Welcome back to the latest mini series on the Don’t Cut Your Own Bangs podcast – “Riding the Waves.” In each episode we examine what comes up, what opens up, and what becomes available when we loosen our grip on big ideas, big feelings, and big problems. The question we explore in every episode is, how can we make the process of riding emotional waves a little easier, more gentle and feel less lonely in the process.
Thanks for joining Juanita and me in this week’s episode, “what’s at stake?” Stakes can be both good and bad, penalty and reward, inspirational and paralyzing. We explore how stakes motivate us, what gets in the way, and real-life examples for context. Here are a few observations from our discussion:
- Parenting, in particular, carries huge stakes. Additional stakes can surface with people who are asked to watch our children or who have opinions on how our children are being raised.
- Social media can affect how we view stakes and prompt us to doubt ourselves.
- Sometimes there is conflict between how much something matters and how to make that thing happen.
- The actual stakes can be very different from what we perceive to be at stake.
- We can feel attachments to a variety of things including people, outcomes, stories, and the way things have always been done.
Thank you for listening. Tune in next time for part 2 of “What’s at Stake?”
DANIELLE IRELAND, LCSW
Thank you for being part of the Don’t Cut Your Own Bangs community. Feel free to reach out with questions, comments, or anything you’d like to share. You can connect with me at any of the links below.
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JUANITA MOLANO PARRA, MBA, PCC
Juanita is an engineer and MBA turned certified life and leadership coach. Originally from Colombia, she worked in multinational corporate finance and later started her own coaching business—training new coaches and partnering with organizations to transform culture and leadership from within. Her business, Jump Coaching, helps leaders live authentically, lead with purpose, and turn their dreams into reality. Juanita lives in Indianapolis with her husband, their daughter, and two cats.
Want to connect with Juanita? Check out Jump Coaching
Ep. 164 Transcript
Danielle Ireland: If you know me, you know I love journaling. Whether you need to vent, get something off your chest, or you’re deeply in search of answers in the face of doubt, anxiety, stress, fear, insecurity, the only person who truly knows you better than anyone else is you. And journaling is the way in. That is why I’ve created the treasure journal. It’s a seven part guided journal that also can be accompanied with my treasured journal meditation series. It’s broken into seven different themes. Career, relationships, love, sex, money, family and purpose. Because, well, it pretty much covers it all. Each section of the journal has a short story, a, takeaway sentence, stems, quotes, prompts, things to get the wheels turning so that you never feel stuck looking at a blank page.
Hop on over to the show notes or visit danieland.com and grab your copy of the journal and the treasure journal with meditation series today.
Juanita Molano Parra: Hello.
Danielle Ireland: Hello, this is Danielle Ireland and you are listening to don’t cut your own bangs, a miniseries riding the waves of big feelings with my dear friend, life coach extraordinaire, Juanita Molano Parra. This is an experience where a therapist and a coach team up the ultimate duo to fight the challenges of the plights of existence. I don’t know where that came from, but I’m going to go with it because that was really fun. But where we sit down and explore what opens up becomes available when we hold big ideas, big problems, big feelings lightly. I originally became interested in this topic and approach to emotional well being because I wanted to explore something that didn’t feel so hard or scary or confusing. And part of what makes things feel less hard, scary and confusing is when you do it with a good friend. So welcome, Juanita.
And today we are going to talk about what’s at, stake. That’s the question we’re exploring. We started with where do I start? What should I do? What if I fail? And today we’re exploring what’s at stake within this question. We’re going to explore a common topic that comes up as it relates to the question why it’s hard or challenging, what gets in the way? Where we have or clients have experienced this as well. And lastly, what happens or becomes available when we hold it lightly. Hi, Juanita.
Juanita Molano Parra: Hi.
Danielle Ireland: Hi.
