Rita helps women have a happier life by making better decisions. She learned how to do this because she made some pretty crappy decisions in her life. Like, deciding to start “the most successful business ever,” only to have it fail in less than one year. Or “being the perfect mom,” only to find myself in a battle of wills with a 2-year-old every day on our way to preschool. Those and many other choices didn’t turn out the way she thought they would (surprise!) and this made her really mad. And frustrated. And, if she’s honest, kind of desperate. How could she be trying so hard and getting nowhere (move over Sisyphus, she’s got that boulder!) And then she realized that maybe, just maybe, she needed to learn something from all this failure and frustration. Join us as she shares what she learned…
You can Find Rita:
Calm And Clarity | Becoming Awake
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Transcript
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Transcript
Welcome to the New World Order Showcase program.
Today, we're speaking with Rita Desnoyers Garcia.
Welcome Rita.
Tell us about yourself and what you're doing to be the change you want to.
See in the world.
Thanks for having me, Joe.
I really appreciate this.
This is a long time in coming, so I'm really happy to be here finally.
And I feel like my reason for being here is, first of all, to be completely imperfect and have my own challenges and journey.
Although Journey is one of those things that people use all the time, but just to make my own mistakes.
And fall down.
Get up and to develop even more compassion for myself so that I can bring that into the world.
And then, you know, that's sort of my.
My sermon is about how people can have more compassion for themselves, so I do it for myself and then I say.
OK, now it's your turn.
That's perfect.
Compassion is one of those things that we think about having it for other people, but we rarely think about having it for ourselves.
Yeah, and.
It really everything starts with ourselves, yeah.
The training to like, that's selfish if you're thinking about yourself, if you're taking time for yourself, if you're doing all these little things that we've been told since childhood, but it's just not true.
Yeah, I think you know, part of it is generational.
I mean, my parents grew up during a very hard time during the depression in World War Two, and it was all about service.
My dad actually died a few months ago, and one of the things when I find that when people die, you learn a lot.
More about them and the theme throughout his life was service, which is.
A beautiful thing.
However, sometimes people overdo that and they're serving so much they forget about themselves, and then they start pairing looking out for themselves and doing self-care and taking it easy on themselves as somehow not being a good person. And I work with moms who are all about.
You know, raising their families.
And growing their businesses and spinning a lot of plates and so many times.
And I know this because I've.
It is when you get into that mode of, you're always putting that outward energy.
You forget to fill up.
And then and then you're going on an empty tank, and nobody's happy when you're doing that.
Tell you're not doing anyone favors by walking around.
In an empty tank.
No, it makes you cranky and short tempered and then you can't have compassion not only for yourself, but you're not having compassion for other people because then you start to feel like.
You're being put upon.
A lot of resentment. Yep.
So how did you get started in this?
I'm my own stuff, so I wanted to help people since I was a very little kid, but so I went to social work school and Idi d a volunteer program before that, so it was always trying to help other people.
That comes naturally to me.
The self compassion work really came when I was a mother of three little ones and trying to grow a business around health and Wellness products and it wasn't going very well and it was it kind of imploded one day and I was on the floor crying and one of the thoughts that kept coming up was you're such a failure.
Here you are failing again.
Your failure as a mother, you're a failure.
As a businesswoman, you're a failure as.
A wife.
And you know, I was crying.
My kids were crying.
We were all crying.
And, you know, I look back on that day as one of the lowest times and also one of the best things that ever happened to me because it forced me to find a different way to live my life.
And I found a coach.
Who I thought was going to help me revive my business because it was still all about my business and how I was going to be this big success.
And he was the one who said in the first phone conversation.
Hey, Rita, right now, can you just be kind and gentle with yourself?
And when I heard him say that one thought I had.
Was are you kidding really?
Is that what she got from me?
Because I'd never really heard that before.
Or maybe people might have said it to me.
But I couldn't absorb it.
I thought it was kind of, you know, like to.
Fluffy or too impractical?
