Mom Owned and Operated
Candid conversations with and for moms about the real deal of raising a family, running a business, and remembering yourself.
Tired of the fluff and just want real talk about what it takes to succeed as a mompreneur? Then you've come to the right place.
Join your host, business growth strategist Rita Suzanne, as she dives into the nitty-gritty of building a business while raising a family. With over 10 years of experience helping women entrepreneurs thrive, Rita knows what it takes to make it all work.
In each episode, Rita sits down with inspiring mom business owners to uncover the strategies, mindsets, and tactics that are actually making a difference in their lives and businesses.
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Mom Owned and Operated
Stop "Should-ing" on Yourself and Upgrade your Identity with Danielle Lee Darling
In this episode of the Mom Owned and Operated podcast, Rita Suzanne and Danielle Lee Darling discuss raising a family, running a business and remembering yourself.
Danielle Lee Darling is a speaker, ThetaHealing Practitioner and Identity-Based Life Coach who specializes in helping women break free from their past, reconnect to who they truly are and create a life built on their authentic truth.
As a recovering people pleaser and perfectionist herself, Danielle has broken free from the limits of being a “good girl” and now uses Identity Based Coaching and the power of Theta Healing to help women quantum leap their money, love and joy by upgrading their identities!
You can connect with Danielle on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
Send a text message! Email, if you want a reply though. ;)
P.S. You can find more interviews at momownedandoperated.com and learn about working with Rita at ritasuzanne.com/apply/
Hi, this is Mom Owned and Operated. I am Rita, Suzanne, and today I have my guest Danielle with me. Danielle, please tell everyone all about you, your business and your family.
Danielle Lee Darling:Oh, awesome. Thank you so much, rita. It's so great to be here. My name is Danielle Lee darling and I am a certified identity-based life coach and theta healing practitioner. Identity-based life coach and theta healing practitioner. Basically, what I do is I help people break through the belief barriers that are holding them back, quickly and efficiently. Healing doesn't have to be hard is my little motto right now, and I help people recreate their identities and create a life that they love, and I am a mom of two amazing kids. I have my son, daxton, who will be 13 in like a couple of weeks. I'm like in the thick of teenage years coming up, and my daughter is 10.
Rita Suzanne:So nice. I love it. I also have a bunch of teenagers, so it's a lot of it's a full stage, isn't it? Well, I have four of them. My youngest is 13. So, yeah, he is definitely a handful. So let's talk about identity and the importance that I feel like a lot of times, when you become a mom, you're well not. I feel like this does happen. When you become a mom, your identity does change, and so let's talk about that a little bit.
Danielle Lee Darling:Yeah, we don't talk about this enough.
Danielle Lee Darling:I feel like we go from one person to another person literally overnight.
Danielle Lee Darling:That baby, you go into the hospital and you come out a completely different person. And this role is, there's a lot of expectations with it and sometimes there's a lot of cultural, societal expectations, along with the expectations that you and your partner have, and that starts to craft the way that we show up and we have so much responsibility and little by little, we lose the things if we're not careful responsibility and little by little, we lose the things if we're not careful. The things that are important to us, our hobbies, our passions, the things that made us who our spouse fell in love with in the first place, and we can lose our sense of self. So it's so important to understand who you are, outside of just your role as a mother, and to intentionally do things to keep those things intact, like self-care not just bubble baths and wine nights, but taking time to process emotions and getting deep with your thoughts, physical, spiritual care, taking time to do your hobbies and making time for the friendships and the connections that you had previous to becoming a mother.
Rita Suzanne:So if we add on business owner into those identities, what is another, I guess? What does that aspect look like as well?
Danielle Lee Darling:Right, it feels like you're switching hats every two seconds between I'll be working at my desk and then I'll get an email about my kid at school and then I'll get an email from my client.
Danielle Lee Darling:I'm like, okay, it's a constant, almost mindset juggling that we have to do. And so being rooted in your identity, outside of roles, outside of your role as a business owner, outside of your role as a mother, by knowing what makes you special, like what makes what are your strengths, what are the things, the virtues that you have that bring that special sauce to your clients and to your children and to your spouse. It's also knowing your values and having that clear vision for the life that you want to create. Because when you have those things in place, I like to talk about like the analogy of, it's kind of like bumper bowling, right, so you're the bowling ball and your values and your strengths are moving that ball down the lane to your goal, but the bumpers are your vision and your purpose in life and when you've got those things in place, it creates almost like a container where getting to your goals, whether it's personal with your family or professionally with your business, is so much easier and quicker and faster.