Juanita: last time when we were talking about what if I fail, something that we talked in terms of what today is and what’s at stake is some of the distinctions. Because I was asking you like, well, is this different? Is this the same? Should we collapse them? And something that I, that I’M present to, and I want everybody to stay present to, is that what’s at stake can be going to say can be good and bad, can be positive and negative. Like what’s at stake could be the things that we lose, but it could also be the things that we gain and the things that we get access to that become possible. Like the questions we’ve been putting the topic. And so yeah, just really looking at this, at the stakes in an expansive way.
Danielle Ireland: Yes. I remember you talking about that before we started recording the what if I fail episodes. I think what’s interesting too about the breakdown of these questions that we laid out. Where do I start? What should I do? What if I fail? What’s at stake? And then what now? They maybe with the exception of where do I start and what now? The others don’t necessarily follow a linear trajectory. We kind of bounce around, hop around or slide from one to another. Yeah, they’re kind of more circuitous than they are linear. And yet this one felt like the natural next step and something we were talking about before we even pressed record, which I think would be a great way to open up to a common topic as it relates to what’s at stake is parenting.
Sam and David went on a trip to Switzerland to celebrate their 10th anniversary
When my husband and I. I can’t remember if I talked about this. When we recorded before, we went on a trip to Switzerland and it was to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary. It was a beautiful adults only, like just very I’ll say luxurious experience. It was luxurious for like the freedom of space in a bed, space in a day. Being able to go to bed on my time and wake up on my time all the while. Jet lag was my close companion in all of, all of these sleep cycles. But we had a lot of time to just talk about life and we, of course we m. I shouldn’t say of course we were lucky enough to miss our kids a lot because I. It’s funny how distance in so many ways can just bring things in perspective. It’s like I couldn’t wait to get away and get some. Get some adult time. And then by the time that wore off I was like, oh wait, I just miss them so much. And I end up looking at their photos a bunch. But thinking about kids, it’s insane actually to think about making a life, birthing a life and then keeping that life alive. Like it’s just, it’s wild and the stakes are so high. I think the stakes being so high and I’d love to even talk about why the stakes are High like it’s the most important job we’ll ever do. And yet there is not a job description for it. And the reason why I know there’s not is there are too many experts with their own job description of it. If you need a rule or a list to follow to make this work, you can Google it and find a KA Bajillion of them. But if any one of them work, there wouldn’t be so many lists. And yet they all, I’m sure, offer some value to some people some of the time. But I’m specifically remembering, like, what to go to. Like, why is it hard? And how I experienced it. When other people watch my kids, it is, first of all, a, massive privilege. Whether it’s a family member who’s helping me out, of the kindness of their heart and their love for my children, or it’s help that I pay for. Either way, it’s an incredibly privileged position. And the people who are watching my children that are not me have their own views on how they think things should or shouldn’t happen. And that. Oh, man.
Juanita: Or even different views on what the stakes are.
Danielle Ireland: Oh, bingo. Wow. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it just. I think I’m jumping around, but it’s such an important job. And maybe even calling it a job as a disservice to what it is, because a job, you punch in and you punch out. Like, you clock in. You clock in.
Juanita: Maybe a role.
Danielle Ireland: Yeah, that’s a good way of describing it. It’s a role. And there are certain things, in terms of the aspects of the choices that, David and I make as parents, where I don’t feel tender, I don’t feel precious about. And then there are others, or maybe even other times, like, I’m not sure what’s different, if it’s the time, if it’s how hydrated and rested and how confident I feel in that moment if I’m having a good hair day or not. But when someone has an opinion about something we ought to do differently with our kids, and it doesn’t always come off as a suggestion or it’s not always an opinion. It’s more of a suggestion of something else that, I’m interpreting as a criticism. I’m trying to think about how I can talk about what specifically happened without describing, without calling somebody out, potentially.
Juanita: I think one step back from that, it’s the, we have our own definitions, evaluations of what is at stake. And as parents, we’re making choices based on that, either to cover for Something or to generate something, right? Like also when we think about, like, the. What’s at stake in terms of their growth and development and like, their enjoyment of life, like, we make choices around that. I believe that we and Sam, my husband and I, were like, making the best choices for our family in this moment. And all those words in that sentence are important, right? Like, the choice we’re making right now may not be the best choice next week.