Or I didn't want to have a pity party and he's just like, just trust me on this.
I know this is our first encounter, but just take a.
Moment and just.
Be kind and.
And so, because I am also a good student, I decided, OK, I'll do it.
I'll take a stab at it.
And I sat.
There for about a minute.
And the first thing that happened is that my whole body just allowed just collapsed into.
A weeping mess.
And then as I kind of recovered from that, I just noticed.
Wow, I'm not thinking about myself as a bad person anymore.
I'm not a failure.
I'm just being kind and gentle with myself.
And I knew in that moment.
This is revelatory for me.
There's something big going on here, and I didn't do much about it at that time, but I kind of put it away.
Like OK this.
This guy has some valuable information for me.
I think I'm gonna hire him.
And we worked together for four years.
And in that time.
I started to feel so much better and I noticed all of the other miserable moms in my neighborhood, and so I just sort of emailed all of them and said, hey, I was miserable.
I feel so much better.
You want to get together and learn what I'm doing, and three of them out of the ten said yes.
And that was my first group.
And then.
A year or so later, I started really diving into the self compassion stuff again.
Because I wanted to learn.
More about it because it felt really powerful.
And then I created a course on how to be more compassionate with yourself.
People loved it and one of them said, you know, you should write a.
Book about this.
And I was like, alright and so I wrote a work workbook called.
The self compassion.
Project because I love projects, I feel like projects.
Is a great.
Excuse to dive into something.
It's very limited.
It's a project.
It's not like your whole life.
And it kind of fools you into deep discovery.
So I thought I'll fool everyone else and say it's a.
Project and what I noticed is that as women started to do the workbook, they started to discover different parts of themselves that they had put away sort of shadow work, if you will.
If you haven't heard that I'm, I'm sure you've heard of it.
I don't know if.
Your listeners have go.
Ahead and share with the listeners.
So it's basically.
Bringing the light to the parts of ourselves that we put away, we're ashamed of.
We don't want anyone to know about, and these could be very positive parts of ourselves or very negative parts of ourselves, or anywhere in between.
And what I noticed was for me, what emerged was I had a real mean girl in me.
Who just was like, had it up to here.
Here and would like to come out and say things.
That were I.
Would probably Gret later.
But if I actually worked with her and brought her out of the shadows and said, what do you have to tell me?
And I'm so.
Sorry you're suffering.
And what do you need?
She would transform.
She stopped being mean.
And she just said you need to have some boundaries.
Can you listen to me?
This is not going.
Well, you know.
And then I realized she had a lot of.
And she didn't have to constantly be poking me because I was paying attention to her now.
And I think so.
When we have compassion for ourselves, we have compassion for all these different aspects of ourselves.
The good, bad and the ugly.
And when you actually have compassion for all these parts, they become really nice.
Not nice, but they become.
They transform into something much more powerful and much more in alignment with you, and they get a seat at the table.
Versus being banished.
And then tripping you up along the way.
Feels to me kind of like your.
I know, and I know this isn't anything like what you're talking about when, but when you have split personalities, I think in some ways we do all have a little bit of split personalities.
They're the personalities that we hide and there's the one that we present to the world.
And then there's the one that we present to our family.
Which is.
Yeah, slightly different.
It may be totally different that.
It's allowing all of those.
Those personalities.
To be 1 to.
To join back together and to create a more fuller picture of who you are as a human being.
Or a.
Yeah, it's not that.
You know, you're you are not.
It's not that you have split personalities, but it's just that we tend to like compartmentalized.
More to mentalize, yes.
In fact, in the workbook itself, you start off with compassion.
Then you explore acceptance and then the third part is integration.
Yeah, that's perfect.
So and those three things can be really challenging.
I mean, some people have different.
Different levels of challenge.
I know like some people have.
I have a hard time accepting things.
And it takes a lot.
Of practice.
And some people have a hard time, compassion and a lot of it is because they just don't know what it really means.
They have an idea of what?
It really means but.
