Maintaining a Growth Mindset Through Adversity: A Solo Mom’s Story w/ Robyn Sears

J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 01:00 My guest today is Robin Sears. Thanks for coming and talking to us on Solar Mom's talk. Robin, I'm glad to have you.

Robyn Sears Guest 01:07 Yes, thank you so much, Rosemary. I feel very grateful to be here today. Thank you. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 01:12 You're welcome. So before we get into what Robin does, tell us who is Robin Sears.

Robyn Sears Guest 01:20 Yeah, that's a great question. So I reside outside of Atlanta with my husband. Between the two of us we have five grown children, three granddaughters and another grandbaby on the way, so life is expansive and busy and quite beautiful at the moment. So I am also a coach and love serving my clients and they're predominantly single mothers and I have a heart and a passion for them. I was a single mom myself for a number of years and really experienced some tremendous generosity and compassion from individuals that crossed my path during that time, and I want to pay that back. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 02:17 Okay, all right, thank you. Thank you for sharing that a little bit with us. Now I want to go back a little bit and ask you to tell us one how you became a solo mom. We use solo mom because we want to encompass all mothers' mothering solo. Yes, how you become a solo mom, and how did that journey lead you to do what you're doing now? Robyn Sears Guest 02:43 Yeah, I became a solo mom after 17 years of marriage and I had three young children one in elementary school, one in middle school, and one in high school, and found myself entering the workforce for the first time in my mid-30s, because previously I'd been a stay at home mom and I was very blessed to be able to do that.

03:12 But over the course of 17 years my marriage had always been difficult and it just got to the point where we just needed to part ways and after a number of years I can say that we're not friends. We are cordial, right. We can get along for our children with all of the growth that happens when families expand, right? It's important to maintain some of those relationships with boundaries. So I also which I think is an important part of my story is I was a very young mom. I was 17 when I had my oldest son and my husband was 20. So we were two children and having children, so trying to grow up together and start a family and step into adulthood in a way that neither one of us were really prepared for and honestly I think we did the best that we could in the moment. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 04:30 Yes, okay, thank you for sharing that. Yeah, it's not. It's not always successful when we marry young, especially, especially if we weren't finished growing. Yes, yeah, okay, all right. So I see you say you empower single moms to thrive through positive intelligence coaching. What is that? Robyn Sears Guest 04:58