Danielle Ireland: Zero idea.
Juanita: I really hope it is. But we are making all of that, and then the situation kind of changes or something alters. Kind of like that maybe I don’t know if that belief, but kind of like how confident I am in that belief or how something. I don’t have the word for it. When we get that outside input. And it could be kind of what you’re pointing to of like, somebody telling me that I should do differently or that I need to do differently, or that they believe that I most definitely must do differently right now. But I was also thinking, as you were sharing, because I’ve had those experiences and I have a certain reaction to that. But, when that outside comes from not a person that I have a relationship with necessarily, but, like, from. Well, I mean, if it comes from a stranger, that’s also a whole other thing, like at a restaurant telling me how to feed my kid or something like that, like, that’s a different situation. But when it comes from social media, for example, like, I stopped consuming social media for like the last four or five months, mainly because of the parenting part. It was giving me tremendous, tremendous, just contributing to my anxiety because there’s so much of that. And so just like, present too, how different my receiving of that was. Like, if you come and tell me, which you wouldn’t, but you come and tell me, like, hey, you need to do this differently. Need to change how you fit your kid, because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I’ll have a certain reaction to you. I may, like, accept it. I may be like, dude, like, it’s my kid. I’m, making my choices. I know what I’m doing. I’ve done the research that I need. But when I re. When I would receive those things from social media, I would actually second guess my choice, especially when I saw it multiple times. Like, so is that the way I’m supposed to do it? Or am, I missing something? Or it was just like a different work and a different effort to be like, oh, no, no, no. Like, that’s what that’s saying. That’s not what I need to Do. That’s not something I need to put attention on right now. That’s not a gadget I need to buy. Like, any of those things coming from the outside, it was just like a very. It’s a very different reaction that I have, and I don’t know what that’s about.
Danielle Ireland: When I was listening to you describe what things activated you or where the source of activation came from, where my mind went for myself was the choices that I’ve made that maybe I’m not 100% clear on. Like, if there’s a wobble within me of, ooh, am I doing this part of this right? Versus another choice. I think if there’s a wobble in me, I’m more likely to have potentially a reaction from somebody else’s feedback or whatever. Also, I think I was carrying at that time that I received the comment that kind of got in my head. When we were traveling, I was already. I think I wasn’t wobbling about a particular ch regarding a specific element of what we were doing, parenting, but I think I was wobbling on, not enough to not go, but I was wobbling about going. So I think any feedback about anything in that moment, because I was just sort of a walking insecurity. Like, what does it say about me that I’m traveling away from two small children under the age of three for six and a half, essentially seven days? So again, the. There was a part of me that was walking through that experience unsure whether or not I had permission to do it. Again, it wasn’t enough of a wobble that I didn’t go, clearly, because I went. But there was that part that I was carrying because I find that the choices that I am either secure or certain or confident. And I would even say maybe a greater degree of confidence is not really even thinking about it at all. If anyone had an opinion, my attachment to how someone may respond to it would be essentially none. Right? Like, I just wouldn’t have as much of a reaction, if a reaction at all. Or I might not even notice the comet as a comment. But I think I was feeling so tender about making the choice to go. Any interaction I had with someone, I think on some level I had a cherished outcome, which was I wanted everyone on some level to know that I was a good mom. I was a good mom with good hair and good style, and I was making good choices. I’m just going to go. I’m just going to fully air out all the insecure things that you should say that I was a good mom making good choices with good style that was super charming and just really funny and whimsical and a total free spirit and also super worldly and well traveled. What else did I want? Oh, and then I have perfect, well behaved kids who are just like an absolute dream whether I’m there or not. Which shows how securely they’re attached because they can handle being with me or not handle being with me. Yeah.
Juanita: And so that’s definitely a lot at stake.
Danielle Ireland: But like it’s totally, totally valid. No, I’m kidding, I’m kidding. It’s just.
Juanita: But, but it is.
Danielle Ireland: Oh, thanks. Thanks.
Juanita: No, no, no, but it is.