It doesn't mean that.
So, for instance, compassion for people.
Well, sometimes means to them that they're going to deny things or they're going to let themselves off the hook in a way that is not helpful.
Or it's a pity party.
Or if they have compassion for other people, they're going to let them violate their boundaries, or it means that they can do anything and treat them like a doormat.
And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
No, no, that's that is not compassion.
Compassion simply means that you have a sympathetic viewpoint.
You want to help yourself feel better with a desire to help yourself feel better.
But that doesn't mean that you allow yourself to do something destructive or have destruction upon you.
It really means that you hold a higher.
Observation mode that allows you to see something bigger than what you're kind of little self sees.
Does that make sense what I'm saying?
Yeah, totally. Totally. It's just.
The ability to just like, allow yourself to be totally integrated into.
Who you were meant to be instead of who?
We have allowed ourselves to become the programming and just life.
And when you have compassion for yourself, it actually allows you to decrease the.
Decrease how you sabotage yourself?
So a lot of the sabotaging behaviors we have are really parts of ourselves that we're ignoring or denying.
And then they come in, sneak in, and they do stuff.
But when you have compassion, you're kind of like, OK, all of you into the light.
Let's look at all of you.
See what you need.
How can I help you?
I love all of you, and there must much less likely to sabotage you because you see them.
You see the tripwire.
You see how they're telling you one thing, but actually giving?
You the opposite.
And not having to own the lies that the other one is telling.
Yeah, because.
In that process, there's.
There's the little voices.
And there there's more than one because you know, you run these loops, but they're different loops and they serve different purposes for you.
Yep, absolutely.
And you know, it's not our fault.
We kind of just developed this.
Sometimes it's natural personality traits.
Sometimes it's our upbringing.
You know, we have, like survival strategies.
That we choose.
That help us get through childhood so.
But my point is, you know you don't do everything from childhood, right?
Like if you had pajamas that you really loved and childhood, would you wear them now?
No, they wouldn't fit you.
They wouldn't be comfortable anymore.
They don't work anymore.
It's time to upgrade.
It's time to change your.
Welcome back every now and then we have a little disruption in life and I'm just going to have compassion for myself.
Explain that we had a little technical difficulties.
So we're talking about having compassion for yourself.
Yes, and.
Give you back the.
Well, I was just gonna.
I was just going to say, well, another thing that comes up when people start doing compassion work is that they're hard on themselves for having foibles and.
Maybe bad habits or they don't know, like one of the biggest questions I get is I know the correct way to do this.
Why am I not doing it?
You know, why am I not exercising?
Why am I not eating right?
Why am I not?
Why am I yelling at my kids?
It is and.
A lot of it is.
When you have compassion for yourself, it stops you from compulsively doing something.
It stops you from being on automatic pilot.
Compassion actually can be a way to change your behavior for something that you feel is better for you because you stop blaming yourself so much it actually does.
It actually delivers what?
People think blaming is going to help you with like people.
I'll just blame and shame myself and to be a being a better person.
And it's like, no, it doesn't work that.
Right.
You have to have compassion for yourself first.
Then you get the clearer picture.
Then you can start making choices.
Before that, you're on automatic.
Pilot and when you start blaming and shaming.
Yourself, you're more likely to do the stuff.
That you don't want to do, which will then make you blame and shame yourself more.
It's like.
A vicious cycle, right?
Trapped in.
The loop it's you're trapped in a loop, and sometimes they say how.
How's that blaming and shaming going for you?
Is that actually giving you anything?
If you look at the evidence and?
They go.
No, and I go let's try something different.
Can we?
Can you try something different?
And it's.
Breaking the cycle by pausing and just sitting and being kind and gentle with yourself, just for a moment interrupts the cycle.
It gives you some wiggle room to make a different choice.
Maybe it's not the perfect choice, but maybe it's a better choice.
And then it allows you to see.
It allows you a bigger per view so that you see wow.
I actually have five choices here.
I thought I only had.
