I believe that when we develop the habit of finishing what we start, we become confident and successful. AND....we need to know how to accountably QUIT doing what isn't aligned with our purpose so we can finish what is. In this episode, I talk about how we can increase our success and the success of our kids by learning some very important distinctions about the nature of long-term relationships and how to navigate them in all aspects of life!
Find us at www.QuittingCulture.com. Get the CLEPTO Code, Stop Stealing from Yourself, for frree at www.QuittingCulture.com/giveaway
Welcome to the liberated life. Get ready to free your mind, body and
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Now, here's your host, Robin Quinn Keehn. Hey, friends, welcome. Great to have you here. Today, I'm going to be talking about one of my favorite topics and one of the areas that I really love to help people with and that is the area of quitting. You may know my business is quitting culture. And I've gotten a lot of really curious looks about that when I've told people and they're like, What are you talking about? So I thought I'd explain it take a few minutes to tell you what I mean.
0:41
My experience of quitting looks a little bit like this. When I was a kid, I never got to quit anything. My mom and dad were very much committed to me completing whatever it was that I had committed to. So when I was a little girl, I took Suzuki violin until I was 10. And I don't even remember thinking about quitting. It was just something my parents required. And then when I was 10, I got to pick if I wanted to play piano, which I already played, take lessons or continue with Suzuki violin and I switched over to piano. I continued to study piano, all the way through college. And I can promise you there were many times when I did want to quit, I actually made the mistake of telling my teacher in high school that I wanted to be a concert level pianist. And yeah, I cried mercy pretty quickly after I declared that because I was going two or three times a week. And that just was too much for me. And that's not really what I wanted. Sounded good at the time. But needless to say, there were times that I wanted to quit and my parents held a firm line and just said, You said you wanted this, we're committed to this and you're going to continue. And obviously, I'm one of those people that looks back and says, Wow, you know, I had a music and dance studio. I've taught music for over 25 years. I'm really grateful to my parents that they kept me going when I do didn't want to, and that they held that really strong line for me.
2:04
So fast forward, I had my first child and quickly had my second child. And the oldest one was in preschool. She was like three and a half or four, and her brother was 21 months younger. She was having a great time at preschool, and we really loved it. I knew the teachers, loved the environment, it was a very wonderful place for her to be. And one day, she just decided she didn't want to go anymore. And initially, I thought, weird, because she has a great time and she's actually crying but she didn't have a fever. She didn't didn't seem like anything was wrong, but we stayed home that day. And then she did it like the next week. And I thought, wow, I wonder what's going on here. I don't understand why she's unhappy.
2:49
So I packed her up and took her the next time. I dropped her off and I watched her as she made her way to the sand table and was having a great time. So we had tears all the way there and then the minute we arrived she was having a great time with friends. This pattern continued with her. And I finally asked her teacher, Mrs. O'Brien, and Mrs. O'Brien's was this lovely woman probably in her 50s, who had her own kids and had been teaching preschool forever. And so I felt like she was, you know, good person to ask. And he said, What is going on? And she said to me, Look, do you value this for Madeline? And I said, Absolutely. And she said, Okay, great. So is she safe here? Yes, I have no, no concerns about her safety. This is a great place for her to be. And she said, Robin, (I still remember we were sitting in those little tiny chairs at the table, a little short table, right?) I still remember her looking at me across that table. While I'm sitting in a toddler chair and saying, Robin, you're the grown up here. You get to decide if you value this and you know that she's safe here. Yes, she's smart. She's super smart, but she's not old enough to make a decision. About her activities you need to decide. And you know, just come anyway even though because she's waiting to see what your response will be. I remember thinking, are you kidding me? Like, how can a little tiny child actually be manipulating me basically. And, and so I took that to heart and yes, there were more mornings where Madeline was kicking and screaming and we'd still get out the door. I just made it happen. I remember putting her in her car seat, you know, getting kicked and having all the crying and tears and we still went. And you know, she she stopped she stopped doing that she she changed her mind. She saw that I wasn't going to give up on her or on preschool. And so we continued. So fast forward to you know, I had a music and dance studio and I had tons of kids from newborn all the way through high school, especially as we expanded into dance. We went from I went from, you know, 15,000 And in my Kindermusik studio when I first moved to Sequim back in 1994 is when I started teaching to, you know, over 500 students in our studio, which was awesome. But I promise you, I saw it all. And I saw the same thing that happened with me and Madeline, repeat time and time again with parents.
