Eps 149: Lindsay McCarthy Teaches Us How to Bring Miracle Mornings to our Families

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Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Music. Hey everybody, welcome to the joyful courage podcast, a place for information and inspiration on the conscious parenting journey. Conversations you'll hear on this show are all intended to offer you tools for moving forward, expanding your lens and shifting your narrative to one of possibility, connection and empowerment. When we bring deep, listening, acceptance and courage to our relationships, we are doing our part to evoke it in the world. I am thrilled to partner with you on this path today. On the show, I have Lindsay McCarthy on to talk about her book, The Miracle Morning for parents and families. Lindsay is a homeschooling mama with two children, a writer and the founder of the grateful parent.com Hey there, Lindsay, welcome to the podcast.

Lindsay McCarthy 0:53
Hi Casey. Thanks for having me today.

Casey O'Roarty 0:56
I'm so glad that you're here. Please share it with the listeners. A little bit about your journey of doing what you do, sure.

Lindsay McCarthy 1:02
So I guess the journey to doing what I do started in 2014 when I first heard Hal Elrod speak, who is the creator of the original Miracle Morning. And Mike and I were in a conference called the one life, fully lived conference. He was the keynote, and he shared his story about how this morning ritual changed every aspect of his life. So Mike and I kind of turned to each other and said, We got to start doing this. So we read his whole book on the flight home, and day one we're like, we're going to implement we're going to wake up early, we're going to do these six things he told us to do. And we did that. We woke up early, and immediately our kids started waking up earlier, too, and they started interrupting us doing our miracle morning. And we're like, Man, this is a different problem. So the way we solved that, ultimately was to teach them how to have their own miracle morning, and then we started doing it as a family unit. And then fast forward to 2015 at the same conference. How again, was the keynote Mike and I were also speakers at that conference. And we met him at the welcome reception, and I just kind of went up to him and said, Hey, I want to thank you for writing the Miracle Morning. We've been practicing it as a family for the last year, and it's totally changed our lives, too. And he was like, wait a minute, your kids do this. He's like, tell me more about that, because my kids don't do it. And so we got to talking about that, and I said, my son is at this conference, and he would love to meet you. So he said, Bring him to breakfast. So I brought Tyler to breakfast. He brought his little homemade affirmation book and start saying his affirmations for Hal Elrod. And his mind is just being blown. He's like, this is the coolest thing. He's like, everybody should be doing this with their kids. He's like, can I take pictures of this? Like, I want to feature you guys on something. And we were like, yeah, absolutely. And a couple weeks later, I woke up literally in the middle of the night with these poems, like burning in my head of how to explain the Savers, which is the practices of the Miracle Morning, to children. And I write them all down, and I send them to my husband, because I was too scared to send this. You know, Mike reassured me it was good. And he's like, You should send it to Hal. So I sent it to Hal and said, You know, I know you're working on a project for kids. If you find these poems helpful, I would love for you to use them. And he wrote back the next day, parents need this. He's like, You need to write a book with me for parents. And I was like, Oh, okay. Like I was thinking of a kid's picture book. Maybe he's like, No, you need to teach the parents how to do this. And so it was really his encouragement. Like I never really thought to be a writer. So it was kind of a roundabout way to get there. But that

Casey O'Roarty 3:57
is amazing, what a great story tell me so for listeners and myself, because I don't know what I kind of know the basics about Miracle Morning, or at least I think I do, and for listeners that don't know what that is, can you just kind of take us back so you, you see the speaker, you get the book, what is the like, what's the gist of the book, and what's the purpose? And tell us a little bit about like, what Miracle Morning is as a thing as a concept? Yeah,

Lindsay McCarthy 4:24
so basically, in a nutshell, the Miracle Morning is waking up before you have to in order to work on yourself to start your day in a positive mindset. And it follows an acronym called the lifesavers, which stands for silence, Affirmations, Visualization, exercise, reading and scribing and so those are, like the six things that Hal said, do these six things in the morning and it will literally change your life.

