Dear Husband,

P.S. I would also LOVE if YOU tell me what makes your Father’s Day the BEST FATHERS DAY for YOU!!!!!!!!!

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I love it! She’s so crystal clear about what she wants and needs. I hope this inspires you to ask for what you want this Mother’s Day. And all ways.

Take responsibility for your happiness.

:: Do you want the day off?
:: Do you want to be with your partner and children the whole day?
:: Would you like to be with your own mother? Friends?
:: Do you want a massage or a pedicure?
:: Do you want some time alone? An hour…or 24?
:: Do you want to eat a certain meal?

Don’t wait for your family to read your mind or hope that they will magically just know what you want. I guarantee you THAT is a recipe for disaster. It doesn’t work that way. YOU are in charge of your experience. Set your family up to succeed. Because I promise you, they want you to have a great day. And they want to know they made you feel as special as you are to them.

Give them the gift of giving you what your heart desires.

Right now take a minute and ask yourself, “How do I want to feel on Mother’s Day?” And then, “What needs to happen so I can feel that way?”

Be honest with yourself. Be clear with your people.

:: You expect presents? Great! Tell them.
:: You want to sleep in on Sunday? Communicate that Friday (and Saturday!)
:: You need brunch at a certain restaurant? Fabulous. Hand your partner the number of the restaurant to make the reservation. Or better yet, make the reservation yourself.

NO HINTING! People need clear and kind communication. The
result? Your happiness. And when mama’s happy everyone is happy.

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I know what you might be thinking: ”But if they loved me, they would know what I want.”

Really?
REALLY?!?

Stop. Stop, stop, stop. People cannot read your mind. It’s not fair to expect that of others.

Asking for what you want = getting what you need.
Done.

Remember this on Mother’s Day and always…
To feel great you must communicate.
And be sure to appreciate – because what you appreciate, appreciates.

I want you to feel celebrated this weekend. I want you to have a fabulous, joy and love-filled day. You deserve it. Decide how you want to feel and then tell the people around you how to help you make that happen. They will LOVE you for this.

Here’s to healthy parenting, partnering, and personhood.
xo,
Carrie

Back in January I received an email from Matt Monarch. Matt and his wife Angela Stokes-Monarch are, in my opinion, the king and queen of the raw foods world. I was so excited to hear from him. Why did he contact me, you ask? Matt and Angela recently welcomed a brand new baby daughter, Oria Berry.

Inspired by the ideas and practices of natural birth and healthy family living, they decided to gather many of the luminaries in the area of conscious parenting and offer a FREE online summit. And, I’m honored to say I’ve been included! Click here to learn more.

In addition to myself, the list of speakers includes some of my friends and heroes, such as:

• Sarah Buckley, MD
• Jan Hunt
• Naomi Aldort
• Barbara Harper
• Michael Mendizza
• Mary Jackson

Among many others!
Click here to register for this amazing event.
 
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Yes indeed, in June I’ll be heading east and spending five weeks on the road visiting friends and family, AND gathering with some Evolve 2012 participants. With their communities in mind, we’ve created a series of private workshops in 7 cities. I can’t wait to meet some of the people in my year-long program who I have only known virtually up until this point.

At the end of July I’ll head back to Austin, catch my breath, sleep in my own bed for a week or two then it’s back on the road. This time heading west. Again, I’ll be meeting with my Evolve 2012 folks in 5 cities. I can’t wait!

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This tour is pretty set, however, I would LOVE to meet you and speak in your area. If you are interested in hosting a talk or workshop please email me. We’ll see what’s possible – whether it be sooner or later.

Here’s to freedom, friends and summertime fun!

You want some of that? Well, let’s do.

Your Burning Questions… Answered! is a half-day, LIVE Q&A session, limited to 10 people. As a participant, you will have an opportunity to bring to the table your #1 parenting concern and I will address it with a special blend of creative tools, useful inspiration and proven science. The brilliance of this format is not only the answer you’ll get to YOUR burning question, but by hearing what other parents are wrestling with, you’ll gain more insight into your own state of being and begin to see the many resolutions available to you. Things naturally start to fall into place.

The guided session will bring together an intimate and dedicated group who want to dive deeper into their parenting experience. The sessions are well-paced and I can promise you won’t be bored.

If you’ve been missing my classes and workshops, I invite you to join me. If you want to take the EVOLVE experience deeper, this is it! And even if you are just needing a re-set, whatchya waiting for?!

