The Secret to Thriving as a Blended Family Parent: My Personal Prescription

In today's video, I'm sharing a powerful prescription that every blended family parent needs. It's not something you'll get from a doctor—this prescription is about taking time for yourself! As a blended family parent, you're constantly pulled in different directions, and finding time for self-care can seem impossible. But I've learned firsthand how important it is to reset, reflect, and re-energize to be the best parent you can be.

In this episode, I’ll walk you through the 3 R’s—Reset, Reflect, Re-Energize—and show you how even a few small adjustments can transform your energy, mindset, and family dynamics. Whether you're a step-parent, co-parent, or navigating your own unique blended family situation, this video has insights that can help you thrive.

Transcript

Jalal: 0:00

I want to start off by saying this prescription that I believe all blended family parents need. I want to start off by saying it may not work for you, but I'm going to let you know right now. It for sure worked for me, and so, since it worked for me, I want to share with you. Now, I do realize not all blended families are exactly alike, and that's OK. I'm just on here sharing what I learned in my blended family, you know. So take the information and the medicine with a grain of salt, all right, so let's get into it Now. My belief is every parent in a blended family needs this prescription. And you're like what is this prescription that you're talking about? Well, technically, this bottle is a metaphor. The prescription that I believe that you need is time to yourself. Yes, I believe that time to yourself is one of the most important things when you think about all the things that go on in our blended families we being pulled here, we being pulled there, this, we got to worry about this outside thing here, this thing over there, we gotta worry about this outside thing here, this thing over there and it just seems like we're always moving, going. There's always something to do for the family, there's always something, something, something. We need time for ourselves. I'm gonna tell you, when I discovered this back in my day, I was I mean, I was a single father for a while and during that time period, me and my ex-wife had set it up to where every other weekend I got a free weekend. All the things I had to go through as being the single father it made it tolerable. I knew that every other weekend I was going to get a break. I was able to go hard and do everything I needed to do during my my time period where I had the kids every day because I was going to get a break. And when I got that break, I made sure I enjoyed that break. I allow myself to do the things that I need to kind of woosah me during that break and it worked. It was working so well. It was just like man, this, it could have always been this easy. And then, just like as easy as it came in, boom, it went away and then I didn't have no break. But I was determined. I told myself I've got to figure out a way to still have a break. Now I have figured out how to get a break, but I had to get a little more creative back then. Now, these days, I get a break Every summer. I mean the whole summer. Now, that may not be your situation. Don't get jealous. It's OK, because I don't just wait till summer to get breaks.

Jalal: 3:06

I get my medicine more often than that, the same medicine I'm telling you to take. Now, you know I like ours. So we're going to get into the three R's of why this is important and why you need this medicine. Okay, so the first one is when you take time for yourself, it allows you to reset. It's almost like you know, when you don't have that time to yourself, you're taking on everything that you're experiencing. It's like putting all these items in a backpack and you don't have time to actually look and see what's in the backpack because you haven't had a moment to take the backpack off and sit it down right. When you take this time to reset, you actually get to take the backpack off and it's where you get to reset mentally, physically and emotionally. All these things are available to you when you take that time to yourself to reset. All right, now that's the first thing you reset Put your backpack down.

Jalal: 4:11

I mentioned that you have to look into the backpack and that's where we reflect. We reflect on the things that are going on within ourselves. We reflect on the things that are going on in our blended family. If I asked you, you could probably tell me with absolute certainty what's going wrong. But could you tell me with absolute certainty what is going right? No, you probably can't. Well, when you reflect, it gives you a time to actually think about what's going right, because there are some things that are going right in your blended family. But the problem is with our brains. We zone in on the things that are going wrong instead of zooming out and looking at all the things going right. So when you take this time to reflect, you can actually see what's going right, and during this time of reflection, you may actually see some things going wrong. But then the question becomes Are they going wrong or are they things that you are looking at wrong? There is a difference. You need to know the difference, but you cannot figure that out Until you take time to reflect.

