the place to be to create a business and life you love.

And today whether you are a parent, you hope to be a parent, or even you have parents,

I think each of us wants a more loving and connected relationship

to our families and my guest today is gonna show us how.

Dr. Shefali Tsabary is a clinical psychologist and author of the award-winning book The Conscious Parent.

Oprah Winfrey has hailed it as one of the most profound books in parenting she's ever read.

Her latest book, Out of Control: Why disciplining your child doesn't work…and what will,

is breaking ground with its revolutionary perspective on how to create positive change in families.

She blends mindfulness with western psychology, integrating wisdom from both traditions.

Dr. Shefali has a private practice in New York City.

Dr. Shefali, thank you for being here.

Of course, I'm so excited.

So as we were talking before the episode I was sharing how we have so many parents in our audience,

but then we have this unexpected amazing audience of people like age 9 or 10 and up.

So I'm so excited to have you here today so we can talk not only about conscious parenting,

but also really the underpinning spiritual principles that can help all of us

relate better to ourselves and our teams and our parents and our kids and just have

better relationships across the board.

Absolutely.

So let's start off. What are some of the basic ideas around your concept of conscious parenting?

So like you said, even though I talk and write about conscious parenting, it's really about all relationships,

but particularly the parent-child dynamic because that is just such a personal relationship.

I mean, I don't think anyone gets more defensive about their issues than a parent

because the child is yours, you know, it's the one person you believe, narcissistically disillusioned,

to believe that it's yours. It's a delusion, but you believe it's yours. Right?

So the ego comes roaring in such ferocity, in such velocity and you believe

you can, you know, possess and control and contour this person into the ideal image of yourself.

We're doing this in all relationships but we do it full force in the parent-child relationship,

and my approach speaks to this in position of the parental ego on the child.

And asks parents and takes them to task on it. Challenges them to become aware that there

is this thing called the unconscious that we put on our children and impose on them

burdens from our emotional past that are not really theirs to hold, to bear, to contain, to heal.

This kind of internal fixing needs to be done by ourselves.

But we're unconscious of this, so onto our children comes

all our past baggage and all our desires, all our, you know, wishes for our own ideal self to

be manifested that we couldn't but we make our children do it.

So in this process of imposing the ego on the child, the child loses its authentic self. Right? And has to forsake

its authentic self, give it up for its parent. And the child loves its parent

and doesn't even know that this is happening, so will just give it up. And in that process

year after year after year the child becomes increasingly more disconnected from their authentic voice

and then you have an adult who's lost, directionless, purposeless, not knowing how to access that inner voice.

And that's what we see in teenagers, we see that in adults,

and that process starts in the parent-child dynamic.

This is so fascinating because everything that you're suggesting and all of your work,

I think, is so revolutionary, so beautiful, but brings us back to our own wisdom

both as a parent, which I'm a step-parent, I don't have a biological child, but also

as an individual. You know, listening to our own inner guide. And I think something that

you said that I see so much throughout my work and I've tried to keep a balance of

in my professional life is even though I may have suggestions, is guiding people back to

their own inner voice and their own inner wisdom because they know better than I do.

I can give little guideposts or suggestions, but they're usually sparks.

But that's because you've learned to so honor that inner voice in you

that you don't wanna mess it in anyone else.

Yes.

Because you realize how sacred that is, what a valuable, inestimable gift that is. Right?

So you're not giving that up. So therefore you hold it sacred in the others you meet.

But imagine being raised having that inner voice being trampled. Right?

That inner voice being disconnected from within,

so then you don't even know that you need to be honoring this voice. So when your child comes

you're thinking, "Ok, I'll just do what my parents did

and just slap on my huge ego onto them, "and thus goes on the process of generational

trauma, generational pain. It just keeps going on and on.

Yeah. You're giving me so much respect for my mom right now. I just saw her in Vegas not too long ago and

since I was a very little girl she would tell me that I have this small voice inside

and she's like, "What do you think? How does it feel?" And

I love hearing this because it really is, we all have this beautiful gift that guides us to

decision making, relationships, how to be a great person. And I love this approach

because you're giving parents such freedom and so much more soulful connection

with the little beings they created and they love more than anything.

Yeah. It's the biggest gift to give parents, it is ultimately freeing, but parents get

threatened by this approach because it's all about them. It's about them doing the inner work.

They can't be misguided into believing, seduced into believing, that there's

some therapist that's gonna come and fix their child or fix them.

They're gonna have to do the inner work.

But the minute they are on this journey they become liberated

because they can trust that inner guide, they can re-access their own, you know, purpose for living

and reorient themselves to their inner compass. Right? What greater liberation?

They don't have to read another parenting book, they can… right? It all starts from within.

So that's the core principle and authenticity then becomes the core principle of the family life.

Authenticity, worth, self orientation, inner introspection, inner reflection.

So these become the pillars of raising a child, not success, not grades, not beauty, not wealth.

It's all the inner dimension.

Which leads me to something that we talked about on the phone and I thought it was excellent.

Let's say our child or ourselves, we're struggling with something as common as overeating.

You know, and so many times we wanna go right to perhaps the action. Ok, well, we need to

adjust the diet or start looking at how much food. And perhaps that's a component

but you said, "No, no, no, no, no, there's something much deeper that we need to look at."

Well, so this approach really stays true to the premise that it's all happening on an internal level.