Danielle Ireland: Yeah, yeah, I know. Yeah.
Juanita: Like, I think there’s some pieces that are. I don’t know, there’s like the thing and the judgment of the thing. I want to be a stylish mom and I want my kids to have like a secure attachment and like there’s all those things. So it is, I think the things.
Danielle Ireland: That I am the least certain about the choice I’m making and yet I don’t feel so strongly to the food that I put in our kids mouths and their exposure to screens and their exposure to seeing David and I like on our phones, for example, and tv. I don’t know. I think we probably won’t know until our kids are like their brains are fully developed and then science says, oh yeah, if you watch below this many hours or above this many hours, your frontal lobe is going to show evidence of that. And we don’t have that information. We just, we know enough. We know enough. There are things that we know. But like I’m going to be real honest, my daughter has seen a lot of Disney movies and I don’t know. And you have a different position on screen which is, you know, and you’re not. I just want to also air. By the way, I’m sharing that. I’m inviting that as a way to offer a different perspective on two moms doing great jobs who have a different opinion. And I’ve never felt, I want to just also say, for the record, I’ve never felt judged by you at all.
Juanita: We stayed friends despite that.
Danielle Ireland: Despite. Yes. but screens and food, again, the wobble I have inside myself is because I had a very strong opinion before my children were born. And that opinion has evolved just like you said really well just a few moments ago that this is the right choice for us right now. I almost want to cringe thinking at pre child Danielle and her. Because there were certain things that I knew that I Was very certain of that. I’m still certain of those Things haven’t changed in terms of like how I want to relate to my kids emotionally, how I want to validate their experience. Like I. Because like in terms of how I relate to our kids on an emotional level and how I communicate with them, I don’t worry about that at all. Therefore I don’t really feel concerned about how people perceive that. But for whatever screens and food. Screens and food, I thought, okay, my kids are going to eat what I eat and we’re all going to eat at the same time. I think that was a thought I had and oh that I was going to make a lot more things from scratch too. I was going to be from scratch, mom. I was going to have a garden. I mean I didn’t.
Juanita: I still hope that’s going to happen.
Danielle Ireland: Well, we didn’t have.
Juanita: It won’t.
Danielle Ireland: We didn’t have the language when I was pregnant because it wasn’t a true trend. But like a trad wife, I don’t think I wanted, I don’t think I was going to go full trad wife, but I was definitely going to have a vegetable garden. I was going to pickle things and I was going to. I was, I had a lot of ambitions about all that. My daughter’s very familiar with a particular brand of like free range, non hormone, non gmo, like the most woo woo version of a frozen chicken nugget. I have like, I have found the healthiest version of a chicken nugget and the healthiest version of a french fry. But damn it, that girl eats chicken, eggs and french fries at least three times a week.
Juanita: I think something you’re making me think is that there’s difference. Like I’m kind of seeing a distinction between like what’s at stake in terms of what matters. The experience that I want of life for, in, in the context of parenting would be like for my kids, for me, for us as parents, for us as marriage, like for us as a family. Like all these different things in terms of, yeah, more like the experience of life and what we value. And I think sometimes I collapse that with how that happens. So I think food is a great example. I’m like, I’m very particular about food. But also I like need to say this. I’m not a good cook. I didn’t learn to cook. I like for the life of me, like I really want to. They say to learn to cook you have to cook, but that’s a whole. That could also be a Steaks conversation.
Danielle Ireland: Is that an actual expression?
This stake is not about me cooking everything and mastering the kitchen
Because I feel like you can say that about anything. In order to learn blank, you have to blank. In order to learn to drive, you have to drive.
Juanita: Yeah, I guess so. I wanna, I wanna like that wasn’t my way matrix installed chip. Like I want to stay installed the program of cooking. But, but the thing is that like. Because the thing that is important to me is that. So I’ve always wanted for everybody in the family to have healthy food because just like for our like health, our organs, our like body functioning. Now it feels the stakes are higher because I really, really, really want my little one to have to be healthy. And I feel the stakes are higher because her body is growing and it’s developing and it’s more sensitive. And so like, I definitely want that to be healthy now. I also, I had really big dreams of like cooking everything and learning to make delicious food very easily and quick every single day.
