Energize Your Life One Breath at a Time with Adria Firestone

Hey parents, welcome back to another Mindset and Motivation Monday. My guest today is going to teach us how to energize our life one breath at a time and three simple keys to designing a life you love even when your family feels in chaos. You know, sometimes the simplest things are the toughest things to do or we doubt the technique because it just seems too simple. Well, incorporating mindful breathing into your daily routine is something you can start right away today and my guest, Audrea Firestone, is going to share with us how simple it actually can be and how life-changing it actually is. Audrea Firestone is a master speaker and magical storyteller. She is authentic and combines common sense and a warm, engaging sense of humor that fuses into a perfectly nuanced package. High-achieving women engage her to reclaim their essence and energy so they can discover their wise, wild woman and reinvent their lives to create an impact. With decades of international performance and media experience, Adria's expertise in vocal, visual, and verbal presentation has earned her credits from opera to TV appearances and features in prestigious publications. Adria's experience with burnout, putting other people first, and always being available to other people actually sparked her curiosity for becoming a coach. She's written several books and today we're going to focus on her book, You Are the Artist of Your Life. She's going to share some

key things that you can do right away today. Do you say yes when you mean to say no? Do you work hard and long and feel unappreciated? Are your relationships going nowhere? Maybe you're depressed and feeling hopeless or you feel like you're living someone else's life. Well, the book, You Are the Artist of Your Life, is going to give you the keys to unlock what is keeping you stuck.

And we're going to go through the usable tools for your personal transformation in my conversation with Audra today. Hey there, parents. Thanks for listening to the No Problem Parenting podcast. Are you ready to become the confident leader your kids crave you to be? You can start building confidence in your parenting immediately, whether your child is a toddler or all grown up and still living in your house. Click on the link in the show notes or go to our website at noproblemparents.com. Become a No Problem Parent today. Hello, Audra. I'm excited to have you with us today. Welcome to the show. Oh, Jackie, I'm happy to be here. I am. I love your podcast. I love what you're doing. We women, we need somebody to open their arms and say, honey, it's gonna be okay. And you do that. You do that. Not only are you emotionally a support to women, but you also give us practicality, feet on the ground. I appreciate that. Thank you so much for that compliment. I said, I'll receive that all day long. I'm a little under the weather today,

as I mentioned to you before we started recording. And you know, I'm not, I don't do sick very well. So got a little cold, but we're going to keep her moving. As we say in the Midwest, we are going to talk about a couple of things, how to energize your life one breath at a time and three simple keys to designing a life that you actually do love.

Even when your family feels in chaos, how do we even begin to pause? I think it was something that you said when you and Nan were talking on the last podcast that I heard, which was Mission Control, which I loved, is instead of we women paying attention to our early warning system that says something is wrong, I'm getting near a point where I feel I don't have reserve. don miguel ruiz in the four agreements now says that we are domesticated we are domesticated we are tamed so what happens is we especially as women we are taught when that early warning system goes off and starts going little tiny flashing light what we usually do is let me just throw a pillow over that. I'll just not pay any attention to that. Well, what happens? You keep doing that and eventually you reach a breaking point. Then you start yelling. Then you start losing control. Then you start becoming angry with yourself, angry with those you love because you have allowed yourself, notice I didn't say they did it. We are allowing ourselves to get to a point where we have no more reserve and no more tolerance. And the first thing that I have learned to do is something that I used to do when I was on stage as well, because things go wrong.

There's nothing like live performance. No, the first show that I did was Sound of Music. The Abbey started falling behind us and I was one of the nuns. So we had to back up against the Abbey and sing, How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria, holding the Abbey wall up.

So isn't that life? That life is just that way while you're holding the Abbey wall up. So what I do is I call it an LM breath, love myself breath, because we don't get enough. I want us to have enough courage to say, hey, everybody, hey, stop, stop.

Mom needs to do an LM breath, a love myself breath. Let me tell you, we don't realize how we stop breathing when we get stressed. Have you noticed that when you're coming downstairs or you're going upstairs, you're holding a breath? Have you realized that when you get out of a chair, you hold your breath?

and when we get stressed that's the first thing you do you clench your fist you stop breathing you feel pressure in your chest you feel pressure in your gut and what happens is if you will just take a breath in breathe in through your nose and feel your belly pop out a lot of people think it's the opposite way around. And if you get lost about how do I breathe, just bend over, bend over a chair, put your hands on a chair back, make your back parallel to the floor and just breathe in.

And you're going to feel your belly go boop and your belly's going to pop out. That is how you take a breath because we have an autonomic nervous system that takes care of breathing. I can relate to this when I am stressed or have a lock weight on. It can be good stress.

