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This is a throwback to February of 2019, but the lesson is just as relevant today!

My college girl is amazing. I’m not playing favorites, all my girls are amazing. On the daily, my breath stops when I think how lucky I am. My girls are strong, smart, capable, and move through life with dogged determination. So, why do I crumple like a cheap tent every time they have a big issue? Because I’m a mom. As such, my knee-jerk reaction is to fix problems for my kids to save them pain. However, as a life coach, I know that pain and struggle are just what’s needed to create grit and resilience. We can’t control the pain and suffering of our kids, but we CAN control our own—by being a calm compassionate spectator and staying in our own lane.

But this isn’t just about your kids. It could be that you are easing into (or crashing into) your spouse’s lane, your parents’, your co-workers’, or the president of the PTA’s. Control freaks exert their energy in a ton of scenarios that might resolve themselves without their very particular assistance that is given unrequested.

This was my specialty—fixing problems that were not mine. Not in my lane. Not even on my highway. I was a champ at finding a solution to a problem that the other person didn’t know they had yet. I did everything outside my lane and used up all my energy, only to let the things in my lane crash and burn.

I would construct elaborate scenarios of how to get my boss to do things my way while leaving sensitive financial documents on the copy machine. Or the year I micro-managed our office Christmas party and forgot to buy gifts for my youngest daughter. Walmart at closing on Christmas Eve is no place you want to be.

We only have so much energy and focus at our disposal. Doesn’t it make sense to use it where it’s really needed? Then when people ask for your help, you have the energy, compassion, and focus to decide if you want to help or if that help at that time doesn’t fit into your budget, schedule, or priorities. When we value our time and energy by staying in our own lane, we use that energy more wisely for things that bring us greater joy and less resentment. If you want a little help sitting on your hands, write me at terrif@findyourpride.org or go HERE for more help.

XO

Terri

If you’ve landed in Stress City, this week’s blog is a good one. It’s a throwback to the summer of 2021–enjoy!!

Hello, again. I’m finally back in the groove of my “normal” life after 4 weeks of adventure in the wilds of South Africa and watching my eldest tie the knot in New York City. Actually, I’ve been back for 2 weeks, and I’m just now able to write and create again. Because it seems, even really cool adventures take a toll.

It took me a while to recover my balance and believe in my ability to inspire others, due to four weeks of too much change, too many people, and not enough alone time for my inner introvert to feel safe. For the last two weeks, I’ve been awash in self-doubt. Right up until I accepted that I was locked in a stress response and started to ask for help.

My help started in the form of the best book I’ve read in a LONG time called What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey. It’s about how childhood trauma affects you. It’s a subject with which I’m well acquainted since I was raised by wolves (really interesting and hilarious wolves, but wolves nonetheless). It seems that when I’m in unfamiliar surroundings without my safe space, I get triggered and shut down in various ways. Like a turtle, I pull my head in and freeze.

My month of adventure triggered this freeze response, and I couldn’t regulate myself. I asked my safe people for help, and slowly the frozen pond of self-doubt is beginning to thaw. As I learned in this book, we humans need other people to help us regulate after a trauma-induced stress response. We can’t “think” our way out of the situation, because our cortex is offline during a trauma response. First, we must regulate ourselves. 

I chose movement and music to regulate. I’ve been walking and paddle boarding while listening to music for two weeks, while I kept my expectations very low…just doing the minimum at work. The next step after Regulate is Relate. We must talk to our safe people and ask for help. With every telling, the problem seems more manageable. Only then, can we move to the final step of Reason, with the help of our cortex to strategize a way forward.

Regulate-Relate-Reason has its own timeline and rushing it won’t work. Know that if you put yourself first on your TODO list and you’re patient with the process, then you can return to contentment much faster than powering through a trauma response. Powering through doesn’t do anything but bury the trauma, then it takes you down when you’re too tired to power through anymore. 

