#8 - Coloring Outside the Lines

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

goal, noise, preschool, color, lines, kids, thought, life, parenting, achieving, teachers, woman, learn, part, work, balance, mismatched socks, parents, twin, art

SPEAKERS

Trisha Barita

00:02

Hey there, I'm Trisha Barita. I'm a mother of twin girls, a wife, an entrepreneur, a psychology major, a lawyer, and a coach. With all these different roles in my life, in the past, I truly struggled with limiting beliefs in my ability to adequately juggle all these roles successfully. I often would be frustrated that, time and again, I let my goals and dreams always take a backseat to everything else I was trying to do. And those dreams always seemed to be on the horizon, just out of reach, until I discovered tools and thought-work to help me tackle and learn to balance all of it. Now, I don't let these titles define my limits. I define my balance in life by how I choose to show up for myself every day. Am I perfect? Hell no far from it. But I do work every day to believe in myself and to be present with whatever I experience in this life, The Good, the Bad, and The Really Fucking Ugly, to own my truth and own my thoughts. I created this podcast to talk about how that noise gets in the way of our goals as women. And now I help women and teach them tools to cut the overwhelm of noise in their life preventing them from getting the balance they want. If you like this podcast and want to take my free course to get started on designing your balance and saying fuck that noise, go to TrishaBarita.com/freecourse. Now let's get after it.

01:45

Hello, fabulous friends. So because I have two kiddos that are twins and the same age, and they are me and my hubby, Peter's, only kids, well, everything about parenting is new for us. Each phase comes in, sometimes like a freight train, because there's two of them. And then when it's gone, we've learned stuff. But just when we think we've got a handle on it,  umm... another phase. Parenting, right?

03:12

So it's not like we get to experiment with the first kid though and then get another crack at it. I do envy that some parents do that. So it's just a little different, you know, which is hilarious because both of us have younger siblings. And we're pretty sure our parents used us as the experimentation piece. So this leads me to our experience with the kids being in preschool. And we were asked to come in for a meeting to discuss the kids progress. And my husband had work stuff, so I was able to plan it around my work schedule and I went in alone. Which by the way, I don't really get nervous, but I think I was definitely feeling like I was in trouble with the seriousness of the tone from the head of the preschool. So she sat me down in this little conference room with her binder and papers and started talking to me about the girls. Everything seemed okay. She's explaining the curriculum, which was minimal because they were only four years old--the different things the kids are working on, you know. So I started to relax and then . . . and then this woman paused. And she looked at me with a very serious face, somewhat stern. I think so I would know how serious whatever it is she was about to say was. I don't . . . I don't think I will ever forget her saying . . . this twin, one of the girls, she said, 'we're having real problems with. You see every day she colors outside the lines of the pictures we give her to color.' And then she put a couple examples in front of me. I looked up at her and I looked down at the papers. And I look back up at her and I just said 'Ohhhh kaaaay. And this is a problem why?' And she explained some reasons but frankly, I couldn't care in that moment. I just immediately thought . . . I mean who gives a shit that she colors outside the lines. She's fucking four! Obviously, I didn't say anything to, you know, I didn't say anything . . . that this completely kind woman who was seriously concerned about this situation. I understand that this has been identified as a milestone for children. And she's trying to tell me that she feels it's not being reached.  

05:21

I love teachers and educators. My mom was a teacher for a long time. And I have awesome friends that are teachers. And it is a tough job, no doubt. But parenting is a tough job, too. And navigating these waters as a parent in each phase of the kid's life--it brings more challenges. And I think more thoughts. I mean, I remember thinking, I want to do a good job at this parenting thing. But geez, it's just coloring. I mean, I kept thinking, Am I totally missing the boat here? Man, I must really have this parenting thing wrong? Aren't we trying to raise independent, fierce and spectacular kids? And if they color outside the lines? Where is the harm in that? If they danced to a different drum? Wear mismatched socks, etc, etc? Is that okay? Long term--really--tell me where does coloring outside the lines begin the downfall? Is it really the gateway to the other side of an unsuccessful journey in life. So maybe I'm getting a little carried away. But I think about how this 'fitting inside a box' requirement carries over into adulthood. More specifically, I think about how we create goals for ourselves, and the noise that surrounds the creation of those goals. Goal creation is something we learn at a young age, such as when your family sets goals for you. 

