Eps 636: Create, Don’t Correct in 2026

Joyful courage…. Today joyful courage is a reminder that I get to create the life I want. Not through what I have or accumulate, but through the mindset and beliefs I choose each and every moment. I get to release myself from doubt and fear and instead live in trust and love and joy and possibility.

Resources mentioned:

• Living Joyful Courage Inner Circle Membership – Casey’s membership program that’s currently open for enrollment (doors open as of the episode). Starting 2026 with a 6-week Positive Discipline class for parents of teens, then monthly workshop calls and group coaching calls starting in March. Includes weekly one-on-one time and Thursday morning soul care sessions.
  • Website: https://www.besproutable.com/teens/parent-membership/
• Casey’s book – “Joyful Courage: Calming the Drama and Taking Control of YOUR Parenting Journey” 
• Newsletter signup – besproutable.com to stay connected and learn about offerings for parents of kids of all ages
• Social media – @JoyfulCourage (for sharing and connecting)

Transcription

[00:00:00] Casey O'Roarty: Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Joyful Courage Podcast. This is a place where parents of tweens and teens come to find inspiration, information, and encouragement in the messy terrain of adolescents this season of parenting. Is no joke. And while the details of what we're all moving through might be slightly different, we are indeed having a very collective experience.
[00:00:30] This is a space where we center building, relationship, nurturing life skills, and leaning into our own personal growth and man. The opportunities abound, right. My name is Casey Ody. I am a parent coach, positive discipline lead trainer, and captain of the adolescent ship over at Sprout Bowl. I'm also a speaker and a published author.
[00:00:53] I've been working with parents and families for over 20 years. And continue to navigate my own experience of being a mom with my two young adult kids. I'm so honored that you're here and listening. Please give back to the podcast by sharing it with friends or on social media rate and review us on Apple or Spotify.
[00:01:13] Word of mouth is how we grow. Thank you so, so much. Enjoy the show.
[00:01:23] All right. Yay. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Welcome back. Happy New Year 2026. Oh my gosh. I had. An amazing break. I hope that your holiday break was full of ease and self-care and connection. Um, and here we are. Here we are in 2026 and yes, it is a Monday. And yes, I am just gonna be here with you, you and me. It's not an interview, uh, because I wanted to bring in this new year with you.
[00:02:05] Just the two of us. Um, and so that's what I'm doing. That's what I am doing. I want you, as we start, as we come together, just take a breath with me. Wherever you are right now, maybe you're driving or folding laundry or hiding in the garage, getting a minute to yourself, whatever it is that you're doing in this moment, I just want you to take a breath.
[00:02:36] Yeah, so I have been thinking a lot about this time of year and the energy around it. I love New Year's. I love the whole idea of having a new year, a fresh start, a reset. I love declaring goals and ways of being, I get really into it. And I've been thinking about you because there is so much messaging that comes at us during this time of year.
[00:03:12] Right? New Year, new you, fresh start. I already think I even said that out loud. Maybe this is the year you're finally gonna lose the weight or create a new routine or whatever. Right. And for those of us. Parenting adolescence, it can often translate into something like, this is the year I'm finally gonna fix my kid, or This is the year I'm gonna get control.
[00:03:40] This is the year they're gonna start listening to me, and I just wanna invite us to pause on that for a second. Because what if 2026 wasn't about correction? What if it wasn't about fixing or controlling? What if this year was about something completely different? What if this year we focus on what we're creating?
[00:04:08] And before I dive into what I mean by that, I wanna name something because if you are listening to this pod, if you've listened for any amount of time, if you've read my book, if you've taken any of my workshops, you know about positive discipline. You know about connection before correction. You know about natural consequences and family meetings and all of the beautiful tools and frameworks that come along with that.
[00:04:37] Program. Right? Which by the way, that's what this year we're starting with in the Living Joyful Courage Inner Circle membership. We're actually starting the year with the six week class for parents of teens. I'm really excited about that. So if you're getting emails. From me about the membership. Keep in mind that's what we're starting with.