So positive. Positive intelligence is a methodology that was created by a gentleman. His name is Sherzad Charmaine, and after years of he was a CEO and did a lot of executive coaching and studied a lot of neuroscience, and this was this is his, his methodology, and what I love about it so much is I think it really gets to the heart of the matter, of the things that we struggle with, right, like they say, that our the biggest struggle that we have in our lives are actually what lived between our two years, right, our brains, and it's a way to recognize the ways that we self sabotage, and each person is unique and so he has. There's an assessment you can take and it's free and it's actually pretty interesting and what I learned when I took the assessment. The goal of the assessment is to figure out he has 10 saboteurs, he calls them saboteurs and it's the 10 most common ways that we get in our own way. And when I first took the assessment, I was like I don't do that. No, that's not me. And then, when I started reading about it, I was like, oh, my goodness, this is me. I create my own stress by being restless and by avoiding things, and each saboteur actually has an underlying strength, and so some of my strengths are I'm very calm and like I changed plans, is like if somebody's like, oh, we're not going to do that, now we're going to do this, I'm like, okay, like I tend to be very go with the flow. 06:52 So what I learned about starting the positive learning, about positive intelligence is is how to interrupt those thought patterns. So when my restlessness kicks in, when I'm looking for the next shiny object to distract me from what my goals might be, he has a process and he calls them PQ reps and the way I like to explain it is there are micro moments of mindfulness and that's sort of my own terminology, the way that I've been able to explain them to myself. But it is literally just taking a moment to restunder yourself. And you can do it anywhere in a business meeting, you know, at the doctor's office, when your kids are freaking out and traffic, whatever, and it is, and it is utilizing your breath and taking an opportunity to just stop the mind from going 15 miles an hour into the future, which is what we oftentimes do. And I think especially it's important to interrupt this pattern for single mothers, because that's where stress is created. 08:05 It's the what ifs, right the what if I can't pay this bill? What if I lose my job? What if this? And and I don't know if you've noticed this by yourself, but what I noticed for myself is that when I start down that path, I feel it in my body my shoulders become earrings, my neck gets tight, my jaw starts to hurt, my heart starts to pound and I start breathing really shallowly and I might be describing like a panic attack. 08:35 And the opportunity to do some of these PQ reps is a way to interrupt that thought pattern and to say to myself okay, but what is going on right here, right now? How can I connect my breath to bring me to the present, instead of allowing myself to be racing off into the future or fighting all the battles in my mind with the I should have said this or I should have done that, the I should have and all of those things get in the way of our peace. Yes, so this is what I like to share and it's really applicable to anybody. But single moms have a special place in my heart for obvious reasons, but I wish at the time that someone had shown me some ways to stop the madness right, and I did go to therapy, which was really helpful, and I learned some things there which, of course, were really beneficial. 09:41 But there's this there's a simplicity to the positive intelligence method that I think really resonates with a lot of people, and it is embracing the fact that we have this weakness right. It's our inner judge, it's the inner critic always beating us up and telling us that we're not enough, we're not doing it right. Yes, we're not good enough, and that is a lie. And the world tells us it's the truth, but it's a lie. I came to the point where I was like I am so exhausted and I am tired of believing the lies. 10:20 It doesn't mean I have toxic positivity, because I certainly don't. Life is hard, sometimes right, and embracing the hard, recognizing that it's hard, but not staying in that place and being able to the flip side of the saboteur, it's the sage perspective. So it's being able to be creative and innovate, which is what we were created to do, right? I believe that we were created to be incredibly innovative individuals and when stress, it's like a block, right, and it prevents us from thinking and it prevents us from wanting to do more. And so, anyway, that's a long-winded way to say I utilize positive intelligence to throw a stick in stress and say no more, no more, we're not doing that.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 11:17 Yeah, I love it, thank you. And it's the lizard brain, and sometimes, when I look back, I see how that lizard brain they say hi inside, it's 2020, but that's how you made all the wrong decisions, because you were in the frame of mind to make decisions. You were too busy listening to the crazy. So, yeah, what's that? Robyn Sears Guest 11:43 The fight, flight, freeze, and now they've had it fall into that, right. So it's this, and it literally stops the thought process. So I like to think that stress, anxiety, fear I don't think that there's anything. I don't think any emotion is negative. What makes it negative is the amount of time that we stay in it, and that's part of what positive intelligence teaches you is to learn how to limit the amount of time that you stay in it. 12:18 Right, it's like putting your hand on the hot stove. That first second, that, oh, that is hot. It's a warning, right? Yes, when I feel anxiety starting to creep in, that is a warning signal. The bells now go off and go Robin, you've got some anxiety going on. What's happening here? And it allows me to check in with myself and to sit back and do a little breathing, feel where I am in the moment. It's like what is the truth here? It's my brain running off into making meaning out of something that there is no meaning. What is the truth for this particular moment? Yes, Because I don't like to have my fingers on a hot stove. It hurts. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 13:07 I don't think anybody does, but then we don't realize that's really what we're doing, right yeah? Robyn Sears Guest 13:13 So you utilize those tough emotions as a warning sign to check in with yourself. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 13:19 Yes, absolutely, thank you. All right, so I'm thinking that somewhere in there you told us what inspired you to work with single mothers, but can you expand on that a little bit and also expand on this topic of mindfulness, especially where it pertains to single moms? Robyn Sears Guest 13:41 Sure. So, like I mentioned before, I was a single mom for a number of years. My situation I needed to start working so that I could support my children. That was terrifying. I had worked at home, doing all the things volunteering, taking care of the kids in the house and the eight million things that you have to juggle there to step into the workforce and to add that to my plate. 14:16

And my very first boss I was working in the insurance industry was very challenging and he ended up moving on to another end, closest agency, and so I was without a job for like two weeks. Well, a friend referred me. She's like hey, I know another insurance agent and his office manager is going, she's leaving, she's going to have a baby and she's not coming back. And you already know the business, you know all the things, so you're already trained. Do you want to interview? And I was like, absolutely. 14:54 It ended up being the biggest blessing for me at that time because the gentleman he and his wife owned the agency and I really credit them with setting me on a path to self-exploration, increasing my self-confidence and starting to peel the onion of all the lies that I had believed and been told about myself, that I'm not good enough, right, that I'm not smart enough, that I'm not. They were so incredibly kind and really mentored me in a period of time of my life where I didn't have a good understanding of who Robin really is right, like I didn't. It was like I was just kind of moving through life in a fog and incredibly afraid of failure. If I lose this job, I can't feed my kids. If I, you know, if I lose this job, then all of those things that had been told to me that must mean it's true. Yeah, so what this gentleman and his wife did for me was help me realize that I am enough. I am smart enough, capable enough, creative enough, I am good enough, as I am Slightly broken right, I think we're a little broken, but I was so I ended up in working in an environment that was incredibly positive and they taught me this might sound silly, but they finally gave me permission to make a mistake and not beat myself up over it. 16:44