Two crappy ones.
And when you think that you have just two terrible choices, you're usually.
Not seeing the whole picture.
And having the time to like just sit back and not have to accept either one of those choices by having compassion opens your minds eye to other options you probably missed.
Yeah, because you're in this loop.
No wonder you're doing the same thing over and over thinking.
To get better results or different results.
Because you're in a loop.
And we all have loops.
I have loops, you have loops and sometimes we need someone else to go.
Hey, you're in a loop.
Because yeah, you don't even recognize that you're.
Going around the same.
The scenery might look similar but.
You think this is normal?
This is reality.
This is the way it works.
You just.
Keep going because there's not.
You don't really see any.
Way to get out of the circle.
Yes, having a coach often will be like we need to take three steps over this.
Way, yeah, or just stop.
And this circle may go away.
And and sometimes, you know, like when I first started talking with a coach.
He asked me.
He asked me what he what I believed about and what motivated me, and I'd never asked myself.
Those questions, or I would tell them what?
I believed and he'd be like, really do.
You really believe that?
You know, I'd be, I'd say something like, I just want peace, Chris.
I just want peace.
He said, yeah, I know you want peace, but then you get in the car and someone cuts you off.
Do you still want?
Peace. Or Are you ready?
To like scream at them.
And I'm like ohh OK.
And I said, well, I don't.
Even know what I believe?
He said.
Look around you.
Just look around you.
How much money you make is what you believe about money, how your marriage going is what you believe about relationships, what you do with your kids is how you feel about parenting.
It's all there.
And that was a hard one, too, because I realized.
I just thought that was reality.
And then I realized, no, it's actually what I'm believing.
And that's why it keeps.
Happening over and over again.
Because we do create our own realities.
Yep, the decisions we make get us to the spot we're in and in order to make you have a different future, you have to make different decisions today.
They definitely start with compassion.
Yeah, it just.
It's a pause point.
It's just a pause point for a little break in life.
Get off the the crazy hamster wheel.
Just take a pause and breathe and.
You know, sometimes I put my hand on my heart.
Sometimes I tap on my heart or in that area.
Sometimes I just walk around.
That's going.
I love.
I love you.
I love.
And you know, no one's around so.
No one says anything.
But and even if they did.
I'd be like, oh, I'm just loving myself.
You know, super cultural.
And you.
Need to.
It's a little different.
That's OK.
I I like that the culture is changing and.
And people stepping up and saying, you know, it's OK to love myself.
It's OK to.
Say it out.
My cells need to hear that from me.
Cause your body's listening.
When you say things like, I just want peace.
Your body will.
Try to give you.
Yeah, you stressed out.
You may find yourself sick.
Yes, I have.
That was another thing.
A few days in bed.
Yes, there wasn't another big belief that I.
See you soon. Quiet.
Discovered with the help of.
The coach.
Was that when I was a mom of young children?
I got sick fairly often.
And we've talked about it and.
And I said, well, you know, the nice thing about getting sick is that I feel like I can legit take a rest.
And he goes, huh, that's really interesting.
Is that the only time you can take a rest?
And I got a thinking because that's what he does is he gets me a thinking.
And I thought.
Yeah, that's pretty much the only legitimate time I can take a rest.
And he goes.
I wonder if you changed that belief, if you get sick as often.
And I went.
And I realized.
That I wouldn't give myself any rest.
And so my body would be like, OK, I guess we're going to.
Have to get her in bed because we need a rest.
And I got sick.
A lot.
And when I stopped doing that.
Stopped getting sick so much.
It was really it was reliable.
Plan time, downtime, and the American women are really famous for not doing this, but.
Especially, you know, high achievers or overachievers to think we should have it all and.
And be able to.
Do it all, yes.
If you don't.
Give yourself planned time off and really put those boundaries down.
And stick to them.
You will burn out.
They burn out so prevalent in our society because people don't, they don't respect their own boundaries.
No they don't.
They don't.