[00:05:00] So yeah, we know all the things and yet, and yet there are these moments maybe daily, maybe a few times a day, where all of that knowledge can feel completely unavailable to you, where maybe you find yourself yelling or shutting down. Or saying things you swore you'd never say. I just got off a call with a client who was like, Casey, I knew I should walk away, that I was activated, but instead I planted my feet and I leaned in.
[00:05:37] Maybe you lie in bed at night thinking, God, I know better than to do that. Why can't I do better? So I like to talk about this as minding the gap, right? The gap between knowing. What you should do and doing what you know is helpful, right? The gap between the parent you wanna be and how you actually show up in those activated triggered moments.
[00:06:05] And by the way, I want you to know you're not alone in having this gap. In a workshop that I did last month during the coaching week offer that I made, I asked. Parents to finish the sentence. Right now, the hardest part about parenting my teen is, and I encouraged people to share how they would finish that sentence.
[00:06:29] And here's what came up. What came up was the hardest part about parenting. My teen is not taking things personally, self-regulation when I'm triggered tolerating their unhappiness with our rules. Watching them struggle setting and holding boundaries, letting go of control, and the need to try to keep them safe, not becoming untethered when things go sideways, big or small.
[00:06:56] Do any of those things resonate with you? I'm guessing they do because this is the work, right? This is where we all are. This is the work of parenting through adolescence, and here's what I've learned after nearly 20 years of doing this with parents and my own practice. The reason we stay stuck in this gap isn't because we need more tools.
[00:07:21] It's not because we need another parenting book or another framework. It's because we're asking ourselves the wrong question. We're asking, how do I fix this? How do I get them to stop? What's wrong here? When really the invitation I wanna make for you today as we move into 2026, the question that changes at all is, what do I wanna create?
[00:07:46] What do I wanna create in this relationship? What do I wanna create in this moment? So, yeah, let's talk about why shifting into that question matters. Right. And I'm gonna get a little geeky here with you for a minute because there's a lot of actual psychology and neuroscience that backs this up when we're focused on what's going wrong.
[00:08:09] Right, which includes what needs to be fixed, what needs to stop, what we're trying to avoid, our brain is literally in a different mode. We are in threat detection mode. Our nervous system is scanning for danger. It's catastrophizing. And from this place we have access to a very limited set of responses, and what we have access to are those survival instincts.
[00:08:38] Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. This is what cognitive behavioral therapy talks about. When they say that our thoughts create our feelings, which creates then our actions. When our thoughts are focused on a problem, on what's broken, on what we're trying to control, we start to feel anxious. We start to feel frustrated, powerless, afraid.
[00:09:01] And from these sets of feelings, we act in ways. Most of the time make things worse. Here's what's really to me so fascinating when we shift our focus to what we want to create. Our brain actually starts working differently, and this isn't just positive thinking. This is about something called the reticular activating system.
[00:09:28] Basically, it's your brain's search engine. So whatever you're focused on, your brain starts to look for evidence for it, right? If you're focused on everything your teen is doing as wrong, you'll see everything they're doing as wrong. Your brain will collect evidence all day long, right? And if, again, what you're looking for, what your mindset is, is your teen is getting into trouble.
[00:09:55] Your teen's doing the wrong thing, your teen's lazy, your teen doesn't care. That's what you're gonna see. But if you shift your focus to the relationship you wanna create the moments of connection you wanna have, how you can look through a different lens about what's going on. Your brain starts scanning for opportunities to create that instead.
[00:10:18] Research in positive psychology shows us that this shift from problem focus to possibility focus. I love that. Staying possibility focused actually. Expands our capacity for creative problem solving. It increases our resilience and it fundamentally changes how we show up in our relationships. And there's another piece here that's actually super important.