Rita Suzanne:So oftentimes, though, women struggle with maintaining those values and things because they are too critical with themselves, absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about that inner critic.
Danielle Lee Darling:Yes, absolutely. I have an amazing tool on my website that gives you a framework to work through as you are dealing with the inner critic. So our inner critic is that voice that has been built on the beliefs that have been installed in us since childhood. They are just stories, they are ways that we made clarity and understanding about the world around us. So my analogy I love analogies because it just helps me wrap my brain around what is actually happening, because we don't, I can't talk to, like talking about synapses and neuroscience and stuff like that can get kind of dry.
Danielle Lee Darling:But imagine your brain when you're born is like a forest and it's overgrown because nothing has been built. It's just there's trees everywhere, there's grass that's waist high, and then something will happen and a pathway, a clear path will, will open up and it's just like when you're walking a path for the first time in a forest, it starts getting matted down and then it starts to get a little bit easier to walk and then you're in teenage years. Somebody comes along and paves that path and puts like a nice little track lighting along the way and it makes it super fast for us to move it down. And then by the time we're in the forties. It's like a four-lane highway with mass lighting, off ramps, and there's an airport just off the side there. So it's chaotic and it's moving super, super fast.
Danielle Lee Darling:And we don't even realize that those pathways and those beliefs have been built. And that path was originally built because, as a child, we are always trying to keep ourselves safe and loved. That is built into our biology, so mommy is a little bit stressed out and she's a little bit angry. That day the child internalizes that, as I, have to be perfect in order to be lovable and that turns into an adaptation that we make to our behavior built on that belief. And then that perfectionist voice forms into our head and is wreaking havoc on our business, our parenting and our sense of self once we get to adulthood. So I joke that this work that I do is like standing at the opening of that pathway and taking your inner child in one hand and the machete in the other and saying, baby, we're creating a new path in the forest.
Rita Suzanne:So what are some techniques that we can do in order to, I guess, break free of this inner critic ourselves?
Danielle Lee Darling:Yeah, it's about noticing the story when it comes up. So the framework that's on the workbook and the freebie is called STOP, it's S-T-O-P, it's four simple steps. S is the story, so it's recognizing that story that's coming up. It's like what am I telling myself in this moment? I'm telling myself that I'm not enough. I'm telling myself that I'm a terrible mother. I'm telling myself that I'm never going to make it in my business right. And then the T is the event or the trigger. So what happened to trigger this? Like, was my child just upset about something? Was my spouse upset about something that happened at the home? Did my client send an email? That wasn't the kindest right? What are the things? So we can create awareness around the things that are creating the stories, the things that are bringing the stories up into our brain trigger. You could also explore it deeper and look to what the deeper belief and meaning is, and I have tools for that as well.
Danielle Lee Darling:O is other explanations or observations. So when I was a young mother and my child would be upset about something because I had such perfectionist tendencies, I would internalize that as something is wrong with me as a mother not understanding the psychology of a child and where their brain development is Now understanding that, looking back on it, I'm like I totally beat myself up for other things, all these things that were not my fault. So, understanding other explanations he's tired, he's hungry, he needs a diaper change. He didn't get enough sleep last night. There's something else that's bothering. He needs a diaper change. He didn't get enough sleep last night. There's something else that's bothering him and he just needs attention. Right, it's not necessarily me.
Danielle Lee Darling:What are the other explanations that we can have? Or observations about the situation where we can create more opportunities to step in and step into our best identity, and then the P is your powerful truth. Step into our best identity, and then the P is your powerful truth. So if you can provide other explanations for the story, then is the story you're telling yourself really true? No, so if you can choose any story you want to tell yourself what's a powerful truth?
Danielle Lee Darling:What's a powerful story that you can tell yourself about who you are as a mother, who you are as a business owner, that you can tell yourself about who you are as a mother, who you are as a business owner, so we can say, well, I am a fantastic mother just because my child is crying has no reflection on the fact that I am actually a really great mother and I show up for my kids every single day. It's recentering yourself in that identity right. It's recentering ourselves in the values, the virtues, the ways that we show up in the world every single day and knowing who you are outside of that role and how those things influence your roles as well.
Rita Suzanne:Yeah, it reminds me of this thing that I did with my kids, and especially when they were younger, when they would maybe be fighting with each other and one of them would say, oh, he said I was mean. And then I would say, well, are you mean? And then he would say the other one would reply back and say no, and I would say, okay, well, why are you letting this bother you? And then he would say, okay, and then leave Right.
