Rethink Your Rules
Traveling with a Neurodiverse Family: Tips to Minimize Misery & Find Joy (Part 1)
It’s Spring Break season, and if you’re like most parents I know, that means you’re gearing up for a family trip. Traveling with kids isn’t easy, especially when you add neurodiversity into the mix.
In this episode, you’ll learn key mindset shifts to feel less stressed and have more fun when traveling with your family.
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Need help applying this to your life? Ready for more strategies like this, but personalized to YOU? Set up your free consult and let’s talk about your unique situation and how coaching can help:
https://getcoached.jennyhobbsmd.com/consult
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Everything on this podcast and website is for informational purposes only and should not be used as medical advice. Views are our own, and do not necessarily represent those of our past or present employers or colleagues.
It’s Spring Break season, and if you’re like most parents I know, that means you’re gearing up for a family trip. Traveling with kids isn’t easy, especially when you add neurodiversity into the mix.
In this episode, you’ll learn key mindset shifts to feel less stressed and have more fun when traveling with your family.
_________
Need help applying this to your life? Ready for more strategies like this, but personalized to YOU? Set up your free consult and let’s talk about your unique situation and how coaching can help:
https://getcoached.jennyhobbsmd.com/consult
_________
Everything on this podcast and website is for informational purposes only and should not be used as medical advice. Views are our own, and do not necessarily represent those of our past or present employers or colleagues.
Welcome to Rethink your Rules with Jenny Hobbs MD. A fresh perspective on relationships, success and happiness for high achieving moms.
Speaker 2:Hey, there it's, jenny. Welcome back to another episode of Rethink your Rules. I'm very glad to be, knock on wood, finally on the mend from all this illness, got some antibiotics to clear up what I think was a pretty bad case of sinusitis, and my family has all taken turns being sick, so we are kind of in recovery mode here, but I'm very glad to be able to actually talk to you and present some new content. It's been a hectic several weeks, not just because we've all been sick, but we also had a family trip that we went on during our midwinter break, which is that we kept your president's day. Our kids have a school break. We went on a Disney cruise and, well, super fun. It was a family vacation which took up a lot of time and energy in between all the illness and work shifts and things. So nice to finally be back here and into a bit more of a normal routine.
Speaker 2:That's actually part of what I wanted to talk about today was this travel experience with kids and with your family. It is definitely spring break season. I know many of you have spring break right now during March. We here in Seattle have that midwinter break in February and then we have a later spring break in April, which, by the way, I absolutely love because it gives you that kind of spaces out, the time off and gets you out of the gray weather in February when everybody's kind of over it. But whatever your family schedule is, I'm assuming you probably have some time where your kids are off school and maybe you're planning some travel. So what I wanted to talk about today was both the mindset and the practical strategies that have helped our family as we navigate how to travel as a family and make it worthwhile and fun for everyone to the best of our ability.
Speaker 2:And you may or may not be able to relate to this, depending on what your family is like, but my experience is that most parents would say that traveling with their kids is quite different than traveling on their own without their kids. And people often say traveling with kids isn't really a vacation, it's just more like a trip. It's like taking this stressful job of parenting on the road and it has benefits, but it's not like a true vacation. And then, for those of us that have a lot of neurodiversity in our families, like I do, I think there's another layer where traveling with kids who are on the spectrum or have ADHD, or parents who have those neurodiverse traits, can even be a little bit more complicated and challenging, as they have different needs and things like that, and so I'm really excited to share some of the things that have helped me and my clients with this.
