Episode 2 - Happiness Over Perfection with Stef Tousignant
By Jessica Garrison
Our guest this week is the creator and host of the Parent Differently podcast, Stef Tousignant. Stef’s podcast aims to help parents grow, reflect, and understand that being perfect is impossible. However, just because you aren’t a perfect parent doesn’t mean you aren’t a good one. Everyone is just trying to do their best in a world that isn’t always working in their favor, and Stef really puts things into perspective with her podcast on how we can continue to better ourselves and be happy, rather than getting bogged down on things that we cannot change.
For Stef, the journey to self care has been a bumpy road with a lot of “enough is enough” moments. She describes how she found it difficult in her busy schedule to find time for herself, but she realized that, for her, it has little to do with the acts of self care and more to do with her mindset. Her goal is to be intentional and purposeful in her thoughts, which helps her prioritize what is most important. Her journey in self care may not necessarily apply to anyone else, but that doesn’t make it wrong either. We’re all on our own journey that we must discover for ourselves what works and what doesn’t.
The conversation that sticks in my mind the most from this episode comes from the topic of boundaries. Stef says how she always created unachievable goals for herself and lacked the boundaries to keep herself on track. However, she shifted her perspective so the word boundary has a new meaning: “happiness over perfection.” Stef uses the example of decorating for the holidays—she hated it! She always felt the need to do it because that’s what everyone else would do, but it didn’t make her happy. She realized she had the choice to just not do it. Instead, she lets her children choose their favorite holidays and they can decorate however they please for it. She’ll help them, of course, but the pressure is off of her and the freedom is instead given to someone who actually wants it. There’s no need to put useless amounts of pressure on yourself, especially if it isn’t making you happy. Sometimes, there is the secret option to just let things go.
When it comes to taking care of her emotional health as much as her physical health, Stef says something very important that I think we can all take away from this episode: “All emotions are welcome.” As Melissa has said before, there is no such thing as a bad emotion. Feelings may make us uncomfortable or they may be unpleasant to experience, but they are all there to serve a purpose. They help us understand why we’re feeling that way, whether it be a stressor we need to take care of or a negative presence in our lives. Sometimes this is a difficult concept to understand, but these two women put it into words perfectly.
A quote I love from this episode comes from Stef, who says to “ground your expectations in your intention.” You can make yourself feel like a failure, especially if your expectations are rooted in cultural norms. No one is perfect, though sometimes they may seem like they are on the outside. Expectations to be perfect are never going to be met, so you’ll just make yourself miserable by trying to reach something completely unreachable, like how her goals used to be. She says to take the shame out of this by being intentional with your purpose and actions, and by just being the best you can be without constant comparisons.
The F.E.E.L podcast did an episode in season 2 called “Weaponized Gratitude,” where we discussed how gratitude can be used against people to make them feel guilty or to manipulate them. We weren’t sure how this would contrast with Stef’s podcast, since hers puts an emphasis on the word and encourages others to feel gratitude. However, Stef speaks about gratitude in such a healthy way on her podcast, and she shows a whole new perspective to the word, so we were happy to welcome her as a guest this season. We’re grateful (no pun intended) that Stef was able to be part of our podcast and share with us how she gets through the world as a woman, a mother, and a professional. Be sure to check out her podcast Parent Differently and continue to share the positivity that Stef has shared with us!