5:21
I remember the turning point for me on that with all the dance students was I was standing near the front desk, and we our receptionist, Sarah was at the desk. We had a requirement that when parents wanted to withdraw, they needed to come up to the desk and fill out a form. This rather tall blonde mom came up to the desk, and she said, I want to withdraw my child from class. And Sarah said, Okay, no problem. And here's the form. Can you tell me a little bit about why you're withdrawing? And she said, Oh, I just don't think she likes it anymore. I think she's bored. I'm standing there looking at the mom. And I realized that her child is on the other side but I can't even see the child. So I peek around the desk and there's a three and a half year old or four year old who's enrolled in fairy tale ballet. And I'm thinking, oh boy, here we go, right. Here's a little tiny child, telling her mom what she wants. And the mom is just saying, Okay, great. I don't want to put up with the upset so we'll just withdraw.
6:25
To be clear, when a child doesn't want to do something, it's usually not little sweet faces and you know, fairy dust. It's like, you know, rolling of the eyes, crying, throwing tantrums, screaming, throwing things. So I'm sure I get it moms and dads struggle with putting up with the upset that our kids feel when they want something, but it's how they also get what they want from us. Anyhow, I remember thinking, oh boy, she's four. Now. If this becomes a habit, this will continue on until she just doesn't have to do anything anymore.
7:00
That was my big aha moment in my studio when it grew so large, pretty much overnight that this was very normal. So that wasn't happening with my students though. And I give credit to my mentor, a guy named Neil Moore, from Australia who invented created the Simply Music piano method. I've been teaching it for the last 17 years and you learn to play first and read music later. And Neil being a great, insightful man, and I say great because he's just so thoughtful and present and aware of what's going on with people. Quite a student of human dynamics. He taught me years ago when I first became a Simply Music teacher, (and he teaches all of the teachers) that music learning to play music requires a long term commitment. And any long term commitment has peaks, valleys and plateaus, that lasts for short, medium and long times. And they're always changing.
8:00
Let me say that one more time: long term commitments, anything, any long term commitment has peaks, valleys and plateaus. And those lasts for short, medium, and long times. And they're always changing. So I always had these conversations when students enrolled with me and I required parents were in the room with us, right? So they were sitting with their child. So I got into the habit of just saying to each kid every time each students that I had adults to But hey, how are you feeling about piano this week, and they'd give me a thumbs up if they were loving it a thumbs down if they were really unhappy. And somewhere in the middle of that's where they were. And so, what they noticed was that everybody in the room had this experience. I taught groups, everyone had this experience of loving it, not liking it, hating it, loving it, hating it, liking it, you know, everybody all the times moving around.
8:55
I think most people don't know that. They know it on a level but they actually have never really thought about it. And I have a lot of compassion for parents, young parents, I have four children. I was a young parent. I had four kids between, you know, zero and 10. And it was a bit of, you know, crazytown for me a lot and to be present with what was actually happening was a stretch.
9:20
So you have a kid getting upset about something, you've got three other kids or two others, one other, whatever, you got other kids around, you're trying to manage it right? And you're not really thinking, oh, we're just in the middle of a long term relationship. I'll just hang on. It's easier just to quit, because it's so stressful. So let's talk about that for a minute. I, here's what I've noticed. I used to think something was really remarkable about my piano students. So they usually started with me in in Kindermusik or Music Rhapsody when they're tiny, and then they'd stay and they'd stay and they'd stay. they'd stay for years. They'd be with me from the time they were newborn through 14 Or from the time they were five until they were done with high school, tons of them.