Speaker 2:I certainly wouldn't say that we have figured this out perfectly in my family, but I think we've come a long way in the 10 years since I became a mom and, to be honest, this is a topic that's very near and dear to my heart, because I love to travel, it's very important for me and it's a very big part of my mental health, and I have family members that don't really like it as much as I do, and I've had to cope with a certain amount of grief and disappointment and frustration around having to give up or change something I really love about my life that I had hoped to share with my whole family during this season, when I have kids at home and I obviously I wasn't going to give it up completely and I don't really want to do all of my traveling without my kids necessarily, either be away from them all the time, and so I've had to sort of think a lot about how we can navigate this in a way that works to some degree for all of us. So maybe, if you're like me, you can relate to that and I think certainly a lot of working moms can relate to this because there is this sense of we finally get some time off of work and we want that time to relax and we need that time to ourselves, for ourselves, but we also are still coping with parenting and planning and everything. When we do get that time off of work, we're taking our kids with us, and so it can be challenging. I think, no matter what your situation, if you're a working mom and, of course, if you also have kids who have neurodiversity or spouse who's neurodiverse, then this will feel even more relevant and probably feels like a pressing issue. You know, like for me, it's like something you can't ignore, that you have to figure out. I will say, though, even if you don't have those issues in your family, I hope that you at least consider some of these ideas that we're going to talk about, because I have actually found that most of the things I've been forced to learn thanks to the neurodiversity of my family, I can't ignore it. I have to kind of change and adapt and figure out how to accommodate these emotional needs. Most of those things and changes actually work really well for neurotypical kids as well, and they often are sort of a better way to help them navigate the world and it is more emotionally safe for them as well. You just maybe aren't as forced to recognize it because they tend to be a little bit more outwardly adaptable.
Speaker 2:Okay, so these tips break down into kind of two parts. One is mindset tips and the other is practical strategies, things that you can actually do that are very tangible, that can make things go more smoothly. And if you're like me, you love the tangible stuff. Most of my clients do. But I am gonna start with the mindset first, because the tangible stuff always works a lot better if you have the mindset background. And you're gonna need the mindset because you're gonna try these practical strategies and they may or may not work very well, and so you need to be able to manage your mind around that. Okay, and the way I wanna talk about the mindset piece is through that framework that I've shared before of the calm method or calmer method and how it can apply to travel. So I'll walk you through. You don't have to remember the acronym.
Speaker 2:But so, for the first step is connecting with yourself with compassion, and the connect step is really about connecting with your emotions, noticing and naming how you're feeling and allowing your feelings to be there and to be okay even if they're bad ones, okay and having self-compassion around that and the way that I think about this with travel. So if you're someone like me who has had some disappointing experiences or frustrating experiences with travel with kids, what you wanna do in this step is you want to just acknowledge and notice the actual emotion there, okay. So for me, this is where I've learned to just start saying like I have a lot of grief because I had hoped for travel to be different when I had kids right, I name that. I don't try to focus on the frustration and anger and irritation which is there too, right, but really like the underlying problem for me is this just feeling of grief and sadness and disappointment, right, and so if you've had those experiences, I want you to sit there for a minute and allow yourself to feel that way and I think sometimes we don't, because we feel guilty or like it's not a good use of our time or it feels negative, but I promise you it is so calming to your system to just be like, after a trip happens and you've got all these pent up emotions, to just be really honest and notice like I'm a human who had my hopes up about this trip and I'm disappointed it didn't go that way. Right, you get to be a human who has that feeling and it's very honest and it's very vulnerable.
Speaker 2:And the other great thing, by the way, about putting this into words for yourself is that it takes the edge off that emotion, but it also gets you primed with the language to use. If and when that emotion gets triggered by something that happens within your family, like I can even say to like my husband or even my kid who's causing this, I mean I can say, hey, I'm just really disappointed. I get to feel that way. I get to be human and my kids get to hear that I'm a human who gets disappointed because I have things I like to do too. And that's so much more useful for all of our emotional intelligence than it would be for me to just be like what I sometimes do, which is go straight to being like annoyed and grumpy with my child and complaining that they won't just like do what I asked you know, they just won't suck it up and come to dinner with me on this trip that I really wanted to go to.
Speaker 2:So, if you've had those experiences, really sit and name for yourself and remember these questions for the connector, like you know, what's the matter of love? What's the matter sweetie? What's going on? What do I need here? Right, and doing it from a place of it's totally okay for you to be. You're not, it's not childish, it's not embarrassing, something you feel guilty about. You get to have those feelings and once you name them and allow them to be there, they'll have a lot less power of you.
Speaker 2:And if you haven't had those experiences, this may not be a long step for you. We'll move on to the next steps. But one thing to ask yourself is like to maybe notice what emotions you think you're going to get to feel if this upcoming trip goes a certain way, right? Because, remember, when you're planning a trip or you're doing something that you're excited about, your motivation for doing that, deep down, is like you think you're gonna get to feel a certain way, right? So, if you're planning a trip with your kids, you're thinking you're gonna get to feel connected with them or relaxed, you're gonna get to read your book, and then you're gonna feel like you know you had a little time to yourself or you had some time outside at work and less burned out. So you might just wanna like kind of notice through yourself ahead of time what emotions you're expecting, that you're going to feel on this trip. Right, and that's kind of part of the expectations that we build up is like, oh, as we sort of bank on getting to feel a certain way once we're there, just maybe noticing it. And again, you might be lucky enough that your trip goes well and you get to experience those emotions. But if they don't happen, at least you've kind of noticed for yourself, like what you're expecting and therefore you can identify why you might be disappointed if that doesn't get met. Okay, does that make sense? So that's just kind of like connecting with yourself. It's a step we often miss and skip because we go straight onto the cognitive side of what we're thinking, which is the next step. But if you can connect with the feelings first, it's really helpful, okay.
Speaker 2:So the second step leading up to your trip is to assess your thoughts and really this comes down to assessing your expectations and those unspoken rules that I've talked about before as they apply to this trip. Okay, so you want to ask yourself, like, what am I? If you're worrying, let's say, about the trip, like about time to pack, or about the tickets or about whatever, or if you've had a bad experience and you're worrying about your kid not wanting to do something or the people you're traveling with having an opinion, you'll notice as you ask yourself, why am I worried about this? That's a key question. Or why is this a problem for me? Or why is this stressful for me? What should come up?
Speaker 2:If you keep asking that and really get to the core of it, it will be one of these unspoken rules and, as a reminder, those are things like perfectionism. So you're having this perfect, ideal trip in your mind. That has to look a certain way for you to feel great about it. Or people pleasing your kids have to love the trip and your husband has to love the trip, and everyone has to do everything together and have this like romanticized version of like an amazing time at Disney and everyone's smiling and happy Right. Everyone's laying on the beach in Hawaii and perfectly thrilled about it. So you've got this idea that, like you have to figure out a way for all the people to be happy, for your kids to not have fits for everyone, to like the food, right. Or maybe there's a rule coming up for you of this control enthusiasm which we often have, which is this idea that, like, we need to make sure that, like, our husband does a certain thing with the kids and our kids needs to have this certain amount of experiences and we paid a certain amount of money and therefore we expect that, like, we're going to get a certain amount out of that and we need to control the time we get back and we need to. You know, it's like this sort of hyper control scenario where if something doesn't go exactly according to plan whether it's another human's emotions, right Like that's going to be a problem for us. So just noticing that another big one that can come up is the hustle culture mentality, right.
Speaker 2:So thinking that, like okay, we're going on this trip, we only have five days in this place, I don't know if I'm going to get to go back again. Here's the list of things we need to see. Here's the like perfectly planned itinerary here, you know, here's all the things we need to do. Again, like maybe you're thinking you need to do all these things to get your money's worth, and that kind of ties in with the hyper rationality that I talk about. This rule, that's the fifth unspoken rule, where there's like a quote, unquote right way to do things are most logical way to do things, and so it may be in your brain you've decided, like it doesn't make sense to do this trip if this and this and this don't happen. Or if I pay this much money for this cruise and my kids need to have this, we need to go to this many of the shows and take advantage of this many things, and we don't want to spend extra money on these things because, like, that's a waste of money, right?
Speaker 2:So notice how, by the way, you can keep any and all of those thoughts that you want, but what you want to do is assess and notice which of those unspoken rules are at play that are leading to your stress. Right, and you may just be. It may be like I think we need to take all these extra snacks and food and the kids need to have, you know, sunscreen and all their pool toys and all their stuff, because, like I don't want them to have to, we don't have to buy it there. It's going to be stressful. We have to find it there, you know going to be extra money, right.
Speaker 2:So just noticing, like, maybe the stress you're putting on having everything packed perfectly or whatever the case is like, because you're worried about money or you don't we want to maximize your time and just notice where that stress is coming from for you, Okay, you're not. This is not the step where you have to let go of it. Okay, just notice it. And I think a big part of this for trips is just like, what are my expectations? Okay, because this next step and one of the things I've been talking about is a major thought, thoughtwork, thing you got to do with traveling with the kids is you got to lower those expectations. If you want to be happy, right, and you probably expected me to say this. If you expected me to say this about lowering expectations if you've ever traveled with kids, or if you're someone who's, you know, older and wiser and has been through this, right, a big.
Speaker 2:The name of the game is lowering those expectations, but you have to recognize them and name them to yourself first, which we often skip. So naming your expectations and noticing them, okay, and a lot of times that comes into those five unspoken rules. If you're not sure, just ask yourself what am I worried about? Why am I stressed, why is this a problem for me? And just like kind of notice it, write it down or just observe.
Speaker 2:Next up is the step in the call method where we loosen our grip, and so this is a huge one for trips because, again, the name of the game is lower expectations, and that is about loosening your grip on those expectations and thoughts that you had about how you're going to, how this trip is gonna go and how that's gonna get you to feel okay. And some of the thoughts and questions that I really like to help me loosen my grip here are to remind myself that perhaps the goal is not for everyone to be happy the entire time. But I remember when we went to Disney World for the first time it was after a disaster trip to Hawaii and I was thinking about canceling the Disney World trip because I was so frustrated with traveling with my kids and I had a coaching session and I was talking through whether to cancel it or not and one of the thoughts that we kind of decided was I decided I wanted to go to Disney World and the coach and I talked about how it's funny because we call Disney World the happiest place on earth but if you look around, kids are constantly screaming and crying and throwing things. And it's clearly not. And part of that is because, well, I'll talk about the reasons for that when I get into practical stuff. But she was like, well, what if you just went and your mindset was like this is not gonna be, this is gonna be the unhappiest place on earth. The kids are gonna be unhappy and that's just part of the deal. But I still wanna go because I wanna see and experience certain things there. And that reframe for me has helped a lot with all of my trips.
Speaker 2:Like, what if the goal is not for everyone to be happy 100% of the time on a trip? What if there and this is about loosening my grip what if there's different goal here? What if one of the goals is to have memories of those? You know, the small percent of the time that things went well, to create these core memories that are so great for me, my husband, my kids, whatever right or like, as we get moved through things here with my son, who really hates to travel, and we debate constantly whether to keep taking him on trips when he clearly doesn't like them and for most of the time, one of our goals my husband and I have talked about is like we think that we want him to slowly develop some skills around being able to be flexible and travel, because we do think that as an adult he will be glad that he has some of those skills and it will allow him to partake in life more fully.
Speaker 2:And so sometimes my goal on my trip with my son is more about helping him navigate those moments where he feels like he hates everything and doesn't want to do something, and helping him gain a little bit of resilience and flexibility, which is totally different than if I went in with the expectation that, like, I'm gonna set up a perfect scenario where he's happy about going to this event with us, right? So asking yourself, like, what if the goal is not for this to be perfect? What if, in fact, the goal or the positive outcome is not 100% happy? And in coaching we talk about this idea of the 50-50 positive negative, you know. So there's a theory in coaching and in, like, I think, buddhism and various traditions of life is about 50% positive and 50% negative emotions, and we can debate. You know, I don't think there's any way to prove what the percentage is, but I think the concept of there's definitely a hefty portion of negative. That's just a part of the human experience and if we believe that we always have to feel good or we're resisting that normal negative part of being human in whatever, that person is right.
Speaker 2:But it was funny, as I was preparing for one of these trips, one of my colleagues, who's a coach and also a pediatrician, was telling me she's like you know, to be honest, I think on a vacation with kids you're looking at like 25% positive and 75% negative with kids on trips because it's just like really not, it's really stressful for them and so you know, maybe loosening your grip looks like okay, like what I want. My expectation is that I'm gonna plan this beautiful trip it's been all this effort and pack everything perfectly and like we're gonna have this amazing time and like maybe my expectation is like I'm looking for one quarter of the time to have like positive memories and I'm just gonna expect that like a lot of the time is gonna be kids having a hard time and us all learning to deal with that and whatever Another way that you can think about this. Loosening your grip is to remind yourself they're just kids.
Speaker 2:And I have had this experience with my son where he has a violent reaction on a trip. He hates something so much and I find this is a disaster we can never do this trip again, like he's never gonna be able to travel. And then, after the acute moment ends, like maybe even months later, he'll be talking about that trip and how much fun he had or how he wants to go back again, where he'll say it was his favorite trip. And I'm like, dude, you literally spent the whole time complaining and yelling and saying you never wanted to do it again. And he'll say, oh yeah, well, it felt that way at that time, but now, as I look back, it wasn't so bad. He's just a kid, right, and even adults do this. As you get further from something, it doesn't feel so bad. But remember they're just kids. So in the moment they're just expressing their emotions.
Speaker 2:And if you're too tied to the goal here is for everyone to be happy and to people pleasing people pleasing perfectionism, hustle, doing all those things, checking off the list, everyone being happy about it you're not remembering that they're just kids and they might actually end up looking back and being happy about it, but they aren't always going to be able to give you pleasure and this positive reinforcement in the moment, because they're just not able to. And so another thing that I really like in this listening to your grip and this is one that my husband gave me is when we're on a trip and things are challenging with our kids. He will even say it's their vacation too, and it is. And sometimes we think, well, this is our idea of what the vacation should look like and how it should be, and we get to be legitimately, as I said in the connect stuff, we can legitimately be disappointed or frustrated because they're not doing it the way we think or they're not responding how we'd like them to, but at the same time, like loosening your grip is what else is true. It's their vacation too, right.
Speaker 2:What else is true is that it's hard to be a kid and be told what to do all the time, and they get told what to do all day in school, and so maybe, when they go on vacation, having to go now and do everything I want to do is feeling like a little much for them and like how can I make sure that they also are getting a vacation out of this, and remembering that it's everyone's vacation and we can we don't have to always do everything together the whole time in this idealized way, necessarily for everyone to get what they need. Okay, so really loosening the grip. What else could be true? What are some other ways we could be doing this, assuming that this family, these kids, these people do not change, and this is how they are for now. What are my options? Okay, and another thing that you can do with this loosening grip is think about or notice or just chat with other people about what they do on trips with their family. And I will tell you. In my work as a coach, I talked to lots of people and lots of women who are physicians about how they handle travel, and everyone is different. So what you think is the only way to do it is probably not the only way to do it.
Speaker 2:There are people who don't take their kids on trips at all until they're much older. They send them, keep them with family members and they do their own travel without them. There are people who never travel without their kids, right. There are people who don't ever want to be away from their kids. There are people who take trips with just one kid at a time or split up on a trip. There's other people who do everything together. Some people find that being on a cruise is the best option. We talk to family and it's like that on the cruise it's the only way that works for them. Other people that would never work for them. So get creative about what you need on your trip.
Speaker 2:In my family we've discussed maybe we leave the one kid home sometimes and we just go with the other kid who enjoys it more right, and of course, people might judge us about that or people might have opinions.
Speaker 2:But just opening your mind and just listening your grip, step to what are the other ways we could do this.
Speaker 2:And along with this, what if it's totally okay to forget something and have to buy it there?
Speaker 2:What if we just decide that there's no money ever wasted on a trip because the point is to be together, right?
