MOMENT | If you want your children to be happy, do this with Laurie Gerber

0:03Hey, everyone. It's Zoe. Thank you for being here. Thank you for pressing that little play button to spend a few minutes with me on your Monday for this motherkind. moment. This moment is with the wonderful Laurie Gerber. Laurie is a really, really well-known coach in the US, and she specializes in a method called the Handel Method, which is delivered to celebrities like Hugh Jackman and Ivo Longoria, and is even taught at the top American universities like Columbia, MIT, and Stanford. In this clip, Laurie shares about the power of modeling to our children and how we must understand our lineage, where we come from, if we want to move forward and make changes in our lives.

0:50Here it is. I hope you find it inspiring, interesting, and hopefully changes your perspective a little before the rest of your week ahead. Here it is. When you started to feel the word that's coming up for me is empowered. How did that change your parenting? I believe that the most important thing as a parent is that you model having a happy life. If you want that for your child, whatever you want for your child. So for me, for my child, I want them to have a happy life, which I think means healthy, fun, contributing to the planet, love, right? Like it's not a million things, right? Like that's what I think a happy life is.

1:31So I want that for my kid. I think the most important thing that I can do is demonstrate it because we do as they do. The only way, isn't it? It's the only way. Well, we did just establish epigenetics are real and we really do imitate our parents, whether we like it or not. So give them something good to imitate and you're off to a good start. There's no way around this now. And I think this is really exciting and really petrifying. Agreed. So really just in quitting sugar, just in rekindling my romance with their father, just in creating self-respect that happened with each choice of what I ate or didn't eat.

2:10With each choice of when I put myself to bed and woke myself up, with each choice, I became the mother I wanted to be because I became happy and healthy and self-loving. So then the parenting techniques became less important because just the whole vibration and space of the household changed. My availability changed. My spirit changed. Everything changed. So that really is the most important thing. I could say a lot about also parenting techniques, if you want. But I think it's so true. You know, I often look to some of the wisest minds that I think have walked this planet, you know, and when I became a parent, I was like, what they said about parenting?

2:48And they all, all say that. I'm glad. There you go. I mean, Mother Club was founded on this quote, which is a Tickvallon Han quote, which is, you know, a parent's greatest inheritance to their children is their own happiness. It's so true. Everything's passed on, right? And DNA, emotional DNA. So all the work we do, they go on our shoulders. And so when you were doing this work, did you get new realizations? Because something I often coach on, talk about is I think becoming a parent can bring up everything about how you were parented for sure and I'm wondering what your experience of that was and how you would coach someone through that who's like you know I cannot believe how critical my father was and I feel fucking angry yeah how do we move past that yeah into the vibration that you're talking about which is expansion that question love that question because interestingly right as soon as I got my own self-respect got my relationship on track started to look at my career.

3:53And then I could go into the family stuff to the family of origin stuff, because again, you can't, you can't avoid it. It's there. It's the elephant in the room. But it's the roots. I loved that you said that up top. It is the root. You have to look at it. And that's later modules, later modules and interview. So I love teaching people about lineage, right? About how lineage repeats. So lineage repeats. Don't question me. Lineage repeats. Just figure out how your lineage is repeating. Assume that it is. It's so funny. I I once had a person in one of my workshops about traits and lineage and how it repeats.

4:27And I was saying, listen, you have every one of your parents' traits. It might be like you think you have the reverse. They're aggressive and you're passive aggressive, but you have the same traits or a reaction to the traits. Traits don't disappear. Like if you grow up in a French speaking household, you speak French. You can't, sorry, but you're going to pick up French. And if you want to speak Italian, you have to go learn Italian. So you're going to have their trait, either exact replica, variation, reaction to that's not so different. You can't get out of it. And this woman goes, I have this trait where I give up too easily on things.

4:59And my parents are not like that at all. They're like, really, they really, really, really stick to things are very, very dedicated. And I was like, well, then you're adopted. And she was like, I am. Yes, I am adopted. Yes, I'm adopted. I was like, I understand. Like you can't fall far from the tree. And then of course you could see her mind going like, oh, I guess my biological parents did give up too easily. And the funny thing is, is the only reason we tell you to look at your parents to figure out your own traits is to just get the joke of it. It's not to blame your parents because you know where they got it.

5:32The cave people, the people above, right? We're just going back into the stone ages here. They did the best they could, right? So you got it from them. So not your fault. You have those tendencies, like you said, right? Survival mechanisms, obvious, not their fault, just interesting cosmic spiritual curriculum. And the more you avoid it, the more it's going to kick your ass. So how about we just take our little magnifying glass and go, all right, which one am I taking on this year? Like, what do I want to take on this year? So one thing I took on just last year, I have teenagers now, I have my 18 year old, 16 year old and five year old, but I took on not being sarcastic with my 15 year old, five bucks every time I said something sarcastic to her.

6:16It didn't take but three days for me to realize I pretty much only said sarcastic things to my daughter. Wow. I was like, you know, but no consciousness until I brought consciousness to it. So I think for most of us, it's getting our own life in order so that the kid doesn't stress you out is the biggest battle. And our parents didn't necessarily have enough self-care or awareness to do that. Once that's removed, it's about that wonderful balance of listening so that they want to talk. I'm talking so that they want to listen, right? Like how do we talk in a way that is easy to hear? And how do we listen in a way that makes them want to talk to us?

6:53That's like the next level of how we can design our parenting. And I am no expert. I can be a real jerk to my kids. And I think, you know, some of the same ways my parents were to me and some new and different you know, some variations, but I'm always willing to be criticized. I'm always willing to get feedback. I'm always willing to endeavor to make a change by actually making a change.