditating and doing the visualizations and you know, making that connection. Your partner doesn't have to have anything to do with it. They can be as negative as they want which kind of sucks but your aura and vibrations will eventually rub off on everybody around you, that's in your inner circle. So again, just do it. I can't tell you enough.

Speaker 1: 9:53

There's so much proof out there that this works. That like. How could you not Like, how could you not do it? So that's topic thought starter number one. I wanted you guys to hear it, hear it here. You're going to hear it over and over again, always, always from me Meditation, big deal. Make sure you do it.

Speaker 1: 10:12

Guided meditations are available all the time. Kathy Heller has a great I think it's like $13 a month. You get meditations from her. She's where I one of the she. I started with her like two years ago. Amazing guided meditations. The Miracle Morning. You guys heard me talk about that. Hal Elrod Great, great practices in that book and he really guides you through the steps and gives you a lot of examples. So if you're very unsure about how to do it, buy the book. It's incredibly, incredibly important.

Speaker 1: 10:43

Now, the other thing I wanted to talk about was perspectives. There's a difference in people's perspectives for everything basically. So I see it a lot professionally in my day to day where we will all be on a conference call together and when we hang up from the conference call I'll say like I'll jot down my notes and say, oh, this is what I heard, and then, literally, like two other people, be like no, no, we heard something else. And then we have to come together and be like, wait, what did we hear? And it's just incredibly interesting, like the way that we translate what we're hearing. And so to take it a step further, outside of your professional life, because professionalism you can figure it out there. You can write recaps, people can align. That's kind of easy to deal with.

Speaker 1: 11:34

What's not easy to deal with is when you start to think about the perceptions that people have, let's say, within your family. And if you have siblings, if you are blessed with siblings. Siblings are an amazing thing. I can guarantee you that if you go and approach one of your siblings and say, you know, what did you think of how our childhood was? Or what did you think of mom and dad when we were growing up, like if there's things that, like you remember, you bring it to them and I can almost guarantee you maybe in some instances they'll remember the same thing, but they will have a different opinion about how exactly it happened, like what transpired. And it's crazy because you all grew up in the same house.

Speaker 1: 12:17

I don't talk about my family, my personal family, my brothers that much on this podcast, mostly because it doesn't really fit, but for this topic it does. But there have been many instances where my older brother and I would just chat with each other about various things and his perception of how we grew up was is incredibly. It is almost a total 180 from my perception of how we grew up and he has this outlook of you know that he was the oldest and he took care of us and you know he looked out for everybody and in his mind that's how it was when we were growing up. My perception was that I was left to myself having to be independent, having to depend on myself and nobody was really looking out for me, and that I had to, not so much I was busy taking care of myself, but that I always kept an eye on my older brother too and made sure that he was all good. We're only two years apart that's why I mentioned him, because we're so much. We were closer trajectory through school and stuff. So it's just very interesting to look at the different perspectives and then even really to look at the whole honestly nature versus nurture, because when you and your siblings all grew up in one household and then you know, as you get older, everyone goes their separate ways, starts living their own lives it is incredibly interesting to also see how the values develop differently in each person. So and I'll use my family again as an example my older brother is a lot more strict with his values and he um aligns more with organized religion. That's that comforts him, that's something that he enjoys, that he likes, that.

Speaker 1: 14:12

For me, I'm not a fan of organized religion. In my opinion, once human hands touch something, it becomes tainted. I feel that way about a lot of things, actually spreadsheets mostly but personally, organized religion, I feel like, is tainted in a lot of ways because it's controlled by humans. It's not controlled by the creator, the infinite creator. It's controlled by humans on this earth who deem what's appropriate and what's not appropriate and whether. What are the rules going to be? And if you look at the history of certain religions, you can see the immense amount of corruption that flows through them.

Speaker 1: 15:02

And I had picked up a book once, just randomly, when I was in my I guess, mid-ish 20s to late 20s it was like early 2000s. I still would go to the library. I remember going to the library and I just picked up a random book about, um, I was raised catholic, so it was about the vatican and I just was like you know what? I don't really know that much about my faith, I don't know about the vatican. Like let me read up on this.

Speaker 1: 15:28

And it turned out to be this wildly interesting book where it talked through the different decades and different you know parts of the organized religion for the catholic faith and like how incredibly different things were, like at one point in time, um, in order to when in our, in catholicism, you can go to confession, to receive the sacrament of confession and then you get penance and you're forgiven for your sins. Right, like I'm not saying I'm quite right, because, again, I haven't participated in a while. That's a practice you're supposed to do. It's to humble you. It's to go to church and admit your sins and it's supposed to be a humbling experience. I'm here for that. But I'd like to point out that at some point in time the church used to charge a fee per sin, depending on how badly it was, and then that's how you received absolution for your sins. It feels like the infinite creator would not have done that, but man did. So you see where I'm going with this. There's another period of time in church where the Pope would have um concubines and the Pope would have um, the Pope would have wives, and just at the Vatican, and it was acceptable.

