Protecting Your Peace: Scottie’s Guide to Authentic Living

Scottie Durrett  0:00  
Welcome to the momplex Podcast. I am your host. Scotty durett, my passion and purpose is to help other moms just like me rediscover their joy and step into their confidence as their kids grow up, join me as I share my own experiences, my own mistakes and aha moments as I navigate this incredible journey of motherhood while trying not to lose my identity, if you are a modern day mama who is ready to live for herself, not just for her kids, and knows that is the best possible gift you could give, then you are in the right place. This is momplex.

Scottie Durrett  0:37  
Hey, my beautiful mamas, you know what? I have been waiting for my entire life, for somebody to finally give me the perfect holiday gift, like without even asking. Not so, hey, what do you want this year? Just a full on telepathic soulmate level intuition, just gift. I don't even know how to do that for other people, but I've always wanted someone to know me so well that they could read my mind, they could just feel what I needed and magically hand me that one thing that they would know that would make me feel so loved, so seen, so calm, so Whole. Like, here you go, Scotty, here is this perfectly wrapped present. This is the one for years I've been waiting for that, that moment that someone gets me so well that I don't even have to use words or pretend like that robe or those slippers are the perfect gift. Even though I do love a good robe, it's hard to beat a good robe, even though that Saturday Night Live skit with Kristen wig, oh my gosh. If you have not seen that, please stop what you're doing and go Google the Kristin wig. I got a robe SNL skit, oh my gosh, that thing is like chef's kiss. It's so perfect. I do love a good robe. And my kids always steal my robes. So I do love a good robe. Nothing quite beats that, but I have been waiting for that perfect gift, and it kind of drives me crazy when people ask me, What do you want? It's kind of the same thing that bugs me when people send me a text and they say things that say, Guess what? Those I just I don't even reply. But you know what? I finally realized, after all of this inner work that I've been doing since 2021 the meditating, the crying, the breathing, the tapping, the coaching, all of it, it's been a lot. The person that I've actually wanted to know me so well was me, not my husband, not my kids, not my bestie, not my parents, me, and to really know me, to know me so well that I could speak up for myself, and to speak up with confidence, and to have such clarity and to not filter myself, and to say things like maybe, and I'm fine when I didn't really mean it, and that really hit me in the heart this week, I was standing in my doorway earlier this week hugging a friend whose husband went for a bike ride on Sunday and he didn't come home. It's awful. He was out with their oldest son on a mountain bike ride, and in the middle of the ride, he had a heart attack, and he died just like that. In one moment, her whole life changed. Her whole life. As I was standing there, you know, we stood there facing each other, she's telling me, her eyes are swollen. She's tears are streaming down her face. She's not only sad. I mean, she's devastated. Her heart is, I mean, it's like her ribs have been cracked open. Her heart is just ripped out. It's, it is devastating. But she's also, she's telling me this is not how it was supposed to be. We have worked so hard for so long, like we've been doing all the right things. We had plans with each other, with our kids. We were supposed to have grandkids together. We have a future. This is not logically how life was supposed to be. On top of it, she's freaking devastated. If she's leaving, I'm, you know, we're sobbing. I'm I was like, we were just squeezing each other so tight. And as she's leaving, I'm still ugly crying, and it hits me, you're just like, what actually matters? Because if everything that we're living for and we're fighting for suddenly is taken away from us, what really matters because it sure as hell isn't likes on Instagram. It's not our body fat percentage. It's not what Christmas present is under the tree. It's not if my wrapping paper matches my throw pillows, right? It's none of that. What matters is hugging your kids. It's your health. It's telling the person in your people in your life that you love. Them. It's knowing yourself. It's feeling like yourself. It's living life on your terms. It's living out your dreams. It's making the most out of every single day, because maybe today is all you've got. And yet, here we all are running ourselves ragged, trying to prove that, you know, we're good moms, trying to get somebody to tell us that we're worth something like, there's a scoreboard trying to get to make sure that people approve of us, like we're trying to win some gold star. And we've all, you know, we all know that people tell us in music and in books and in poetry and in quotes, like, live like today is your last day. We post