10:04
The funny thing about my kids- my students were that they were remarkable. Those were they were the kids that didn't just play the piano, but they also danced, or they played the piano and they played soccer, or they played the piano, and they did gymnastics. And they did everything really well. And in addition, they did extremely well in school. They got the best grades, they made the honor roll, they competed in history fair. They competed for the science fair, went to Washington DC to compete nationally and one, you know, it's like, wow, how do I get all these amazing kids? This is remarkable. And quite honestly, right now, I'm watching a bunch of them graduate with honors from different colleges all around the United States. So, you know, the beat goes on. It's kind of like okay, that's amazing. I remember when they were little tiny kids sitting on my piano bench.
10:55
Anyway, interesting to be a teacher and get to track with your kids for years, but the point is, here's what I really believe. I started noticing that. And then what I realized later is all those kids number one, their parents were very involved with them. They always came to my class, that was a requirement. They were always there. They're always supportive. They paid attention. They knew what their child needed to be doing. So that was great. So they really knew how to stand for their kids, which meant that when their child had a feeling of I hate this, I don't like it. I don't want to come anymore. Mom and Dad were very clear that this was just the roller coaster of that long term relationship. And they were just in a valley. Nothing was wrong with their kid, the method, the teacher, the studio with them, this was just the nature of long term relationships. And so they stood for their kids put up with the upset, didn't respond with a bunch of emotion and get upset with them just said, Oh, I know where we are not a problem. I'm just going to stand here for you and we're going to keep going. Get your stuff. Let's go That's what I had to do with my kids to write. And so that's what happened. So let me contrast that with what happens when we quit habitually. And I'm talking about children, but I'm also talking about adults. This is not a children phenomenon. This is a people phenomenon. But let me just keep it in the realm of kids right now, since we're talking about kids. So here's what happens. And I'm clear about this. It's not like maybe I'm clear, this is what happened. So a child is enrolled in an activity. And at some point, because it's just human nature, they want to quit for any reason for no reason. But the parent doesn't know that they just know that their child is upset and wants to quit. And so out of a place of perhaps some confusion, a desire to have their kid be happy, a desire for their kid to try a bunch of things. And until they find their thing, the parent makes the best decision that they know how to make and they lead The child quit, they withdraw from the activity, and they move on to the next activity. All right. So quite predictably, some amount of time goes by two weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks, I don't know. It depends on the age of the child and whatever. But at some point, that child wants to quit. And the parent goes, wow, okay, he or she isn't liking this. I guess we'll try something else.
13:27
Here's the danger in that. Quitting becomes a habit and never achieving an outcome becomes the outcome. So if I enroll in piano, and eight weeks later, I want to quit. In the simply music program. Yeah, you would have learned a number of songs, but you're at the beginning of the journey. So you wouldn't learn that 30 to 50 songs the first year that we promise you'll learn. So you maybe learn five or six great, but it's not the outcome you came for. If you're taking gymnastics, and you quit, three weeks in, you're at the very beginning of learning a skill, you're not going to think of yourself as, hey, I did something, I achieved something. So when kids quit prematurely without having had a win or accomplishment, a skill developed, they begin to tell the story that, wow, I'm really actually not very good at this. Because they don't understand what happened.
14:28
They just wanted to quit and their parents let them. A child can't reason that through. They don't understand. They just got what they wanted in the moment because they don't have a long term picture of what's happening. So the kid wants to quit, the parent lets them they happen to something else. That kid wants to quit, the parent lets me hop into something else. This goes on over and over and over again and the child tells the story, I'm really not good at anything. It's, it's a setup and nobody really knows it.
14:55
If a parent actually understands that this is the nature of long term relationships, it can shift the story dramatically. So what I'm telling you is the kids that came to me and stayed with me, they all had success after success after success, and because they believe they could, and they did. And they had evidence. Then when new opportunities came up, they had all the evidence in the world to say that they could do it, whether that was soccer, or a school project, or another instrument, or whatever it was, they had evidence from their experience with me, or at my studio, that they could accomplish their goals. And they became confident kids who have gone on to be confident adults who believe that they can finish what they start and achieve their dreams.