Speaker 1: 16:52

So there's a lot that I take with a grain of salt, because there's such a, there's a human fingerprint, and once there's a human fingerprint on something, it is tainted. It no longer has to me. It's real. It's not validity, basically because of this, because it's tainted. That's my opinion. I can't not think that, because I hear so many things and then I do my own research. That's a big one for me. You know I'm here for it, advocating for researching.

Speaker 1: 17:21

If you don't agree with something, this is just something that I don't particularly agree with. It's like a perspective, right? So older brother is organized religion. I respect this because I was brought up this way. I'm more spiritual. I believe in an infinite creator. I believe that people are touched here on earth from the infinite creator, but I don't believe in the organization part of it. I don't believe in the business side of it. I don't. I'm not on with that. And then you have my younger brother, who went total opposite and doesn't do anything as far as I know. I haven't spoken to him in a while, but as far as I know they're him and his wife are not religious at all and I'm not sure if they're spiritual now, but they're definitely not religious. So it's very interesting to me because if you look at the three of us, we were all raised in a very somewhat strict Catholic household and we all took these very different paths. And so it's the perception of how we took information in and if you can see it amongst your siblings and you all grew up in the same home just imagine people out in the world. The perceptions are different now, just because the perceptions are different does not mean that we cannot coexist peacefully.

Speaker 1: 18:45

There are many people out there that think that if we don't agree on every single point, that there can be no relationship. But strong relationships do not need alignment. 100% Agreement is like identical opinions. Excuse me, we need alignment, not agreement. Agreement is identical opinions. Alignment is just sharing values. My older brother and I share similar values. We truly do. Regardless of our faith beliefs, we share similar values. We respect each other for that.

Speaker 1: 19:22

You know, like there's things like that that unfortunately today people feel like they cannot coexist in a space unless people 100% agree with each other. This whole there was. You know there was a lot of noise at one point around anti-vaxxers versus vaxxers. Like you know, kids who got vaccines versus people who did want to get vaccines, and it was like this big to do I don't care if someone's kids aren't vaccinated, that's not really my problem, that's their problem. My kids will be vaccinated and they'll be fine. Fine, but your child's the one who's at risk, not mine. So I'm not.

Speaker 1: 19:54

You know, like do you go to? I hope you get where I'm going with this, like we can all be here and we can all still coexist peacefully. We can respectfully, um, occupy the same space. We can agree to disagree, it's okay, like you don't have to force your opinion down someone's throat and vice versa. I don't really, um, I don't do well when people try to force upon me because I'm just like, okay, that's nice, it's not my opinion, um, but it's something that that has been bothering me and I wanted to point it out, because strong relationships don't need agreement, we just need alignment of on values and as long as those core values are there, the rest of it really doesn't matter. Your husband, your husband as well, you're married, like, just because you don't agree with each other on every single point does not mean you cannot remain married. You can still be in alignment with each other. Your core values are there, you're all set Agree to disagree on the rest of it, like it doesn't matter, you really don't have to agree 100% of the time.

Speaker 1: 20:54

So, which is something else I wanted to put out there as a thought starter, really give it some thought. If there's relationships in your life that you feel like have been, you know, problematic or you know, troublesome, because there tends to be arguments like just agree to disagree, don't discuss the topic, don't bring it up. My older brother and I have different political views too. We don't bring it up. We talk about our kids. We talk about our family. We talk about work. We talk about houses. There's so many other things you could talk about. You don't have to talk about something that you don't agree with. Not a big deal. Let's use our heads a little people. Okay, um, okay.

Speaker 1: 21:29

So, on that note, I'll leave you with those two thought starters. Those are just things I was kicking around a little bit that I wanted to mention to you guys. Um, we'll pick it up again next week. Only two more episodes left in the summer series. After these episodes air, we go into the fall series. Um, again, I I gratefully, gratefully, gratefully appreciate all of you who've been leaving reviews. It's been a huge, huge help, so thank you so much for that. Check out the resources page on stillroseswomencom. We had two new people join the resources section, so there's more to look at there, and if you guys need anything, you can always reach out via the text that's in the podcast description. I am grateful for all of you. Thank you for listening and being here with me today, and I'll see you on the next one. Take care.