EP184: The Mr. & Mrs. Austin Series: Biggest Lessons Learned

This post was authored by Rosanne on Rosanne Austin.

In the 3rd episode of this series, my husband I share the biggest lessons we learned as a result of this journey. We share how we not only came out on the other side blessed with our baby boy…but stronger as a couple…for good! Some of the lessons may surprise you.

The post EP184: The Mr. & Mrs. Austin Series: Biggest Lessons Learned appeared first on Rosanne Austin.

Transcript:
Hey Gorgeous, if you want success on your fertility journey, you’ve got to have the mindset for it. It’s time to kick fear, negativity, doubt, shame, jealousy, and the whole clown car of low vibe fertility journey BS to the curb. I’m your host, Roseanne Austin, fertility mindset master, former prosecutor and recovering type A control freak perfectionist.

I use the power of mindset to get pregnant naturally and have my baby boy at 43. Despite years of fertility treatment failure, I help women across the globe beat the odds on their fertility journey just like I did. Get ready for a quick hit of confidence, joy, feminine badassery, and loads of hell Yes.

For your fertility journey. It’s time to get fearless, baby fearlessly fertile. Let’s do this. Welcome to the Fearlessly Fertile Podcast, episode 184. The Mr. And Mrs. Austin series. The biggest lessons we learned. Hey loves, I’m so excited to be in this third and final installment of the Mr. and Mrs. Austin series.

And over the past two episodes, we’ve shared some real truths about what we went through, some of the things that we’re going through, our collective heads as a couple. As we made our way through our journey, and it’s certainly our hope that this has helped you and really given you some insight that might not just validate what you’re going through, but also maybe take you a few steps down the road so it can help you anticipate some of the complexities, the situations.

And points of conflict that can come up in a couple who’s living this journey. So I thought that the coolest way to bring this particular three part series to a close would be to share some of the biggest lessons that we learned. Now, I want to be really clear about something. This isn’t just lessons learned, Pollyanna, it’s all going to be okay.

I want you to really hear why this journey was a gift in our lives. And I know that is probably the opposite of what you might believe right now. And I know that a lot of people get stuck in victimhood. Why me? Why is this happening to us? Why is this happening to me? Can’t we just catch a break? But I want to do something smarter than just wallow and circle the drain with you.

I want to lift you up. I want you to see bigger and brighter and bolder than you might otherwise see. Because I come from the perspective, and I believe my husband does now, everything that we went through was preparation for being Asher’s parents. And the kind of life That we live today could not be more dramatically different than the life that we would have been leading had he come the minute that we asked him to come into our family.

And this is why if you’ve listened to this podcast for any length of time, you at one point or another have heard me say that this journey gave me my life back and that this journey was a blessing and it was a gift. And I understand that when you’re in the middle of it, that might be something that you find hard to swallow, but it is a fact.

And it is a fact that women all over the world who get to the other side of their journey better for it will agree with. And that’s what I want for you. I think, I think that’s what we want for you. So without any further ado, babe, would you like to share the top 10 things that you learned on this journey?

Thanks, love. I broke it down a little bit different because I think there is some personalization for everyone, uh, going through this journey. And so I have it just simply about what I learned about us and what I learned about the grand design of things from my newfound perspective at the end of it.

About us, uh, the strength of our relationship, we believed we were uh, strong, but never being tested. And any measurable way. I mean, it was good sale in times, uh, up until, uh, things weren’t. And so we didn’t have any adversities, things were working out pretty well for us. It also demonstrated the commitment we had to one another and, uh, our, our respect for each other’s goals and how.

It was important, and we discussed it before, that neither one of us wanted the other to not have their dreams fulfilled, um, on our own, on our own part. We did try and enjoy the journey. We did, you know, uh, things were funny at times. We made day trips out of things. We saw even in the, in the difficult aspect of it, that we can still live, live to have some fun and do some things for ourselves.

And, uh, we built wins, uh, small wins, tiny wins. We would try and see those as a, as a boost. And so, uh, I, I always appreciated and loved our approach to how. We did certain things, things that I thought that anyone could benefit and learn from. The big one for me, and we’ve discussed this a little bit before is, is courage takes non traditional forms.

Me as a very masculine male thinks, you know, I’ve got this protection duty and there’s going to be the, the bad guy jumping out of the bushes and I’m going to be there to save my, my beautiful bride. Um, it, it wasn’t. ever, uh, a thought in my mind that There would be a doctor that we were uncomfortable with that I would have to have the courage to stand up and say, no, that’s, that’s not going to work for us.