it, we sing about it, but we don't actually live like it because it's morbid. It's too hard. We can't actually do that because we would never leave our houses. And that's not really how we we cannot go through our day like living like it's our like we're dying. Plus, I carpool at 230 you know it's we just, we just can't live like that. But if we tried for just a second, if we took a breath and just asked ourselves, if today was all I got, what would matter most to me? Who would matter most to me, and what crap Am I giving my energy to that isn't even making that list right? If I were going to sit here and take out a piece of paper and today was my last day, what are the five things, or the five people that I want to come with me and on my to do list? Are there things on that to do list that don't support or go with those five things. Look I'm not saying that the things that we're doing every single day don't matter. I love a good outfit. I love a mani pedi. I love my car in the driveway. I love my Nalgene bottle like it's my fourth child. Those things make me happy, but when we start chasing the wrong stuff, the stuff that doesn't make us happy, that pinches our heart, that causes anxiety and versus filling our heart up. You know the difference, right? The stuff that makes us like that, chasing energy versus the attraction energy, when the external becomes our determinant for worth. And I'm not immune to it. I'm not preaching from a pedestal here, I fall for all this too, but it's that different, right? The noticing the difference I you know, I'll tell you a story. I've been obsessing lately over hitting 10,000 followers on Instagram and weighing 133 pounds, because those numbers, I have this belief that those numbers are the key to my my all successful universe. It's as if one day, the Universes will open and Mel Robbins will High five me, and the algorithm will whisper, you are worthy. You have a successful business, and you are beautiful. What who even made those rules society marketing? My inner overachiever from the fourth grade, I don't know. Meanwhile, hello, in real life, I've hosted two incredible mom events in the last four weeks. I've gotten certified in somatic breath work. I went to New York and attended a woman in Leadership Summit, and in January, I'm launching my Hi vibe mom community. What? So I'm still sitting here, but telling myself, wait, but I haven't hit 10,000 followers, and I don't weigh 133 pounds, so clearly I'm not good. I'm not successful, because those external markers are telling me that I'm not worthy. So yesterday morning, I was sitting across from my husband crying into my almond milk coffee because I was bitching that I'm not at, I'm not at 10,000 followers. I'm clearly not a successful business, business yet, right? And my husband was like, Babe, can you take those blinders off for a second? By the way, everybody in your everybody deserves. Can we all get somebody in our life that tells us to take the blinders off? We all deserve one of those. And he said, Babe, you're changing lives. You're not chasing likes. And actually, a couple of years ago, you actually were dreaming about hosting mom events, and you're doing that, don't, don't miss out on that, like you're living what you were dreaming about not that long ago. Can you see that? I was like, Oh, fine. Why do you always have to be right? But I needed that reminder right, because I'm actually living the life that I was dreaming about a couple years ago, but I was so obsessed with these numbers that I couldn't even appreciate that. And it hit me. I was like, gosh, you know what life it's so short, this, this loss that my friend is experiencing right now. It's these, it's those horrible moments right that we sometimes get hit with. Make us realize, like life is too short, we are not in control. We like to believe that we're in control, but we're not. So can we learn from those moments that life is too short to measure ourselves by someone else's damn scoreboard? And really appreciate in this moment that we are the magic, we are the gift right now. And how can we see that? And what can

Scottie Durrett  10:25  
we do to shift that? No one else's approval, no one else is like no one else's choice of gift under the tree. No one else's approval is ever going to do that for us, right? No one else picking out the perfect gift or telling you that you rock even that number on the scale. Sure, those things are going to feel good for the moment, but that moment doesn't last. The only thing that lasts is you. How you feel matters, and that's what lasts. What you think matters, and that's what lasts. But if we're not checking in with ourselves before we check in with everyone else, we're going to miss our own life. And I say this because this is what I'm working on. We were all raised to be good girls, to smile, to be polite, to keep everybody comfortable, but now we're grown ass women, and yet we're still trying to earn gold stars for being agreeable, saying yes when we want to say no, baking the pie from scratch