Road Trip

Like many people, our Thanksgiving tradition includes a road trip.  The drive from Phoenix to Los Angeles is between six and seven hours, depending on how often you stop and how fast you drive.  The beginning of the trip always starts out with a lot of excitement.  Eager for the journey ahead, spirits are high and there is constant chatter over what awaits us at our destination.  Batteries are fully charged, bags are filled with fun stuff to do and snacks are plentiful.  The trip has begun.

An hour into the trip, we get our first “how many more hours?”  The answer isn’t a popular one, but it’s accepted and they easily go back to their movie or game of the moment.  During the middle of the road trip we are surrounded by open roads and desert for as far as the eye can see.  There are few places to stop which makes it easy to keep going, moving forward and all the while getting closer to our ultimate destination.

The last two hours are always the hardest.  Surrounded again by the comforts of a city, there’s an anticipation that any of the exits could be “the one”.  Legs are starting to cramp and tempers are starting to flare.  Snacks are no longer a special treat and everything to do has turned boring.  Inevitably we get stuck in traffic, which slows the trip down even more.  ‘Are we there yet’ becomes a banned phrase that can no longer be uttered by any human within the confines of the vehicle. 

When we finally arrive, all the excitement and energy from the beginning of the trip returns.  Hugs from family members erase any tension that built up over the miles.  You can finally take a deep breath, there is comfort simply in the fact that you have arrived.

As we were driving, I couldn’t help but think about how the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are also like a road trip.  You start off excited and happy.  Somewhere in the middle, it gets harder and you wonder if you are going to make it.  You want to pull off the road.  Obstacles get in your way that you down.  You may have to take an unexpected detour.  When you are in the middle of the trip it’s easy to feel like you are never going to get there but through it all, but your destination remains the same.

I hope you are packed and ready to go.  Set your GPS and if you have to decide between two routes, let your heart be your guide.  The road trip to the holidays starts today. 

Heart-FULLy Yours,    

Kacey

p.s. You may be thinking, the blog is great, but I could never do that!  I disagree and am here to help!  Let’s schedule a 30 minute consultation to define what matters most to you right now and create a plan on how to spend more of your time doing that.  Email me at balancedheartcoaching@gmail.com and we’ll work out the details. 

What's this about?

Over the last couple weeks I’ve had a couple people ask me “What’s your blog about?”  Oddly enough the question catches me off guard and I struggle to answer because to me the blog is about so many different things it’s hard to narrow it down.  I usually end up responding that it’s about parenting and work life balance.  That it often includes funny stories about my kids going through various situations where someone always responds, “my kids do that too”.  Even though I think that was a pretty good answer, the question is still nagging me.

The blog is also my chance to share quotes, ideas and concepts that I’ve read about that make me stop and think.  This week I read a quote from the book “The Upside of Stress” by Kelly McGonigal:

Stress caused by the news, as opposed to stress caused by your life, is unique in its ability to trigger a sense of hopelessness. Watching TV news after a natural disaster or terrorist attack has consistently been shown to increase the risk of developing depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. One shocking study found that people who watched six or more hours of news about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing were more likely to develop post-traumatic stress symptoms than people who were actually at the bombing and personally affected by it.

Can you believe that?  People who watched over 6 hours of news on the bombing had more symptoms than the people who were actually there!  That is crazy!  What a vivid reminder that what we choose to pay attention to matters. 

This week on Facebook millions of people created word clouds showing their most used words in their posts over the last year.  I’m not typically one to participate in all the Facebook quizzes but this one intrigued me.  My word cloud looked like this:

There are many words that stand out at first glance: time, day, love, beautiful, happy, one, think, kids and weekend.  But as I looked at it again, the words that really stood out were time, day, love and one.  Shuffling them around they make the phrase “Love one day (at a) time” which is another accurate description of what this blog is about.  It’s about giving yourself a break, not being consumed by the to-do list and taking time to enjoy each day as it comes.

The blog is also my opportunity to share with you some of my favorite things.  This week we will all celebrate Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays of the year.  I love the outpouring of gratitude that is not only expressed but also felt during Thanksgiving.  In one of my favorite quotes, Marie Forleo says it best:

Gratitude is simply a deep and genuine sense of appreciation for what you have in your life. For things big and small. For the air you breathe; the unconditional love of your pet; for blessing of someone who loves you.And this shouldn’t just be an intellectual or mental exercise, it should touch you and fill you up emotionally.Because when you genuinely fill yourself up with the emotion of appreciation, it changes how you feel and it completely alters the actions you take and, therefore, the results you’ll create.