So courage takes non traditional forms is how I wrote that. We discussed this in another, um, segment, but one plus one does not always equal three. One parent and one parent does not equal a child. And that violation of my expectations was something that was difficult to wrap my head around. Not only was the violation of the expectations difficult, but I think we had always attained through hard work.

So we had expectations, plus hard work, didn’t carry the mission through. And that was affecting us, you know, on, on two fronts. So what I learned was expectations, plus hard work, without mindset, didn’t mean anything for us. Another big one that really changed my life was deciding whether or not something was happening to us or for us.

And that’s a simple little twist of phrase, but it means drastically different things. And so, A lot of things have happened to us that have happened for us. And I think that was critical in advancing my mindset. We have to be aware of owning our journey with a deliberate mindset and not let things overwhelm us.

Be aware of what decisions may need to be made ahead of time. I think frequently, I know for myself, I go into a situation. With the open mind of let’s review all of the information and then we’ll make a decision. Well, I think there’s. At times, and I’m not saying fear rehearse, uh, but what I’m saying is you can anticipate what could be presented ahead of time, uh, with a little bit more diligence.

I know I didn’t because at the time I was deferring a lot of my decision making, uh, to what a professional said my decision should be. The next thing I wrote was Partners Resolve may be more damaging than productive. And this is directly related to what I saw you putting yourself through. You were driving yourself so hard without taking the appropriate care of yourself that you were damaging yourself physically.

And mentally and emotionally and to approach things with a good work ethic is, is always generally a positive, but if you’re doing the work ethic without the proper mindset, it can be damaging. So I think that’s what I saw was taking place when you were really, really trying to drive this home. I always felt like we were an effective team and treating it like a team kept it light, kept it fun at times.

I think there’s studies out there about, you know, Hey, teams that high five more are just more successful. There’s more physical contact, there’s more joy, there’s more engagement with one another, there’s more accountability, there’s more responsibility. So I always thought us treating it like a team helped keep things a little bit lighter and a little bit more productive.

And, uh, simple where the, where the mind goes, the body follows. And if your mind is spiraling down, like I kind of going back a couple points and that’s generally the direction your body’s going to go. So I thought those were some points that anyone could use, uh, based on what we had gone through. Those are awesome, babe.

And I really, I really like that you pointed out that. You know, there was a disconnect between your expectations and what was happening, you know, that there, there isn’t necessarily a correlation between the hard work and an outcome. And mindset is the key to bridging that because this is completely nonlinear, like it’s so different from anything else that you and I had ever lived.

I mean, for the most part, there is, you put in X amount of work, you get Y results. And I think that’s one of the things that is consistently most mind boggling for people is that, you know, I’m doing everything. And, you know, and I guess the question that sometimes I ask in response to that is, are you really doing everything?

Not from a perspective of you’re not good enough or that it’s just sometimes we end up finding out that we’re avoiding some things that we really need to do. And for us, it was having joy. For us, it was traveling again. For me, it was getting some mentorship that really helped me get out of that blocked place.

So when we say, oh, we’re doing everything, chances are that’s not exactly true. There’s no way that any human being can do everything. It’s just a turn of phrase to say, are you doing everything? But most of the time, we’re missing some stuff. And when we’re trapped in our own stories, it’s often the most important stuff.

So we were working hard, but we weren’t necessarily doing the right things for us. Just like if you’re not gluten sensitive, then going gluten free doesn’t mean shit. So it’s, it’s about doing the right things for us and the right things for me, the right things for you. So I think what you raised there is really good.

And so here are my top 10. And they’re not in any particular order. They’re just what came to mind. I mean, I think in truth, we probably could have a list of 100, but I think these are the ones that that come to mind the most. Number one, if I truly desire something, I can have it. And that was probably me.

One of the biggest lessons that I learned very quickly because I, you know, in my mind, I thought that Asher was just, you know, at the darkest times that he was unattainable, that there’s no way we were going to bring him home. But the reality was, is the way that we were doing it was going to virtually guarantee that he wasn’t coming home.

The second thing that I learned was the timeline is not relevant. It’s totally fucking made up. Totally made up. Because I think that The idea that, oh my gosh, I was on a crash course with 40, you know, this baby’s not going to come. It’s like, who cares? Who cares? Like, that didn’t matter at all. He decided to come when I was almost 44.

I was months away from my 44th birthday. So it’s like, when you get caught up in these numbers, that’s somebody else’s story. That’s somebody else’s paradigm. It’s not ours. So the timeline is not relevant. There’s a difference between longing for this child and falling into the idea that if they don’t come by a certain date, it’s over total bullshit.

