“Saturday nights with my future Olympian. I think I finally found someone who likes practice more than I did.”
Lindsay Arnold is changing the way she talks to herself — and she has the perfect reason for doing so.
The 31-year-old “Dancing With the Stars” pro appeared on the July 23 episode of “The Squeeze” with Tay Lautner when she opened up about motherhood and how it has positively affected her life.
According to Arnold, she started noticing a shift in her mindset during her first pregnancy.
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“My relationship with my body changed so much during my first pregnancy,” she said of going from an athlete dancer who uses her body as a tool to “literally growing a human” inside of it.
“I got this new confidence in appreciating my body and thinking of my body about what it can do for me and what I can do with it rather than what it looked like,” she added.
Arnold went on to add that her mindset change only multiplied when she had her daughters.
The mom of two recalled the first time she heard her child say something that she didn’t teach her how to say — and from that moment on, she became “much more aware” of what (and how) she says things.
“They watch, they hear everything. They listen to everything. You are truly setting an example for them with every move you make, every word you say,” Arnold explained to Lautner.
To combat this, Arnold changed the way she talked about herself around her kids — and started complimenting herself more.
“I feel like I’ve just shifted so much about the way I talk to myself because that’s how I want them to talk to themselves,” she said of her daughters.
Arnold describes her mindset change as a ‘full-circle moment’
Arnold went on to describe her change of mindset as a “full-circle moment” for her because she started doing it for her daughters’ sake, but it ended up working in her favor, as well.
“I’m naturally feeling more confident in myself because I’m not saying those (negative) things to us,” she continued.
“And by not saying them, I’m starting to think them less,” she added.
“Those are things about motherhood that you don’t even realize that will change you,” she told Lautner.
You can watch the full exchange between Arnold and Lautner below:
Arnold first became a mom in November 2020 when she and her husband Samuel Cusick welcomed daughter Sage Jill, according to Us Weekly.
The couple, who tied the knot in June 2015, welcomed their second daughter, June, in May 2023.
Elsewhere in the July 23 podcast, Arnold revealed what surprised her the most about being a mother.
At the top of her list? A mother’s intuition and instinct.
“How moms really just know how to get things done before even knowing how to do it or being taught how to do it,” Arnold said on the podcast.
“The things that I’ve just figured out with my children and the things that have just come to me on the spot — that never ceases to amaze me,” she continued.
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“It shocks me because it’s like you don’t know how to do a lot of things and then you do them and it’s just really built my confidence,” she added later in the episode.
