Episode 92: Present Over Perfect – How to Reboot Your Balance as a Busy Mom

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

Welcome to the kids sleep show, where we help tired parents from around the world to get their children to fall asleep independently, sleep through the night, and build healthy sleep habits for life. I’m your host, Courtney Zentz. Now let’s sleep together.

Hello, everyone. And welcome back to this week’s episode of the kids sleep show. I am so excited to be chatting with you all about kids sleep and how I can help your newborns and your infants and your toddlers. To sleep. Well, I have been a sleep consultant for over seven years, I’ve helped 1000s of families around the world, as has my team, the slumber squad, to bring good quality sleep back into your home. And today’s episode actually is a little bit different than sleep. I talk a lot about sleep and sleep struggles and how to fix those struggles, which I obviously know is why many of you listen to this amazing podcast. However, I realized in the past couple weeks as I’ve done some more self reflection and growth and commitment to things like exercise and wellness and mindfulness and such. And I realized very quickly that even as a business owner, you can get burned out, you can get burned out as a mom, you can get burned out as a business owner, you can get burned out as an employee as a wife, right? All of these different things that cause us to as parents be sometimes pouring from an empty cup, it is no question that the past couple of months have been excessively hard on all of us. Wherever we are in our life, whether expecting a baby, whether we just had a newborn, or whether we have a house full of children who are bouncing between school and home, and trying to make sense of this normalcy. And I did an exercise last week with my business coach who I would actually call my like business therapist, if you will, because she helps me look at things interested completely outrageous and different angle from any other business coach that I’ve had in the past. But in addition, she challenges me on the personal growth and development side too. So I would equate her to be my business coach and my therapist. But she goes more along the lines of the business therapy and did a really cool exercise that I want to share with you to help you better reset and reboot yourself. So this one is going to take a little bit of visualization because I did this on zoom with her. But I really think it’s a powerful message that I got that I wanted to share with all of you. So you don’t need zoom, you’re just going to have to have a piece of paper. So if you’re listening to this while you’re at the gym, or you’re driving, that’s okay, I’m going to explain it it’s not terribly complex. And you’ll understand what you do. When you have the opportunity to take a pause and sit down with a piece of paper and write out what I’m going to tell you to do. This exercise was very glaring for me where I had gaps in my overall I would say self care satisfaction, right? I think a lot of us will do things like go to the nail salon, right and we say oh that self care for me, I like getting my nails done. So that is something that I enjoy when I think of self care, right? The problem is most of us go to the nail salon for that self care time to disconnect to rejuvenate ourselves, right. And if you look around the spa or the salon The next time you go, every single person is on their phone. I purposely when I got a pedicure about two and a half weeks ago at the beach was the first one I’ve had in forever. And I was like you know what, I’m actually not going to hold my phone, I’m going to put my phone in my purse, and I’m going to put this leather comfy massage chair on. And I’m going to close my eyes and I’m not going to talk to anybody, I’m not going to think about anything, I’m going to get my nails done. I’m going to take some deep breaths, and I’m going to enjoy this beautiful chair needing my back, which felt amazing. And I did and it was great. And I feel like so often we go for things that involve self care and we end up spending the entire hour getting our toes done on our phones, looking at Instagram or thinking about our grocery list or writing our grocery list or you know, we’re getting a massage and we’re thinking about what the heck we’re going to cook for dinner or all the work we didn’t get done and it ends up not being that time you had originally envisioned to fill your cup. So this exercise is meant to really show you and call out from an accountability standpoint, some things that you may need to change. I had a really good conversation with my husband on Sunday, just about exercise and wellness and working out and commitment to that he is the most regimented person in the world almost to a fault where I’m like, Hey, we’re gonna do this. He’s like, holy crap.
