Adventurous Mom

Archive for the ‘stress managment’ Category

So you’re stuck in a pretty bad sit­u­a­tion huh? Seems like things couldn’t get any worse, and then they did.  How do we cope with when we’re in these hor­ri­ble situations?

To be hon­est, when I was talk­ing to moth­ers that were sin­gle, barely mak­ing ends meet, I felt awful.  I wanted so badly to alle­vi­ate their pain, to make them instantly suc­cess­ful, to end their wor­ries.  But I knew if I did this, it would only pro­vide tem­po­rary relief.  Much like those that win the lot­tery, they find tem­po­rary finan­cial relief, only to blow all of their money on friv­o­lous spending.

The best way I have found to help peo­ple swamped in Stress, in Debt, stuck in Life, is to show them the way, let them fig­ure it out with help and assistance.

If I were to do all the walk­ing for my kids when they were grow­ing up, they would not have a rea­son to learn to walk on their own.  Same is true for any­one stuck in a mis­er­able sit­u­a­tion.  I could hand you a life pre­server, and res­cue you, but it is bet­ter if I teach you how to swim so the next time you fall over­board, you can make it to shore on your own.

With this being said, when you’re stuck in a hor­ri­bly stress­ful sit­u­a­tion, “SEE” your way out of it.  What I mean by this is you have the capa­bil­ity of visu­al­iz­ing your way out of debt, out of stress and out of fear.  The three most debil­i­tat­ing human feel­ings are those I just listed.  But, peo­ple find their way out all of the time, why can’t you?

If you’re say­ing that it’s impos­si­ble, you’ve defeated your­self before you began.  All per­sonal devel­op­ment experts will tell you that the num­ber one way to get­ting what you want is to Visu­al­ize your Desire.

So then, let me ask you, if you are stuck in this mis­er­able sit­u­a­tion, WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT?

• Do you really want to become debt free? – ask for it
• Do you really want to find a bet­ter pay­ing job? – see your­self work­ing in one
• Do you want a bet­ter rela­tion­ship with your kids? – believe every day that it is happening.

Doing this exer­cise may seem what I call “woo-woo” or just plainly stu­pid and eso­teric.  But ask any of the super suc­cess­ful, the wealthy, the happy, the bal­ance peo­ple in this world, and they will admit, they had a vision of how their lives would be.

This Vision puts into play sev­eral prac­ti­cal steps:

• -          You declare that you desire some­thing to hap­pen, you openly admit it to your­self, and it goes beyond wish­ing, it is a request.  You believe this will hap­pen and you get past the fear of actu­ally ask­ing for it.
• -          Your Retic­u­lar Acti­vat­ing Sys­tem (RAS) acts as a “ful­fill­ment request cen­ter”.  It is given a demand to ful­fill a desire, and then seeks to accom­plish that request.  It is a very black and white issue, and does not deal with the com­pli­cated emo­tions that are involved, it doesn’t have to.
• -          So now that the RAS has its request, it starts shoot­ing out images and ideas to your sub­con­scious in attempts to ful­fill that request.  Some­times you may start see­ing more images, TV ads, signs or other “coin­ci­dences” that will poten­tially fill your desire.
• -          Lastly, as we declare a desire, and we see it vividly in our mind’s eye, we start doing the emo­tional work nec­es­sary to com­plete the goal.  Emo­tions like to get in the way of goal com­ple­tion, but hav­ing a clear and accu­rate vision will allow us to do the work nec­es­sary to make it hap­pen.  The ques­tion is, how badly do you want it?

It’s no won­der that gurus such as Tony Rob­bins and Joe Vitale sug­gest using tools such as Vision Boards.  It allows us to take our men­tal pic­ture and put it into phys­i­cal real­ity.  Sure, the phys­i­cal real­ity is only 2 dimen­sional when you’re mak­ing your vision board, but it is still a phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of your desire, and is the first step in see­ing what the desire feels like.

This vision board also allows you to rein­force your desires.  If you look at the board once or even twice a day, it is that daily con­sis­tency that acti­vates the RAS, the sub­con­scious and the con­scious mind to work together to bring forth your desire.