In fact, when I was doing my business and I had hired my coach, I had scheduled for an O pair to come in and and be with live with us watching like 3 kids.
We were going over the schedule together, she and I, and this is like a 21.
Year old 20.
2 year old right and she said Rita.
I don't see lunch in your schedule.
And I went.
Ohh right and I thought, Oh my gosh, a 21 year old is teaching me about how to take care of myself.
She's like I'm a little.
She didn't even say she was concerned.
She just said I'm just noticing you don't have lunch in your schedule.
And I was like, right?
You know, so.
Who eats lunch, right?
I'm like is that that?
Important can we just work?
Through it.
You know, I'll eat later.
I'll sleep.
Later, you know.
So and I also was like the idea of sitting down for 15 minutes.
To read a book in the.
Middle of the day just seemed like impossible.
Now I do it all the time, but at that point and I actually think about that a lot, when I think something's impossible now, I think you know what I used to think sitting and reading for 15 minutes was impossible.
So what story am I?
Making up about this thing that seems so impossible.
It's the what story am I making up now?
That's a great phrase.
To keep.
When you start telling yourself things.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I heard.
I was listening to Renee Brown and some lecture she was giving.
And she said when she and her husband communicate.
99.9% of the time. If there's a conflict, it's because they both have different stories going on.
In their head.
And sometimes she'll even say to him the story in my.
Head is this.
And I love that because he she's not saying you're wrong.
She's not saying I'm right.
Or you're a jerk or whatever.
She's saying this is my understanding in my head and I know it's a story.
And most of the time, he goes, yeah, actually, that's not what I meant by that or whatever they then they can deconstruct it.
And I love that.
And recognizing when you're when you're being the victim.
Yes, rather than being the heroine in the story, and we all do it, it's like I'm the victim here and if you just come to the realization of whatever The thing is that's upsetting you about the situation, ask yourself First off, are you just trying to be the victim here?
Or are you really trying to solve a problem?
Right.
And if it's just to be the victim.
You know, confess it.
Let him know.
Yeah, this is.
This is where I'm at.
Maybe I need to change that and you.
Can laugh about it, cause it's funny.
Hey, who doesn't want to be a victim sometimes?
I mean, it's a very seductive.
Comforting place to be for a lot of us.
I mean I.
Know somebody has to rescue you.
And you don't have to take any responsibility for anything like.
Obviously there are people who are victims or not victimized, and things happen right, but it's not a place to stay.
Yeah, and that's.
Stay there.
If you're chronically in that, there's something going on there.
Yeah. So.
It no longer feels like comfortable to me, but it used to be a very comfortable place to be, and the idea that I was responsible for my life made me physically ill.
It was like a big reckoning.
Once I got over that, it was completely powerful and I realized I can actually change my life.
Yeah, you.
Get to be the hero of your.
Own story, exactly.
Imagine that.
Imagine that.
And how powerful is that when you start telling yourself that?
I can do anything, I can be anything.
No matter what age you are, it doesn't matter.
Now is always the best time to start.
If it wasn't yesterday, yes.
Well, and the other thing that.
I tell my clients to do or suggest they do is I'm like, read an autobiography or a biography of someone.
You really think is cool?
Because in that story, you're going to see that person fall down.
Be humiliated.
Feel like they're gonna quit, have a really hard childhood story.
A lot of times you know where they are.
A victim as a child and they overcome that every person has something in their background that they have to overcome and that's part of the game of being here.
It's not about having smooth sailing all the time.
It's it is about surfing the waves though, right?
So it's not about having calm ocean.
It's about learning how to surf the waves.
Of the ocean.
And I'm taking that from someone.
I can't remember who.
My apologies but.
That's the joy of life.
That's the thrill of it is not knowing what's going to happen and not knowing how it's going to turn out.
But being able to navigate through that.
I like that quote of when things aren't going your way in life.
Yelp, plot twist.
Move on.
Yeah, that is.
And you know what I have to say that when something happens.