If you long for them and you hang in for them, they will be there. Third, I can choose to be an outlier, not a statistic. And for me, that was probably one of the biggest leaps. That was probably one of the biggest mental leaps that I had to make because as a prosecutor. And, you know, looking at statistics, looking at, you know, DNA results, all kinds of stuff.

It was very, quote unquote, fact and science driven. But there’s an element to this that has nothing to do with what’s, you know, written in the statistics or anything like that. There is this X factor. Where belief comes in, where spirit comes in, where faith comes in, and there was a choice that could be made.

I could choose to be an outlier. I did not have to be a victim of statistics. And I think that switch is, is critical and which is also why I put victimhood is a choice. That was my, my fourth thing. The fourth lesson that I found so pivotal and and what’s crazy is I would have never thought I was a victim Back then I thought you know, I had everything together.

I work hard I’m not victimized by anything But the truth was my mentality was that of a freaking victim and when we talk about victimhood we’re talking about Powerlessness, we’re talking about handing our license and agency for our outcomes and our lives to other people, which is why that dovetails so nicely with, I can choose to be an outlier because as long as I accepted statistics as my faith, that’s what it would be.

So the sixth one, God is real. There is divine intelligence and it was there the whole time. And I’ve talked about this in my, my faith series. That I struggled with that idea for a long time and that, that dovetails again with this, this whole idea of victimhood thought I was being punished who, you know, what kind of.

Infinite intelligence or God or universe would put any woman through this. And what’s crazy is it’s a presumption that this journey is bad. That’s the underlying belief that, that really gave me a very troubling, I think, relationship with my faith. It was, it was rocky. You know, it also didn’t help that I got dragged across the playground by the ear by a nun, sixth grade.

But all that aside, this journey gave me an unshakeable faith. I saw the hand of what I call God, universe, source, Gus, God, in so many things, in the people that came into our lives, in moments of grace. in seeing Asher. Like, it’s crazy. Every time I look at our son, it’s like, dude, there’s no question. There’s no question that God is real and exists everywhere, because when I look at him, it’s just crazy.

The next lesson that I learned was really interesting was what I need always shows up, and it’s always in an unexpected way. And it’s interesting because this journey, even it was funny because the amount of money we were investing, the things that we were doing totally shook me to the core because at the beginning of our journey, I was hardcore in lack and scarcity.

That was definitely one of the things that I had to move out of from childhood programming, that there wasn’t enough, that that’s too expensive, uh, that’s for other people. And that having it all was selfish. And when we embarked on this journey, the truth was, whenever we needed something, it always showed up.

Always. There was always enough. And it was crazy, because it didn’t hap like, there wasn’t a bag of money that fell out of the sky. It showed up in a lot of different ways. And, and when you make that shift, to think from a place of abundance. And you see the whole truth that everything you need has always shown up in your life at one point or another.

And it sometimes comes in a form that you didn’t expect. It may not be a cash per se, it could be a blessing in some other way. The reality is, is we live in an abundant universe. So. All of these things stacked together, all the, the points that I’ve made up to this point, really was opening my mind and, and having me see beyond the matrix that I was raised in.

It was super shocking. And. The next point was, I’m willing to be the woman that finds out. I think that was a turning point. That was a real turning point in my journey, was being willing to be the woman that finds out. Because I, I spent so much time on our journey in fear. Like, I was afraid. I was afraid that this was never going to happen.

And so when I started shifting my mindset, that decision to be the woman that got to the end of her journey and found out and knew what it meant and knew what it was like to do everything that I knew to do so that I didn’t have regret, that changed my life. And that shows up in the way that I write. It shows up in, in the work that I do.

It shows up in the way that I coach is I was willing to be the woman that finds out. Okay. And I think I have two more quick points. The next one is everything. Even the uncomfortable shit is for me. And that lines up with what you were saying, too. Everything is for me. And when I started believing that, when I started practicing that, because, you know, you have to repeat that more than a few times.

That’s not something that’s easily Uh, just incorporate it into your psyche. But when I started living from that place, hey, even the most uncomfortable shit, even the most painful shit, it is happening for me. It gave me a new level of resilience and it gave me so much courage in the face of what felt like defeat.

So everything, even the uncomfortable shit, is for me. And then the last one is failure isn’t final. And I think that this was another intensely important lesson for me to learn, particularly for what I was transitioning into, you know, going from work as a prosecutor into going into a line of work that I had never done before.