I’m a firm believer in feeling your feelings, and when you’re in a trauma-induced stress response your feelings can overwhelm you to the point of shut-down. This is the time to try the Regulate-Relate-Recover method. It really works! See, I just used an exclamation point, I’m feeling more like myself already. Get the book, then ask for help.

 As always, I’m just an email, or click here for Life-Coaching!

XO

Terri

As I’m traveling a lot this summer, I’m sending you some old blogs that are prolly new to you! This week’s blog is a throwback to the summer of 2018–enjoy!!

I have been in volleyball gyms a lot lately. The last week in March was Big South, our biggest tournament of the season in Atlanta. It is a national qualifier, and our little Club went up against the best clubs in the country, and our 17U Blue Sammy team finished 2nd in the Gold Bracket of the USA Division.

For those of you who don’t know anything about Volleyball, this is a huge deal. It’s the highest finish for any 17U team in our region (Mobile to Panama City) in that division, ever! This past weekend, our 17 Sammy team won the Regional Championships in Mobile. Both of these are huge accomplishments for that team and our club, but I had to leave early because my body said “Go!”

At Big South I was in a volleyball gym with 1200 teams on 150 courts for two and a half days; imagine the noise and the lights! My poor little melon was in a state; I got one migraine every day of the tournament. I wasn’t terribly surprised. What did surprise me is that the migraines continued when I returned home. My body needed more rest, even though my brain told me differently. 

Our current Theme is How Will You Let Your Body Love What It Loves? This comes from a poem by Mary Oliver; the excerpt goes, “You do not have to be good…You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

I started living the theme by coming home from our grassroots tournament early. My heart and spirit wanted to stay and empower the girls and their moms, but the soft animal of my body needed rest. I went to the tournament and worked our front desk, greeting moms and players as they walk to the door. Spreading cheer for all to hear. But instead of staying the whole time and “doing it right“, I turned it over to responsible people and went home to rest my head. I took my animal home to curl up and recover.

This week I’m urging you to treat your body as though it was your most treasured pet, because it is. We wouldn’t make our puppy run when it was winded or sick. And yet we think nothing of pushing our body through household chores, social engagements, or family stuff, even when we are exhausted. We would never force-feed a baby animal, yet we cram stuff in our mouths, without a second thought, because we don’t have time to prepare nutritious food. 

This is not okay, y’all! We are better than this!

I am taking a stand, and it starts today. I’m listening when my body tells me, “Enough!” I’m resting before I think I really need it. And I’m taking my animal out to play, taking a moment to drink in the beauties of nature, walking barefoot in the grass, or looking up at the clouds instead of down at my phone.

Want to join me in taking care of your magical creature? Start with defining what you loved to do as a kid: Reading under a tree? Playing hopscotch? Taking your dog for a walk? Playing with duckies in the tub? Now take that treat and do it now, as an adult.

How will you love your body this week?

Tell me all about it by dropping me an Email, or click here for Life-Coaching!

XO

Terri

To bolster players in our final week of the 2023 season, my Mama T talks were about how endurance only develops outside our comfort zone. Our DNA is programmed to see threats around every corner. As cavemen, we were safe as long as we didn’t leave the campfire. But we had to leave that comfort zone to hunt, eat and find water. We had to leave our comfort zone to survive. 

We don’t run from saber tooth tigers anymore, but we still need to leave our couch to grow and thrive. We must venture into unknown territory to develop resilience, or Grit. 

You can only build Grit when things go ass-over-tea kettle! If you never experience loss, failure, exhaustion or bewilderment, you don’t develop Grit. Period. And without Grit every bump in the road halts forward movement. 

One of my favorite quotes is from the book Endure¹, “Endurance is the struggle to continue against a mounting desire to stop”. It’s when you’re in the final push of a project or on the last 10 reps of a strength workout that you discover your mettle. The road to resilience is long and sometimes unforgiving, but you will emerge stronger, wiser and more capable at the end of it. 

Challenge forges life lessons. Instead of “Why is this happening to me?”, ask “Why is this happening FOR me?” Every sucky situation has a lesson in it, if we stop whining long enough to learn it (this is me talking to me)! 

