Episode 18- Mindset and Self Care For 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 to this week’s episode of the kids sleep show. My name is Courtney Zentz, the founder of tiny transitions. And I welcome you here to listen to another episode of our awesome show. Thank you for tuning in. I love hosting this podcast and really connecting with the audience around things that are real life struggles that we are all facing and how we can work together to solve some of those challenges that you are having. So this week, I actually wanted to get a little more real around mindset and the current state of what’s happening in the world today. Because I believe that it is a very important piece of all of us as parents, who are really trying to balance having children at home unexpectedly, the lack of structure in our day, our children’s mental health and stability, and also, frankly, our own mental health and stability. I know you know, for me, I don’t even know what day it is sometimes, I’m doing my best as an entrepreneur who’s on the phone, frankly, most of my day to balance supporting the clients that I have. And also, you know, the needs of my little ones, I have a four year old savella, who is typically in daycare, so she has been home obviously will be for the long term. And then my son who’s in kindergarten, who kind of had his world rocked and frankly, has been struggling quite a bit with the anxiety and fear. You know, and one of the questions a lot of folks keep asking me is how are you so positive? How are you continuing each day to just get up and hustle and, you know, support families who are struggling. And often there’s a lot of emotion in what I do with the families I work with, because it’s a very sensitive situation, right? Like, a lack of sleep in all of us causes irritability on us, right? irritability and our children. tempers are short, eating habits are off, right? All of these different things are kind of causing challenges. And, you know, people kind of continue to say like, how does your mindset keep working and keep being so positive, during such a crazy time, and really, ultimately, what drives you. And that’s what I wanted to chat a little bit more frankly, about today is mindset and how powerful some of our even smallest actions
in the day as parents can help to balance such a crazy messed up time that we’re all in right now. Because 90% of how we get to the goal that we’re looking for is actually mindset. Right. So I think, you know, I wanted to spend some time on that, because I’ve had really a rough couple of years, you know, on a personal level, many of you who’ve been following along with me or following my journey know that about 15 months ago, I was diagnosed with an extremely rare genetic mutation called CDH. One.
And it’s probably
like, I don’t know, the stats are like one in 9 million people have it. Of course, I’m one of those, that’s great. But it turns out, my mom died when she was young from stomach cancer. I got genetic testing, I’m 38 I got genetic testing on a whim because my neighbor got breast cancer, who was also 38. And it freaked me out. And so I thought you know what, I’m going to go get genetic testing. And just make sure that you know, frankly, I don’t need a colonoscopy when I’m 40. That was my whole thought was like oh, I’ll be considered high risk, I’ll get a colonoscopy at 40 instead of 50. And life is going to move on. And sure enough, I got a phone call from the hospital that said, you have this rare mutation, we’ve never seen it here and I’m in pretty popular area and filling. We’ve never seen it here. You have to call the University of Pennsylvania and you’re going to have your stomach completely cut out most likely your gallbladder and you’re going to have a double mastectomy. And again, I’m a 38 year old who practices you know, exercise every day I eat pretty much in 100% clean you know real food whole food diet like I’ve always been pretty cognizant of that and you know, so for me, it was kind of a shock like what are you talking about? I’m totally healthy. Right so this this episode is not meant to be all about, you know my history, but it talks a lot about mindset, right? So I found out this the week of Halloween, about like I said about 15 months ago, and immediately called the University of Pennsylvania found a doctor that specializes in my particular mutation, he’s seen about 40 patients with it, you know, kind of within the East Coast, because there’s only about five hospitals that help with this mutation. And he was like, I want to see you tomorrow, get in here immediately, blah, blah, blah, I go in, and they tell me, it is true, I will have my stomach cut out, there’s really no other option or alternative. If I don’t do it, it’s going to kill me. You know, and the cancer that I would have gotten right with the middle layer of my stomach, and so they couldn’t really monitor for it. It wasn’t like I could have preventative things that monitor right. So long story short, I meet the doctor scheduled surgery, my brother finds out he’s positive kind of during all of this as well, because it’s a hereditary genetic thing for my mom. Um, he’s positive, we both decided to have the surgery together. So fast forward, December 7 2018, we both have our stomachs cut out, and our gallbladder was removed. And then about a year ago, I had a double mastectomy.