15:46
Compared to the kids that quit, and I know plenty of them that did. And I can tell you that my experience of those kids because I was friends with their parents. I live in a small town. You see people you know, all the time. Those kids became the teenagers that isolated themselves in their room and really don't ever want to do anything because they tell a different story, which is, why bother? Why bother trying really not good at anything.
16:13
So it's, to me, this is like really critical information. And if parents understood what was required, it could change the entire course of that child's life. And it really could change the course of that family's experience. Because when you understand you end up with a much more peaceful home. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I'm saying there's a lot less drama when you understand what's going on. And you can guide your kids through learning the long term relationship and the only way to learn it is by experiencing it and with guidance from parents. So let me shift over to adults for a moment. Because the same thing happens with us. And when I started talking about quick proof kids last year, I was on some radio shows and some podcasts And the host said to me, almost every one of them were like, you know what you're talking about kids, I think you need to be talking to adults.
17:08
And at first I was like, What are you talking about? And then, you know, I gave it some time, because I knew they had a point if they all kept saying the same thing to me, and that is, we quit as well. So on a previous podcast, I talked about the idea of living on purpose, and that you have a spiritual thread that runs through your life, that is your purpose. And then your mission is all the different ways that you fulfill on that purpose. And that is what's constantly changing, right? So I think that adults quit a lot of times because they've said yes to things that actually don't line up at all with who they are, or who they want to be. So they say yes to something in the moment from a place of Yeah, I want to do that or sometimes a place of obligation, or sometimes the place of guilt, but we say yes to things and then we realize actually I don't want to do this thing. But instead of accountably, ending that commitment, promise or agreement, we just slip away a lot of times. And then we feel a sense of shame, guilt, embarrassment, if it's a big enough thing we will isolate from that person that we made a commitment to or and or will become depressed, because we backed out.
18:28
So, we quit all the time. And when we quit, without accountably ending something, we do have an experience of, you know, I'm not really good at this. And if we quit often enough, we tell the story that we never finish anything. We don't get things done. We're not a good friend. We're not a good parent, whatever it is. So I work with people on learning how to accountably quit things that they shouldn't be doing so that it's a clean a clean thing. out of this, you know, muddied waters around the quitting. So just quickly, I'll go over that. So you understand what I'm talking about. So let me just give an example of myself. So if I've told myself, which I did back in September, I'm not eating any sugar anymore. And, you know, we got to, well, we got to the pandemic. And I was doing really well. So I did really well for six months, and suddenly, I found myself eating caramel m&ms, who knew? And I remember thinking, Oh, my gosh, I just totally started eating sugar again, like, What's up with that? And so I really had to think about what I was doing and realize i'd broken into an agreement with myself, which I believe and quite clear, causes a lot of negative self talk and condemnation, right? embarrassment, shame, whatever. It's not good. So I actually just let myself off the hook. I had a little conversation with myself. That went like This Wow, look at you. You're eating sugar. Okay, well, you did a great job for six months, you did a great job, no sugar at all in your diet. So proud of you, Robin for doing it. And it looks like things have changed. And now the decision you've made is to eat sugar. Okay. All right, well, that's okay. You're eating sugar, and you just changed your mind. You made a different decision. And I'm just gonna let myself off the hook here and say, no problem. When you're ready, you'll go back to the thing that felt better for you. But right now, this is the thing. So I'm off the hook.
Okay, now that might sound ridiculous to you. But it's actually we all talk to ourselves all the time anyway, or I think we do. So why not have that conversation and let yourself off the hook. You simply made a different decision. For whatever reason, doesn't matter. The reason? I could give myself a reason, but I don't really need to. I just changed my mind at that point. So that's how you clean things up with yourself. Let me just talk about cleaning stuff. with other people. So when I work with people, and you can go get this course, it's called the CLEPTO Code, Stop Stealing from Yourself. And it's how to stop stealing time and energy by letting go of things that don't serve you anymore. So you can go get that I'll leave the link in the notes.