06:59

Other people set goals for you--coaches, teachers set goals for you. Then you start creating goals for yourself. It's a whole thing. And all the noise, good or bad comes along with it. Have you ever felt other people's noise contributed . . . contributed to you making something a goal that really wasn't something you were interested in pursuing? Let me ask you this, if you ever did do that, how much did pursuing that goal take away time from something you actually DID want to pursue as a goal? Have you ever created a goal and shared it with somebody and didn't get the feedback you wanted? You know, instead of like them being like, 'that's awesome. You're gonna do it.' You hear them, like, doubt you and analyze you. Well how are you going to get there? And what is this thought? And, you know, why do . . . you why do you want that anyway? I mean totally questioning why you mean the goal in the first place? And then did you ever change the goal? Because they kind of challenged you about that? They were like so Hmmm. Yeah, I mean, are you really thinking you're gonna be able to do that? Or when you are trying to achieve said goal? Did you feel less excited about it? Because this person or several people didn't . . . didn't believe you could get there--didn't believe it was realistic for you. Because of whatever outside noise of someone saying something about this goal itself, or how you plan to go about achieving the goal.  

08:37

Setting goals is a big part of what I talk about with clients . . . coaching clients, because it's a big part of cutting the noise out and learning to design the balance in your life. You have to be able to set a goal and work towards that goal with the expectation that there will be noise from others and from yourself on your way to achieving that goal. So let's just agree that shit, yeah, it's going to happen. And when it does, we aren't going to make a big drama about it. Because we already knew it was going to happen. Another reason I coach around the setting of the goals before we even get to the steps and going after the goals and all the trouble related to that and actually achieving the result of the goal. Before we even get into any of that--just the part where you pick the goal. It's because I also like to know and hear that you've set this goal for yourself. Not your mother, not your significant other. Not some stranger on TikTok. You want this for yourself for whatever reason.  

09:50

It matters to sort that out upfront before we get to the part where shit is difficult and uncomfortable as we were working towards the goal. And we realize you never really wanted it to begin with. So what does this, all of this, have to do with coloring outside the lines? Look, I don't think my daughter at four years old had a goal to color outside the lines, you know, to make her version of art. But if later in life, she has a goal and people disagree with it. And I'm gonna tell her what I'm telling you: knowing why you want to achieve something, and doing it for yourself, MATTERS. And if your goals are coloring outside the lines, or attempting something a little different, that's okay. I mean, don't do anything, you know, crazy and life-threatening. But for the most part, it's going to be okay. And achieving a goal you really want, it's going to be so much more enjoyable and rewarding than what someone else wants. Or who tell you that, you know, you had a need to achieve this goal to fit into some type of mold, or check some type of box.

11:07

And as far as that parenting moment for me, well, I went home from that discussion with the teacher in preschool. And after laying it all out to my husband, well, we both jointly agreed we didn't give a shit the kid colors outside of the lines. She is a very well-behaved and kind and empathetic child, which we thought was pretty darn good for four years old. So while we decided we weren't going to combat with the preschool about this, we also decided we would just give her positivity and approach it with her with a curiosity about her development into art.

11:52

And as she has grown and really began to start to draw more and make her own unique art, guess what? Sometimes she colors inside the lines. And sometimes she does not. I think she's just as amazing as ever. And guess what? It's all okay, people. It really is okay to color outside the lines once in a while, or at least I think so. And I'll leave you with that. Now go get after it. You got this

12:35

Hey, thanks for listening today. If you enjoyed this episode, and are woman ready to say fuck that noise so you can start designing the balance in your life, go take my free course to get started at TrishaBarita.com/freecourse. Now have an awesome day and I'll see you next week.