Doable Self-Help Strategies with Holly Blanc Moses

 

We know self-care is important, but doing it is a whole different ball game. In this episode, Holly Blanc Moses shares doable self-help strategies and her challenge to parents of children who are differently wired. Beginning with a bucket list of what we want to do, she shares how we can slowly tick the things off one by one. Holly then explores the uncontrollable things in our lives, giving some tips on how to come to terms with them and put the pressure off from yourself. Listen to the story your brain is telling you and know what you can control.

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Doable Self-Help Strategies with Holly Blanc Moses

I have Holly Blanc Moses back with us again. She’s starting an exciting class that I’m anxious to hear about and I’m sure you’ll want to hear about it too. Holly, welcome.

Thank you for having me. I’m excited about starting a self-care challenge on Facebook and it is a free group.

What will be covered in this class?

What I find is that when parents who have differently wired children hear about self-care, it is important, but we think, “That’s funny. Who has time for that?” We are running from place to place, we’re taking our children to therapy and then school. Some of us home school and also work, so it’s a lot. We want self-care. We know it’s important but doing it is a whole different ball game.

I know a lot of them feel, “Maybe when my children are grown, I can do that.”

It’s always later, and of course it is because we feel it’s not even a possibility for us. I do have some helpful doable strategies that don’t require a lot of time, a lot of energy or even money. I definitely want to share that with you.

What are some ideas? What could they start with?

Have you ever heard of a bucket list? A bucket list is this list of things that we want to do, things that we feel passionate about, things you want to accomplish before we die, which sounds a little bit depressing. Usually what happens is we don’t ever end up doing them. We have all these great ideas and we want to go to this place or do this but it doesn’t seem doable. We have this idea where we have all this time to eventually do these things. I want to make a twist on that and call it a Love List. This is to yourself, but I only want it to be three months.

It needs to be short-term. It needs to be doable. We’re going to use the “I will” language. You have a deadline. It helps you take action to move forward in a more fulfilling life. If we don’t take action, we continue to get through the day. We’re spinning our wheels, we’re running and we end up doing the same thing all of the time. We don’t end up taking the time for ourselves. It’s important for it to be short-term. It needs to be reasonable, the things that you can accomplish. That way you’re going to be more likely to take action and meet your goals.

I’m thinking of some things for me that I can do within three months’ time. There are simple things. When we live in an area, there are those tourist attractions that people come from halfway across the world to see but we never go to because we can do that later. There are historical sites in my area that I’ve always wanted to see and haven’t done that yet. That could be on my bucket list.

Trying to control something we can't control is like hitting your head against a brick wall. You're ultimately hurting yourself. Click To Tweet

I could challenge you to do that. I’m personally challenging you to make that list for yourself. I’ll share mine with you. I started my new Love List and this may sound completely ridiculous to everyone but everyone has to do what works for them. We’re using “I will” language, not “I want to.” That doesn’t get us where we want to be. “I will ride a mechanical bull before the end of 2019.” It sounds silly but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do and I thought, “I can talk about it or I can do it.” I didn’t have to have this goal or this activity I’ve always wanted to do on a bucket list and then it never happened. Another thing is, I will spend time with a friend or two friends, two times a month for the next three months.

Something like going out for lunch?

Going out for lunch, meeting up for coffee, anything like that. I know where I am currently and maybe different people want to nurture their friendships, that something that’s a value for me. For me to make it two times a month is double of what I usually do. To me, that’s a goal that is doable and that is meaningful to me.

I’ve noticed, quite often those friendships are the first thing parents let go, but they need that support.

They do and you need to laugh. You need to smile and you need to get the advantage of having that social relationship. It’s incredibly rewarding to be able to sit down with a friend. It’s one of the first things that go by the wayside and it’s too important. Another one I have is I’ll listen to classical piano every day for the next three months. That’s something I find that feeds my soul. I do not play the piano, but there’s something about that that relaxes me. When I’m doing paperwork, when I’m not in front of a patient providing direct service, I can definitely have that going on in the background. That’s doable.

I remember I used to do housework to Sousa.