It can just be a busy day and you're going, you know, you're getting all the things done. I've noticed I am not breathing. I'm not allowing myself to just naturally breathe. Absolutely.

And so we're interrupting a natural flow. So when we breathe in and then just release it with a sound, release it. If you do that three times, you don't even have to go anywhere. You can do it right there in the kitchen.

You can do it anywhere you are. just breathe in conscious here's the key the key is be conscious is when you start feeling the water is rising the stress is rising it's right underneath your nose don't wait until then the minute you start feeling the tightness the minute you start feeling discomfort just stop and breathe in and release it i'll tell you you do that three times like i call it the lm breath the love myself breath. Just do that three times and your world changes. You will have more tolerance. You will feel better. And guess what? Your body's going to love you for it because you just released a ton of stress. One of the first things I teach in No Problem Parenting is to remember the pause.

And I say, put your hand on your heart, your hand on your stomach. When you do that, you cannot help but take a breath. I do even just showing you, I take a breath. You cannot help to take that breath. But what you're adding to this, which I think is super key, is again, that breath, the stomach pushes out, not in, when you're taking that breath, to when you release to make a sound. Yes. The sound is such a key thing because you're allowing yourself to be heard.

I often say that women, and this is on my group on Facebook, is speak out, be seen, and lead. Well, for us to do that, we need to be heard, don't we? We need to be heard. And one of the ways is even when we're breathing, we need to be heard.

And so that consciousness of paying attention to yourself because what you're doing when you don't, that society has trained us to keep giving and giving and giving until we have nothing more to give. well we're doing not only ourselves and our health and our health a big disservice but we're also doing a disservice to those around us because pretty soon we're going to get to a point where we don't have any more to give we just don't have any more to give so isn't it worth it to take three breaths in a row if you do that twice a day three times a day do it before you go to sleep Do it when you wake up in the morning.

And while you're doing that, say, thank you. Thank you. I'm still here. And breathe.

That breath is so amazing. It is so healing. It is so transformative. And it's something so simple that we already do.

This is not going to buy a piece of equipment. We already come fully equipped. We're already fully equipped. But it is magical.

The effect is magical. and I would love your people listening to try it. Let me know how this works for you. I promise you, you're going to feel differently and people are going to start respecting when you hold up your hand and you say, stop for a minute.

I just need to breathe. You don't even have to say anything. Like Jackie said, put your hand on your heart and just breathe in and let it out with a sound. I'm envisioning parents picking their kids up from school or dropping them off at an extracurricular event And in those times, you know, grab the steering wheel of the car before you turn it on or put it into drive.

You take those breaths and teaching our kids to do that as well. You know, a lot of times in that hustle and bustle, it's like you get in the car and, you know, you go, like, oh, OK, what's next? We'll be real intentional about that and take that breath. I love it.

And I teach the pause before we respond to our kids, maybe backtalking, negative behavior, wet noodle tantrum, complaint, whatever it is. That's when I teach. I'm saying, parents, before you even respond to them, taking that breath. The other thing that it does, Adria, is it shifts our amygdala, that smoke detector part of our brain that says, like, warning, warning, incoming danger.

If we can take that breath, we'll move, we'll shift our brain to our prefrontal cortex, our logic, our thinking cat part of our brain. Instead of having it hang out in the fight or flight, we get more frantic and just more reactive from that place. So that is how we can incorporate mindful breathing into our daily routine. Right. The LM breath. I love myself breath. Yes.

And then when you're doing it, say to yourself, I'm doing this for me. this is for this is my gift to me very important when do we do that consciously there's that word again when do we do that when do we say what do i need right now oh i need to i need to stop and breathe don't i sometimes we like we make things harder than they need to be we do and we think oh we've got to go out and spend money on this that or the other that you know it's exercise equipment or more supplements or more this or more that.

And it's like, wait a minute, it's right inside us. It doesn't cost a thing. It's here. It's in between your eyes.

It's in your sternum, right in front of your heart. Okay. And then your belly button. It's all right there.

Everything you need, all your energy centers are there. The first time I learned the pause technique of putting your hand on your heart and your hand on your stomach, I couldn't catch a good breath. I was so tense that I couldn't even get myself to do it. So I had to literally practice and figure out how to breathe again.

Doesn't that seem so ridiculous? But it's not. Society trains us from the time we're little kids sitting with our hands folded in school. You are here to produce.

You are here to serve. You are here to give. Instead of you are here to nurture first yourself, then everybody else. So now if that's not simple enough, you've got three simple keys to what you call designing a life you love.