I'll never forget this moment. I made a mistake and I was sitting at my desk and in my boss and I told him and my boss came over and we were kind of talking in a very like educational matter of fact, like it's no big deal. Hey, and that's kind of, let's do this instead. And you know it's nobody, it's fixed. You know it's like it's no big deal. And he was so incredibly kind to me in that moment and I'd only been there for a couple of months that when he walked away, I slumped down in my chair and I hid behind my computer monitor and I cried Because his kindness hit a spot that needed healing. Yeah, so that really was a pivotal moment for me to realize that I actually deserve kindness. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 17:51 It makes a big difference, doesn't it, when you have a nurturing environment that you work in as a solo mom, because you know you're already beating down yourself and you know you may have people around you beating you down, but when you're at work you know you spend a lot of time there, and if there are people there beating you down too, I mean what's left like? Robyn Sears Guest 18:12 so yeah, exactly, and so that's kind of set this process in motion where I really started to peel the onion and figure out who I am, what I love, what kind of human do I want to be and how do I want to serve. And years later, I've taken quite a number of certifications. I've had an executive coaching diploma from Emory and done some work with the empowerment dynamic and positive and you know my mindfulness certification and that's where I felt like I was being led is this place where I needed to understand how to interact Right. Life is always going to be hard and challenging. It is the way we choose to interact with it, and we have that's the only choice we have. We don't have a choice to handle the other person and to control their, the way they're responding to you. You know, the only choice I have is to control myself and to control my emotional responses, and I knew that I needed to have a handle on this and to create some practices in my life and to implement healthy things that would take me to a place of of peace, even in the midst of chaos, and so part of that is my part of that understanding is my desire to give this back to single mothers who are juggling work and all of the eight million things at home and children and the the fear of the world is sitting on their shoulders and it breaks my heart because I remember sitting in that seat and thinking this is hard and being incredibly worried about my children and some of the choices that they were making as teenagers. And you know, it's like you guys are giving me great hair and wrinkles is as hard. But all of this just really, I think, put me into a place where I wanted to figure out how I could serve this community of women, who are incredible human beings, in a way that might help them alleviate some stress, some of the one of the. 20:53 When I was in my mindfulness certification. One of the interesting studies that they were discussing is there was a study with two teachers in two different classrooms and both of the teachers practiced mindfulness daily. One of the teachers implemented small bits of mindfulness into the classroom with their children. The other one did not. Then they studied the classrooms and studied the children, and what came out of that study I thought was really interesting is that there was almost no difference in the way that the children behaved, whether or not they were actively practicing any mindfulness. 21:31 It was coming from the teacher and the teacher's presence in the classroom and I thought isn't that interesting that as a parent and now grandparent, my mindfulness might actually rub off on them a little bit and maybe kind of tone down a situation in just the way I engage with it. Maybe, you know, when I was a young mom my top of my head would flow eye off and the steam would pour out of my ears and you know I would lose my cool. But you know, I think age and wisdom and learning how to kind of just recognize that you know these are little tiny humans learning how to interact with the world and losing your cool doesn't actually help. So I just I think that single, solo moms, I mean as a population, carries so much and I just would love to serve them in this way.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 22:36 Okay, all right, and in serving them, you also work with non-profits, and can you explain what you do there and why you focus on the non-profits who serve single moms? Robyn Sears Guest 22:51

Yeah, I have a deep appreciation for the non-profits who are serving this community, and part of what I wanted to do on my I have a podcast also but what I wanted to do is really to highlight the work that they're doing, to drive awareness to the programs that they have, not only for other solo moms out there who may need their services, but also to maybe some donors, somebody who hadn't heard of that. It's like, oh, I really think what they're doing is amazing and I want to be supportive of this. Okay, so it's really more about building relationships and bringing awareness to other, because I think when we, when we highlight other people and we give to them and share our audiences with them, it's an opportunity for the goodness to grow. And the other thing that was important to me in the process was you know, you turn on the news, you turn on the radio and the world is, you know, blowing up and everything is negative and their you know humanity is no longer, you know, kind and we're all out for ourselves. 24:04