that interferes with my perfect day. And so sometimes, you know, I’m like, Dude, it’s fine, like, you’ll be okay. But he’s very regimented and structured, he wakes up every day goes to the gym at five goes to work at 635 gets to work around seven, he’s a controller for a corporate commercial lumber company. So he’s doing a lot with all the finance and money and numbers, and he’s the numbers guy. And, you know, and it’s just a lot of mental load every day that he spends doing what he does, and he very much likes the structure and the consistency. But I don’t have that I have my own business, which is a successful sleep coaching business. I also coach a lot of people who want to become sleep consultants. And so that’s a different side of the business and a different part of my brain. And then in addition to that, I’ve got two kids that I’m with from 5am, when I get up to, you know, somewhere around six or so when they get up, and I’m managing the pickup at the bus stop at three, and then they come home and play and then I come back upstairs and work and I get dinner sorted. And I’m managing all those day to day things that I think sometimes get lost, and I lose by the end of the day, my energy, my motivation to want to go to the gym or do something. And you know, so we had this conversation Sunday, where I’m like, honey, I need help building a workout because I used to go to the gym every day. And I really stopped and I think I stopped for a variety of reasons, I’m quite active, right, but I had my stomach cut out, my entire stomach is gone. So I have one long to from my throat down to my intestines, I have no gallbladder. So that proves to be very difficult in eating right? Like, I have to figure out what my body likes what, what it will tolerate. But that ultimately, it really doesn’t like things like cheese, which I love. And I just have decided I have to give up. And you know, I had a double mastectomy a couple months after I had my stomach removed. Like I’ve had a whole host of things going on where I’m just like, you know what I like I was I’ll get back into things, but I don’t feel like 100%. And now I’m at the point where I’m like, you know what, this is bowl. And since working with this business therapist that I have, who’s amazing, you know, I call her business therapists. Like I said, she’s kind of half and half. But she’s really just said, Courtney, you got to focus on yourself, like what makes you feel good? And how do you get back to that place, which is why I’m rambling a little bit today. But I want you to understand that like we all go through this, as business owners as a stay at home moms as working career professionals, as first time parents as seasoned parents, like, whoever you are listening to this, like, you can’t pour from an empty cup, you know, so I sat with my husband Sunday and said, All right, like get me back into a routine, I need a structure and a plan. I can commit to five days a week, what does it look like and he walked me through the exercises to do the days to do them how to couple them together. So if anybody would like to learn more about that my husband is like super fit. So he can happily share that with me written and I can happily share it with you. So just pop me over a note on Instagram, you can find me at tiny transition sleep coach and I’ll be happy to share what I’m doing. But basically I’ve committed to five days one of them is bar one of them is yoga and then three are lifting weights. And I love lifting weights. I’m not a big cardio only person I never have been. So barn Yoga is where I kind of mix that in with a couple laps around the gym during my you know, my weightlifting sessions and such but you know, but that took care of my exercise, right? My physical well being well, I think by default that releases positive endorphins, right, which help from an emotional standpoint, help with energy, you know, spiritual mental, I’m working on at night with meditation and yoga. And so I’m kind of just trying to put this foundation together. And you may be saying, Courtney, what the heck you were talking about doing an exercise and you’re just rambling about yourself? Well, I am. Because I want you to realize at certain points, there’s going to be things in your life where you’re like, how do I measure up with this? What does it look like and this exercise is going to actually help you do that. So without further ado, let me talk you through what it looks like to do this exercise. So again, you’re going to need a piece of paper and a pen, that’s it. And you are going to draw an X in the middle of the paper, I would say a decent size x you know something, you know, a couple inches by a couple inches, right? So draw a nice big x in the middle of the paper, and then draw a line down the middle. Okay, so you should have an x and then a line down the middle. So there should be six kind of spokes, if you will, on this particular piece of paper. Now in the middle, right where all of those lines meet, I want you to draw a big circle and write a zero next to it. Okay. And then at the end of each of the six lines, I want you to write a 10. So zero meaning nothing 10 meeting the most. Okay, and now we’re going to walk through an exercise where at the end of each of those spokes, I want you to write the following words physical, spirit, spiritual, mental, financial, emotional energy, okay?