So let's get into those. All right. So for me, all of us, and I think all of us find ourselves in this place, is we would like our lives to be, let's say our life right now is A, but we want it to be B or we want it to be C. And I don't like where I am right now.

So I'm living with one foot in what I don't like. The other foot is in what maybe it could be. And I say, and this sounds very, very simple. The first key is accept.

Now, accept for me was a very disturbing word because I don't know about you guys out there, but I'll tell you, my answer to being in crisis was take what was going on out of my heart and my gut and put it in the frontal cortex, put it into my brain so that I could control things. Accepting with such clarity and simplicity exactly where you are in your life. And here's the key, at this moment, I'm not talking about where you are five minutes from now.

I'm not talking about where you are a year from now or a month from now. I am talking about where are you right now. Let's say you're in a relationship that could possibly be dangerous. I'm going to give you a quick story.

I was in a relationship with someone that I loved, my husband, and we're talking mental health issues. And I didn't realize that I was eating ice cream, a lot of ice cream. And I'm thinking, why am I eating a lot of ice cream? This little light went off in my head and I realized, wait a minute, I'm protecting myself.

And I said, I'm protecting myself from what, Adria? I did not want to admit that some part of me, a very wise part, I might add, said you could be in danger. And if you are in danger, what you're doing is you're protecting yourself from that danger. Did I want to accept that reality?

Absolutely not. Because I felt like I was betraying him. I felt like I was betraying my own strength and admitting weakness instead of saying, wait a minute, you need some protection and you need some help. And I heard myself say to the nurses in the psych unit, I no longer feel safe. It still hurts to say it, but that was the truth that required me to accept.

It still gets me. It required me to be honest with myself. So when I'm saying acceptance, I mean accept exactly where you are. Because if you don't know where you are, you can't get anywhere else.

And you are not going to be able to envision the steps to get there because you're not accepting that you are in this place right now. And that is such a powerful message, I think, for the parents out there that are, you know, and if you are in a relationship where you've needed to separate or you're thinking of separating or you're divorced and you're co-parenting. And I think sometimes we tend to want to skirt that, like just kind of pretend it's not happening or going on.

And because of our guilt, we feel, especially when there's kids related, right, and kids involved. But I love that first is to accept. It's not saying you're okay that things are the way they are. No, no, no.

It's not saying I like where I am. Not at all. Just acknowledging it and being real. It's happening anyway.

So just being real with yourself and saying, I'm scared. I don't feel safe. I am sad. I am feeling guilty.

This relationship is not working. I don't know how to get out of it. How can I save it? What can I?

Admit that. Yeah. Admit that to yourself. Love that.

And it's not easy to do. I'm here to tell you that it went against what I wanted to think of myself. It was my preconceived notion about here's that horrible word when you should all over yourself. And I should be strong.

Well, guess what? I am strong and I'm strong enough to say, I need some help here because I can't do this alone anymore. The acceptance is huge. That is the first pillar of designing a life that you love.

That leads us- Simple key number two. Now, number two, and this is very easy because it's AAA, okay? Your second pillar of designing a life you love is to ask. Now, ask on so many levels, on so many levels, is something that gets in the way of us being, I'm going to put it in quotes, cool.

If I'm cool, of course I know what you mean. Oh, Jackie, I know exactly what you mean. And inside of my head, I'm saying, what did she mean by that? Gee, I don't know what she meant by that.

But I don't have enough humility or authenticity to say, Jackie, when you asked me that, what did you mean by it? We don't do that because we're trying to be cool. And worse than that, you know what? Most of the time we find ourselves asking for what we think we can get instead of asking for what we really want.

Let that hit home. Feel that in your chest. Feel that in your gut. That most of the time we find ourselves are young, impetuous, even if you're 80 or 92, this beautiful part of you that says, oh, but I want, and then you stop yourself and you say, oh, that's silly. That's ridiculous.

Why would I ask for something like that? Why? Because your heart wants it, because your mind wants it because that's part of the joy of being human. But we instead ask for what we think we can get instead of what we really want. Part of asking in relationship is having the courage to say, what do you mean by that? Because our partners, our friends, our parents, they don't have a crystal ball. They don't know what you meant by that. Without communication, without true, honest, heartfelt communication, not just brain run, but heartfelt communication, your life begins changing.

And if you never ask for what you want, well, I can guarantee you, you ain't gonna get it. That may sound simple, but ask. Isn't that the truth? So you lay this all out in your book called You Are the Artist of Your Life.

So tell us about the book. This is my bestseller. I've got three others, but this is the one that it's also a journal. It's also a journal.