when we'd rather DoorDash it. I actually saw a commercial, which I was like, literally, on this exact story where a girl was having people over, and she looked at this recipe, I think it was probably her grand mom's from scratch recipe, and she looked at it, and she was like, What am I doing? She just door dashed a Marie callender's Apple pie, which basically was the exact same thing, and it just saved her time and energy so she could just go spend more time and energy with her friends. She bought back time for herself. I love that, you know, but it's like we push ourselves to work out when our body's saying, Please, please, please give me a nap. We have turned martyrdom into a personality trait. We confuse exhaustion with importance, and honestly, it's killing us. It's sucking our joy. It's creating a generation of bored people. It's causing us to live in a massive amount of pressure, a ton of stress. We're walking around with so many health problems. And rather than allowing ourselves to lay down and take a nap and lay in the sun and drink water and sleep better. We're popping melatonin and, you know, taking shots and finding manufactured ways to feel better when honestly, it's more about listening to our bodies finding joy and saying no more to things that don't light us up, and trusting that our gut that we know what is best for us, and trusting ourselves more than trusting everybody else, right? It's really this beautiful shift of like, how can we start to appreciate that what we think is more important than what everybody else thinks about us, especially around this time of year, especially around the holidays, when the pressure to do it all, host it all, post it all, is so freaking loud every time you open up your phone, it's like you can just scroll, scroll, scroll, and it's like somebody else has another trip, another tree, another lit up, coordinated pajama photo with their family on a beach somewhere, and it's like, oh my gosh. I mean, literally, I'm recording a podcast. I have Ugg boots on. I'm wearing exercise clothes, and I threw on a sweater and some lipstick, but I'm literally gonna take this sweater off and then go work out. It's, can we just be real? Can we just be real about where we actually are and what we're actually focusing on and what really matters to us? That's my permission slip for myself. This holiday, I'm actually just going to give myself permission to be real, to actually do what I want to do, to say what I really want to say, and to trust myself that when I lead with my heart and lead with my authentic self, that it's always going to be coming from a place of love. And if I'm coming from a place of love, what better place to come from? And if I don't want to do something, I'm not going to do it, because then my energy is going to be more pure, it's going to be more real, it's going to be more inviting and more welcoming. If I don't want to join the PTA or go to that party, I'm not going to do it. If I don't want to bake the damn pie, I'm going to buy one, and I'll have more energy to spend with the people I love. If I don't want to wear matching pajamas, I'm not going to do it. It's it's more about just trusting that if we don't want to do something, there's a reason why it's like our own body is telling. Us, there's a reason why. It's not because we don't like people, and it's not because we're mean or we're bad. It's because, I'm trying to tell you that if you conserve this energy to do something that to not do something that you don't want to do, it's going to give us energy to do something that we really want to do, that's going to be even more special, right? Like our bodies love us so much. Our bodies are magnificent. Our bodies are self healing, and if we allow our bodies to actually do what it really wants to do, it can actually heal and find balance, and it'll be in alignment and then become the most unbelievable system for us to be healthy and strong and present for the people in our lives and to be there for us, we have to respect it, and we have to think that our inner voice and our body and our own beliefs and our own feelings and our own thoughts are as important, if not more important, than all that noise out there. When did we decide that everybody else's opinions of us were more important than our own opinion of us. That's why we're constantly chasing likes and gifts and opinions, because we've stopped filling our own lack with our own thoughts. And this is where it's really this is where it really matters from within. And the best part is our kids don't need us to be perfect. They need us to be present. They don't need a curated holiday. They need a connected one. They need to know what it looks like to be a real human. I just did a reel on this. It's like my most What did I say? Unhinged mom advice. Go look at it. They don't need a mom that has all the answers. They don't need a mom that always has her hair done, always has her makeup on, that always looks perfect, that never cries, that never you know, has a hard day, that never