Happy Thanksgiving!      

Heart-FULLy Yours,    

Kacey

p.s. You may be thinking, the blog is great, but I could never do that!  I disagree and am here to help!  Let’s schedule a 30 minute consultation to define what matters most to you right now and create a plan on how to spend more of your time doing that.  Email me at balancedheartcoaching@gmail.com and we’ll work out the details. 

Focus

Have you ever noticed that when you focus on something you start seeing it everywhere?  For example at the end of a recent workshop, I encouraged the participants to look for the word “joy” and when they saw it to post a picture in the event group.  In just a few short days there were pictures of joy in all shapes and sizes.  Given the time of year, “joy” is pretty easy to find if you are looking for it.

Focusing on specific things always brings them to the forefront of what we pay attention to.  If you are looking for a new car, you will see the car you are interested in all over.  If you are thinking about planning a vacation to a special destination, you may start to see articles and references to that place more often than usual.  Have a new baby?  Babies are everywhere.  Your kids are interested in something new?  All of a sudden that new character, toy, video game or sport appears whenever you turn around.  I suppose it makes sense – we are exposed to thousands of messages and images on a daily basis.  Most of these messages remain in the background because we simply cannot process them all.  However when we are focused on something, that specific item or idea breaks through the noise and grabs our attention.

Of course it works the opposite way as well.  Does your child/spouse/co-worker/friend do something that drives you crazy?  Chances are you are going to notice every single time they start doing it.  Are you worried about health/finances/job?  Every sniffle/dollar/project will be placed under a microscope, reviewed, analyzed, criticized and second guessed.  It’s easy to focus on the negative.  Somewhere we started to think that if we worried about it, it would somehow get better.  It’s unrealistic to think we can ignore negative things but what we can do is decide how much of our attention we give to each situation/feeling/person currently in our lives.        

Author Mike Dooley says “Thoughts become things.”  What are your thoughts?  Where is your focus?  Pick something and see how often it crosses your path this week.

Heart-FULLy Yours,    

Kacey

p.s. You may be thinking, the blog is great, but I could never do that!  I disagree and am here to help!  Let’s schedule a 30 minute consultation to define what matters most to you right now and create a plan on how to spend more of your time doing that.  Email me at balancedheartcoaching@gmail.com and we’ll work out the details.

What's our secret?

This week my husband and I celebrated our 15^th wedding anniversary.  Because I am a numbers girl I had to do the math - fifteen years is about 35% of my life!  No wonder I have been feeling like it is such a big number, I’ve almost been married longer than I was in school.  I know that there are plenty of other couples out there that have our 15 years beat by a mile, but unfortunately these days, we are not in the majority.

I often talk to new moms and while I expect to talk about their babies and motherhood, many of their struggles are about the changes they feel in their relationships.  When you are pregnant you focus a lot on how your life will change with the baby in the house, but it’s rare to think about how your life as a couple will also change.  It’s hard enough figuring out what all the baby stuff is about, add to that exhaustion and a changing dynamic in your relationship…..it’s enough to turn your whole world upside down, flip it around and back again.

So what’s our secret?  Here are a couple of the biggest lessons we’ve learned:

·       Be willing to have an open and honest discussion about how you are going to manage your money.  We decided early on that we were going to combine our accounts and have never looked back.  That choice is certainly not for everyone, but for us it worked.  If you choose a different arrangement, discuss what will happen if one of you lost their job, had to take a pay cut or wanted to stay home with the kids.  Talking about money is never easy and is always an emotional discussion.  It’s important to keep an open mind and be able to talk honestly.

·       Have a discussion and divide up the household chores.  Sure, you naturally fall into different roles and each of you begins to do certain things around the house but there are always those things that are no one’s favorites.  This really comes to light when babies come into the mix.  The dishes start piling up, the laundry is never ending and even the vacuum starts to gather dust.  You must talk about who is going to do what, when and how frequently.  If you don’t have the discussion, chances are the other doesn’t know they are waiting for you to take care of something.