Casey O'Roarty 4:56
Silence, Affirmations, Visualization. Is exercise? Was that E reading, reading and scribing? Ooh, yes. So you, you get this book, you read this book, you implement getting up before you have to. And your kids are like, What are you doing? Because listeners, we all know it's, it's it's easier said than done to be like, I'm gonna wake up before my kids, because then they catch on and they're like, I want to get up too.

Lindsay McCarthy 5:23
Yeah, exactly. They're like, something different is happening here.

Casey O'Roarty 5:29
Yeah. How old were your kids when you when they jumped in?

Lindsay McCarthy 5:32
They were two and six. Oh, wow. First started implementing this,

Casey O'Roarty 5:37
oh my gosh.

Lindsay McCarthy 5:38
And it was actually our two year old at the time, who flat out said to me, mommy, I want to do what you're doing. And I was like, oh, duh. Why don't we teach them

Casey O'Roarty 5:50
well? And that's huge, right? I think so many of us, when we do decide because I one of the things that I really encourage my listeners and clients to do is meditation and journaling. I think those two tools are so powerful when we're really working on being more intentional, more conscious, more present in our life, basically not just parenting. And often, what I'll hear is, oh, I try, but my kids interrupt me. And so what I'm hearing you say, Lindsay is, yeah, we wanted to implement this. And when the kids showed up, it was more of like, how can we all do this? Versus you're interrupting me, which, by the way, anyone who's had that feeling, I get it, it's like you're wrecking my vibe here, kid. But there's another alternative, right? There's also join me, yeah?

Lindsay McCarthy 6:37
And honestly, once we invited them into that space. Then they were like, Oh, we're not really missing out on anything. And they started sleeping to their normal time again.

Casey O'Roarty 6:48
So they weren't missing a huge party. Yeah.

Lindsay McCarthy 6:52
They were like, Oh, this isn't like, I get to play with mom and dad. It's like, I have to do something. They're like, Yeah, I'll sleep. So now it's easier to wake up before them, and, you know, kind of secure our own oxygen masks before they wake up and are in our space. So I usually try to get my meditation or silence done and my reading done before they wake up, and then all the other stuff I can do when they're awake, and some like exercise and affirmations we all do together every morning. So cool.

Casey O'Roarty 7:27
What do you read?

Lindsay McCarthy 7:29
Personally, I like to read. There's these really great daily readings from a magazine called Science of mind. That's my favorite thing to read, because they're, you know, they're short a few paragraphs that takes me five minutes to read, but it's just reminders of what I personally believe, and it puts me in a really great mindset for the day. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 7:50
have you read any mark Nepo? Do you know who he is? Yeah,

Lindsay McCarthy 7:53
yeah. He's got a really great like, 365

Casey O'Roarty 7:57
Yeah, book of awakening, yes, yeah, that one's a

Lindsay McCarthy 8:00
good one in our bathroom. Actually,

Casey O'Roarty 8:03
that's where we put, where I put all the important reading is in the bathroom, because I know somebody's going to pick it up eventually. So what have you found is the benefits, like, what? What do you notice? And maybe like going way back to before you even read the book, and then implement, you and your husband implementing this practice. What did you notice shifting in your life? Well,

Lindsay McCarthy 8:25
I think for parenting, especially, it's made me a lot more patient with my kids, because when I'm kind of filling myself up first, then I have more love to give to them. If I just kind of wake up groggy and they're jumping on my head, I'm like, you know, I'm kind of in a bad mood, but if I get up on my own terms, and, you know, have a cup of tea and do a little reading, a little meditation before they're ready to go, I can meet them with a lot more love and patience and presence than if they woke me up. Yeah. So that's been a huge shift. And I think for them, because we, as we started teaching them this practice. My six year old came to me and he's like, Mommy, I don't get it. Why do I have to save my life every day? And, you