[00:10:48] When we focus on what we wanna create, we're activating what psychologists call intrinsic motivation. We're connecting to our values, our own vision for who we wanna be as parents. And that's so different than being driven by fear or that external pressure, or trying to control outcomes that we can't actually control.
[00:11:12] This is about agency. It's about recognizing that even when we can't control our teen's choices or their struggles or their path, which spoiler alert we can't, what we can do is influence the experience that we're having of their choices, struggles, and path. We can create something intentional with how we show up to them.
[00:11:43] One parent in the workshop that I mentioned last month had this insight. She said, you know, when I am activated, it's all about me questioning things like, why aren't you thinking about me? How could this happen? Right? Why are you doing this to me? And when I'm grounded, I'm really more curious about my child's perspective.
[00:12:05] Can you hear that shift from all about me to curious about them and their experience? That's the shift from reactive to creative, from correction to creation. That's the gold. That's really what I wanna spend time on this year in my own personal practice as, wow, it's useful for all of us. And you know, before we go any further, I wanna talk about something that might feel counterintuitive, because when I say, what do you wanna create?
[00:12:38] Your first thought is probably, as it is for most of my clients, about your teen. What do I wanna create with them? What kind of relationship do I want? Which are, you know, those are great questions and we're gonna get there. But here's the thing, you can't create anything sustainable in your relationship with your teen if you're not tending to yourself first.
[00:12:58] Right. I talk a lot about willingness and being willing in those moments to shift into something different, and I think the more resourced we are because of our self-care, our soul care are tending to us. The more resourced we are, the more we can be in that willingness to try something new and different.
[00:13:20] Right. It's the oxygen mask principle. You've heard it a million times if you've been on a plane, right? Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others. But I wanna talk about why this is so critical when it comes to parenting. Teenagers. Your nervous system, you, the parent, your nervous system is the foundation of everything when you're dysregulated, right?
[00:13:46] And dysregulation means flooded with emotion triggered. When you're in that survival instinct, fight, flight, freeze, fawn mode, you literally cannot access the parts of your brain that allow for connection, curiosity, creativity, problem solving. You just can't. It's not a character flaw. It's neurobiology.
[00:14:09] And then here's this other piece, right? Your teen is learning how to regulate their emotions. By watching you, not listening to your lectures about emotional regulation, but by watching you, by feeling your energy, by seeing your practice, they're wired to attune to your state. Of wellbeing to your nervous system.
[00:14:33] So when I ask what do you wanna create, the first question is actually, what do you wanna create for yourself? How do you wanna feel? What state do you want to be in on a regular basis? Another parent from that workshop shared, you know, it's taken time to meet these parts of myself with self-compassion.
[00:14:53] It's taken time for her to look at her activated self, look at her triggered self. And arrive there without guilt and regret and remorse, but instead self-compassion. We're always doing the best we can with the tools we have in the moment. And this is the work. Meeting ourselves with compassion, recognizing that our triggers are not character flaws, they're information, they're often connected to our own younger parts, our own unmet needs, our own fears.
[00:15:25] The conditioning that we were raised with. One Mom said it really beautifully. She said, when I'm triggered, it's my little girl who had whatever experience that is triggering this and I get to have compassion for my little girl and to also have compassion for my kids'. Little kid, they're still a child trying to figure out their own, whatever it is at any given moment, right.
[00:15:56] Compassion goes so far in our relationships with our teenagers and with ourselves. So what do you wanna create for yourself? Maybe it's an experience of being more grounded, having more capacity and willingness to pause, more self-compassion. Maybe it's more permission. To take care of your own needs without guilt.
[00:16:21] Here's what happens when you tend to yourself first, you show up differently. You see more clearly, you respond more skillfully, and the relationship actually starts to shift, not because you controlled your teen into changing, but because you changed the energy that you're bringing. To the shared dynamic that you have with your teenager.