Danielle Ireland: We’re not there yet. Very easily and quick. I love it.
Juanita: And so now I’ve bought these like little squeezies which are so, so nice.
Danielle Ireland: Oh, those little pouches are amazing.
Juanita: She loves the pouches. And I’ve just like gone down and like looked for like same like what is the cleanest version of this I can find? I’ve been reading ingredients and what is this and what is that? But like my point being that like the steak is really still about like health and my little one and all of us in the family eating healthy so that our organs work and hers grow and develop in the best possible way. This steak is not about like me cooking everything and mastering the kitchen. Like there could be a different way. When we look at what’s at stake, there are two camps
Danielle Ireland: Well, I want to take this too and bring it back to what gets in the way or why it’s hard. Because part of what I’m realizing too about the steaks is I think in your examples and my examples, and if we pull this off of parenting and maybe get a little bit more conceptual and less specific, that when we look at what’s at stake, I think there’s almost two camps. There is what we believe and perceive about what’s at stake.
Danielle Ireland: And I think that’s more of an egoic definition that I’ll explain a little bit more too. And there is what’s actually at stake. And I think it can be really challenging to comb through the difference because one, it’s just hard to be truly objective about ourselves. But like in terms of an egoic perception, I am what I do, I am what I Have. I am what I look like, and I am what other people think of me. And so thinking about it through the lens of what gets in the way, what’s at stake is my daughter’s health. And then what’s at stake is how other people judge or perceive or how I judge or perceive myself. Like, I think that there’s an emotional egoic attachment to that. I need to be perceived as a good mom. And I think there’s, like, a quality of that perception too. Like, I need to be like. For example, I’m thinking back to my first year working as a therapist. I went into the experience wanting and needing. Therefore, the choices I made were infused by needing to be perceived as good as a good therapist, as a qualified therapist. And so I may make more references to studies that nobody cared about or asked about, or I may use words or language that is not necessarily grammatically incorrect, but it’s. It’s wordy. One of the things I love about comedians is they know how to edit anything that doesn’t fit the joke. So if it doesn’t add to the joke, if it doesn’t make the punchline punchier, then just cut it. It’s bullshit and you don’t need it. And so it was, working with a therapist that I used to see, and it was such great language. It’s like, what. What the situation is maybe is 20% what you are perceiving the situation as is maybe 100. So there’s potentially 80% of energy that you’re bringing into this moment that is not only in this moment. It’s rooted in a whole handy bag of history about maybe not feeling good enough, not feeling seen, feeling laughed at, not being taken seriously, or what you imagine, not being taken seriously, flubbing a line on stage, therefore not feeling like you belong on that stage, or spelling a wrong word on a test. Or spelling a word. Yeah, spelling a word wrong on a test and then missing a point. Like, there’s a whole host of experiences that infuse and inform what I’m perceiving as at stake. Because the stakes that I didn’t see at the time, at the time. If you would have. If I could go back in a time machine and interview that Danielle, she. She would just say she’s trying to do a good job. And I would say that that’s true of Danielle today, who’s trying to be a good mom. But there is what’s actually at stake, and then there’s what I’m thinking and believing about what’s at stake. And what’s interesting about what you think and what you believe is that that can change, like what I’m thinking and believing about where we’re recording right now. We’re actually recording. I should add this note. We’re recording in my mother in law’s home, which is lovely, by the way. Thank you, Donna. Because there’s work being done in my house and there would have been no cutesy way to just excuse the audio and move that banging. Too much banging. Yeah. So we moved and I. What I was thinking and believing was that it would never work somewhere else because I had been very attached and been holding very tightly, not lightly holding very tightly to how my podcast set up, how the audio was set up, how to make the quality as good as it can be. Because I’m, I think if I even peel that layer back further because I’m sort of re. Exercising a muscle that I was afraid had atrophied. I hadn’t recorded in so long. I was putting a lot of pressure on myself, like, can you still do this? Can you still. Can you still run the equipment? Can you still make a good podcast after leaving it for so long? And all of that attachment that I had such a tight grip on didn’t. It didn’t even occur to me until. And I’ll give David the credit, Donna gave me the space and David gave me the idea to maybe. What if you went somewhere else? And my first reaction was, what? What do you mean? Just move my equipment and my laptop to another place. Impossible. And here we are. Here we sit. When I held the idea lightly. Yeah. It. Something new became available that was not there before.