know, so I kind of had to take a step back, and I'm like, well, let's make it our own. Like, we don't have to call it the savers. Like, what do you want to call it? And so we started playing with the words of the Savers, and at six and two, like, they didn't know how to write yet, so we kind of scrapped scribing for them, and we said, let's call it creativity. And you guys can play with Play Doh, you can paint. You can draw. You can scribble on a piece of paper like you can do whatever you want, as long as it's something you're doing kind of independently. So Mommy can still do her journaling while you guys are doing creativity. And that it kind of gets your brain working in the morning, and they're like, they love it. You. Sometimes they make up skits. Sometimes they, you know, have nerf wars. And I'm like, whatever, like you're playing you're not watching TV, you're, you know, because I think kids today they they're so structured that they don't really get this unstructured play time that most of us had as kids, you know. So I thought, why don't we build that into our day?

Casey O'Roarty 10:21
Well? And I heard you say creating, right? Like create is so different than passively sitting there. And I think that so many of us forget that, while it is really handy to put on a show, and they do ask for it, like it's a part of their life, and it's so easy for it to get folded into the morning ritual. What you are offering here for everyone to remember is there other things that we can fold into the morning ritual that are and especially as I think about my kids, who are older, 15 and 12, you know, and they're not really doing a lot of creating. So even, you know, as I listen and talk to you, I'm thinking about what create, you know, how to what it could look like to fold creating into our day? I'm gonna have to, yeah, well,

Lindsay McCarthy 11:17
and for older ones, you know, if they create music, or if they like to write, you know, totally journaling. In my mind is creation. Like you're creating something from scratch. You're writing something that maybe nobody's ever written before, you know, yeah, so that is a creation, right there, just, you know, offering gratitude, writing three things down. That's a creation. You're creating positivity in the world, right?

Casey O'Roarty 11:43
Yeah, I love that. So you've, in your book that you co authored, you shifted. So you were talking before about the acronym of savers and the, you know, as the things to do in the morning. So you've tweaked that for kids. And what's the acronym that you came up with for kids,

Lindsay McCarthy 12:01
right? Yeah. So the acronym for kids is charms, so the C is creativity, H is health. So we expanded on exercise to include a healthy breakfast, because, you know,

Casey O'Roarty 12:13
yeah, it's important. We

Lindsay McCarthy 12:17
wanted to build that in too. So we're like, all right, health includes moving your body and eating a healthy breakfast. Affirmations, we kept the same reading. We kept the same. You know, if they're too young to read on their own, read with them for so many great books. Yeah, there's so many great books and there. I mean, technology can be used there too, like we listen to audiobooks in the morning, and kids love it, and it frees me up too, and it's an alternative to watching a show again, yeah, but you can still utilize technology for this. I'm not like anti tech. And then the M we combine silence and visualization into meditation, because to us, those were kind of two things of the same category. And then we added an s that we call service. And in our household, that's what we call family contributions or chores, yep, and that's my favorite of the charms, actually, because the kids come to me every morning now and they're like, Mommy, what can we do for service? And I don't have to nag them. I just have to be like, Oh, today's laundry day. Can you please bring your laundry down and help me separate it? Or, Oh, the dogs didn't get fed yet. Can you please go feed the dogs and let them out? Or, you know, whatever hasn't been done that day or needs getting done. I can ask them to help with that, and they do. Oh,

Casey O'Roarty 13:39
my gosh. I love this. So what has been the response from your readers? What are people saying about this work and implementing it with their families?

Lindsay McCarthy 13:48
I mean, we've got a lot of positive feedback. And actually one of our good friends, Cheryl, in the book, there's 12 different parenting profiles, and we have this little family mastermind. So we put out a challenge to our members, and we said, hey, we want you to try this for like, 30 to 45 days and give us your feedback, and whoever kind of gives us the best feedback will put you in the book. And so our friend Cheryl, they were kind of the winners of that challenge, and they have a son who is on the autism spectrum, and she said it has made such a huge difference in his day, because he really thrives under a structured environment. So she said when they gave him the charms and like, these are the things that you have to do in the morning, he was just like, he soaked it up, and they said having him say positive affirmations made a huge difference for him too, because being on the autism spectrum, he gets told no a lot during the day, like, No, you can't do that. No, you can't climb on the wall. No, you can't paint the wall. So for him to. At to say these positive things about himself every morning before he started his day and focus on the things he can do. She said, You know, he just lit up, and that's probably one of my favorite stories.