·       Be open to change.  My husband and I are not the same people that we were when we got married.  We didn’t enter into this marriage expecting to change something about the other, it just naturally happened.  We are all constantly having new experiences. From those experiences you learn new things and grow.  You must be open to that evolution.  Chances are in the early days of your relationship you were willing to change to be a better person for the other, that drive to keep improving should never stop.

·       Don’t keep score.  Those of you who’ve been reading the blog for a while know this is a big one for me.  You can’t say “You went out with your friends two nights this week, I went for a mani-pedi which counts for half, so now I get 1.5 nights out.”  If you keep score you make things infinitely more difficult for yourself and your spouse.  If you want to plan a girl’s night out, then plan a girl’s night out.  If you want to sleep in on Saturday, then talk to each other about trading off weekend mornings that you get to sleep in.  We live in a busy time and days get filled up quickly.  If you need a break, an afternoon or night out, ask for it.

Did you catch the common theme?  It’s communication.  Communication goes beyond just talking.  In order to communicate, you often have to take a really good look at yourself.  Why is this so important to me?  Why do I feel this way?  Is there something more that I’m not considering?  In order to communicate you have to listen.  What are they trying to say?  Is it possible that I could see it differently?  In order to communicate you have to set the emotion aside to truly get to the center of it all.  It’s not always easy.  There’s no point when you get to set the cruise control and everything just takes care of itself, unless maybe that happens at 30 years?  All I know today is that I wouldn’t have it any other way.  

      

Heart-FULLy Yours,    

Kacey

p.s. You may be thinking, the blog is great, but I could never do that!  I disagree and am here to help!  Let’s schedule a 30 minute consultation to define what matters most to you right now and create a plan on how to spend more of your time doing that.  Email me at balancedheartcoaching@gmail.com and we’ll work out the details. 

Boo!

Today is Halloween, time for costumes and candy.  For some kids it’s all about the costume.  For others it’s the candy or the fact that you get to be out in the neighborhood after dark.  And for others it’s about the scare factor.  It’s the one day of the year where we look forward to being afraid to the point that we seek it out.  Where being afraid is part of the holiday tradition.  (It’s a little weird when you put it that way, because most other days we avoid being afraid and if we are afraid of something, we would certainly never admit it.)

Kids, like all people, have varied tolerances of being scared.  A game of hide-and-seek is an acceptable, mild scare level for all kids of all ages.  There’s the anticipation of the seeker not knowing who they will see when they turn the corner.  It’s not scary per se, but it will make your heart beat a little faster in anticipation.  Then there is the opposite end of the spectrum, the extreme scare that haunted houses thrive on.  Scary music, black lights, frightening costumes jumping out at you triggering the fight-or-flight animal instinct that lives within all of us.  Older kids love this extreme scare, while others want to prove how grown up they are by making it through such a scary experience.

Somewhere in the middle of the scare scale is being afraid of the dark.  On Halloween it’s fun to be outside in the dark walking from house to house, making up stories of what might be lurking in the shadows.  In costume the kids feel invincible, but once you get home, the shadows of the dark rooms can be too much to overcome.  My kids do not like to go upstairs alone.  In fact they will pull out every stall tactic in the book to not have to go upstairs by themselves.  If they go together then it is moderately better, but they really prefer to have an adult up there with them.  No matter how much we try to rationalize with them and explain that there is nothing to be afraid of, the fear is still there.  At the end of a long day it can be very frustrating.  It’s hard when you know for a fact there is nothing to fear but you can’t get them to believe it.  Who knows what is running through their brains?  Who knows why they feel this fear?  They may never be able to explain it in words, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not real.  So for now that means we go upstairs with them.  It means there’s always a light on in their room while they sleep in case they wake up in the middle of the night.  If that’s what it takes, then we’ll do it.  Growing up is scary enough, home should be the one place where they don’t have to worry about being scared.

Have a happy and safe Halloween! 

Frightfully Yours, 

Kacey

Asking Questions

Today is a special day.  It is the day my life changed forever.  I knew at the time it was going to change my life as I knew it, but I had no idea the extent.  It is the reason you are reading these words.  Today, October 10^th, is the day I first became a Mom.