The idea is if you make a list of all your outstanding commitments, promises and agreements, you can start to clean them up. So when I say that, I mean, just anything that comes to mind. Sure, there will be some things right now that you committed to that you're not doing. And that would be a great place to start. But it's funny how things come to mind that are really old. For instance, when I did this, six or eight months ago, I realized there was somebody I promised I would call like, a year before and it still hadn't called her I called her but not reached her. Long story. I hadn't spoken to her and I felt really bad about that. And so I cleaned it up, I reached out and finally reached And told her, I had been trying to reach her. And that I was feeling very badly that we hadn't spoken. And I asked if we could, you know, clean that up, and would she Forgive me for dropping the ball and so forth. So I'm talking about cleaning up old stuff, and I'm talking about cleaning up current stuff. So there's a whole conversation to be had about that. I'm gonna have it really briefly with you here. And then you can go get the CLEPTO Code if you'd like.
The conversation you can have with a friend might go like this. So let's just say you have a friend. And you said you would run together every week. And you were doing a great job for a while. And then one week you called and said, Hey, I'm not going to make it today. And then, and then the next time showed up, and you didn't make it that day, and then you didn't make it again. And what happened for you is you started to feel embarrassed and guilty, and then you were too embarrassed to make another phone call. And then you just kind of dropped the ball and walked away. And so I would be calling you If it were me, I would call that person and say, Hey, you know, we had agreed to run together and I want to let you know that I completely dropped the ball. And I'm going to tell you that the impact on me is that I want to be your friend, and I want to be engaged in friendship with you. But now I'm feeling really embarrassed and kind of ashamed of myself, and I'm isolating myself from you, like I'm hiding from you, because I'm so embarrassed now. And I'd like to clean that up with you. And I'm wondering if we could have a new agreement and if you can, forgive me for disappearing out of your life.
23:39
Okay. So I said it was on me, and I also said the impact it had on me, which is, now I'm hiding from you, and I asked if we could clean it up. And I would ask if we could find a new agreement that would give us both a win. So maybe that would be who knows we run only every once in a while together or Don't run at all, but at least I've cleared the air with my friend. That's a really important piece in the quitting things. So when you do intentional, accountable quits, you, you stop stealing from yourself. When I have things on my mind that I haven't quit well, they'll wake me up in the middle of the night. In fact, calling my friend Karen was waking me up in the middle of the night, I'd wake up in the middle of the night, and I think, oh, shoot, I still haven't called her or I'd be in the middle of a conversation with another friend named Karen different friend and I think Tang I need to call Karen. So you stop circling around that in your brain because literally your brain holds those things and remembers them and reminds you at really the most inopportune times. So if you can clean those things up, all the better. And I believe that when you let those things go, you clear the path for yourself, to actually commit to the things that are most important. And here's the key. finish what you start right Finishing what you start looks like, you know, completing phone calls that you said you'd make or completing a project or launching that podcast or, you know, finishing that course that you said you were going to launch. And finishing what you start gives you a habit of success makes you feel good about yourself, you become reliable people know they can count on you. And mostly, you know, that you can count on you.
So that's a little bit about the Quitting Culture. That's one of my main messages - we need to help our kids and we need to learn how to help ourselves finish strong so that we tell ourselves, we have the habit of success. And the story we tell ourselves is, Hey, I actually do everything I say I was going to do. So if I could say what I would love it. If I could have it any way I wanted it, we'd all be impeccable with our word. All right, so I'm going to wrap it up for today.
You can find me at Robin@quittingculture.com. Go to the website and get that free course I was just telling you about it is www.quitting culture.com/giveaway, go get the CLEPTO Code. It's really short and very impactful. I've had a few hundred people go through it and let me know that it really meant a lot. They had a whole new perspective.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, please rate and recommend on Apple podcasts overcast or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also get more great information at www.quittingculture.com
Transcribed by https://otter.ai