And the more I started to talk to people like that's not true. Yes, of course there is truth there, but that is not the whole picture. There are a lot of incredible people doing amazing work in the world and I'm tired of the negativity. So I was like, okay, well, let's start talking about the really amazing, compassionate, empathetic, beautiful things that people are doing in the lives of other people to make a difference. 24:36 So I build relationships with other nonprofits to hopefully bring a program to the single mothers that they serve and to bring them it's a six week coaching program, very small groups like only five women at a time, in an effort to create intimate community. Because that's the other thing that I've learned through my own experience and that also having conversations is that community is lacking. When I got divorced like I lost half my friends because people don't know how to handle that right and they think it's contagious. So community is really important and so that's part of what my desire to do is just to bring community other other solo moms not necessarily in the same, you know, geographic area having an opportunity to share and encourage and to grow together.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 25:35 All right, thank you. You mentioned you had a podcast. Talk about the podcast. Tell us about your work specifically, like how you serve single mothers, and then tell us how we can get in touch with you. Robyn Sears Guest 25:49 Yeah, thank you. My podcast is called Above and Not Beneath, and in my podcast I'm interviewing these solo moms who have overcome a tremendous amount in their lives and they are on this path to self-sustainability and to success, whatever that looks like for them. In some cases, these women finally have a home of their own, or their very first apartment or their very first car, or maybe they're in, you know, in recovery and it's been a while, or they lost their children and they got their children back. But they're on this beautiful path, and so I'm interviewing them to share their stories, so that they have an opportunity to spread encouragement to other women and men because men certainly go through this also but to spread encouragement to other individuals so that, you know, maybe they're having a bad day and they're like, oh my gosh, that story was so powerful. You know, I see myself there. She did it Like I can do it too. Right, I can do it too. And then also I've interviewed some other individuals that just are just doing some unique things in the world to help people overcome fear and to learn how to start businesses, because a lot of the moms I'm working with are working for someone else isn't actually working for them and they're doing so, okay. Well, I'll interview some individuals who are experts on helping entrepreneurs and here are some steps that you need to take if you really want to do this. 27:35 And then also working like highlighting these nonprofits. So, you know, if somebody is in actually just interviewed a really interesting woman who has a neat nonprofit in Florida that's providing safe housing for women, and you know she has some really practical ways, you know there's like a, you know a Walmart shopping list. You know she provides the basic necessities in the home. You know paper towels and all that stuff, and it's an easy way to partner with them. You know, yeah, I can give you 10 bucks a month for paper towels, sure, and to serve a mom who is, you know, is maybe even living in her car. 28:16 So my, that is my podcast. My podcast is about bringing hope and encouragement to other people. And then also the ways that I work with women is to do group coaching, like I mentioned before, small groups, and then it's a. It's a six-week period and we have a once a week group coaching session together and there's other materials and homework, but it's not arduous or really hard or anything like that. A lot of it is learning how to practice the positive intelligence and to get in touch with your stress and to learn how to just let it go, and then after that, there's an opportunity for additional community after that, and so you can find me on my website. It's above, not beneathorg. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 29:06Okay, all right, thank you, and are you on Instagram? Robyn SearsGuest29:10

I am on Instagram struggling a little bit with. Anyway, it's not working right this minute, but it should be soon, okay all right, no problem, you got a little apology right. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 29:24 It's all right. I'll put the link to your podcast and your website in the show notes so people can get a hold of you. All right, so what is Robin grateful for today? Robyn Sears Guest 29:37

Oh, what am I grateful. I am grateful for this moment right here. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 29:39 Thank you. Robyn Sears Guest 29:41 I am grateful, Rosemarie, for the invitation to share with your audience. Yeah, the list is long. Today I got to spend a couple of days dog-setting for my son and my husband. We don't have a pet right now, so that filled a cup that I didn't realize was empty and I had just a fantastic time with this dog. He's 100 pounds of lap dog, so I'm grateful for that moment that I just a little bit of time I got to hang out with a sweet pup, and I'm grateful for my family and the opportunity to serve single mothers in a way that hopefully brings them a little piece on their day. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 30:29 All right, thank you. I appreciate you coming and talking to us today to sharing your wisdom and expertise on Solomoms talk and before I let you go, I'd like you to give a Solomom one piece of advice. Robyn Sears Guest 30:44 Yes, one piece of advice. If I could give myself that piece of advice, you know, 15 years ago, it would be to believe in yourself because you are fully and completely equipped. You might not feel it, but the truth of the matter is that you are equipped to do the job that you have in raising your children and juggling the 9 million things, and you can do this. And it is completely fine and totally okay to drop the occasional ball right that we always do, but to believe in yourself and to give yourself a little grace. J. Rosemarie (Jenn) Host 31:39

Amen, thank you very much for having us here. So coming and talking to us today, I really appreciate you. Robyn Sears Guest 31:45 Yeah, thank you, Rosemarie, it's been such a great time.