So I
went through hell for a period of time, and continued to support clients continue to work as hard as I could with having a positive mindset. You know, when people said to me, you know, you just found out number one, that you already had stomach cancer, which I did, and I didn’t know. So thankfully, I did do this, because I did already have stage one signet cell at no carcinoma, it was called. So if I didn’t do this, it would have actually killed me in a couple years. And they said, How are you so positive through all of this? And the answer, frankly, was that I have two children at home, who are four and six. And I didn’t want to die. I have a husband who is incredible. And we just got our life started together, and I didn’t want to die. So the alternative was die or get your stomach cut out, realize you can actually live a pretty normal life without a stomach, which I’m a testament to, and, you know, try to keep moving forward in life with my family, and do it in the best way I could, I could have very, very easily
curled up into a ball,
landed in a gutter and just done a heck of a job to just, you know, crumble, right? And that was a choice. And I made the choice to be positive and to say, you know what, I’m not gonna die, and I’ll figure out how to eat and I’ll figure out what I can eat. And, you know, that was a hard struggle for me. And I realized how much mindset at that point really played into as a family, as a parent, as a mom, you know, how much that really played into our everyday activities, you know, so I’ve started to read a lot more on mindset. And I’m reading a book right now. That is called the big leap. And what that book talks about, is really making the leap to be the best version of ourselves. And I think as parents as moms, and especially during this crazy time, it’s very easy to crumble, right? We’re all stressed, we’re all trying to manage, we’re all trying to balance and it is easy to just be like throwing your hands up and walking away and just letting it fall apart. Right? So in this book, it talks a bit more about your upper limit, right. And so your upper limit, and the upper limit problem is that most of us self sabotage, right? So, you know, I speak to some large corporations around the country around sleep and sleep, you know, for adults and children of the employees who I speak on behalf of right and and you know, when I come into these companies, you see, someone comes up to you afterwards, and they’re like, that was the most fascinating presentation. You’re amazing. This is great. And where as a person in the past, I would have said something along the lines of thanks. But right and there’s always that, but but I screwed up a slide, but I missed a statistic or, but I wish I would have covered blah, blah, blah, right? So you sort of self sabotage by like degrading this awesome presentation you just did, to somehow make yourself feel better, which is screwed up because you’re basically just cutting yourself down. And I started to recognize that there’s this pattern, right? That every time you do something really good, you find something to self sabotage. Well, Mother’s Day was great, but I should have or Yes, this vacation was awesome. But I wish you know, the food didn’t blah, blah, blah. And so there’s always this but or some negative that I feel like you know, in the past, you try to justify to bring you back down. And so what I’ve started to do and started to recognize in myself in doing that, was that I essentially am like self sabotaging, right? So, you know, you do a great job, I work with 1000s of families all over the world, I get great feedback. And that’s really humbling, right? Because I’m involved with you in a very vulnerable point of your life. And yet, I always seem to be like, I wish I did this differently, or I wish I could have helped them in this way or that way. And you know, it’s it’s one of those things where I’m changing people’s lives by fixing challenges they’ve had for months and years on end. And I’m doing it pretty quickly and pretty successfully right. But I always seem to self sabotage. So the past few months. This whole mindset thing and realization, as I’ve been healing, how powerful your mindset is, I’m really focusing on that upper limit and making sure that I’m not cutting myself down, that I’m not looking at the negative, and, frankly, that I’m not getting involved in the negative crap conversations that are so easy, right. And it’s been a real challenge for me, to try to center myself and to recognize with structure being messed up and schedules being messed up and kids being messed up, to keep that mindset while being so easily
distracted.
