Confidence Coaching with Heidi Benjaminsen

Everyday we have opportunities to either respond, or react, to our teenagers. Reacting feels out of control and creates disconnection and defensiveness. Responding requires us to anchor our emotions and take responsibility for our words and emotions. Listen as Heidi gives many examples of how to pause and get out of reaction mode. Hear phrases to use when responding and questions to ask instead of...

If you find yourself navigating how to support, love and accept an LGTBQ+ teen or loved one, listen to this conversation Heidi has with Jenie Hunter - lucky mother of an LGBTQ son, coach, podcaster and all around warm soul. Jenie shares her own journey, her fears, her mistakes and the enormous blessings she has being the mother of an LGBTQ child. Listen for tools of how to handle conversations and...

Life is hard. Having the faith to keep showing up, putting one foot in front of another, to face the struggles and uncertainty of a new day... is hard. In this episode Heidi shares how she has been dealing with the hard of life recently. Its easy to think other people aren't feeling the hard like you are... but in reality... we are. We just don't see what other people are carrying. If its getting...

The first skill to anchor our emotions and beliefs is to learn how to watch and observe our thoughts. Being able to identify what is going on in our brain gives us power over what we are thinking and creating in life. Listen as Heidi explains how to stop, get still and observe what is going on in your head. Heidi teaches we are not our thoughts, we can't believe and act on everything that runs thr...

We all have someone in our life who seems "difficult", a child who triggers everything about us, an in-law or neighbor who constantly rubs us the wrong way. Learning how to love these people is a gift we give ourselves - WE get to feel better, we grow in our capacity to accept differences. Listen as Heidi lists many "love facts" with examples of how these truths are all tools to increase our capac...

Every time we think our teen or spouse SHOULDN'T be the way they are, think that life SHOULDN'T have gone the way it did, and WISHING our circumstances were different... we resist accepting reality. Which leaves us powerless to create any future change and feel better. Listen as Heidi walks listeners through several small ways in which we resist accepting reality and how it pushes us backward. Lea...

There is a secret to how to connect with our teens that certified life and teen coach Ben Pugh shares in a fantastic conversation with Heidi. Listen as Ben shares that our teens think we've lost hope in them and how to change what we're thinking to feel MORE hope. Learn how to connect with our teens where THEY are and the powerful changes possible in our teens when WE change and anchor our emotion...

We create most of our frustration, stress and worry by taking on problems and trying to control things that are not ours to control. By trying to direct and "drive" the lives of others, we aren't paying careful attention to our own responsibilities and control what we actually CAN control - our life, our responses, our actions and more. Listen as Heidi explains the three lanes of life (our lane, o...

One of the ways we can change what we believe is possible for ourselves is to "borrow belief" that others have in us or that others have about what is possible. When we see what others have done, we can choose to believe "it is possible for me to achieve this" or "this person believes I have the potential". Listen as Heidi teaches how to look to others or look to our past achievements to fuel our...

At the beginning of the year, I challenge you to focus LESS on the goals you want to achieve and MORE on who you want to BECOME this year. Sure, pick a goal that seems fun. Then who you need to BECOME to achieve this. Listen as Heidi shares how to visualize a River of Becoming that has currents and obstacles in which you will BECOME someone who is committed, determined, patient, vulnerable and mor...

When we're feeling "un-anchored" and out of control emotionally, there is a way to pivot our emotions and "re-anchor" them. Learn as Heidi teaches a tool to get control of our emotions and remind our body that WE are creating what we are feeling (not someone or something else). Listen to episode 115 to hear the importance of what we say after "I am...". because these are the things we attract into...

Listen as Heidi shares the thoughts and questions that have anchored her through this year, especially a year full of disagreement and social discord. Learn how to distance our own opinions about how other people are living their life with our own opinions. Each thought and question helps get us back in our own lane and focusing on how we show up. Learn how to reflect back on this year to fuel you...