Casey O'Roarty 15:16
No, it's important. It's powerful. Work, right? Life changing. Work for people, that's beautiful. Hey, everybody just popping in to check in and invite you to pause for a moment, pause for a moment and consider what the content you are listening to right now is worth to you. Do you listen weekly to the show? Are you ever moved into action by what you hear? Have you ever found yourself saying, yes, someone gets me. Someone gets this parenting journey. I am honored to bring you this podcast each week, I am also thrilled to let you know that there is a way for you to support the podcast sustainability. You can become a patron. Being a patron is giving back patrons. Pledge financial support that goes directly into the production of this podcast, you can pledge $1 $5 or $10 a month, whatever works for you. Thank you to everyone who's already become a patron. Your support is so so appreciated. If this sounds like something you can do, head on over to www.patreon.com/joyful courage. That's www, dot, P, A, T, R, E, O n.com/joyful, courage. Or you can go to the joyful courage website and click on Donate in the navigation bar. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I am so honored to support and hold space for this community, for all of you, for my listeners. I love every single one of you. Now, back to the show. So how are some of the what are some of the things that you're hearing about how people are maybe because you said you started when the kids were two and six, or that's when they said, Hey, what about us? Right? How old are your kids now?

Lindsay McCarthy 17:30
Now they're five and nine.

Casey O'Roarty 17:31
Five and nine, so they're getting older. You hear from your community, what are some things that people do? You know, because I know my listeners come from, you know, the early years, all the way through having teens, and what are some things that people play with or tweak to make this fit in their family? And the reason that I asked this is, like I mentioned before, you know, I encourage parents to find stillness and find meditation and to like, commit to a practice. And there's all sorts of reasons why it's hard. And I also think that it's so common. I mean, I know that it's so common for us to be attached to what it looks like, right? Like it should be this, like, super Zen time, and maybe there's a candle lid and some incense. I'm just pulling this out of this is what I like it to look like, right? And then when it doesn't look like that, so often, we'll say, Well, I just can't do this right now. Or I can't, you know, this isn't for me, or I have to wait till the kids are older, and we come up with all these stories because it doesn't look, you know, quote, perfect, or the way we want it to look so what are some what's some feedback that you've gotten around? Like, well, this is the way that it works in our family. What are some stories that you

Lindsay McCarthy 18:47
have around? Yeah, so especially people who have, like, real little ones, you know, babies who can't even walk and talk yet, I encourage new moms, especially, like, give yourself grace. Like the Miracle Morning is not about losing sleep, which, you know, it kind of gets a bad rap sometimes for that. It's not about that. It's about the way in which you wake up. So if that's at 6am great, if your baby is still waking you up at night like sleep as much as you can. And, you know, maybe implement it at their first nap or something like that, when you can come up for a breath of air and take a little time for yourself. So that's my encouragement for people with real little ones, and also just being flexible, like the younger your kids, the more flexible you have to kind of be with the practices. And the other thing I tell people is it doesn't have to take a ton of time, like there's a practice called habit stacking. So everybody has a morning ritual, whether they kind of realize it or not, but every day you wake up, you might have a cup of coffee or tea, you probably eat breakfast. You probably brush your teeth or your hair or get dressed, you know, like these are things that people do every day. So why not build a little habit on top of that? So when you're getting dressed in the morning, say a few affirmations. When you're drinking your cup of coffee, read something positive. It doesn't have to be long, but you mean,

Casey O'Roarty 20:22
don't scroll your Facebook newsfeed, what I mean, or a magazine.