So I know this is a lot of infor­ma­tion about a pretty sim­ple idea: Visu­al­iza­tion. Yet, believ­ing that you will not be STUCK in your mis­er­able sit­u­a­tion is so impor­tant to your men­tal health and to your abil­ity to dig your way out!

Think about this:

In all things it is bet­ter to hope than to despair. “ Johann Von Goethe

When things are bad, we take com­fort in the thought that they could always be worse. And when they are, we find hope in the thought that things are so bad they have to get better.

Let me know what you think…have you had suc­cess with Vision Boards, have you been able to SEE your way out of bad sit­u­a­tions?  Leave a com­ment below, I love feedback!

Many Adven­tures!

Maken­zie

Wel­come back!  This is the 2^nd post of 3 in my Tips for Stress Reduc­tion.  I cre­ated these posts when I real­ized that Stress is the num­ber one epi­demic in our coun­try, which leads to many life-threatening med­ical con­di­tions such as car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, dia­betes, obe­sity etc…

Yet, as I have per­son­ally expe­ri­enced, doc­tors will diag­nose your con­di­tion as “stress related” but then just hand you a nice lit­tle pill to take.  I’m not dis­count­ing the neces­sity of med­ica­tions in cer­tain instances, hav­ing been in the health­care field for as long as I have, I com­pletely agree med­ica­tions in cer­tain patients are a neces­sity.  But what if your con­di­tion is cre­ated in your own real­ity? What if the lit­tle pill doesn’t cure the under­ly­ing problem?

This is the ques­tion you can ask yourself.

So in Part 1, the idea was to get you to iden­tify that you, as a par­ent, need to take care of your­self first.  We talked about iden­ti­fy­ing your energy lev­els, and slow­ing down your speeds.  Step 1 was to bring into your aware­ness WHEN you noticed that you were stressed out.

Now in Part 2, we iden­tify 3 Sim­ple Steps to get into action to reduce your stress.

Step 1 — Do Less

What? Do less? ….I can hear all of the “yeah but” com­ments now.  So let me clar­ify: Just Do Less.

This step in its sim­plic­ity can some­times be a dif­fi­cult step to rec­on­cile to your­self because you will argue for your stress.  Doing less is a sim­ple deci­sion you can make.  Let me ask you these ques­tions: Do you need to attend every birth­day party for every child in your son or daughter’s class?  Do you need to have your child enrolled in every extracur­ric­u­lar activ­ity leav­ing you run­ning from base­ball to bal­let to piano lessons?

Doing less can extend to spend­ing less money and pos­si­bly elim­i­nat­ing the need to work so much!  Sim­plic­ity is a very free­ing feel­ing. We were able to man­age as humans in a sim­ple world before there was money, can we not man­age now?  Leo Babuta writes a beau­ti­ful blog at www.ZenHabits.net that focuses on sim­plic­ity.  Check it out, you may learn that there exists another real­ity about a sim­ple life.

Doing less can also mean instead of hav­ing to take the fam­ily to the lake, or ski­ing, or on activ­i­ties to feel like that is what proper fam­i­lies should do when spend­ing time together.  Doing less can sim­ply mean, stay at home, read books, have mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tions, be still and enjoy your time together.

Step 2 – When you have a lot to do, then con­sider Batching

Per­haps you’ve heard of batch­ing as some­thing that peo­ple do when they send out large amounts of mail.  At least that’s what I think of when I think of batch­ing.  I first learned about batch­ing from Tim Fer­ris, author and Lifestyle designer.  I have been employ­ing the idea of batch­ing for a while now.  It is some­what against what my mother taught me grow­ing up, but it allows me to focus my atten­tion and my time on pro­duc­tiv­ity rather than menial tasks all day long.