I could recount for you all the obvious ways that my life changed – the lack of sleep, the increased laundry, the irrational worries and the indescribable feelings of love.  I could talk about how my relationships and responsibilities changed in one way or another, but those are all blogs for another day.  Today I can’t help but think about how much I’ve changed. 

There was not one situation that started the ball rolling.  Instead it was a series of small things that all started to add up for me.  If I had to summarize it into one thing, I started asking more questions.  The first and most common question seemed to fit every scenario - what should I do?  I turned to parenting magazines, which led me to online articles and books.  I shared stories with select close friends, guarding myself from moms I didn’t know well out of fear of judgement and criticism.

What turned to why?  Why did I feel so strongly about a good night’s sleep or a solid routine or a way of disciplining?  There were certainly other ways of doing things that other people believed in and saw results in, why was what we chose the “right” one?  A few years later, I read The Conscious Parent, where Dr. Shefali says it best:

“We each enter the parenting journey with visions of what it will be.  For the most part these visions are fantasies.  We hold beliefs, values, and assumptions we have never examined.  Many of us don’t even see a reason to question our ideas because we believe we are “right” and have nothing to rethink.”    

I had questioned few of these beliefs, values and assumptions, just accepting them as truth.  These “why” questions started out as parenting questions, but very quickly led to internal questions that only I could answer for myself.  I started to realize that to be the best Mom I could be was less about the best way to handle the behavior of my children and more about handling my own behavior, mindset and perspective.

The why questions led to how.  The most powerful question for me came from author and motivational speaker, Gabrielle Bernstein.  During an online webinar she asked “How do you want to feel?”  I knew I didn’t want to feel tired and stressed out, but how did I really want to feel?  This question became a both long term and a daily question I asked myself.  When how I wanted to feel didn’t match what I was actually feeling, I went back to why.

The thing about questions is that there is always another one waiting to be asked.  Eleven years ago I knew I would be watching my child grow, I just never imagined how much I would be growing right along with her.    

Heart-FULLy Yours, 

Kacey

p.s. You may be thinking, the blog is great, but I could never do that!  I disagree and am here to help!  Let’s schedule a 30 minute consultation to define what matters most to you right now and create a plan on how to spend more of your time doing that.  Email me at balancedheartcoaching@gmail.com and we’ll work out the details. 

Low Battery

Beep.  What was that?  You listen for a while and don’t hear it again so you figure it was nothing.  Fast forward 40 minutes and the beeping is now happening every 5 minutes.  You know exactly what it is - the smoke detector battery is running low.  It does you a “favor” by beeping every few minutes so that you can replace it.  However it is 10 pm.  Everyone is asleep except for you.  And you know that there is no way you will sleep listening to that beeping (which always seems to echo throughout the house no matter where the actual detector is located).  And to boot you know that you don’t have any 9v batteries (who keeps stock of 9v?  AA, AAA, C, D, you name it, but 9v is never in the junk drawer.)  Some detectors will give you a break if you don’t happen to have a 9v and will stop their chirping if you remove the battery.  It allows you to ignore for a little while until you can make it to the store. 

In contrast, we are all acutely aware of the battery on our phone.  We know exactly how long we can go without plugging in.  We take steps to make sure that it is fully charged before we head out the door.  If we forget, we have a backup plan in the form of a car charger or portable charger that can fit in your purse.  Charging stations are popping up everywhere, in the mall and in stadiums to help people recharge when they are on the go.  Letting your phone battery run out is unthinkable and for some may cause a minor anxiety attack.

Why the contrast?  Why are there some batteries that we diligently check, while others are so easy to ignore?  I equate the phone battery to your immediate needs.  It is your to do list.  Every day you expend most of your energy running from place to place, checking items off the list and moving on to the next one.  You take time to recharge this battery so that you can check more things off the list.  The smoke detector battery is more like your personal needs.  It is the battery you need to recharge in order to feel your best physically and emotionally.  It is a battery that is easier to ignore, but if you ignore it for too long the consequences could be costly.    

  

Which low battery will you recharge today?

Heart-FULLy Yours, 

Kacey

p.s. You may be thinking, the blog is great, but I could never do that!  I disagree and am here to help!  Let’s schedule a 30 minute consultation to define what matters most to you right now and create a plan on how to spend more of your time doing that.  Email me at balancedheartcoaching@gmail.com and we’ll work out the details.