Lindsay McCarthy 20:37
But yeah, like it's just these little baby steps that you can fit into the things you're already doing. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 20:44
well, and I love that. And I love like, how there's the smallest Well, in a couple things. So first talking about, it's not about losing sleep. So I'm guessing that if you want to, you know, start doing a miracle morning and having this sacred to me, it seems really like sacred time, then you have to start looking at bedtime. Yeah, right. What does bedtime look like? And, you know? And if it's a struggle, you know? And listeners, you know, I have, I have shows on bedtime, right? I have shows on bedtime routine, reach out and I'll help you with that. But we have to be going to bed, right, so that we can get up and and do these things. And then the other thing too, I'm interested to hear what your family exercise is. But when I have my little morning, one of the things that I like to throw into is movement. And instead of being like, Okay, I'm gonna do a 30 minute Jillian, Michael ABS blast workout. You know, it can be as simple as I am going to turn on one of my favorite songs that makes me feel all the feels, and I'm going to blast it and I'm going to dance to it, and that's three minutes.

Lindsay McCarthy 21:49
Yep, that's one of our favorite exercises, by the way.

Casey O'Roarty 21:52
Yeah,

Lindsay McCarthy 21:54
play on the trolls soundtrack. Have a little dance party.

Casey O'Roarty 21:59
Yeah? So I hear you. I hear that flexibility that you're talking about Lindsay, and I hope listeners that you're hearing it too. And, you know, and three gratitudes is enough. Can be enough for journaling. And if you're like me, and you just, I mean, I kind of write and write and write when I have the time, then I do that, but I, you know, not getting hung up so hung up on the structure of it, or the again, being attached to what it should look like, so that that then becomes a roadblock, and then you don't ever do it so small, little steps and maybe, like you said, implementing one thing at a time, even just, I know at our house, when I put books and magazines that I want to be reading out, like, when they're right there on the counter or right there on the coffee table or right there next to the toilet. I read them. Yeah,

Lindsay McCarthy 22:50
I actually have, like, a little miracle morning bag that has my journal and my magazine and my vision board and then so if I want to do it in bed, you know, I keep it by my bed, and then if the kids get up earlier, or whatever, I can bring it upstairs. Do it in the kitchen. So then it's, it's mobile.

Casey O'Roarty 23:11
When I'm picturing, like, it could even be like a cute little basket. I mean, oh, I love it. I love it. So how do you deal with what's your advice for perhaps reluctant family members, like, I'm thinking about my teenagers, because they're, you know, there's, they're just like a walking eye roll. But I have a feeling I know what you're going to say, but I want to hear from you what you know. What are some ways to encourage our older kids, or even, like, school age kids that maybe have lost their I want to do everything that mom and dad do vibe

Lindsay McCarthy 23:42
well. I mean, as you probably know, we can't change other people, right? So all we can really focus on is ourselves, and that's what I encourage people to do, like start implementing it yourself, and your family members will start seeing changes in you, and might get curious and might not, but we can't really force our kids to do it. We especially teens, like they're getting more and more into their own being, and don't always want to be told what to do from mom and dad, and honestly, their bodies are changing. Like it's a tough sell for a teenager to wake up any earlier than they're already waking up. Oh, yeah. So maybe encourage them to find a time in the evening that they could maybe do the Savers or the charms or Yeah, and there's a, there's a The Miracle Morning for college students. Oh, so if you know, maybe put a little bug in their ear, place that on their bed, stand or something. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 24:40
that down, yeah. And you could be like, and that's enticing, like, I know you're only in high school, but I think you can handle this, yeah, right, because, well, in our, in our, in my school district, I mean, we have yet to figure out. Well, I think they figured it out. But there's, you know, the high schoolers and the middle schoolers are still going to school. Well, in the hour before the elementary school kids, even though everything research wise shows that we should swap that, but it's inconvenient for the adults. Blah, blah, blah, anyway, so, yeah, so like, I'm thinking about my daughter gets up at like the crack of dawn. However, this is all I mean, I think miracle could be a miracle evening too, for sure, and a wind down and a way to end the day, and maybe not all, maybe some. And you are planting some seeds in my mind. Thank you for that. Lindsay, I'm excited to just

Lindsay McCarthy 25:36
and like I said before, it doesn't need to be this big, long, drawn out thing, either it can take five minutes in the morning, and everybody has five minutes, everybody

Casey O'Roarty 25:45
has five minutes. Are there any other final thoughts that you'd like to leave listeners with today?