Here are some exam­ples of how you can employ batch­ing in your life today:

1. Laun­dry – The dreaded laun­dry!  My mother always used to say that it was eas­ier if I did a lit­tle bit every day, but hav­ing to think about laun­dry every­day was a men­tal drain, and a time drain.  Instead we batch our laun­dry once or twice a week.
2. Bill Pay­ing – If you don’t already have a great sys­tem set up, per­haps bill pay­ing can be batched weekly or bi-weekly.
3. Gro­cery Shop­ping – Mak­ing daily trips to the gro­cery store not only drains your energy and your time, but can inevitably drain your pock­et­book as you are more likely to spend over your bud­get with fre­quent trips.  Instead batch your gro­cery shop­ping into a weekly task.

I am sure you can come up with other ideas for batch­ing.  The con­cept is that you get to allow your­self to tem­porar­ily for­get about a task know­ing that you’ll get back to it at a pre-determined time. You are not ignor­ing the task; you are just defer­ring it and instead putting your atten­tion to get­ting other things done.

Stress is some­times a prod­uct of multi-tasking.  New research on this phe­nom­e­non shows that peo­ple are most effec­tive when they can UNI-task, and their stress lev­els are lower.  So focus on ONE thing at a time.  Other, more mun­dane tasks can wait!  So batch on!!

Step 3 – Elicit Teamwork!

I was recently coach­ing an over­worked an over­stressed mom that had 3 teenage boys at home!  She says, I’m so tired when I get home, but there’s so much to be done!  We came up with a plan to elicit team­work from her fam­ily so that she does not feel that all of the work needs to fall on her shoulders.

I owe this solu­tion to my dad, a per­fec­tion­ist with house­work, retired Navy and raised Navy brat, he was a stick­ler for a clean house.  When I was 9, he sat my sis­ters and I down, and asked us to out­line every sin­gle chore that had to be done in the house.  When we were done, we divided the chores into 3 areas.  One was kitchen/dishes, then there was the bath­room and linens, lastly was the liv­ing area.  We were then each respon­si­ble for our areas each week, and we rotated once per week.  It was easy for my dad to keep track of who’s area of respon­si­bil­ity it was that week, and then he was able to be the house­hold man­ager, instead of the custodian.

Can you pull together your team?  Who is your team? Your fam­ily, kids, grand­par­ents?  As the man­ager and leader of your house­hold, you can elicit their team­work.  Gain their inter­est, ask for their involve­ment, and get their feed­back.  It is eas­i­est to get buy-in for chores and duties when it is THEIR idea, not yours.  But they will want to be a part of this great team.  Team mem­bers as young as 2 can also take part in con­tribut­ing to the house!!

Thank you for fol­low­ing along!  Please feel free to post any ques­tions or com­ments below!  I’d love to hear how you get into action to get out of Stress!! ~Makenzie

Part 1 of 3 of the Stressed Mom­mies to Suc­cess­ful Mom­mies Series

I recently read mul­ti­ple post­ings by moth­ers that are so stressed out, that they would likely sell off one or both kid­neys to be able to cre­ate more time and have more money to devote to them­selves and their family.

These were just a hand­ful of the situations:

“I’m a sin­gle mother, I work full time, I have a 7 and 4 year old, I’m exhausted when I get home, but then I have to do school work, laun­dry, make din­ner, clean the house and then get ready to do it all over again!  I have no time for myself!”

“I have three kids, I work full time, go to Grad school and still feel like I can never get ahead!”

“My hus­band is in the mil­i­tary and gone half the year, my son has lost all abil­ity to potty train, and my daugh­ter does exactly oppo­site of what I tell her to do!”

My heart just ached when I read all of these stressed out Mom’s post­ings.  They were scream­ing for help onto a ran­dom forum post­ing, not know­ing where to go, just hop­ing that some­one would lis­ten to their cries for help!

Are you this mom?  Are you burn­ing the can­dle at both ends?  Are you cry­ing for help and think­ing that no one can help you?

1. Lis­ten to the flight atten­dant:

The first rule here is just to be aware that if you are at this point in your life where you are hang­ing on by a thread, do what every good flight atten­dant sug­gests in the event of cabin pres­sure fail­ure: “Put the Oxy­gen Mask on your­self first before you put them on small chil­dren.”  Eas­ier said than done?