So you know, I just kind of wanted to chat today about recognition of what things in your life could use some recentering. Right? Giving yourself some grace and giving yourself the ability to recognize the mindset shifts that you may need to make personally in your life, to bring balance back to the chaos. For myself, I’ve started to do a few things, I started to meditate. I suck at it. Frankly, I have 100 apps on my phone, all for meditation, I suck at all of them. But I actually have found mindset and meditation inside two different things. The first thing I do is every night with my kids, I do a zoo animal meditation is animal. If you listen to last week’s podcast, I had annemiek sock on who’s the founder of zoo animals. And it’s this little turtle that is like a six minute meditation and mindset shift for kids. And I’ve been doing it with my kids every night. We now do it during the day. So I’m spending 20 minutes a day doing some mindset work that frankly, I wasn’t doing before. And I’m finding it amazing for my kids and myself to quiet my mind for just a little bit every day. And to recenter my focus around empathy, graciousness, creativity, stillness, like all of those things that just get sort of tossed aside because you think like, what the heck is a five or 10 minute meditation going to do and it’s actually been amazing. The other thing that I have done personally, is I started doing Joppa meditation. Right? And for those of you that have never heard of Joppa, I grew up Catholic. So we had rosary beads, right and the rosary, doing the rosary was kind of the thing that, you know, my parents did my grandparents. I mean, my aunt still every morning when she wakes up, pray the rosary every night prays the rosary, she prays rosary like three in the morning because she sucks at sleeping. And that works for her to calm her mind. You know, and for me, I wanted something that was a little more rhythmic. And I found Joppa yoga, actually at a workshop at my gym. They did it yoga workshop on like, mindfulness meditation. And, you know, it was one of those things where I’m like, I need that I need to do this, it was about a year ago. So Java beads are basically the equivalent of what I would call rosary beads, right. But for a different type of meditation. So it’s a very old tradition that people use, and I freaking love it. Right. So Java is a mantra based meditation. And so what you find is that you say some sort of meditative thing, a very specific number of times, right? And so for me, it was saying something in Sanskrit is the way I learned it at this retreat, right? And you basically take these Java beads and I believe it’s 120 beads. To be frank, I don’t exactly know I’m pretty sure it’s 120. But you’re basically doing this mantra where you’re repeating 120 times something specific now. I use the phrase Ohm nama she via, right so it’s Sanskrit and you repeat own dimasi via Om Namah Shivaya Om Namah Shivaya omnimaga she via 120 times and you basically move the beads as you’re doing it without thought, right? Like you’re kind of just moving your thumb along the beads. And there’s a little specific spot on the beads where you’ll figure out you’ve done the whole circle right or the 120 pieces of the meditation. I love it again. I suck at just sitting in the room stillness, breathing quieting my mind. I’m just not good at it. My mind is always racing like what am I gonna make for dinner? Did I cut the grass? Do I have to clean the you know the garden up what’s going on with the chickens that we just got like, in my mind, there’s like a bazillion things going on in my school son learn enough today is my daughter, you know going to be looking for me from some aspect of support, right. And the Java beads have been cool, because it’s a way for me to meditate and keep that stillness with myself and with my mind. So for me both the zoo animal and the job of meditation has been awesome. So I encourage you to take a look at both of those right and to bring some stillness, back into your mind in whatever way works for you. It may just be saying, you know what, once a day, I’m going to spend five minutes just deep breathing. Right set your alarm on your phone. Five minutes of deep breaths right Joppa meditation does not take very long, you can do it one time, two times. 10 times, right? But it’s something that gives yourself stillness. And there’s different monitors that you can do. Own dimasi via was my favorite. There are definitely some other ones. It’s all different types of scripts Sanskrit is, what the meditations are. My husband tried to do it one night when he was struggling with some sleep, and I tried to explain to him what you do. And in the morning, he’s like, you know, I struggle. I
don’t know, I
don’t know what I was doing. And I was like, Well, what was your meditation and he’s, it was something like ridiculous, like, I want to eat a ham sandwich for lunch. I’m not even kidding. I want to eat a ham sandwich for lunch, I want to eat a ham sandwich for lunch, I want to eat a ham sandwich for lunch. And like, that’s great. But I’m not sure that that is what you know, they were going for. But I mean, if it works, that’s fine. You know, but I was kind of laughing because that was his meditation was I want to eat a ham sandwich for lunch. But whatever works for you, I suppose. As long as you’re quieting your mind, it’s great. You can get the job of beads on Amazon, you know, I ordered like six, it was a couple bucks. And they came shipped. I mean, if you know, again, I grew up Catholic. So you can technically use rosary beads, it doesn’t really matter what you use. It’s really about keeping that