[00:16:43] This is the natural byproduct of filling your own cup. You start to feel better. You experience a life through a lens of more gratitude and possibility. And your teen gets to experience you as more regulated, more present, more connected to yourself, which is gonna allow you to be more connected to them.
[00:17:07] It's big, it's big and profound, and in a lot of ways, simple, right? They're not, you know, I, I, I always feel really empowered when I remember that where I can make big shifts in my life is right here, right now, inside of me. That feels really good. So let's get into it. What do you wanna create? I'm gonna walk you through some questions and I really encourage you to, if you can pause the episode and actually write your answers down, or you know, real quick, pause the podcast and make a note of the time.
[00:17:46] Where you're pausing it so that you can come back to these questions. If you're driving, let yourself feel into them. Notice what comes up in your body. I'm gonna put these questions in the show notes as well, so you can reference them there. So the first question that I have for you, and this comes straight from a workshop that I said that I did with parents that was really useful, really profound.
[00:18:06] Got a lot of feedback about it. So I'm bringing it here to the pod. First question, when I'm at my best with my teen, I am. Dot, dot. Do just finish that sentence. Describe how you show up when you're at your best. Maybe you're patient or playful. Maybe you're calm or curious or warm. Just notice what comes up for you when you think about finishing this sentence.
[00:18:33] When I'm at my best with my teen, I am right second prompt. The relationship I wanna create feels like. Not what it looks like, what it feels like. What's the energy, what's the quality of the relationship that you wanna create with your kiddo? Maybe it feels like ease. Maybe it feels like trust, safety, joy, respect.
[00:19:01] Just notice what's true for you, right? Sit with that. The relationship I wanna create feels like what? Then the third prompt, when I imagine us five years from now, or if you have a younger teen, maybe it's 10 or 15 years from now, when I imagine us in the future looking back at this season, I want to have been the parent who do right.
[00:19:30] I want to have been the parent who, what? This is about your legacy, it's about your values. When your teen is in their early twenties, late twenties, and they reflect back on these teen years, who do you want to have been for them? What do you want them to share with you about what was useful?
[00:19:52] All right, so moving through those prompts, hopefully now you have some clarity about what you wanna create, and I want you to notice something. Just asking yourself these questions, offering yourself these prompts probably shifted something in, you did it. Maybe you feel a little bit more spacious. Maybe you feel a little bit more hopeful.
[00:20:13] Maybe you feel more connected to your intention, right? Maybe you feel a little bit softer. That's the power of getting clear on what you wanna create. It shifts your internal state immediately. One of the parents also shared something that I thought was really beautiful and really relatable. She said, you know, I'm realizing that I can make room to hold grief for where my dreams and family life looks different.
[00:20:47] And then I can open up to possibility for something new to occur. So if you're someone I know I was a parent of a young person whose day-to-day did not match what I thought life would be like, and there's grief there. So you get to acknowledge that you get to hold space for that. And you still get to be in that question of, so this is what's true and what do I wanna create, right?
[00:21:18] How do I wanna influence this experience, this dynamic? And listen, it's important for us to recognize that we can hold both. We can hold the grief and we can hold the possibility, right? We can honor what is while moving towards what we wanna create.
[00:21:44] So knowing what you wanna create, beautiful. Let's talk about the gap, right? Because knowing what you want again and actually embodying it in those triggered moments. That's the gap. We're minding, right who we are versus who we wanna be or who we wanna be versus who we are. This is where practice comes in.
[00:22:03] This is where we start to build the bridge, shrink the gap, spend more time as the parents we want to be, and less time in that kind of reactive, autopilot parent mode. So I want you to think about what happens in your body when you become activated. What's your physical cues? Maybe it's tightness in your chest or belly or clenched jaw.
[00:22:28] Maybe it's heat in your face. Maybe it's your shoulders going up to your ears. Maybe you hold your breath. For me, it's like my heart starts to pound and I can hear it in my ears, like it's a full like chest, shoulder, throat. Physical experience and that physical, those physical cues, those are those early warning signs.