So these are the six different spokes that I wrote Okay, I want you to take the five the first five physical spiritual mental financial and emotional and then pick what your sixth one is for me it was energy okay but doesn’t have to be that’s just one that I know a lot of us struggle with. And so now you have this x and it says zero and 10. And I want you for each of those to rate honestly, where you are at a scale from zero to 10 with that particular subject, right? spiritual, mental, financial, emotional, energy, physical, like where are you feeling and where do you stack up with all of those different things, okay, zero meaning not at all You’re taking care of and 10 means you are taking care of every single day that particular line and then what I want you to do is after you’ve notated those, I want you to take a line and I want you to connect the dots. So you’re going to end up what looks like a spiderweb but it’s going to be Miss proportioned, most likely right? Because not all of us are at a 10 for all things and if you are Please tell me what you’re doing but I want you to really pay attention to where you go you know for example for me I was a seven with physical I’m very active but I wasn’t exercising right so I put myself as a seven there but then spiritually I haven’t been to church I was a little freaked out with COVID you know, so that’s been a little lower right now I’m at a two but first Friday mass starts this week with my kids being back in school and I’m planning to go so you know getting back into the spiritual side of things for me, it’s going to mass it’s where I spend time with my mom who’s deceased and I feel like her presence is there and so you know for me that was like a part that’s been missing so I dropped really quickly from a seven to a two when I’m connecting those lines and when you finish what you’re going to see is a very obvious oh I need to work in this particular area probably a little bit more. And so then on the back of the paper what I want you to do is under each of those categories spiritual, mental, financial, emotional, physical, and then your optional one or energy if you chose the same as I did, I want you to write 10 things under each of those categories that you can do that is a form of self care to help you to build that number up. Okay and it may not be I go to the gym for 45 minutes it may be that every day I commit to doing 10 push ups intensity ups before bed, right? It may be that I remember to say my prayers and to gratitude journal what I’m thankful for that could be your spiritual side it may be meditations I did my Zoo animal with my kids on Saturday night and it was the first time I’ve done it in probably two or three weeks they do it every night I kind of let them have their alone time to go to sleep because they’re getting older but I was like no man I miss that connection with them and I missed that the mental calm that I got from that mindfulness so you know trying to get back into those things we’re all gonna have different levels but this exercise I really wanted to help you to understand you can’t pour from an empty cup so looking at it and going where maybe Am I not taking care of myself or where did I not realize that I wasn’t taking care of myself I actually just got a book called present over perfect my best friend is reading it and we were chatting a little bit over the weekend we’ve got a group of us that are still pretty close and she’s like I just got this book and I love it so I naturally ordered it right away and started diving into it last night and it is amazing it’s called present over perfect and I can’t think of the author off the top of my head but it’s so far I’m like just in the beginning and it’s just a fabulous book and you know really trying to realize that you know my kids see me unfilled, unfiltered right so if I’m having a bad day that’s what they’re seeing, I know I’m having a bad day they don’t they just know mommy’s freaking out or Yellin or said notice something right and I don’t want that to be the thought that they have. I also have to make sure that I’m feeling refreshed You know, I’ve been through a hell of a lot of surgeries and, and reclaiming my life if you will, the past three years trying to figure out you know, life post a lot of missing organs from you know, my story of cancer and genetic mutations and all kinds of craziness that happened unexpectedly in my own life. But it’s been a journey man. And I’m, you know, I really just feel like so many of my girlfriends, we talk about it, and everybody feels like they’re doing a terrible job, they’re overwhelmed, they’re busy, but they’re getting nothing accomplished. And they’re all trying to pour from an empty cup. And as I simplify things in my life, it actually is affording me the ability to be more present and and to financially meet the goals that I want while doing less, which is crazy and be there for my family and try to take care of the part of me that you know, I do need to exercise and I do want to have a spiritual relationship with a higher power and I want to have mental balance and not feel like a dumpster fire every day. And I think we all do and you know, none of us are perfect and I think if we support each other and we know that this type of exercise can help in doing that, then I’m told about it. And so, again, I know this episode was a little bit different than what I normally chat through. But frankly, it’s my show and I get to talk about what I want. And I really feel like it was something that was necessary to, to discuss and to share. And I just hope that you find as much value in this exercise as I did. And in the show notes, I will post a picture of what mine looks like, just so you can have a glance if you want to see what I did and just make sure that you are doing your exercise correct as well. I wish you all a beautiful Monday. I hope you have a great day, wherever you’re listening to this. And thank you so much for tuning in. As always, you can jump out to my Facebook group called slumber Made Simple, where I chat all about everything, sleep and self love and growth and development personally, and I’m really here to cheer you on. Again, my name is Courtney Zentz, the founder of tiny transition, sleep consulting your amazing sleep coach and cheerleader extraordinaire. I hope everyone has a beautiful day. Thanks so much for listening. Bye for now.

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