Part of developing Grit is having a support system to steady you when you’re feeling shaky. Friends and family can be the guardrails on life’s treacherous roads, but only you can supply the fuel. 

Since your support system is so important, who is in your corner? All support is not created equal. If you are surrounded by people who only drain your energy with their issues, never offering help with yours, it’s probably time to find new friends. You only need a few close friends, as long as those few are your people with whom you feel comfortable sharing the messy stuff and asking for help. They support you when your tank is empty. 

When you want to quit, grit helps you continue showing up, and that’s the bottom line. Just show up for yourself, as you are today, and for all the possibilities your future selves possess. You’re the only one who can keep putting one foot in front of the other, developing Grit with every step. I promise you’re worth it! 

XO 

Terri 

P.S. EMAIL me the grittiest, badass-iest thing you’ve ever done and/or go here for LIFE-COACHING 

¹ Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance

The most prescient issues from my volleyball girls this month are “How can I play well when I’m feeling drained” and “How do I keep from feeling bad because I’m playing badly?”. I’ve heard versions of the same complaints from my adult clients, and I have a simple remedy. 

Find your WHY and create space for what you love. I said it was simple, I didn’t say it was easy. 

In every long-term pursuit or goal, there comes a time when we feel drained because we’ve forgotten our why. I asked each one of my girls why they chose volleyball and why they kept showing up. Also, what are their expectations for how they play? 

Kids come to volleyball from all different skill levels. Unfortunately, the less skilled players feel drained and mad if they can’t hit/pass/set the ball like more skilled teammates. It’s human to compare, but it can also be soul-sucking. If we can adjust our expectations to the reality of who we are, with our existing set of skills, then we can focus only on our skill set. Maybe you’re not the fastest, but you read the court well. Or you have great energy on the sidelines. Use that! When your expectations and your reality are closer, you have a little room to figure out why you’re here in the first place. Then it’s time to create space. 

If you want to be successful at anything, it takes time away from other things. You must adjust your schedule for self-care because no one else will do it for you. For me, that’s daily meditation and good sleep. We all need to prioritize sleep because that’s when your body repairs itself. That usually means a social media cleanse of some sort. Unless you are an influencer, social media time is flexible. Sure, it’s fun to see what other people are up to, but it’s not necessary for survival and optimum performance — sleep is. 

Social media rabbit holes do not create value if you want to feel charged doing that thing you love. For my volleyball girls, I tell them to put away their phones or put them on DND when they are studying. And definitely put them away at least 30 minutes before bedtime, as backlit screens stimulate your brain and interfere with winding down for sleep. 

Once you’ve named your WHY, adjusted your expectations, and practiced self-care, you can follow kindness for an instant energy boost. How can you be kind to yourself in the next 5 minutes? If you’re feeling drained, help someone else who’s having a hard time. Whenever I’m feeling hopeless (yes that does happen more than my glass-half-full personality would dictate) I think about how I can help someone else. Send a friend a funny text, hold the door open for someone at a store, make eye contact, ask a service person how their day is going, and listen to the answer. If they have a name tag, thank them by name. Their smile is an immediate hit of endorphins for you and it makes their day–TWO-FER! Creating valuable goals and maintaining focus is a job, and the paycheck is a life filled with promise, hope, and meaning. 

XO 

Terri 

P.S. Have something to say about this blog? Please email me HERE or click for information on Life Coaching

Our Mama T talks at 850 Elite this week were all about stress and how it affects our life on and off the court. I set up comment boxes around the center to collect anonymous suggestions for topics that are important in our players’ lives. By far the most common topic was stress. “How can I deal with school stress when I’m at practice? How can I play when I’m so stressed?” The amount of pain in those notes was palpable. 

I have a long history with stress. My childhood was chaotic and mired in drama, then I married a man just like my abusive father. Chaos was my default for many years, hence my marathon waltz with stress. Thankfully, I found a partner who embodies peace and laughter, all wrapped in a lovely coating of snark! I have learned that chaos is too high a price to pay for excitement. 