It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it’s not meant to be. It’s about feeding your soul every day, bringing joy into your life every day in doable ways.

That’s your Love List. It’s three items with a deadline within three months and stated in “I will” language.

If you have trouble coming up with your own, here are some ideas. What is an activity or skill that you want to learn or get better at, that might be something that you’re interested in? Maybe what you want to do that brings you joy in specific areas in your life that you want to nurture. That could be health, relationship with your partner or your family, finances, feeding yourself spiritually. Whatever that is for you personally that can give you some ideas of some concrete “I will” activities that you can do.

Some people feel like, “I always had wanted to take up yoga, meditation.” They felt they have to wait until they can devote time and money to take a class and set aside an hour a day. It could just be for five minutes.

The more difficult situations help us grow the most. Click To Tweet

If anything is taking action, five minutes, ten minutes, it’s all about moving forward. Something that comes up often with parents of differently wired children and especially for me is anxiety and trying to control everything. If you’re naturally struggling with anxiety, we feel a little less anxious about what we can control and it makes sense that we try to. Not only that, a lot of times it feels our life is out of control. It makes sense that we would want to try to control as much as we possibly could. The problem with that is it often leads to disappointment and more stress because it’s not possible.

Sometimes we’re trying to control something we can’t control.

It’s like hitting your head against a brick wall, you’re not going to get anywhere and you’re ultimately hurting yourself and possibly others. It’s a difficult thing. The bottom line is we can’t control our kids, our partners, our extended family, friends, co-workers, bosses, our children’s teachers and other people’s bad driving. As much as I would love to do all those things, I can’t. We’re fooling ourselves if we think that we can. We can guide them, we can provide information, we can tell them what we think but ultimately we cannot control everything and that’s a good thing.

Sometimes our kids, the people we love or the people we work with, they’re going to encounter their own experiences. That will shape them. We have been shaped by our experiences whether they’re uncomfortable or comfortable. What we have to think about is if we’re trying to control everything that happens around everyone else around us, how is that impacting other people? I definitely understand that the challenges I personally have been through have made me a stronger and more loving person. I would argue probably the more difficult situations have helped me grow the most.

The only person we can control is ourselves.

If people have trouble with control and anxiety, it’s instinctual. It comes naturally, we don’t even realize we’re doing it sometimes. What I would suggest is coming up with some wording that’s fast, a sentence or two that helps ground you. You need to notice what your brain is telling you I often call them brain stories. Your brain is telling you a story and that you can control something and you connect, you can only control yourself. Something I say to myself is, “I’ll do the best I can at this moment because I can only control myself.” It sounds simple but it does help me notice when I’m getting anxious, notice when I’m trying to control things I can’t and also let me know that it’s going to be okay. It will all be okay because I trust that I will get through it because I always do.

Quite often I think parents put pressure on themselves feeling, “It’s my responsibility to control my child.”

As a psychologist and a behavior analyst, I’m taught all these things on how to change behavior. You can definitely, but there are going to be times where things are out of your control, or you can’t prevent everything from happening. It might be where your child is struggling, something happened at school, plus they’re hungry, plus they’re tired equals meltdown. It came out of nowhere all of a sudden. There are certain things that you cannot control and being okay with that and accepting it can bring a lot of peace to your life. Something to also think about is our self-talk. We are the most meaningful to ourselves.

We say things to ourselves we would never say to anyone else.

We call ourselves names. We are telling ourselves, “We’re not good enough.” This may sound like a strong word, but I would have to say we are abusing ourselves. We’re a horrible parent or we’re a terrible partner, we’re not smart enough, we’re too fat, the list can go on and on and it’s incredibly sad. Our brains are telling these stories that we grasp onto as truth. They’re going to tell stories no matter what. It’s what brains do. It’s how we notice these stories and how we become gentle with ourselves. It takes work but it’s worth it.