[00:22:58] It's your body saying, Hey, you're headed into activation right now. And that's the moment where you have a choice, right? When you can get ever more aware and hear your body saying, Hey, check out what's happening right now. You already start to create a space there for making a choice and choosing something different.
[00:23:19] So that's the practice. When I notice that physical cue, I will what? And I want you to keep this really simple, right? I'm gonna take one long breath. I'm gonna put my hand on my heart. I'm gonna step away for 30 seconds. I'm gonna feel my feet on the ground, whatever is helpful for you to be in that pause, whatever is helpful, use it.
[00:23:50] The goal isn't never to be triggered or never to be activated. The goal is to catch yourself before you're fully flooded and you've done or said something from that reactive place that isn't helpful. Right. So you're creating that pause, you're slowing down the momentum of the activation, and then you get to ground yourself.
[00:24:15] Right? And grounding yourself is also part of that shift, shifting out of activation and into something different. So maybe it is softening your jaw, continuing to take breaths. Maybe it's to remember what it is that you wanna create. I think that's really useful. What is it that I wanna create? Maybe you put again, keep that hand on your heart and another hand on your belly, and you offer yourself some compassion.
[00:24:46] And for one of the parents, right. I'm, I'm gonna share a lot about the feedback I got from parents. Her trigger was her son being teenagery and obnoxious, and she recognizes that when that behavior shows up, she goes into shutting down, withdraw for her, noticing that physical experience, pausing and shifting into opening her heart and palms.
[00:25:14] And thinking, this is the moment to connect. That's the practice for her. Can you hear that? Can you hear that shift from closing to opening? From fighting to receiving, there's a physical shift. That's the embodiment practice, and it truly can be so impactful in shifting your experience because when you're grounded, right?
[00:25:39] Grounded meaning. Connected to yourself, calm, nervous system. When you're in that prefrontal cortex space, really you have access to different ways of responding. You can be curious instead of defensive, you can set a boundary with warmth instead of a threat or anger, you can acknowledge the feeling and the valid reality that your teen is in.
[00:26:04] Instead of dismissing it. You can take a little space. Instead of escalating the challenging moment into something that's, could become a crisis, right? Could be a a, a big tear in relationship. So the last piece of the practice is what are you gonna do or say differently from that grounded place, right?
[00:26:25] What's the language that you're gonna use that's gonna help you continue to forward into relationship? Right. It could sound like, can you tell me a little bit more about that? You guys know I love keeping that in my back pocket for sure. Maybe you say, you know, I'm recognizing where I'm at. I need a minute before we talk about this.
[00:26:46] Right. Maybe it's, man, I can hear your frustration. Or perhaps it's really about just taking a breath before responding. Right. As one parent said, it's micro movements. Into a new way of relating, right? That's what we wanna create. We wanna look at the relationship and how we're relating, how we're being relational, and shift in the way that we are inside of that to make an impact on the whole dynamic micro movements.
[00:27:24] That's all this is. You're not gonna get it right every time either. You're gonna forget your practice, you're gonna get flooded and say the thing anyway. And that's okay too because you know it's not about perfection and you get to have opportunities to make amends and repair and move forward. Those, those are actually really important for your kids to witness and be a part of.
[00:27:45] And I love what another mom in the community said. She said, you know, practice makes progress. Right. I love that. Practice makes progress, not practice makes perfect. Practice makes progress. Every time you notice that cue, right, you notice that indication that you're becoming activated. That's progress.
[00:28:05] Every time you pause for even one breath to slow things down, that's progress. Every time you come back, after you've been reactive and repair with your teen, that's progress. Right. Every time you meet yourself with compassion instead of criticism, that's progress. It's amazing, right? So here's my invitation to you.
[00:28:30] As we move into 2026, start asking yourself, what do I want to create? Again, not do I, what do I wanna fix or what I wanna stop, not what do I wanna control? What do I wanna create? And it's interesting, like you can bring that question into all sorts of personal goals. It doesn't even have to be relational, right?