If you con­sider the rea­sons, you are like the HUB of the WHEEL of your fam­ily. You are what keeps the fam­ily together, ungreased, the wheel doesn’t turn well, it’s squeaky and sticky.  With a well greased HUB, the wheel turns smoothly, effort­lessly and can do more rota­tions than an ungreased hub.  Con­sider your goal to be as smooth as a greased hub.

Tak­ing care of your­self means doing what you need to do to stay healthy. Eat well, take time for your­self, exer­cise, med­i­tate etc…  Imag­ine what your fam­ily would do with­out you? If you are not tak­ing care of your­self, you may con­tinue down the road to sick­ness due to stress.  So first things first –You are first!

2. Slow down to ½ speed!

It is easy to feel that because we have more to do, we need to do it faster, more hur­ried, and feel rushed.  Yet, when we delib­er­ately slow down the speed of our life, we are able to think more clearly and specif­i­cally about the task at hand.  It really is a funny para­dox! You may not actu­ally be doing less tasks when you slow your reac­tion speed down, it just feels like it!  What hap­pens often is you feel more delib­er­ate, your aware­ness comes into the present, and you can con­cen­trate on the NOW task and not the FUTURE task.

3.Notice How Your Vibra­tions are Felt Through your House­hold Like ShockWaves:

Do you notice that when you have a bad day, and you are stressed, the moment you walk in the house, all of a sud­den the kids are fight­ing and argu­ing, the dog is bark­ing, there is chaos spread­ing like wild­fire? Believe it or not, our energy lev­els have cer­tain vibra­tional fre­quen­cies.  Chil­dren are very sen­si­tive to these fre­quen­cies and react in strange and curi­ous ways, and usu­ally ways that tend to sound like nails screech­ing across the chalk boards.  Notice when you walk into your house calm, cen­tered and peace­ful?  The house can sense your “cen­tered­ness”, and mim­ics this energy level.  Its one of those mys­te­ri­ous uni­ver­sal prin­ci­ples.

4.Use your tran­si­tional Times and Take Men­tal Health Minutes:

When time is a pre­cious com­mod­ity for you at this time in your life, it is imper­a­tive that you use small por­tions of time to re-center, recharge and reju­ve­nate.  You prob­a­bly know this, but don’t mind­fully prac­tice this.  So, now I chal­lenge you to mind­fully prac­tice this.  When you are dri­ving home from work, put in peace­ful calm­ing music (I like to call it yoga music, eas­ily down­load­able from i-Tunes).  When you take a bath­room break, take 5 min­utes, close your eyes and do some deep breath­ing exer­cises and pos­i­tive think­ing.

5. Design Your Day:

This was a new con­cept recently intro­duced to me.   At the begin­ning of the day, spend 2 min­utes, grab your jour­nal and decide con­sciously HOW you want the day to go, and HOW you want to feel.  For exam­ple, “I choose to hap­pily drive to work, I will use the free time in the car to relax.  I choose to have joy­ous inter­ac­tions with my cowork­ers.  My meet­ings will go eas­ily and I will have easy res­o­lu­tions to my chal­lenges today. When I leave work, I will hap­pily use that time to tran­si­tion and be pre­pared and cen­tered for my fam­ily.  I con­sciously choose to be present with my fam­ily in the evening, turn­ing off my email and my phones.”  This only takes a cou­ple of min­utes, but you can see the impact that this has on your con­scious and sub­con­scious mind.  One of the beau­ties of this exer­cise is that you will not script your day to say “I wish work is dif­fi­cult, I wish the kids will be bad, and I want to be angry and stressed!”  It just doesn’t work like that!

Do not expect that you will imme­di­ately prac­tice all five steps right away.  Take one step a day and prac­tice.  A mommy’s job is so impor­tant and vital to the health of the fam­ily.  So mind your thoughts, mind your health and have fun!

Stay tuned to Part 2 Tips for Stress Man­age­ment – Mov­ing into Action to Reduce Your Stress