Juanita: Yeah, I love that. And there’s kind of like. You separated the like kind of two things and I think there’s another one mixed in the middle. Something. But it’s like the attachment. You use that word a few times. It’s kind of like the thing itself. What we believe or what we want of the thing. The ego related piece, which is a lot of like what we make it mean about ourselves, to be or not to be. And the attachment that we have on things which is connected. Right. But it’s just like. I just feel like, for me, it’s sometimes easier to identify, to notice the attachment because of, I mean, what. What you were saying that hap. That has happened to me so many times in different circumstances. But it’s like, what do you mean? I can grab my laptop that runs on battery, doesn’t need electricity, and I have a hotspot on my phone and I can go work somewhere else. I don’t even understand what you’re saying.
Danielle Ireland: Right.
Juanita: But when I can say that out loud and when I can notice, oh, don’t compute, don’t compute. Like, okay, there’s a glitch here. I can see the attachment, and that’s easier for me to see.
We can be attached to outcomes or stories. That also translates to mothering
Danielle Ireland: Well, we can be attached to outcomes. We can be attached to people. We can be attached to relationships, but we can also be attached to stories. I think the attachment I had, if I think back to when I was working as a therapist, I needed to be seen as capable, qualified, and good. That also translates to mothering. When other people approve or disapprove of some of the choices I make, it’s like I want to be seen as qualified, capable, and a good mother. And so when there is quote, unquote, feedback and unsolicited advice, big, massive air quote, sometimes I can let it roll off my back, and other times it feels like a mirror being held up to. Did you know that you’ve been making this choice wrong?
Juanita: The thing with that, and going back to the beginning, we were talking about, like, the different experts in parenting and all that is just that when there isn’t one way, which is pretty much most of the times, then there’s a lot of. There can be a lot of best practices and how to’s and should and would and must, like all of these things that feed all of the stories and the attachments and the meanings. Because, like, a good moment based on. What does that mean? And so, like, the stakes are actually. I don’t know if this is a good word, but maybe, like, healthy, empowering stakes are personal.
Danielle Ireland: Thank you all for listening to part one of this podcast
Danielle Ireland: I think that I want to pause that thought because I think I want to expand on it, and I think we’re at a fantastic place to close this episode down and start there at the next episode. Like, what’s at stake in terms of everything you just said? Because I think that that’s what gets in the way.
Juanita: Yeah.
Danielle Ireland: Thanks so much for letting me kind of interject. And thank you all for listening to part one of what’s at stake. This has been a really. I’ll just say in real time, a really great thing for me to process, and I appreciate, Juanita, your presence and your contribution to this conversation. And for everyone listening, thank you for your contribution and participation in the, don’t cut your own bangs. Make miniseries dynamic, because we’re learning right alongside you. So we’re going to press pause for this episode today, the next week. We’re going to finish up with part two with what’s at stake and we’re going to continue exactly where we left off right here. So just know that you can please like stick around. Make sure that you rate, review and subscribe. When you rate and review, the more you interact with the podcast, the more easier it is for other people to find. It helps in the algorithm with a technology that I don’t understand, but I trust that it works. You can also send questions. If you have questions, comments, you’re welcome to email me@daniel ireland.com and then also a benefit to makes your life easier is that if you subscribe to the podcast, it will download automatically for you each week when a new episode comes out. That way you don’t have to hunt for it, search for it. You don’t have to wait. It’s just there, waiting. Just like a sweet message from a friend. So thank you all for listening and I hope that you continue to have a beautiful day.
