Parenting is a challenging task, and this week we have Carmel Ecker with us to discuss ways to minimise drama in our relationships, change our mindset, and modelling self-care for our children. If you want to feel more empowered as a parent, this interview will be super useful and fun to listen to or watch! 

Carmel Ecker is a single parent empowerment coach, she is also the Managing Director of eWomenNetwork, Victoria British Columbia chapter. You can find more information about her work and programs at https://speaknowcoaching.com/

Interview Highlights

#1 - Introduction to Carmel Ecker; single parent empowerment coach and managing director of eWomenNetwork (00.03)

#2 - An image makeover on the idea of what it is to be a single parent; limitations of negative stereotypes (02.42)

#3 - Perspective; reframing your outlook before becoming a single parent, letting go of past expectations (06.57)

#4 - Dealing with guilt as a single parent; the importance of self-care for single parents (11.56)

#5 - Self-care cont. Modelling self-care to our children, demonstrating healthy behaviours (15.08)

#6 - Five elements of Carmel's framework; mindset, creating a vision, motivation, creating habits, making a commitment (17.40)

#7 - Emotional contagion; consciously changing your mood in order to affect others around you positively (22.40)

#8 - How to minimise drama in interpersonal relationships; focusing on your own reactions, thoughts, feelings and positive decision-making (27.31)

Video

https://youtu.be/AFbL1vRH4x8

Transcript

Sze Wing: 00:03 Hi, everyone. Today I have a lovely guest with me, and today we've got Carmel Ecker. She's all the way from British Colombia, in Canada. And she's joining us today for this podcast, and I'm really happy to have a chat with her. So little, short introduction; Carmel is a single parent empowerment coach. She's also the managing director for eWomenNetwork, Victoria, BC chapter. And that's basically how we met online. There's a lot of online meeting going on, since I'm based in Sydney, Australia. I'm really excited to interview her. And I'm certain that she's going to share a lot of information that's going to help a lot of single parents out there. I think one of the things I loved the most when I was looking up her work is that, you know, she talks about how to switch from a survival mode to be a thriving parent, which we all need; whether a single parent, double parent, or just a woman, you know, you want to you depart from that survival mode and really live a more thriving life. And it's not easy, but there's a lot of tools and guides out there. So hopefully today's podcast interview will shed some light on that. I also love the fact that the work she's doing is making people feel, you don't have to do it all alone. You have mentors, you have people who have been there. And I think that support network is amazing and it's really wonderful. So with a welcome to my podcast, Carmel.

Carmel: 01:40 Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Sze Wing: 01:44 Yeah, me too. So I guess first of all, I'm not a single parent, but I have friends; I have heard a lot of stories. I know it's not easy, especially at the beginning you know, the change and everything. So I don't have firsthand experience, but I do friends and people that I know. So your work is about empowering and coaching single parent to change that, when we talk about the survival mode thing, and also to defy the stereotypes, you know, almost like having image make over to be more empowered, to be happy to be successful. So it sounds really amazing, but for some people, it sounds almost too good to be true. So tell us a bit about your discovery journey and also, how do you encourage people to take the step and to believe that's actually possible?

Carmel: 02:42 Yeah. Wow. Okay. That's a big question. But really you know - and I love the word that you used there; image makeover beca...