[00:28:50] What do you wanna create for yourself, for your relationships, for your family? And then notice what gets in the way. What's the gap between the parent you wanna be and how you actually show up when you're triggered or activating? Build your practice, build your pause, build your grounding, build and practice, and be willing to have a different response.
[00:29:14] Here's the thing, like I said, it's not just about parenting. It's about how you move through the world. One of the parents on the workshop call shared that over time. This work that we've been doing together has transformed not just their relationship with their kids, but their relationships with everyone, friends, coworkers, the PTA, parents at school.
[00:29:39] Because when you learn to lead with relationship, when you learn to meet yourself with compassion, when you learn and practice grounding yourself and responding instead of reacting. The ripples happen everywhere, right? I love this quote from one of the parents. My trigger is colliding with my mama.
[00:30:04] Dreams for my kiddo, right? Our triggers collide with what we want most for our kids. She said, when I'm able to ground and release that I'm able to soften into understanding their experience more. It's major, so big. That softening. That's what we're creating. That capacity to hold our own big feelings and experiences and our teen's big feelings.
[00:30:31] The ability to stay connected to ourselves and to them, even when things get hard, right? Even when our tolerance window gets filled up, right? We all have a certain amount of tolerance for their behavior, their discomfort. And really what we're working on doing here is pausing to create more of a tolerance window so that we can stay connected to self and to what's the, what is most important to us.
[00:30:57] This is where transformation happens. This is where it begins. It's not about having the perfect tools or the perfect plan or knowing what to say or being prepared for the issue. It's about being willing to look at ourselves. It's about being willing to practice, slowing things down, releasing the activation, trusting that that's okay to do right, and show up with compassion for ourselves, our teen others again and again and again.
[00:31:31] And again and again, and you again, you're not alone in this, right? You have everything you need inside of you. Every moment is an opportunity to practice, to grow, to create something new, right? And that's what my hope is for myself moving into this new year, and it's the imitation that I'm offering you.
[00:31:56] So as I wrap up. I just wanna say thank you for being here. Thank you for doing this work, for showing up to the pod for listening, being a part of the community. Thank you for being willing to grow and stretch and look at yourself. And keep in mind if you want more support like this, you might wanna consider the Living Joyful Courage Inner Circle membership Community.
[00:32:23] Doors are open right now. If you're listening. In real time, and like I said, 2026. We're starting with a six week positive discipline class for everyone. And then in come March, we'll have workshop calls once a month. Group coaching calls once a month. All of it designed to continue to support you in integrating this work in your family.
[00:32:47] You get one-on-one time most weeks. We do soul care on Thursday mornings. There's so many ways that you get to be learning, growing, transforming inside of this community, right? It's really a special, special place. So go to be spr audible.com/teens right now to find out more and. If you loved this episode, please share it with one other parent who might need to hear this message.
[00:33:15] You could screenshot it, you could share it on social media. Tag me at Joyful Courage. Send it to a friend who is struggling. This work is so much better when we do it together and when you share, you are a part of the impact that it makes on the world. Okay. All right, friends. Here's to 2026. Here's to creating instead of correcting, minding the gap with compassion.
[00:33:43] Here's to showing up as the parent you want to be one micro movement at a time. I so appreciate you. I'm so glad that we are walking this journey together. Take care. I'll see you soon. Bye.
[00:34:03] Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to my Sprout partners, Julietta and Alana. Thank you, Danielle, for supporting with the show notes as well as Chris Mann and the team at Pod Shaper for all the support with getting the show out there and making it sound good as I mentioned. Sharing is caring. If you're willing to pass on this episode to others or take a few minutes to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, it helps other parents find this useful content.
[00:34:30] Be sure to check out what we have going on for parents of kids of all ages and sign up for our newsletter to stay [email protected]. I see you doing all the things. I believe in you. See you next time.