So each page is only, each chapter is only one page long. There are little questions at the bottom, and then there's a journal page. so that it opens up the thought that becomes, you know, that's salient for you, that pops out and you say, well, right then and there, you can start writing about it. When we're dismayed and we sing our sad little song, nobody loves me, everybody hates me, we forgot we didn't ask for what we wanted.

We go through life asking what we think we can get instead of asking for what we truly want. Can you realistically expect other people to be mind readers. Can you expect them to get it when you drop veiled hints? Don't you realize, you guys, men and women, we communicate differently. We communicate differently.

It was so hard for me to learn this, but so worth it. My life is changing because I ask for what I want now. I don't always get it, but there's a much better chance of receiving when you ask, isn't there? And then the two prompt questions are open your heart and ask yourself, what do I want?

Next, open your mouth and ask for it. Again, something so simple that is totally in our control. It doesn't cost anything. All right. So now we've accepted. We've asked. Number three.

act. Okay, it's triple A. It's triple A. It has nothing to do with cars, but let's, hey, talking about cars, you're a Maserati. Now, you notice I didn't say you're a Ford. You're even an Alfa Romeo. You are a Maserati. You are sitting in the driveway, and someone asks you, where are you going? I'm going. Well, you haven't decided where you're going, but what's the first thing you need to do?

You need to turn on the car. You need to put it in gear and then you need to step on the gas. You're going to have to go out and act. You're going to have to be consciously aware of my heart is open and I'm going to the grocery store.

I'm taking a class in the evening. I don't like the job where I am. I'm going to start looking at some other jobs instead of saying to your friends and you continuously want, I hate this job. I hate my life.

I hate that. You have to take some action, even if the action is one little baby step. If you're ready to leap, hey, leap with all four paws. That's fine.

But if it seems like it's daunting, yes, sometimes it can feel overwhelming. but if you have the courage to put one beautiful foot out in front of you and take the next beautiful foot and put it in front of that one that's how you can begin the change in your life and it doesn't have to take forever it doesn't have to take forever it can be rapid change and it is a more realistic and loving way of looking at your life because if you allow yourself to see where you truly are instead of where you wish you were and are not.

That clarity is a wonderful thing. Gives you space to allow something that you ask for that will have space to fall into. But if you have cluttered your life, in other words, your hands and your arms are so filled with the minutia of life, with the intensity of life, with the to-do list that never ends, with perfection, which is a mountain that has no peak, by the way, you were doing all of this where our arms are full. Well, there's no room even to ask for what you want. And even if what you ask for what you want, there's no room for it to come in. So all of this is a way of looking at life that is more loving. It is kinder to ourselves. Because again, as women, we are trained to take care of everyone else. We are not trained to take care of ourselves. This consciousness of acceptance,

asking, and action that becomes very conscious and very loving and very respectful of who you are, I don't have any excuses to hide anymore. And neither do any of you beautiful women out there. You have no excuse to hide. Come out and be seen. I want you to speak out. I want you to lift your voice. I want you to be heard because we are leaders. We are leaders and we have purpose on this earth. And that beautiful femininity that we are, we all have masculine and feminine in us, but that beautiful divine feminine, which is nurturing, let's turn some of that to ourselves as well. And we will be stronger for it. We can make all the excuses in the world for not getting support and nurturing for ourselves. And I've done it as well. I've done it as well. And it's different for all of us, right? But I know what that desperation and hopelessness and embarrassment and, you know, all of that. I know what that, I just know what that's like. And so this is really gearing us up, starting out your new year, parents, men and women, start with that LN,

love myself breath. I'm going to suggest people go grab your book. You are the artist of your life because there's a little journal in there. It's not super lengthy, but it's going to help you with the three A's. Yes. And it's a great gift too, because it's very slender, easy to mail. It just makes us think differently about ourselves.

Adria, thank you for taking the time to be on the show. I really appreciate you. I admire you, your resilience, but also your intentional self-care and self-love. Thank you. Thank you for that, Jackie. It was a pleasure.

okay parents so if you're ready to design a life you love check out audria at her website audriafirestone.com she's got lots of resources ways to connect with her and you can get her book you are the artist of your life at her website as well all right that's it for today's episode of the no problem parenting podcast hey thanks guys for tuning in if you found value in today's episode click the subscribe button and share it with other parents who might need a little boost Stay connected on our socials by following at No Problem Parents for more parenting tips and get your free download of the 60 ways to respond to your kids without losing your cool.

Go to NoProblemParents.com. Until next time, remember, your confidence comes from embracing both successes and setbacks. So take a deep breath, embrace the chaos, and remember, you got this.

Thank you.