falls down, that never has challenges. They need you first of all to be real and authentic and honest. Because you are your kid's soulmate. You chose them, and they chose you, and they are actually looking for you to show them how to do this one life in the exact way that you would do it, not how another mom would do it. They don't need to learn how another mom would do it. They need to learn how you would do it. And they need to learn how you handle pressure, how you manage emotions, how you process emotions, how you release emotions, how you feel stuff, how you love yourself, how you cheer yourself on, how you manage yourself, how you process stuff. Did I already say that? Yes, they need to see it all. They don't care if the crust is homemade. They care that you listen to your body. They need to see how you hear your own voice. They need to see how you hear your own opinion. They need to see how you set boundaries. They need to see how you listen to your body, how you choose rest, how you

Scottie Durrett  18:09  
how you love yourself, how you feel your own lack, how you

Scottie Durrett  18:14  
prioritize your own opinion over other people's. So we have to learn how to do that so that we can show them how and the sciencey truth of it is when we do stuff out of guilt, and when we say yes, when we mean No, our nervous system literally thinks we're in danger and that we're being chased by a bear. So it sends a signal to our brain, our fear center, the amygdala, that we're in danger, and so it releases cortisol and sends us into fight or flight mode. Fight or flight mode is great when it's necessary, but if you know we're saying yes to a holiday party when we want to say no, that's not really when we need fight or flight mode, right? But when our nervous system is constantly in fight or flight mode in our everyday life, and we don't know how to feel safe in our own body. It's really hard for us to know that we can feel safe in our life, right? So when we start to learn how to choose peace over performance, then our body starts to learn that we can be safe in our life, right? And that's when you actually start to enjoy your life. That's when your calm teaches your kids calm. Your joy teaches them joy. You don't have to say it. They feel it. That's not laziness. That's leadership. So how do we keep the magic this holiday season and ditch the pressure? I think that's really what we're talking about here, right? Because I know we all want to get everything done. It doesn't mean we can just sit on the sofa and say, you know, screw everything. We're just we're going to ignore life. We don't want to ignore life. We still want to take care of everything that matters to us. But it's getting really clear on what matters most to us, right? But it's check your body before you check your calendar. That's number one. Check in with yourself. Well before you check in with the world, if your stomach clenches, it's a no. If it feels light and exciting, go for it. Your body knows. Can we start to check in with ourselves? First? That's number one. And then check in with your family. Check in with the people that live with you. You know it's like, it doesn't have to fall all on you. You don't have to be the decider for everybody. You guys are a team. Make it a family unit. Decision number two, redefine memories. It's not all about how it looks. It's also about how it feels. The photo doesn't always matter. The laughter does. In fact, you don't always have to take a photo. It doesn't always have to be posted, right? It's also just about the moment. It's also about the memory. It's about what's happening in here. In fact, there was this beautiful sunset last night. My husband was sweeping, and he was like, Scotty, get out here. Come look at this. Oh my gosh. It was the most beautiful pinks and blues and purples. I couldn't even believe it. I grabbed my phone to take a picture. You couldn't even take a picture. It didn't even translate. It didn't matter what angle I took it at. I was like, I'm putting the phone down. Couldn't even capture it. Doesn't matter. It's in here. It's in my brain. I won't forget it. He and I stood outside. We looked at it together. I didn't need a photo. He and I have that moment together, right? So you can also redefine memories the way I've talked about redefining movement for a mom. Little sidebar, I know, as a mom, it's really hard to find time to move your body with kids at all ages, right? Because we're always needed, and it's really hard to, like, leave your kid to go to the gym, but you want to move, right? You feel so much better when you get that movement out. It's also it's like, you can redefine what movement looks and feels like as a mom and still get the movement in. You know, if you are used to going to the gym and, you know, moving for a full hour and being a sweat ball on the floor, maybe that's not available for you right now, but it doesn't mean you don't. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Movement can be 10 minutes a day, three times a day. Movement can look like a walk around the block. Movement can look like 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes at night, right? It's just about redefining things. It doesn't mean those things have to go away completely. It just means redefining them so that they work for you. And I think that's another thing to say to yourself. It's okay to redefine things so that they work for you. You're allowed to do that. You're safe to do that. That's okay. You're in charge. You're the boss. It's totally fine, okay, I love you. I just want to make sure that's And number three, repeat after me. If it drains me, it's not for me. And every no creates room for a heck yes. Later, kind of going back to what I said about the pie, like that girl in the commercial, she could have stood there and made that pie from scratch because she didn't really want to do it. It was sucking the energy out of her three times faster than it would have had she enjoyed it, and had she made the pie from scratch, she would have had less energy to enjoy the pie with the people she had invited over, but because she said no to making the pie from scratch, she had more energy to be present with the people she invited over, so she had more YES energy later. Every time you protect your peace and you trust your body, you trust your body when it says no, every time you trust your body and you protect your peace, you're telling your body that I trust you, that I prioritize you, and that you're safe. You're also teaching your kids that their piece is worth protecting, right? You're telling your you're telling your kids that how they feel matters and how they feel is worth protecting. So what you're doing is you're telling your body that we're safe inside our body. So you're creating a safe nervous system inside of you, which then creates a safe nervous system inside of them. And here's something really cool. When you're standing next to somebody, your heartbeat starts to beat at the same rate as their heartbeat our heartbeats start to match. There's this incredible energy field that pulsates out of our bodies. I think it's seven feet. I gotta actually do a I gotta. Don't quote me on that, but it's a big field when our heart rate is beating at a really peaceful heart rate, when we listen to our bodies, when we honor our feelings, when we are creating a safe environment in our nervous system, our heart rates beat at a really peaceful, safe heart rate. That heart rate will start to match with the other people in our life, meaning our kids, right? So when you're taking care of yourself, when you're honoring your feelings. When you're honoring your inner peace, that will start to create an inner peace that your kids will match, right? You set the tone right. So every time you protect your own peace, you are protecting the peace for your kids. So this holiday season, skip the pressure, keep the magic. Do what makes you happy? Go all in on the things that make you happy. If you say yes, go 110% if your body says No, trust yourself, right? I think you will literally appreciate when you have your own back. It takes the pressure off of everybody else to be the ones that have to fill your lack. Pick the perfect present. Make you have the likes, you know, make you feel like you're special, because you're already doing it for yourself, right? You already are the magic, your laugh, your peace, your presence. Maybe the perfect gift isn't under the tree this year. Maybe it's just you rested real, laughing and alive. That's what you'll remember. That's what your kids will remember, like you're the gift. So make that your gift to yourself. And you know what? This episode isn't just about saying no to the things that you don't want to do. It's about saying yes to you and yes to your life. Like the whole message is, life is short and precious. Stop outsourcing your worth. The real goal is to help you wake up to the fact that your feelings, your opinions and your joy matters, not the world's approval, not the algorithm, not anyone else's expectations, yours, what really matters to you, because that's not by accident, that's by design, and you're your kid's mom, not by accident. Hey, Mama, thank you so much for listening before you dive back into the beautiful chaos of your life, please take this with you. You're doing better than you think. You are not alone and you do not have to do this on autopilot. If this episode helped you in any way, please share with a mom who needs to hear it, because we grow faster when we do it together. And if you have a second, leaving a five star review helps momplex reach more mamas who need this kind of real talk and support. If you want more support and guidance or just someone in your corner. Be sure to visit scottyderette.com to learn more. Get in touch with me or dive deeper into this work until next time. Mom, Trust yourself, trust your gut. You already know what to do, and you are exactly the mama your kids need. I love you. I'll see you next time you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai