In this episode, I share candid anecdotes on adapting daily routines to carve out moments for self-care and stress reduction. Recently, I had to pause my usual routine to prioritize someone else, which highlighted the importance of recognizing and adjusting our priorities as they change.
I discuss how trying to do everything at once doesn’t work and emphasize focusing on one priority at a time. Whether it's growth, rest, career, or personal connections, different times call for different priorities.
I also highlight the importance of choosing yourself as a priority and provide actionable advice on aligning your actions with your priorities. This includes practical steps like auditing your time to ensure you’re directing your energy with intention.
Embrace adaptability and discover how small, intentional changes can lead to a more balanced life. Tune in to learn how to manage your time and energy effectively, allowing you to navigate life's demands with greater ease and fulfillment.
In this episode, I share candid anecdotes on adapting daily routines to carve out moments for self-care and stress reduction. Recently, I had to pause my usual routine to prioritize someone else, which highlighted the importance of recognizing and adjusting our priorities as they change.
I discuss how trying to do everything at once doesn’t work and emphasize focusing on one priority at a time. Whether it's growth, rest, career, or personal connections, different times call for different priorities.
I also highlight the importance of choosing yourself as a priority and provide actionable advice on aligning your actions with your priorities. This includes practical steps like auditing your time to ensure you’re directing your energy with intention.
Embrace adaptability and discover how small, intentional changes can lead to a more balanced life. Tune in to learn how to manage your time and energy effectively, allowing you to navigate life's demands with greater ease and fulfillment.
what is up? Hello there, my name is jessica patching bunch, you can call me jpb, and this is brain body resilience. This is a podcast dedicated to growth, human development and stressing a little bit less so you can go ahead and live a little bit more.
Speaker 2:
Hello and welcome back to episode number 188 of the Brain Body Resilience Podcast. I am your host, jpb. We did not have an episode last week. I was spending time with family and had to choose a priority, which is what we're going to talk about today. I told each of my nieces and nephew that when they turn 12, they can come spend a week with me.
Speaker 2:
Someone asked me why 12,? And there's no real reason, except I felt like that was an age where they are able to be a little bit more self-sufficient. I don't have kids, and so taking care of a younger like toddler or preschool age even though I think this is the most fun age and they are the most adorable, squishy little things around that age and watching them learn and grow and discover everything at that age is amazing and it's a lot of work. So, and then for, like the 7 to 10 age range, I am not great at that. I don't know how to really do that. The play with me imagination age, someone told me one time just to go back to your childhood when interacting with kids that age and bring yourself back to a playful mindset, to your childhood when interacting with kids that age and bring yourself back to a playful mindset. I did not have a playful growing up time. Between the chronic violence and emotional and sexual abuse. There wasn't a lot of space to develop an imagination that wasn't focused on survival. So all of that to say going back to your childhood to capture that childlike nature is not great advice for the 60 plus percent of adults here in the US who have experienced some form of adverse childhood experience and I imagine those numbers are similar in other parts of the world as these experiences are major factors in why so many of us are dealing with chronic stress and anxiety later in life.
Speaker 2:
I am sending out an email about this to my newsletter people this week. If you're on the list, you will get that. If you are not on the list, well, you won't. So if you would like to hear more about how experiences shape your nervous system's response, go sign up for my newsletter. There is a link in the show notes always, or you can visit me over on Instagram Open for questions, message, reach out, interact. I always love that. So anyway, that age is hard for me and I don't feel like I know kind of what to do with them.
Speaker 2:
I think 12 is a good age, where they actually still want to hang out with me before they're full teenagers and way too cool. So at 12, I told them they can come visit, and I had my nephew down a couple of years ago and it was a totally different experience for him, because everyone has a different experience, naturally, but the world was in a different place. I was in a different place. We were still in the middle of COVID times and I was still having regular seizures so I couldn't drive, so it just made our adventure much different.
Speaker 2:
So now my niece is 12 and she came to spend a few days here. We drove up where she lives to pick her up, which is about four hours away, with a ferry ride, and then on the way back we weren't thinking about it being the end of a holiday weekend, so traffic was terrible and there is a bridge that you can drive around on this. They live on an island, so you can either take the ferry or you can take the bridge, which you have to drive pretty far out of the way north than to go back south. But we thought, instead of sitting in a two hour ferry line, we could just do that, save some time Everyone else had that same thought it was worse.
Speaker 2:
We ended up sitting in stop and go traffic for three hours and then it was another three and a half hours to get home after that. So it was a very long day. We did make it home and got some rest and everything was great. I was trying to figure out what to do with a 12 year old girl and I asked some of the young people that I work with. Some of the studies that we work on are adolescents and I asked some of them and they're like yeah, I just like to watch TV or sit on my device, watch, scroll, whatever kind of app, social media, other device thing, games on their phone, whatever and I tell them, my nieces and nephew, that they can't sit on their devices when they're with me, if I'm up there visiting or if they're down here with me, if they want to be on their device, they could just stay home and do that.
Speaker 2:
If we're going to be together, we're going to spend time together, and so I had some ideas for things to do, which about that not being on your devices. I was very aware every time that I picked up my phone and it was spending. I didn't do a lot of like, I wasn't looking at Instagram a whole bunch or anything. But I noticed that when I was doing something on my phone, my niece was very aware of that. She was paying attention to the fact that I was not very aware of that. She was paying attention to the fact that I was not present and my attention was not on her or what we were doing in that moment. So that was interesting. That highlighted for me just how I pick up my phone and where my attention was. So I was going to take her to show her some cute little places, shopping, or some little restaurants and cafes around the city, and it ended up being over 100, so like 39 degrees Celsius, and for most of the time she was visiting, and that was miserable for her, because where she lives it generally stays around 70 or like 21 degrees, and so it was a huge jump and she was not used to it. And, um, so we ended up going in to find some water and took out the paddleboard. We went to the mall where there's air conditioning.
Speaker 2:
Um, I think it was all a little overwhelming with all of the new stimulation and environment is just completely different. She lives in a really kind of a small town, rural area and Portland's not like a large city, but it definitely is much larger than what she's used to, and so that, and the heat and just all of the new stimulation, it was a lot for the first couple of days for her. And this is something that applies to you and I as well. With new stimuli and experiences, new environments, we can easily become overwhelmed, especially when we don't have the capacity or have built the tools to help create space and take care of our needs in those moments. So slowing down to notice those things, just a pause, just a breath to check in, can go a long way when we are introduced to all kinds of new. So anyways, my time with her, it was lovely.
Speaker 2:
I'm so happy I got to know her a little bit more at this age and also being present and attentive all day is exhausting and I guess it's actually being more available all day and dedicating that time and attention, choosing to prioritize her in my energy expenditure. Because we're always present, we're always right here where we are, we can't be anywhere else. Because we're always present, we're always right here, where we are, we can't be anywhere else. And so the advice to be present is really just saying choose to give your attention to this moment, where you are right now, instead of transporting your attention to the past or the future. So again, parents, moms, you are superheroes.
Speaker 2:
I had this child for not even a full week and it was great. I loved every, you know. I loved having her, but it was also great insight. A very small peek for me about the demands on time for other folks Choosing to prioritize her meant that I didn't get a podcast episode out and I didn't get to the gym and I didn't get to have my normal routine time to myself. All of that, everything just kind of paused. And I know, when you have kids, you're of your own. This is a constant balancing act. You've got going on with your time and attention.
Speaker 2:
I remember someone told me one time they get up so early in the morning because that is the only time that they have in their day to themselves. So if they don't get up at that time, they don't have it. And I thought about that. And during this time with her, I got up early. Also, she slept in pretty late, so I didn't have to get up super early, but this gave me the time to do part of my routine, not all of it. You know my daily grounding habits, but at least one thing in there which helped me, you know, regulate and practice my nervous system hygiene and take care of what I needed. So I had the space and attention to dedicate to her.
Speaker 2:
I remember an old uh old friend's dad kind of introduced me to this many years ago. I was traveling um for an extended period of time and I love that. I love exploring the world. I would love to also like be stable in my job and build my career and wanting to buy a house. And he said to me you're trying to do everything all at once and it just doesn't work like that. And I didn't really like understand what he was saying. I was like, okay, well, I'm doing all these things, I can do everything and I think a lot of us can identify with that Like I can do it all right now but we can't.
Speaker 2:
There are times when the priority is a focus on growth and expansion and building new skills and habits and routines. And then there are times that we are in need of pressing pause so we can reflect and rest and integrate what we've learned, and that has to take priority. And there are times that we are driven by career and passion goals. There are other times that we are driven by personal healing or connecting to family and friends and building community, and these are all important areas and are all needed. But we cannot do all of the things all of the time. We cannot do all of the things at the same time. We cannot be, you know, and do everything everywhere all at once, which was an amazing movie. If you haven't seen it, check it out. You may like it, you may not, but I thought it was great. So you know, we just we cannot. We cannot be everywhere, do everything at once, and this is something trying to do.
Speaker 2:
This is a huge source of stress for a lot of us, feeling frazzled, getting overwhelmed. We're just wearing ourselves too thin. We're over, overworked, under resourced, and so as the seasons change, the days change, as priorities shift and change along with that, we can remind ourselves of what our one priority is, of what our one priority is, and that the other things will come, but they are not the priority in this moment and not everything needs to be done right now. That is your stress response, showing up with a feeling of urgency. So remembering that we chose this one thing to focus on now helps alleviate that anxiety about not doing all of the things all at once. The things we have chosen aren't always what we want the most in that moment, but there's always a choice in how we respond, our attitude about our current circumstance and how we move forward. These are the things we get to choose.
Speaker 2:
And one last thought on that before I wrap this up is that recognizing you are not your priority in this moment, that you are not have not been a priority for yourself. It allows you to then become a priority for yourself. When we can't find the time for movement or sitting with yourself for five minutes checking in with your breath, doing your nervous system, hygiene, routine words that have become really hard for me. If we don't have, if we are constantly saying we can't find the time for these things, and then we find ourselves spending hours scrolling through other people's lives on social media or whatever else, it is showing with our actions that we are not the priority. So we are choosing one thing to focus on that is not ourselves. If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. Priority is singular. We can do one thing at a time and so when you are not the priority, you have the opportunity to recognize that and choose you to make yourself the priority. It will probably be really hard if that's not what you're used to, but we are adaptable creatures and small baby steps is the way to go.
Speaker 2:
Awareness of how you're spending your time and energy have to come before you can choose to direct them with intention. An exercise a coach had me do one time is make a spreadsheet or a journal or however you're actually going to do this thing, but make an audit of your time down to the half hour. How are you actually spending your time? Not how you think you want to spend it or how you know whatever. How are you actually spending your time?
Speaker 2:
And then, how can you prioritize yourself in that, literally, for like 10 minutes, 15 minutes out of your day, 30 minutes out of your day. Do you have to get up 30 minutes earlier? Do you have to put your phone down before bed 30 minutes earlier? Do you have to? You know, pause an activity for 10 minutes, five minutes, there is 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes in. There is somewhere in your day that you can prioritize yourself. And again, it might not come easy, but we are meant to adapt and evolve and we learn every time new information is introduced to us. Every time we give ourselves a new experience, we start to shift how our brain responds to those things, what information it's using to then create predictions of the future. So the more that we make those tiny shifts towards prioritizing ourselves, the more comfortable we get with that, the more your brain starts to expect that and the more then you feel rewarded for that in the neurochemical production, in anticipation of the reward of choosing you. So do your time audit, see where you're spending your time, see where you can take 5, 10, 20 minutes to choose you with intention to prioritize yourself, your health, your nervous system hygiene, to create space and build those skills and see how much that helps.
Speaker 2:
I am always here to help you with that. My resources are available. You know this podcast, my information on Instagram, my newsletter you can sign up for that. I'm also uh, you can book a good fit call um and we can do some coaching if. If that sounds like a thing that you want help with. I'm going to wrap this up now. This is a longer episode. Recently I still like to keep them a little, you know, around 20 minutes below 20 minutes. That way, it's just a little information snack that you have, that you can fit time in in your day while you're maybe moving your body or something. Anyways, that's it for today. I hope that you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please do share it with a friend. That way they might also find it useful in some way. Until next time, I'm wishing you a beautiful week. We'll do this again, peace.