 

This is another opportunity you should notice that our brains tell us things fast, so what we need to do is notice, that’s always number one. If you don’t notice, you’ll be telling yourself ten things before you even realize what you’re doing. Noticing is important. If you come up with something that works for you, mine is, “I am lovable and I am enough.” Not just sound completely cheesy but it can work. My negative brain stories were sitting around that I was not lovable and that I wasn’t good enough for all these different reasons. The one I created was that, “I am lovable and I am enough.”

It makes a big difference because when you are telling yourself a thousand times a day, all these terrible abusive things you would never say to anyone else, that has to change. It has to if you’re going to care for yourself. Something to think about and we may even do this in the self-care challenge is having everyone come up with three lovely adjectives to say about themselves. Sometimes this can make people uncomfortable. We can name things about other people quickly, wonderful things about them but when it comes to ourselves, sometimes we struggle. If we do struggle, that’s a sign that we need to work on this area in our life. I have asked this on my Facebook page and some people said they were struggling to come up with kind things to say about themselves. It took me a long time to be able to get to the point where I could come up with them myself. The more you do it, the better you become and the more comfortable you feel with it.

Any other tips you want to share?

There is one more. I call it mindful gratitude. Gratitude sounds like one of those hokey things that you’re going to see a lot pop up in different blogs. It is important because we don’t stop to notice and that is a huge piece of the puzzle is noticing. Something that I’ve been working on myself which may be helpful for you is telling at least three people a day how much you appreciate them. It’s all about making this doable.

If you want to have a good IEP meeting, start it out by telling the other people on the team what you appreciate about them.

It brings down the anxiety for you and the other person. It helps them feel appreciated. It helps them feel good and that way you don’t ever have to worry, “Does that person know how I feel about that?” It makes it fulfilling to yourself as well not just the other person. I work a lot so I have to stop myself from being able to stop and notice because if I don’t, it’s probably not going to happen. I have a private practice and I also coach and provide online courses. I’m pretty busy. One thing I’ve done, now that I figured how to do it because I’m not tech-savvy is I figured out how to set a timer on my phone for 8:15 AM. At 8:15 AM right before I see my first patient, it pops up a reminder on my phone and asks me, “What are three things you are grateful for today?” It took me twenty seconds to set it up on my phone. If I can do it, anybody can do it. You set a reminder on your alarm and rename the alarm on what you want to tell yourself that day. I was thinking about how grateful I was for my family and specifically a couple of my friends and that I have the opportunity to also love and support people in this upcoming challenge. I was grateful for that opportunity as well.

I know the power of gratitude, it’s a much more pleasant emotion than resentment, fear or anxiety.

It is and that the other things can easily take over, the negative thoughts and feelings. It’s not like we’re not going to have them. It’s okay to feel that way but it doesn’t have to consume you. That’s the difference.

We do tend to be more aware of what’s wrong and it takes focus to notice what’s right.

Something that you and your audience may find helpful is that I’m being more mindful and grateful for the things that I have and that I’m experiencing. Cole’s was having a sale and I bought these exercise pants and they are ugly and comfortable. They look like MC Hammer pants, for those of you who are my age, one of those videos I could be in with these pants. I wore them and I thought, “These are soft. There are amazing. I’m grateful for them.” I was thinking about being comfortable and how that brought me peace and enjoying the pants. I know that sounds silly but enjoying that type of thing. I have a pair of fuzzy socks that I think are great and it’s putting them on and not thinking twice about it. “I appreciate these,” something as small as that.

It takes incredible focus to notice what is right instead of what is wrong. Click To Tweet

It’s about enhancing your self-care.

It’s a lot of these things we don’t even think about.

These are wonderful tips. How do people sign up for your class?

I am going to give you the link to the free five-day self-care challenge on Facebook.

I will be signing up.

I’m glad to hear it. Any of you that are interested in the group, I think you’re going to love it.

It sounds worthwhile and very doable.

Doable is the key.

Thank you so much, Holly, for your time. We look forward to your class.

You are welcome, and thank you so much for having me.

Important Links:

• Holly Blanc Moses
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About Holly Blanc Moses

Holly Blanc Moses talks about doable self care for parents of children who are differently wired.

Hear some of her tips and get information on how to sign up for her free class starting January 7, 2019.

Visit her website.