Sitting in regret of the past or worry and anxiety about the future, robs us from enjoying and experiencing our present. In the holiday season, it's easy to rush to get things done - to think the future will be better than today. Listen as Heidi teaches us tools and questions to get our mind out of "there" and back to "here" and the present. There is beauty and gratitude in the everyday, mundane....

Our brains like to make opinions and assumptions like math equations - if this happens (A plus B), then the only result is this (equals C). If my child goes to college, they will be successful. These beliefs serve us well... until they don't. Until we realize life is NOT a math equation. Life is all in the gray area, where we can't see all of the variables at play. Listen as Heidi shares several e...

While you're deciding which side dish you'll be bringing to the holiday party, take some time to decide the Emotional Dishes you'll be bringing as well. Let someone else bring stress, criticism and perfectionism - we can bring other emotional vibes. Listen as Heidi shares how to bring Acceptance , Curiosity and Amusement to your holiday gatherings. Learn why these emotions will help you connect wi...

Disappointment is what we feel when life (people, events, our circumstances) does not meet our expectations and we feel "displeasure". Learning how to "own" we are creating this emotion and feel disappointment is actually a very powerful tool to anchor us to show up calmly and securely for our children. It's important to let our children feel disappointed (and not try to make them immediately feel...

Resentment creeps into our life when we think life isn't fair, when things or people shouldn't be how they are or we feel betrayed. Resentment makes us the victim of our lives. Gratitude is the antidote to resentment - we can't feel resentment and gratitude at the same time. Gratitude is a courageous and vulnerable choice we make to take back our emotional control. Listen as Heidi walks listeners...

Listen as Heidi teaches you the one way to determine if the way we "handle" emotions is healthy processing or unhealthy buffering of emotions. We don't always need to sit and feel for hours on end. We can go for walks, talk to friends, clean closets and more. What we're doing is less the issue. We always want to be considering what RESULT we create from how we handle the emotions. Are we moving FO...

In this personal episode, Heidi shares two examples of managing her emotions, the exact thoughts that kept her anchored and how this impacted her family. In the first example, Heidi's daughter has a real, angry meltdown and Heidi shares how she stayed calm (it was hard!) and the positive consequences of this. In the second example, Heidi shares how she processed negative emotions of shame, vulnera...

Few people WANT to do laundry, but we all want clean clothes. Few of us WANT to exercise but we all want the benefits of having DONE the exercise. Learning how to do things we don't want to do, learning to do things even if we don't like it is what separates people who achieve goals from those who quit... or don't start at all. Listen as Heidi teaches several mis-perceptions we have about people w...

Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife is an LDS relationship and sexuality therapist, counselor and coach who joins Heidi for a conversation about confidence. They discuss how to acknowledge and own our imperfections, understanding our identity and how our children learn to be confident in their sexuality by watching their parents. Listen as they share their own experiences raising teens and share their own...

We're hardest on ourselves. We expect perfection, no mistakes, zero flaws, 100 on every test... so we're constantly disappointing our inner selves. Our insides have forgotten we're human and full of cracks, weaknesses and missteps. Learning to see our real human nature and give ourselves grace is our work. It's the work of building confidence to be flawed AND amazing AND loved... all at the same t...

One of the best ways to grow our confidence and build relationships is by learning how to be admit and be "wrong" when we are wrong. Our brain on default always wants to be right to protect our ego but this keeps us small and insecure. Listen as Heidi teaches the dangers of always needing to be "right" and questions to ask ourselves to see where we could be "wrong". Heidi gives many examples from...

The fuel of change and growth is self-confidence, and to create this we need to know how to pivot from insecurity... to confidence... to self-confidence. Confidence looks to the past to what "have" I done in the past, where self-confidence looks to the future to define "who we want to be". Listen as Heidi teaches you two questions to ask yourself (what do I fear and who do I want to be) to move fr...

In 1859, miners who had struck gold drown in the Royal Charter storm because they weighed their pockets and coats with gold to swim to shore. We have thoughts and beliefs that become like this gold - valuable in other situations - but the reason we drown and can't reach shore in life. Listen as Heidi gives many examples of thoughts that can be valuable at times... and can also be drowning thoughts...