Danielle Lee Darling:I love that and I love that you bring. You're bringing that self-awareness discussion to your kids and that critical thinking like, well, let's reflect, Are you really being mean? And that's a great way for them to have that inner dialogue with themselves. You can speak to your inner critic and talk them down off the ledge, right? Yeah, I love that.
Rita Suzanne:It's so important to try to, like, use these different techniques, I think, with our kids to, you know, help them with these habits. You know, I didn't have that as a kid, and so when I started my business and I started getting into, you know, some of these practices, these wellness practices, the affirmations and all of the things I started to try to figure out. How can I incorporate this with my kids without it being too much and too much pressure for them? And that was one of the things. But then also, the other thing that I would do with them would be these, these, what I call the 10,. I would tell them like, you're gonna, you're gonna do the 10. Like, and what it would be was if they would say something negative about themselves.
Rita Suzanne:I would then, in turn, make them say 10, I am statements that were positive about themselves and they couldn't be related to each other. So you can't say I'm smart, I'm intelligent. It would have to be something brand new, different, and they hated it, right. They hated it because they put the pressure on them, right, and so, and hopefully, you know, it stuck with them. But, yeah, those, those were the two things that I really was able to take and utilize with my kids. So, speaking of that, are there things that you recommend to moms that they can do with their kids to kind of help their kids not build that same highway pathway that you know we have built?
Danielle Lee Darling:Yes, it's catching it, definitely catching it. Like I was just actually with my daughter's little friend was over the other day and she said something about I'm lazy, and I was like, oh no, no, we're going to talk about that right now, because think about how you would speak to your best friend. Would you ever tell your best friend that they are lazy? And she said no. And I said why would you ever tell yourself that you are your own best friend and you should treat yourself as such? So learning how to develop that relationship with self from a very early age is so key and I love that you used that. Those 10 things is because it's about catching it and saying that is not. That is not how we talk to each other and that is not how we talk to ourselves in this family, and using that as a founding value that the family has not only with each other but to ourselves as well. I think that's so key.
Rita Suzanne:Yeah, it's really important. So what, if anything, do you think that women need to do to kind of get out Like? Are there practices that they can use in order to get out of this critical I guess, self-sabotage that they may be falling victim to?
Danielle Lee Darling:Well, first it is about the self-awareness and understanding the beliefs. The other thing they need to do is to understand where those are coming from. Those beliefs were created when you were a child and you didn't. You had maybe some idea about language, but you don't have the critical thinking skills to realize that mom being angry might not have anything to do with you. Like we can use with the stop framework now. So developing that relationship with your inner child.
Danielle Lee Darling:I know there's a lot of talk about inner child work, but it really is fundamentally and foundationally important because anytime we're experiencing anxiety, that is usually an alarm that is being set off by the reflections of our past, by our inner child. So, understanding how to talk to her in that moment, saying I know you're feeling unlovable right now. I know you're feeling like you'll never be enough, but I'm here to tell you you are enough. Going back and telling her everything that she needed to know as a child that she never heard. Those are so incredibly important.
Danielle Lee Darling:And then the other side of my practice actually is theta healing. Have you ever heard of Theta Healing, rita? No, it is a modality that's been around for about 15 years, but I just learned about it and, through experiencing it myself, decided to get certified. It's a meditative process whereby I help my client get into a theta brainwave state and we connect with the creator to download any beliefs that we want.
Danielle Lee Darling:So if somebody is struggling with feelings like I'm not enough or I'm not lovable, or I have to be perfect in order to be lovable, I can literally go in and allow the creator to pull those beliefs and install new ones and the impact is almost immediate. It's absolutely amazing how effortless it becomes to start that healing process, because normally when we start to identify these things and we're building that self-awareness, it's that two steps forward, one step back, one step forward, two steps back. Because it's constantly that push and pull because those beliefs remember we're talking about a four lane effing highway. Now, right, there's no getting off of it. It's very difficult to take that machete and start carving a new path in the forest, but through theta healing we alleviate all of that and the path is automatically created, so there's a lot less resistance.
Rita Suzanne:So there's a lot less resistance. Yeah, I find that. You know, when I first started my business, I talked about this on several other episodes before my coach she's my very first coach she said to me you really have a mindset issue. Right Back then we're talking 10 years ago I had no idea what she even meant and I think that oftentimes, you know, now mindset is more of a common. There's more common knowledge around it. People understand what mindset is, but back then it wasn't as well known as it is now and I think that a lot of people really didn't realize the things that we needed to do to take care of ourselves, like we know now right.