“Anything is possible when you stay calm” was the first thought I had while writing morning pages today. If that’s true, the way to a peaceful, engaged life is to prioritize calm. It’s impossible to always stay calm, but it’s WAY easier than striving for a perfection that doesn’t exist. The first step to staying calm is to note what stress is and where it starts. 

Stress is not ever-present, it’s actually the friction caused by the distance between our expectations and our reality. Stress typically starts in the mind as a frustrating thought, which our body then interprets as a threat. Our bodies can’t differentiate a real threat of bodily harm (like an imminent saber-tooth tiger attack) from a perceived threat (like a mile-long TODO list). The stress response in the body is the same. If we can adjust our expectations, then we can adjust our stress response. 

I told the girls how I change my stress response: 

1. Notice the response and define it: “I’m feeling anxious, because I have too much to do today. I feel this stress in my chest. It feels heavy and tight.” 

2. Calm the stressed body part by directing three deep breaths toward it to loosen the sensation. Diaphragmatic breathing is proven to activate our parasympathetic nervous system, which is the opposite of the fight or flight response triggered by stress. After deep breaths and directing our attention to our body, our mind can come back online. Three deep breaths allow us to move forward with intention instead of running away from threats. 

3. When our body is calmer, we can move forward toward something we can do in the next 5 minutes to lessen the stress, i.e. write down only the things I can accomplish today in the time I have available. Put the rest on tomorrow’s list and forget about them. They are tomorrow’s thoughts. 

In our world, I don’t believe a stress-free life exists. There will always be stressful thoughts flickering across our minds. But if we can prevent them from lasting in the body, we can return our minds to a state of calm. At least, that’s my focus right now. The more I practice returning to calm, the easier it is. And the calmer I am, the more I notice how lovely my life really is! 

XO 

Terri P.S. Share your stress response with me HERE or click here for information on Life Coaching

One of the first life coaching tools I learned back in 2010 was “Compare and Despair.“ Working with teenage girls, I see the worst version of that phrase. I coach girls who compare themselves to classmates, social media and teammates who are bigger, stronger or more skilled and then feel crummy. They all know they do it, but they don’t know how to stop. Girl World is still a beauty/influence contest. 

This makes me so sad, because my fierce lioness-powered athletes feel “less than” on and off the court. I know that comparing ourselves with someone turns a human connection into a transaction. I’m less this, she’s more that. Our humanity shrinks to an equation bereft of any emotions but envy and shame. 

My own struggle with “Compare and Despair” has impacted the way I deliver my special mojo to the world, and I’m tired of the habit. I am giving a speech next week at the Catalyst of Growth Summit, and I find myself comparing my style to more extroverted speakers. I cannot drum up that level of perky even with A LOT of coffee. So, I’ve decided to talk about my passion, lioness leadership. 

Can you imagine a lioness, comparing the size of her haunches, or the sheen of her coat, to another lioness? Balderdash! Lionesses are together in a pride so that one’s weakness is absorbed by another’s strength. They all hunt or take care of their cubs together. There is no “me vs. you”, it’s always “us for us”. 

When we compare our insides to others’ outsides, we create distance. We don’t know that person’s story or what’s behind that shiny facade. We haven’t lived their life or survived their challenges. Going down that emotional rabbit hole is just a waste of time and energy. The only reliable evidence we have is about ourselves. So, it makes sense to focus only on our own story. 

Let’s turn “Compare and Despair” to “Assess and Commit”! 

If I like another speaker’s turn of phrase, I can commit to practicing hard enough to make my words flow more smoothly. I can commit to being the highest and best version of ME and wish others well. I could even ask the object of my yearning for help with that commitment, since they are killing it right now, then offer my help where they feel weak. 

This sharing of strength makes Girl World a Pride instead of a contest where there are no winners. That’s why I started down this road in 2010, and it’s what still gets me out of bed every morning! 

XO 

Terri