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Photo by Larissa Rogers

More information can be found here. I do hope you join me!

“Carrie, you are fantastic! My cup was full after the first half hour together! I got so many insights out of our time. Thanks for sharing your many insights.”

“Thank you, Carrie. I am so grateful to have your guidance and help. You have a gift. I felt a space in front of me today. A hopefulness. It’s something I haven’t experienced in quite some time. Today, I felt a glimmer of life beyond this ‘period’. I am so grateful.”

Photo by Larissa Rogers

I am happy to share two opportunities you won’t want to miss. Just write your favorite self-care activity in the comment section on my Facebook page for a chance to win a Yummy Mummy Self-Care Package from me and Renee Trudeau.

I’ll draw a name randomly on Mother’s Day and the winner will receive:

» A copy of the beautifully illustrated, award-winning book The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal: How to Reclaim, Rejuvenate and Re-Balance Your Life from nationally recognized life balance expert, Renee Peterson Trudeau.

» A free teleclass with Renee on The Transformative Power of Self-Care (meet Renee here)

» A chance to win the Yummy Mummy Year-of-Self-Care Package (winner will be announced on Mother’s Day); learn more.

Can you imagine winning an entire YEAR of self-care books, resources, a retreat, a built-in-tribe and more? Hop on over to my Facebook page and share your favorite self-care activity!

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Photographs Copyright Renee Trudeau 
 
 

She’s been in this world for over a year,
and in this world not everything’s been examined
and taken in hand.

The subject of today’s investigation
is things that don’t move themselves.

They need to be helped along,
shoved, shifted,
taken from their pace and relocated.

They don’t all want to go, e,g., the bookshelf,
the cupboard, the unyielding walls, the table.

But the tablecloth on the stubborn table—
when well-seized by its hems—
manifests a willingness to travel.

And the glasses, plates,
creamer, spoons, bowl,
are fairly shaking with desire.

It’s fascinating,
what form of motion will they take,
once they’re trembling on the brink:
will they roam across the ceiling?
fly around the lamp?
hop onto the windowsill and from there to a tree?

Mr. Newton still has no say in this.
Let him look down from the heavens and wave his hands.

This experiment must be completed.
And it will.

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Photograph from Kiss Me I’m Polish

A love note from me to you can be found here (go on, click it). The link will deliver a downloadable, printable pdf that includes a page of pre written messages—as well as one of blanks for you to customize.

Sending simple messages of kindness to yourself, and tucking them away in drawers, books, your laundry basket or car trunk… is an easy and delightful way to take care of yourself. Go. Have fun!

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Meet Daniel Hope, counselor and creator of The Commitment Project. Through The Commitment Project, Daniel works with couples to help them establish healthy and realistic expectations in their marriages. He’s a new friend, a great guy and wrote this incredible guest blog post for our community. Let’s give him a warm welcome!

Giving Your Relationship an MRI

Last week I showed the couples in my marriage workshop how to interpret the behavior of others in a new and refreshing way.

I learned a technique from a seasoned business coach who had been hired to help our office work more effectively as a team.  I learned a lot from him with his giant pads of paper and colorful diagrams he would draw on them. But one technique in particular really stuck with me and I hope you will find it useful, too.

This business coach taught me that before I can assume I know the motivation behind another person’s actions, I should always do an MRI.  In this case the MRI doesn’t stand for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (for all you E.R. fans), for our purposes it stands for Most Respectful Interpretation.  We must ask ourselves, “What is the most respectful interpretation of other people’s actions?”

The MRI in Action

What do you do when someone cuts you off in traffic?  Do you get angry?  Do you make assumptions about their apparent disregard for safety and property?  Well, that’s what I would normally do myself, but thanks to this technique, I am now able to complete my drive to and from my office with little to no stress.

Here is how it works:  Just this morning a fellow motorist sped past me and then immediately cut in front of me, forcing me to hit my brakes.  But it was okay because, after doing the MRI, I was empowered to assume that he was rushing to be with his wife who was about to have a baby. And who wouldn’t want to cheer on an expectant dad rushing to welcome his new baby into the world?

Now you may ask the obvious question here, “What if he wasn’t really on his way to the hospital?”  And the obvious answer is: “He probably was not”.  Most likely he was just a discourteous/reckless driver running late to work.  But I truly don’t know the whole story and the interpretation I am illustrating here is much more satisfying, don’t you think?  This one change in my perception has turned my daily commute into a consistently pleasant experience, free of the conflict that has often been known to spoil my day.