Speaker 2:If you just kind of decide okay, I'm not going to put this pressure on my family that we have to get the most out of our money and do everything this certain way, we're just going to do our best and enjoy it and recognize that sometimes you spend money on things on vacation that you wouldn't otherwise. I'm not saying you have to make that choice for your family. I'm saying, if you notice in these first few steps what you're expecting and the rules that you're sort of following and putting on your family for how things need to go and it's not making you and your family happy, the loosening your grip step is about what are all the other options out there to help us all feel better, right, and just getting them out. And then you're ready to work on the next step, which is the M of the call method, which is make a decision and the questions that you want to ask yourself here are looking at this list of options what do I want?
Speaker 2:What do I want most? Why do I want it? Do I like my reason? Okay, and remember that it might be hard at first to know exactly what you want. You may not even be used to asking this because you're so busy to using the shortcut of doing what you're supposed to do, based on perfectionism, people pleasing, control, what your parents said. You know all those things that we've been unpacking in those first steps. So sometimes you have to take a minute and kind of get real honest with yourself. Right, just be like but is that really what I want or is that what I think I should be doing? Okay, it takes practice, but it does get easier.
Speaker 2:And a good little trick for that is to think of the game warmer or colder, like kids play, you know, when you're getting close to an object, and so just noticing like, does this feel warmer or colder? To like what's true to me, and give yourself some permission for it to not be definite and perfect, right. And but then notice your reason, because when you ask yourself why, and do I like my reason, if you find that your reason for wanting to do something is like because someone else is doing it, or because I don't want to lose money, or because I don't want my husband to be upset, or because I, you know, want to convince my kid to be different, like really give yourself. Or because I'm you know, my husband owes this to me because he always gets the time off and now I get the time off. Like, I think when you really dig deep, you probably won't like some of those reasons because they're kind of like controlling and resentful and they're coming from these emotions that are not that helpful. So just kind of have a moment of honesty with yourself about the reasons and whether you like your reasons for wanting it.
Speaker 2:And another double check is, you know, to just remember what all the options are going to have discomfort in some form. And so kind of asking yourself, like okay, that feels like what I want to do. I like my reasons, like the discomfort of this is going to be. You know, like, for example, when I went to Disney World, I went in knowing like the reason I want to go is because I want to have this experience and I'm okay with it being a lot of frustration and pushback and negativity from my family, et cetera, and I noticed the discomfort that's kind of come with that and I decided I'm choosing to deal with the discomfort of traveling on this trip with my family the way they are versus the discomfort of canceling this trip and not getting this to have the Disney World experience and not being able to get to the nicer weather at that time of year. And so because I had articulated to myself this is the discomfort I want to put up with, right, it was a solid decision that I could stand behind.
Speaker 2:Okay, and this making a decision step can also be used, not just for a big picture, like whether to go on the trip, but then you can use it again, those same questions as you're making smaller decisions, like how many activities are you going to ask your kids to go on with you, or how are you going to split up things with your partner so you both get some time off, right? So there might be discomfort in having a conversation with your partner about taking on some of the tasks on the trip. That might be uncomfortable, but maybe you're choosing the uncomfortable conversation with them over the discomfort of not getting any time to yourself the entire week. Okay, or maybe I'm going to choose a discomfort of taking my kid out to dinner a couple times and planning ahead and all the hassle and stress of that, versus the discomfort of never getting to go out to nice dinners and having to stay in the apartment the whole time or whatever. Or maybe I'm going to choose a discomfort of paying for a childcare option or something so that I can go to dinner with my husband and I'd rather not spend that extra money, but I'd rather do that than not get to go out to the nice dinner without my kids on vacation. So, really, using these same questions over and over and recognizing that each decision you make, you can just weigh the discomfort and you can like your reasons or not, and you don't have to please everyone around you or follow all these rules you've been told about how it has to go. You get to choose and part of this make a decision.