Nobody I knew ran a business. Nobody else I knew was a coach and it really ran up against. Everything I believed at that point, except what I knew in my heart that I had to share what I had learned and the failures. I could have let the failures say, Oh, well, you’ll fail at that too, because look at this long history of failure, but I knew that there was more.

I knew that the failures were propelling me to something bigger and something better, and they definitely weren’t final. So those are my top lessons, babe. Any thoughts on those? Yeah, absolutely. I think so many of ours are stated differently, but in essence, staying the same thing, going back to the point of for us and one point that.

I thought was relevant after you spoke about yours was that even, even today, if something happens for me, I don’t even question what the reason is going, what it is, what it is, uh, why it’s happening, when I’m going to see the why or the what I don’t, I just have a, an absolute faith. And I remember the tremendous sense of peace I received.

Laying in the hospital bed going, why did this terrible thing happen to me? Wait a second. It didn’t happen to me. It happened for me. And I don’t need any explanation beyond that as to when I’m going to realize it happened for me and what this will mean in my life in the future. There’s going to be something greater that comes through this.

Yeah, I think your point is well taken because there’s been so many things that have happened in our lives since Asher was born, you know, moves, accidents, things that, you know, all this crazy stuff that has shown up in our lives that all of these lessons that we’ve shared with the ladies today have come back to serve us.

10, 000 times over in so many different ways. So I really appreciate what you shared, babe. I think that was really awesome. And I hope that all of you listening are going to take some of this to heart and really think about, are there ways currently That you can open up with your partner about what you’re learning on this journey.

Are there ways that maybe you, you guys might not be that far apart, but if you overcome some of the mindset blocks that you’re sitting with right now, or old beliefs or old hurts or old wounds or holding on to the need to be right, that what’s possible, what could open up? I mean, you could be having a conversation very much like this.

Which is why we set it up this way to mirror, you know, what are, what are some of the things that you and your partner have learned, because you just may be surprised you might not be as far apart as you think. Anything else, babe? Love. I think there’s a lot of lessons to be taken from the journey. Were we seeing them as lessons when we were immersed in it?

No. No. It’s a hell of a lot easier to look back and, and see what they. Were as we sit here today, so I would encourage everybody to look for that best. They can out of every situation. It’s, it’s not the easiest thing, but the small wins add up and the small wins can change a heart and a mindset and, and being committed to knowing that.

I’m gonna do what I, everything I can and, and leave nothing on the table. And I, like I said, in one of the previous segments that, uh, I’d rather, uh, be broken and certain than, than rich and uncertain. So for me, uh, those were some of the critical points that there were times where I, I, I certainly wish I had at the very, very beginning, some of these points that I made.

And, uh, I hope to help people. Uh, as they go through it, so they don’t make the same mistakes we did, and they don’t feel the same way we did. Well, and the reality is, is, you know, you have to be ready to get this information, you have to be ready to receive this information, and, you know, the point of this is that take what you want from it, leave the rest like a Vegas buffet, like, it, you know, some people may not be ready to hear that this journey is a gift, and that’s okay, it’s totally fine.

You’ll find out on your own, if you’re willing to see it. But the bottom line is that. It’s very rare to have this kind of insight into what’s really going on for a couple. And our heart was in the place of wanting to save you some grief and some misery and perhaps destruction in your relationship by bringing some of these really hard topics to the surface because there, I mean, we’re confident in ourselves and our lives and who we are enough that bringing this to you, we, we hope that it’s, it’s really going to be of service.

So. That’s it from the Austen’s loves. If you loved what Mr. Austen and I shared here, you got to know that relationship is a critical thing to be working on, and we absolutely cover it in my Fearlessly Fertile Method program. So although registration in the Fearlessly Fertile Relationship is now closed for 2022, we definitely get into some of this goodness.

In my signature fearlessly fertile method program and that program is for women who intend to get pregnant in the next 12 months and say hell yes to covering their bases, mind and body. So you don’t have to look back on this time in your life with regret. I work with women who are committed to success to apply for your interview for my fearlessly fertile method program.

Go to my website, www.FromMaybeToBaby.com and apply for an interview there. My methodologies help women around the world make their mom dreams come true. Their results speak for themselves. If you don’t have a mindset for success on this journey, baby, you gotta keep it all in your strategy. Let’s fix that shit and set you up for success.

Till next time, change your mindset. Change your results. Love this episode of the Fearlessly Fertile Podcast? Subscribe now and leave an awesome review. Remember, the desire in your heart to be a mom is there because it was meant for you. When it comes to your dreams, keep saying hell yes.

Rosanne offers a variety of programs to help you on your fertility journey — from Self-study, to Live, to Private Coaching.