Danielle Lee Darling:Anything good came out of COVID, it was this new, renewed focus on mental health, and I'm just so inspired by not only the talk about mental health but how that mental health is actually affecting us physically. If you haven't read the book Myth of Normal by Gabor Mate, or how to Heal your Life by Louise Hay, it talks about how the mental things that we think actually show up physiologically in our body, and that's why the practice is called Theta Healing, because once you start healing those thoughts, those emotions, those energies, you can actually start healing your body as well.
Rita Suzanne:So my coach that same coach she was talking to me about the power of the mind right. And it is so important to fix that self-talk because I think 80 to 85% of your subliminal thoughts are negative, and so that we don't even realize that we're self-talking negative. And that's why it's important to do the affirmations, why it's important to do the gratitude and the journaling and all of the things that are kind of second nature nowadays, and do you encourage those things as well? Absolutely.
Danielle Lee Darling:So, once you identify what the belief is that you're struggling with, you can at any point rewrite that belief when you understand where it came from and realize that there's other explanations to how that belief got implanted into your mental framework. You can choose a new story at any time. You are in control. That's the most exciting thing about all of this. It's simply a choice for you to make that say from now on, I am no longer a person that says I am not enough. I am no longer a person that feels unlovable. I am the type of person who feels enough every single day. So I love the affirmations. But the step up on that is by writing out statements that say I am the type of person who blank, because when you click that, I am am. That's. That's also a connection to source as well, and that helps you um be more aligned.
Danielle Lee Darling:And I have like a instead of a vision board next to my bed. I have a like a vision list, so I have lists. I am the type of person who works out three to five times a week. I am the type of person who looks put together every single day, and these are the parts of me that I would wanted to work on, to step into my future self. Because as a business owner, as a mother, we have goals and dreams for our families and our businesses, but it is only by embodying the identity of somebody who already has that success that we can truly start to do the things that we need to do to have what we want to have. So it's the be, do have.
Rita Suzanne:It makes me think of what I heard somebody say is, like you know, often people will say the affirmation I am a millionaire, right, but our brain says, no, you're not right.
Rita Suzanne:No, you're automatically. No matter how many times you say I'm a millionaire, your brain is telling you, no, you're not. And so by doing something like what you're saying, I think that it's more effective because your brain is saying, oh, you are the type of person who does these things, or who actually enforces or reinforces these particular habits, maybe of a millionaire or a successful, quote, unquote person.
Danielle Lee Darling:Right, because everybody's idea of success is their own, right, and it's your brain is a really great detective, right, so it will also call you out on your BS If it feels like it's too far. You can say something like I am the type of person who has a million dollar a year business. I am the type of person who makes money with ease. Right To release a lot of those blocks that are preventing the millionaire, because right now your brain's like there's no way that you're ever going to be a millionaire. What are you thinking? But if you show up as the type of person who does have a million dollar business, who does make money with ease, that will eventually come. So your brain will go to support whatever you tell it. So we can choose to tell it something negative and create a shame spiral, or we can choose to tell ourselves something that is affirmational and aspirational to the life that we want to create.
Rita Suzanne:Yeah, I always tell my kids your brain is so powerful, so stop saying these negative things, stop telling it these these bad things. So if somebody is let's say that they are struggling with something. It is really hard for someone to get out of that negative spiral. What are some things that you would recommend that they do in order to maybe stop that negative thought process? Because, right, the negative just continues to attract more negative.
Danielle Lee Darling:Yeah, that's why I call the framework stop first of all because it's easy to remember.
Danielle Lee Darling:You just want to stop. Stop, right. So here's one thing I want you to understand it can sometimes be hard to build this self-awareness. So what I have my clients do is I have them tap into their body, because normally when we feel things like shame and fear, we'll have a more physiological response before we register oh, that's what that is in the brain. So the physical manifestation of shame is hiding.
Danielle Lee Darling:So I had a couple of friends. I had this one friend who was feeling a lot of shame about some things that were happening in her life and she pulled back from our friendship circle and she kind of siloed herself and I called her out on it. Like that's not what you need to do when you. You need support when we feel shame, right? So when you're feeling shame, you can. Then you're like I said, your brain goes to work to support you.
Danielle Lee Darling:So what will happen is that you say, oh, I'm not enough, I suck. And your brain's like, oh, yeah, remember the time you sucked this time and you suck this time and you suck this time all the way back to fourth grade when snarky Susie had a bad feeling about your haircut and didn't let you sit with your friends at lunch Like it will bring up everything and that only accumulates more of the shame. So, as I mentioned, the self-awareness is so key and then using something like a tool, like the stop framework, to move ourselves out of that emotion back into our powerful truth. We never want to take action on our lives from a place of shame, fear that will move us in the opposite direction of our goals, by always taking a step forward from our powerful truth. That's what's going to get us moving forward in the right direction.