So all external behaviors are a mirror of the internal landscape.

And so it is with the people we encounter. So first, you know, you orient yourself constantly

that if another person is being mean to you or said that you're ugly or you're fat

or you're lazy, it's coming from their pain. So this is the first thing you teach your children,

that everyone has this looming, dark unconscious and when that unconscious is triggered,

pain comes out. And pain often looks hurtful and looks mean and looks cruel.

And then the second thing to orient children and parents to is that when our sense of worth

is based on how one feels and how connected one is to one's voice, then we are free

from the external tentacles of, you know, either the looks or the grades or the achievement.

So the orientation to this inner work liberates you from being controlled by the other

and liberates you from being controlled by what society puts on you in terms of

how we should be on the outside.

Yeah, because who knows. Who makes up these rules of what's perfect, what's successful?

Right.

We were talking about this on a recent episode that we just shot just about success, you know,

society can't even define it clearly. It's like something that we really need to take back for ourselves

and really look at, you know, orientating it around

what's happening on the inside.

But we have to be mavericks in this. We have to be kind of rebellious and go against the tide

because especially for parents, I mean, the pressure we have. You know, if you enroll

your child for ballet at 5 you're already 2 years behind the curve. You know? You're already falling behind.

The race to nowhere is treacherous, it's uphill, and it's constant.

But everyone's on it so you feel kind of like you're not doing something right,

you're not being a good parent by not, you know, entering that herd.

Yes.

So what a maverick parent you have to be but, let me tell you, when I tell parents that

they have the freedom to become maverick parents they're so, you know, enlivened by that.

They're just waiting for permission. You know, can I not go crazy if my kid doesn't

go to an Ivy League school? Can I allow my kid to just be? You know, this doing, this

fixing from the outside. So like you were saying, if a kid overeats or if a person overeats,

the behavior is always speaking to the inner feeling, the inner landscape. So always taking

the external to the internal.

Yes. One of the questions that we got, and we get thousands of questions from our viewers,

and there was one that really broke my heart and then when I knew you and I would be talking today

I said, "You know what? Dr. Shefali, this is one that I really wanna hear her perspective on."

So I sent it to you earlier and I'm just gonna read a little bit to orient everyone

for this question from Alisha who is struggling with perfectionism, which is not only something

that a teen struggles with but, of course, many people and a lot of women.

So she's a very high achiever, she's the president of the future business leaders of America,

she's the vice president of the national junior high society, assistant editor of the yearbook,

she's maintained a 4.0 GPA for the past 5 years,

and she has high school level classes even though she's in middle school. Check this out.

"I have a boyfriend I love, my family that I love, and for some reason whenever I mess up,

which seems to be a lot lately, I find myself wishing to start over.

Start a new week, a new month so I can just try to make it perfect again.

I can't tell you how many weeks I've beaten myself up

for not making it a 'perfect week' where I follow my schedule each day.

No one around me is extremely hard on myself, in fact, most of the people

I surround myself with are very forgiving of any mistakes I make.

So why can't I stop obsessing over starting anew and making things perfect?"

-What do you say to Alisha? -She's insightful.

She's insightful, she's courageous. At least she knows the traps she's falling under.

And she's not unlike millions of us who have put this mantle of perfection.

I can identify with that. Absolutely.

And decided that this is the only way to validate your sense of self. So she's actually kind of

doomed because she is good at so many things. You know, whenever a parent starts out by telling me,

"You know, the problem with my child is that my child has so much potential,"

I go, "Oh, the child is doomed.' You know, "My child is gifted." I go, "Doomed."

Because this is all coming from the outside. So as you can see with her, she's now created

markers of her identity not based on much internal but all things external.

Now, here lies the trap. If one of them doesn't fall into place you can hear her obsessing over it.

You know, if in the day I don't meet all my markers, which are high markers, she almost

doesn't have a sense of self. She wants to erase it and start all over again, rebirth herself.

So her as-is-ness in her humanness, in her ordinariness doesn't exist, cannot exist anymore.

So she has to live at this vibration at all times, it's unreasonable,

it's unsustainable. So she's crumbling under that pressure, but she's put this on herself.

She's so brilliant that if she could now learn to put all that energy

that she's put in the external world and take it in and go, "Did I live with my authentic voice today?

Did I speak up today? Did I do what my heart told me to do rather than just

staying in my intellect, in my head, in my mind? Was I allowed to be in stillness?

Did I detach from all external pressures today?" She has to do the reverse. Right? She has to go

really inside herself and use that as markers of success. So that's going to be her challenge

as an adult. She's already realizing that she's in a loop. Right?

So she's gonna have to really make that shift.

You know, I think that's fascinating because I can even hear in my own mind as you're saying this,

my spirit softens, my shoulders soften, and I can hear my mind, which is very

driven, very go, go, go. But, yes, but I'm striving for excellence. And I think a lesson

that I've learned and the older I get it's like I can have excellent standards,

but my happiness and my well being has to trump everything and that always comes from within.

And I think one of the things we can share with Alisha, I know from at least my own experience

having had the blessing to achieve success on some external levels,

there's days where if you're not feeling good inside, none of it matters.

It doesn't matter and it doesn't even sit for a second. The next mountain is right there.

Yes.

So it's almost like the universe gave us these gifts but we're not happy yet

because now we see the next horizon and we're still racing with the same restlessness. So that's not fair.