Speaker 2:Step is the practical aspect I mentioned, where I'm going to give you a bunch of options that you can choose and decide to implement. But I do want to skip ahead briefly to the next step of the calmer method, just to finish off the mindset stuff. So the next step in the calmer method is to evaluate, which will come after you make some decisions. But it's good to kind of know that, when you evaluate, the mindset you're going to have is you know, what did I learn? What can I do differently, right. And so you're going to be reminding yourself we're trying things out.
Speaker 2:This is a process. It doesn't have to be perfect the first time, right. We don't fail, we don't lose. We either win, figure it out, works great, or we learn for the next time, right. And so taking that pressure off yourself that any one of these practical things I give you is going to solve everything, and you know, just because it worked for my family or work for my friend's family doesn't mean it will work for you and your kid, and that's actually fine.
Speaker 2:This is really an iterative process where you try some things, you implement them, you evaluate how it went Right, see what's working for everyone, what's not working for everyone, and you stay in it together, trusting that you'll figure it out, okay. And then that's where the R comes in. To repeat, trusting one another to figure it out and to be safe with each other requires us to go back up and connect with our emotion, connect with our other family members and their emotions, all with compassion for ourselves, compassion for them, right. And this is what I do with my son, who doesn't like to travel, and I do, you know. He voices his frustrations and I'm prepared for that, right, I connect with him with compassion and I also share where I'm at and I tell him, I remind him, these mindset things. Okay, we're working on this, we're figuring it out. It's not perfect, you know. I get it. We are going to keep working on it, we're going to keep figuring it out, right.
Speaker 2:And so that evaluate and repeat step really involves coming back to the top, and that's why I like to start with the mindset, because you're going to need the mindset to fully implement these strategies and not to get discouraged if it doesn't work, okay. So that wraps up the mindset piece, the first half of traveling with kids, and I'm going to put the practical tips in a separate recording so that this doesn't get too long and that those are those practical suggestions are really easy to find. But I also don't want you to discount this mindset work. It's always our temptation as the working moms, a lot of your doctors and nurses, to do that. But this is also practical and tangible, okay.
Speaker 2:So the way you do that is, you don't just turn this off and move on to the next thing. You sit here for a quick second and you think back to the last 30 minutes of what I said, like one thing that stuck out to you. That was a new thought, a reframe, a thought you kind of believe but you have forgotten to be focusing on, or a key question that I mentioned that you want to ask yourself and use to coach yourself One thing write it down, put it somewhere where you're going to find it, post a note by your bed or your mirror, on your phone somewhere, put an alarm or reminder on your phone, and then what you want to do is make it a goal to cultivate belief in that thought, to focus on that thought or to ask yourself that question once a day. Okay, our brain can be trained and exercised like a muscle, but you have to actually put it on your calendar and do it, and so that is how you make mindset stuff tangible and practical, and it is surprisingly effective. Just try it for a week. The out goes.
Speaker 2:I see this with my clients all the time, and it's not always the thing that I say in the call that I think they're going to take away, but, as we're talking through their situation, there's just one little piece and they'll say to me oh, that's it, that's what I needed, that was the takeaway, right, and that's what I want you to do from these podcasts as well.
Speaker 2:Of course, though, if you really want the takeaways that are going to be most beneficial to you, that works best in a one-on-one conversation. You can set up a free console anytime to tell me all about your unique situation, and then I can really help you reflect on it what's working, what's not, and what strategies I can help you implement to improve and make that better. It's really fun. I would love to meet you and get to know you and help you feel so much calmer and more in control of things, perhaps even have a little time to yourself as well. So I'm here. Use the link in the show notes to set up your free console and, in the meantime, pick one of the things from this week, cultivate that thought and let me know how it goes. Talk to you soon.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to Rethink your Rules with Jenny Hobbs MD. Would you like to learn more about how to apply this to your own life through personalized coaching with Jenny? Visit us on the web at jennyhobbsmdcom to schedule a free consultation. If you found value in what you heard today, please consider subscribing to the podcast and giving us a five star rating so we can reach even more women like you.