In my life where I don't like it, I wanted it to change.
I want to get out of Dodge.
I don't want to be responsible.
I want to give up whatever it is.
It takes me in the beginning.
It sucks, you know.
It doesn't feel good.
But I've learned earlier and earlier.
In the process to recognize that this is a growing, I'm on the growing edge.
I'm becoming more humble.
This is going to make a great story.
It's going to make me a better coach and it makes me more connected and compassionate with people who've gone through something similar.
Boy, that's a lot of reward for a momentary suckiness.
It's a huge reward, so when I can remember that.
It just makes it worth it.
Which sounds weird because there's a lot of really bad stuff that can happen, but if you can just take a little of that, it makes it.
You stop going.
I'm afraid things are going to happen in life and start going.
OK?
Bring it on.
I'm going to get through it.
And maybe even find.
It becomes an adventure instead of a Horror Story.
A better person.
Yeah, when you're waiting for the other shoe to drop all the time, it's like.
Yeah, that's.
How am I going to deal with this?
A whole.
How am I going?
To deal with that, how you.
Know it's just the constant.
Yeah, and.
Charge that you're getting versus, you know, life’s, an adventure, and sometimes we're going to camp here for a bit.
Sometimes we're going to wander through the desert.
It's going to be dry and hot and miserable, yeah.
We're going to get to the forest eventually, and it'll be cool and shady, but there might be tigers.
Who knows?
Who knows? And I.
Know there are some people who have a hard time regulating their system to adapt to that.
And there are tools to do that.
So I want to.
Give hope to people who are like.
I wake up and I'm feeling dread.
It's like there.
Are tools for that.
I just want you to know they.
Can help you.
Your system.
And people need to learn.
Those tools, in my opinion.
It should be taught in schools.
Or at home you should learn as a child how to.
How to get control of your emotions?
And to recognize your emotions and why you're having these emotions.
Yeah, but we don't teach people that.
We don't even teach kids to identify the emotion that they're experiencing so that you know, having a label is.
Like the first.
Step towards being able to adjust your life.
Yep, around that label.
Absolutely, yeah.
In fact, some of the programs I teach parents say to me.
They should teach this in school.
They should teach this in school.
They're just normal life skills that.
And I'm like.
You know.
We haven't really shared.
Maybe ever, I don't know.
Yeah, I think it's the demand.
The demand, meaning people being dysregulated.
Is causing the world to do that.
I I'm very hopeful, in other words, that as we walk into this new world that we're creating right now as things start to implode and disintegrate, new things will come up and say, you know what we need.
To do this differently.
You know, and that's why I have this podcast.
Yes, exactly.
You're part of it, team manager.
To say.
To what people are doing to change the world.
Because I think that the coaches out there that are stepping up to make a difference and to offer their services to help other people really are changing the way things are being done and the way people think.
So, Rita, what is the one?
Thing you would like to leave our.
Audience with today.
I would say if you're feeling badly about yourself.
The first thing to do is to stop.
close your eyes, take a breath, put your hand on there on your heart and just say I'm so sorry you're suffering.
What do you need?
And if you can heed that call and it's not like I need a slice of cake or, you know.
A jig, a Scotch, but.
An answer like.
I need to stop or I need to have a cry or I need a hug or I.
Need to talk to a friend.
And get help if you need help.
It doesn't, I don't care.
If it's a coach or a therapist or a great friend, or a pastor or whoever, it is massage therapist or Reiki master, whatever it is.
Reach out and get some help, because we all need help from time to time.
And how can people get in?
Touch with you.
So I'm on a lot of different platforms.
I'm on Instagram as Rita
I'm on.
I have a Facebook group called com Mom Alliance.
You can join that and then I have a website called becoming awake.
And I have lots of different ways to get freebie stuff and you will be connected with me.
And I also have a contact page you can.
Just go to the contact page and reach out.
Perfect.
And we'll put those links in the description below.
Thanks for joining us, Rita.
Thank you, Jill.