Rita Suzanne:Love it. It's going to get us moving forward in the right direction. Love it. So it's interesting that you bring up the isolation and and those things, because one of the reasons why I started this podcast was because I was going through a traumatic event in my life and so I had isolated myself so much and I said, you know, I really need to understand how other moms are able to run their business, raise their family and, like, actually take care of themselves, because I was not taking care of myself very well, and so one aspect that I love to talk about is how are you taking care of yourself? Because I want moms to remember to take care of themselves and I love to hear how other moms are doing it, because there's different ways, right, and so maybe by hearing how somebody else is doing it, even if it's just a little thing that they're doing, it might spark. Somebody else is doing it, even if it's just a little thing that they're doing, it might spark somebody else to actually take care of themselves better.
Danielle Lee Darling:So one of my favorite quotes is by Lisa Nichols. It's a and I'm going to butcher it, but it's like you get to drink from my saucer. It's the idea that you filled your cup to overflowing so that the people around you are drinking from your overflow, are getting your overflow. And when I was a young mom, I didn't expect that. I didn't understand that at all. I had a lot of expectations from now. My now ex-husband and I put a lot of pressure on myself to sacrifice my health, my mental health, in order to make sure that I was doing everything perfectly. Yeah, so bringing awareness around those expectations.
Danielle Lee Darling:I notice a lot from my taglines for my businesses. I help people pleasers and perfectionists stop shooting on themselves so they can create a life that they love. Because when we use the words should, it elicits the feeling of shame, because it means that we are not meeting some type of expectation right. So I took should out of my vocabulary. It slips in every once in a while, but especially when I'm talking to my kids. I'm like you should, like oh, shoot, Um, but it really is such a powerful word to remove from your vocabulary and instead say I feel most aligned when I am the type of person who and the other things that I do for mental health and self-care. Obviously, with my Theta healing practice, I'm in meditation a lot of hours of the day, which is so fun because it's really, really great for your mental health and just bringing that awareness inside.
Danielle Lee Darling:I am the type of person, as I said earlier, that goes to the gym three to five days a week.
Danielle Lee Darling:Moving my body, I know, has made a huge difference in my mental health. And then also, too, I think other foundational thing is that I have an incredible network of women around me. When I was starting to feel unhappy in my marriage, coming out of COVID, realizing that I needed to make a change, I decided that I wanted to surround myself with growth-oriented women who were going to challenge me and who were going to support me, because I knew life was going to change and I knew that I wanted to do more, be more in my life and create a business. And so now all of my friends are amazing female entrepreneurs that cheer each other on and I leaned into their friendships when I was going through my transition in life and because of that, I feel like I'm mentally healthier and stronger. So when you are feeling shame, understanding that whole concept around shame and how we pull back. Lean in to the people that love you when you are struggling, because they want to be there for you.
Rita Suzanne:But oftentimes women have a hard time asking for help. Oh yeah, oh yeah, that's a whole. That's a whole other podcast episode. So I do want to touch back just really briefly for my moms who have tried meditation, who maybe struggle with meditation because their attention span maybe gets lost, and so do you have any tips with meditation? And those who say I can't do it because I get distracted too easily.
Danielle Lee Darling:The thing that changed things for me with meditation is the changing my approach right. As women especially if there's anybody resonating with being a people pleaser or perfectionist we always want to do things right, do things the right way. Meditation is a practice, that's all it is. There's no wrong way to do it. So just by spending, I get that notification on my Apple watch all the time. It says take a minute to yourself. That's all you need. It's just taking a minute to close your eyes, notice the sensations in your body, notice the thoughts that are happening in your head. It's just about bringing awareness inside and it's not about doing anything specifically perfectly. Of course, in Theta Healing we have a result that we're looking for and that is facilitated by me. You don't need to do a lot of work, but when you're in your own meditative practice, approach it as a practice. Release the expectations or the shoulds around meditation and you'll find more ease with it because you won't be trying to hold on to this expectation of doing it right.
Rita Suzanne:Love it. So where are you online? Where can others connect with you?
Danielle Lee Darling:You can find me on all social media outlets at Danielle Lee Darling, and that's Darling as in, isn't she darling, not Darlene? It's my great-grandfather's last name and my middle name, and then, of course, my website is danielleedarlenecom. You can reach me there and get that stop workbook freebie.
Rita Suzanne:Love it. Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure chatting with you.
Danielle Lee Darling:You too, Rita. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