meditation, you know, in line with the expectations of what you’re trying to do, which is just silence, you know, a very overstimulated time. Right now, I think we’re all on our computers a lot. Our kids are on devices a lot. You know, I have a sleep program overview today with a new client. And frankly, I don’t have any help. So I obviously want to be respectful to my client, but I’m home with two kids alone while my husband is in the office, because he’s in a central business, then I have to put them on the tablet, because I don’t know what else to do, you know, and they’re just too young. So it’s really all about balance for us. And so for me that balances, you know what, you’re going to use the tablet of it this morning. And then that’s it for the rest of the day, we’re going to go out and enjoy the sunshine a little cold here in Philly again. But I think we’re all trying to struggle with that balance and how we get there. And I think mindset coming back to it is an important part of it. There’s also something called a five minute journal. And the journal is about every morning, setting goals for the day. And then every evening, talking about what those goals are, how you met them, or did you meet them and And where was there kind of a gap or a miss, I love that journal. It gives me positive mindset going into a day, it’s something that really takes five minutes in the morning, before I get out of bed, I set the expectation of what that day is going to look like. And I try to go back to that to feel grounded when I need it, right. So these are all things that are just really to help in mastering the mindset that we all have. As parents, it’s super easy to get distracted. I think trying to be positive in an innately negative world is hard. You know, so I really wanted to take some time and chat more about that mindset and how crucial it is for you and for your little ones, right? They are sponges, to what we are putting out. And if we’re putting out negativity and anxiety and fear and upset and upheaval in our lives, right, they’re going to pick up on that. And they’re going to portray that through the way that they adjust and share their feelings as well. And so I just want to make sure that I’m calling to the fact that, you know, there’s some mindfulness work I think we all need to do. And, you know, it’s been a crazy, you know, year and a half for me, and I am on the mend. And I’m so grateful to have my life. And, you know, I realized that somebody is always struggling far worse than I was or far worse than I am today. And so I try to be mindful of that. And recognize that, you know, we’re all in this together. Positivity always outweighs the negativity. And so just trying to find light in this current time of darkness can be beneficial for everyone, you know, giving a friend a nudge or a positive text, maybe something that they need today, right? sharing something that’s positive with a new mom who may be struggling trying to adjust to this life as a parent in a crazy, screwed up world right now. Someone who’s pregnant, frankly, it is a bit apprehensive about the hospital and can getting sick, right? There’s a lot for all of us that’s happening. So I just encourage you to continue to be positive continue to work on your own mindset to share that positivity with others friends, peers, family. While we can’t be doing hugs, you know, sometimes a positive text or a message is something that all someone needs to really help feel at their best and to you know, really work in a way that is going to make them centered reground in and kind of get through one more day. So thank you for joining me today. I know this was a little bit of a different type of episode than what I normally have here at the kids sleep show but I felt it was important to
really bring a little bit Have a tension to mindset and how important it is as screwed up as our world is, what that mindset can do for you. And if you are struggling mama or Dad, I know I have a predominantly mom base that listens. But you know, there’s lots of dads out there too, that struggle. Join me come to my sleep group, it’s tiny transitions.com forward slash community will bring in I do weekly trainings, I’m always trying to help, you know, posting education, information and resources, I’ve got a live training going on right now you can always jump in and catch the replays in there. Anything I can do, I am always here to help and to bring a positive light to a crazy world to get sleep back in your home. And it’s so important for your immunity and your function and really, ultimately, how you progress through a day. So thank you, as always for tuning in. Appreciate you, appreciate yourself, give yourself some grace. And until next time, sleep well Sweet dreams, and I look forward to seeing you out in my sleep community. Hold on one more thing before you go. As a valued listener of the kids sleep show. I want to help you build a great sleeper not just in the times you’re listening to the show. But all day every day. Every week of the year. I have a new Facebook group called slumber Made Simple. It’s a place to gather with other parents looking for sleep support, laughs and the latest in sleep research to build a family that is rested and at their best day in and day out. If you want to be part of the community where you can get free sleep support, weekly training sessions, unbelievable content and so much more. Head on over to tiny transitions.com forward slash community that’s tiny transitions.com forward slash community or head over to Facebook and search slumber Made Simple. drop me a note and let me know when you join. I can’t wait to see you there.