Jalal: 5:21

All right, now let's go to the last R is re-energize. Now, when you re-energize, it helps. You come back to the situation with energy, energy, situation with energy, energy. You just come back, you feel better because you've had time to take a step back and figure out. You know exactly what's going on, what's going right, what's how you're feeling, you get time to do. All of it affects your mindset when you can say hey, you know there's all these things going on, but I'm taking, I've had break for me. I can look at this with new energy. I can look at this with new eyes and come back and see, you know, oh, okay, there are some things that we, we are doing great. How do we keep doing more of that? Okay, so there are some things that you know aren't going the way I would like. But, okay, how do I change my view on that? To look at this situation from a different way and see OK, well, maybe there's a reason that these things aren't going the way I hope, or whatever the case may be, has it been enough time? Is there something I'm doing to you know? Have this situation go like? This is for me All these things you could ask yourself if you have time to rest, reflect.

Jalal: 6:37

This benefits everyone in the home. How? Because when you rest and reflect and you come back energized, that energy feeds into everyone else. It's like okay, mom, I'm at a break, she's feeling good now. Or dad at a break, he's feeling good now. This is good for us. We need to take some time to ourselves, reset, taking a quiet step back so you can take a few steps forward. All right, and so I know you're thinking like this sounds good, and I don't get every summer off like you. I get it. I understand everybody can't be me and I can't be you, so that's OK.

Jalal: 7:12

Now here's how you can apply this, even if that isn't your situation and, like I said, I don't just wait until the summer. That's what I had to say you guys could decide hey, every weekend one of us gets a few hours to ourself. So if it's this week is your weekend, tom. Next week, jennifer, it's your weekend. The following week, and you just get a few hours to yourself and you decide okay, you know what you're going to do during that time period and I'll give you a list of activities after I get through. When you could say okay, but I can't do every other weekend, you know everybody's got soccer, football, blah, blah, blah. Okay, cool.

Jalal: 7:54

What about in the evenings? After you know you guys have spent time together, the kids are in bed, you could say, hey, hey, I'm going to take this amount of time for me before I go to bed to do xyz. Now the only thing is it should be a way that you reset, you can reflect and you can feel re-energized after you're done. If you're just sitting on the couch drinking a beer, I don't't know that that would qualify, but maybe for you, I just don't know. So don't go home and tell your wife I said, do that, because I don't know if that's really gonna help. Okay now, if you can't do evenings, there has to be some activity in your home that all of you do together that really one of you could do. So maybe it's going to the grocery store.

Jalal: 8:44

I happen to like grocery stores. I will go to the grocery store by myself, and that is time, you know, for me to kind of reset, think about what's going on in the house today, you know, reflect. Is there anything in these situations I could have handled a little bit better? And I can come back energized because I might have stopped to get me a snack that I enjoy, listen to something on the way home that motivated me or inspired me. It doesn't have to be a major thing, it can be these small moments. The beauty is you just have to take them and not allow yourself to just do what you normally do, which may be to just turn on music, zone out or be intentional about thinking about these things. Be intentional about taking the time to yourself to again reset, reflect, reenergize.

Jalal: 9:36

Now some of the activities that I thought of and again, it's your job to figure out the activity. I'm just throwing stuff out there. Uh, one of them yoga. You don't try some yoga? Or maybe just going on a walk, a nice little walk in your neighborhood around the corner, it's, it's good for your body. Maybe go hug a tree I technically enjoy that, maybe that's not for you. Or read a book journal, I don't know. You have to choose.

Jalal: 10:02

The only requirements are that you reflect and you. It re-energizes you. Those are only requirements, and I'm only telling you because I took this medicine. I take this medicine on a regular basis and it has helped me immensely because it allows me just to not carry things forever on my back, when I could take them off, sit them down, look at them, examine them and then come back. Well, you know what? I could have handled that better. And then go handle it better, or go apologize so that person's not carrying it around. And then we've got this whole thing where it's bad energy all in the house and all these things. I'm taking my medicine and I want to encourage you to do it too. Look, if you enjoyed today's video, make sure you check out last week's video about complex styles that are ruining relationships. I know you got some toxicity we all do so check out that video to see what you can do about these toxic relationship issues that are affecting your family. All right till next time I'll see you.