You notice how I said that I was ‘empowered’ to make my positive assumption about this motorist?  That is exactly what this practice does, it empowers us to give people the benefit of the doubt, even if they don’t seem to deserve it.

Crumbs in the Butter

This brings me back to the marriage workshop.  It is one thing to give a discourteous driver the benefit of the doubt and quite another thing to do this sort of thing with our partner.  After all, our partners know where all of our buttons are and they certainly know how to push them.  But our relationship with our partner is also so much more important than a relationship with an anonymous motorist — and that is why we really need the MRI in our closest relationships.

I asked two brave volunteers to demonstrate the MRI for the class.  I promised them that I would give them an innocuous enough topic to get them started.  In my scenario the wife had come into the kitchen to find that apparently, once again, her husband had left crumbs in the butter.  This may seem like a pretty light-hearted example, but I’ll bet if you were to examine some of the arguments you and your partner get into, the hot button issue would often appear pretty harmless to the objective observer (towels on the floor, volume too loud, etc.).  But in our closest relationships we are rarely objective are we?  Something as simple as crumbs being left in the butter can send us reeling and set off one of those infamous ‘discussions’ that last until 2 am and actually sounds a lot more like an argument.

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Accessing Our Second Consciousness

When it comes to communication, much of what I teach is about moving past our knee-jerk reaction and accessing what therapist Terry Real would call our Second Consciousness.  Real does a great job of summarizing this in his latest article:  Deciding: to be right or be married?  It is several pages long, but well worth the read.

First Consciousness is that initial state in which Real explains, “someone’s doing something to you, or you to them, and the natural logic is a straight line toward retaliation or escape.”  It is very easy to default to this First Consciousness state, but it does not serve us in our intimate relationships.  What serves us best is when we opt to tap into our Second Consciousness.

Our Second Consciousness puts us in the room with our partner, in that relationship, in that discussion and helps us realize that our partner is not our enemy.

Giving your relationship an MRI

I asked my couple what the most respectful interpretation of the crumbs in the butter might be and there were a number of suggestions.  I noticed none of them were, “my partner doesn’t care about me” or “my partner has no respect for the few things I ask of them”.  The most respectful interpretation ended up being that he didn’t leave crumbs in the butter after all, it was left by someone else, maybe the babysitter, maybe their oldest child.

Now she was accessing her Second Consciousness and she had empowered herself to give her husband’s actions the most respectful interpretation.  Don’t get me wrong, she still has every right to discuss this “crummy” incident with him.  And maybe she would find that he was guilty of being careless, but you can imagine that the discussion now would be much more productive than if she had gone in with both guns blazing — fueled by an underlying assumption that her husband doesn’t care about her.

Opening Our Heart

In our relationships we have a right to our feelings.  When we feel slighted or neglected, we owe it to our partner to let them know this.  In my workshop we went on to demonstrate step-by-step several ways to communicate these feelings in a genuine and intentional way.  The MRI puts us into the right frame of mind to open our heart to our partner and to give them a chance to understand us and open their heart to us.

The MRI helps us live more peaceful and intentional lives by transforming reckless drivers into expectant fathers.  It also helps us realize that, while our partners may appear careless with the butter and reckless with our feelings, they are actually deep-down loving and caring people who have been put into our lives to become even better.  In the process, they make us better people, too.

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Learn more about Daniel Hope and The Commitment Project here.

What if you can wake up with a new outlook towards money, overnight?

When I am feeling funny around money I turn to my friend, Financial Therapist, Bari Tessler.

Financial Therapy Pioneer & Mommypreneur, Bari provides a radically healing, totally practical, and deeply supportive approach towards getting clean and clear with finances. Her’s is a powerful, playful way of getting to the root of our financial healing, and turns any budgeting dread or bill-paying angst inside out and upside down.

I don’t use this space to promote other’s programs—come to think about it, ever—but this one is a perfect match for you, my community. And is why I am now a proud, official affiliate of Bari’s programs. I would love for you to reap the benefits of her unique gifts including the Wake Up With Money – Group Coaching Program starting soon. Heck, after working with Bari you may skip to the mailbox and back kissing your bills. I would love to see that!

You can check out Wake Up With Money – Group Coaching Program here. See for yourself if it’s a good fit. Again, I could not recommend her, and this program, more wholeheartedly.

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