Lindsay McCarthy 25:54
I mean, just some, like, little tips and tricks that we found combining charms if you're running low on time, that works really well, like we often combine affirmations and exercise so little jumping jacks with your affirmations.

Casey O'Roarty 26:10
Love it. Breakfast and,

Lindsay McCarthy 26:15
you know, listening to some Yeah, breakfast and reading, reading. Or if you have any kind of commute, like audio books in the car. We do that all the time. Tyler likes to do service and reading a lot. He'll read to his little sister. So

Casey O'Roarty 26:32
enjoy this time

Lindsay McCarthy 26:36
getting older. I

Casey O'Roarty 26:37
mean, it's comes with its own fun as they get older, but there are some precious things that happen when they're younger that kind of fall to the wayside. Sometimes, yes, yeah,

Lindsay McCarthy 26:49
I look forward to them getting older because of all the fun things you get to do, especially Emmy right now at five, like, she's just on the cusp of, like, getting to do really fun things. We want to take you hiking and biking and do all these things. And, you know, she just gets tired real easy.

Casey O'Roarty 27:07
Yeah, we used to go out to dinner with the kids when they were little, like a like, three and five. And we'd look longingly at the families with, like, teen kids and my husband, and I'd be like, that'll be us one day, you know, as we're trying to keep Ian at the table, and, you know, things are falling apart. And now we go and we see those families with the young kids, and we look at our kids, and we're like, oh, look at us. We're the ones with the big kids. And it, it's pretty awesome. It's pretty awesome. I like it. So the last question that I always end with Lindsay, and I'm gonna ask you as well is, what does joyful courage mean to you?

Lindsay McCarthy 27:44
Yeah, well, I mean to me courage. It means being afraid, but doing it anyway, like writing a book, for example. Yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 27:54
Well, how else God tells you to write a book?

Lindsay McCarthy 28:00
And then, and then, the joyful part of that is, you know, and just allowing it to really fill you up and and spread light to the world. So, you know, stepping into your own light and your own power, and doing the things you're afraid to do. Anyway, I love

Casey O'Roarty 28:20
that stepping into your own light. I'm writing that down. Thank you, beautiful. Where can listeners find you and follow your work?

Lindsay McCarthy 28:28
Yeah, well, my blog is called gratefulparent.com you can go there. And I also have a Facebook group same name as the book, The Miracle Morning for parents and families. I'm literally in there every day, so tag me and I'll see it. And if you want the book, it's available on Amazon.

Casey O'Roarty 28:48
Great. And listeners, Lindsay and I might be putting our heads together to create something for you too. We did talk about that, didn't we? Did we talk about that? Okay, good. Otherwise, let's talk about it, because I want to team up with you. So stay tuned for that. Lindsay, thank you so much for coming on the show today. This was fun. Yeah,

Lindsay McCarthy 29:07
thanks for having me.

Casey O'Roarty 29:13
Joyful. Purge community. You're amazing. Big thanks and love to my team, including my producer, Chris Mann at pod shaper. Be sure to join in the discussion. Over at the live in love with joyful courage group page, as well as the joyful courage business page on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to the show through Apple podcasts, or really, anywhere you find your favorite podcasts, you can view the current joyful courage swag over at the web page and tension cards, bracelets. E course offers the membership program one on one coaching, it's all waiting for you to take a look. Simply head to www dot joyful courage.com/yes. That's joyful courage.com/y. E, S, to find more support for your conscious parenting journey. Any comments or feedback about this show or any others can be sent to Casey at joyful courage. Com, I personally read and respond to all the emails that come my way, reach out, take a breath, drop into your body, find the balcony seat and trust that everyone is going to be okay.

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