Category Archives: Mind Management

NOCOMMENTS

Help Getting It Done, Inspirations, Mind Management

Self Care: What It Really Is

It’s tough to write about a topic like self-care, a term that’s so popular that it’s become a buzzword. Self-care seems like a great idea and a tool to empower us to carve out time to do nice things for ourselves until it becomes a weapon to blame us when we aren’t doing enough of it (whatever enough is). But we are going to talk about it. Even if it’s not easy to figure out how to get self-care in our lives, I think we need it. So let’s figure out what it really is so we can decide whether it’s just some fad of the day or a tool we can use. Let’s go!

Sometimes I’ve felt like the process of figuring out how self-care fits in my life is like going shopping for jeans. It’s awkward and uncomfortable, most of the jeans go back on the rack, and it’s frustrating when many don’t fit my body. But when I find the one pair that fits, it’s like a small bit of magic just happened – it feels good! Every top I put together with those jeans looks fantastic, I walk a little taller, and there’s a little more swag in my walk. Those are the jeans we never want to wear out!

Self-care is the same way. When we get it in our lives in a way that works, it feels so good that other things get better too. We feel more patient and calm, it’s easier to give to others, and there’s more energy for the challenges we face. But it can seem like there’s just no time for it, as if self-care belongs to those who can hire help and don’t have as much on their plate as we do.

But that’s not it.

The problem is what we think self-care is instead of what it really is.

We think self-care is a spa day or getting our pedicure done, or having enough money to buy a new designer bag or go shopping for a new spring wardrobe even if we don’t need the clothes. We think self-care is being able to have someone else take care of our home and family while we put our feet up and get a massage.

It can be all of this. Or none of it.

Self-care comes from the understanding that you are a human with needs, and those needs are to be met. As a woman, you are highly likely to be taking care of many other people – a spouse, children, parents or other family members, employees at work, and so on. It’s not hard for us to see what other people need and step in to help them get taken care of – it’s how we’ve been trained. I won’t get on my soapbox about the patriarchy and societal norms or race, class, and culture, but suffice it to say that as a woman you have been taught to take care of others. That’s just how it is.

And while there’s nothing wrong with taking care of others, there is something off about not recognizing your own basic need for care. As a human being, you have needs too. And let’s face it, as a grown woman, it’s a lot less likely that someone else is going to meet those needs for you. Self-care is very simply you taking care of yourself.

Self-care isn’t as hard as you think. It can be as simple as choosing to go to bed in time to get enough sleep for your body. Self-care is as simple as basic hygiene and can be as complex and lofty as self-actualization. It’s making time and space for you to eat well, moisturize your skin, and dream about your future. It’s deciding that you need to drop 50 pounds and you will commit to making space in your life to get to your goal. It can mean making time to see a therapist or hire a coach to help you on your way.

It can take a lot of time if you make the time, like going away for a solo retreat to rest and meditate and create. Or it can take 30 seconds to practice your deep breathing. Self-care isn’t one thing, because you aren’t one thing. Maybe a spa day isn’t your jam anyway. But a walk in the woods or around your neighborhood fills your soul. Journaling for 10 minutes makes you feel you lost 10 pounds. Why wouldn’t you make space in your life for that?

We’ll talk about why we don’t over the next few weeks. But for now, look for small ways you can take care of yourself. Talk to me: What are you going to do to take care of you, big or small? Let me know in the comments! I know we can all use suggestions!

And if you feel stuck, like you want to make a change but just don’t know how to get started, I can help. Changing your pattern of living by yourself can feel like trying to push a boulder uphill – but you don’t have to do it alone. That’s what a coach is for! Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and we can set up a free session to get you started on changing your life for the better!

Here’s your video help for the week!

NOCOMMENTS

Blog, Mind Management

Weight Loss Myth #5: “I need more willpower to lose this weight”

Most of us know the weight loss journey ups and downs. Feels like being trapped on an elevator – we want to get off on the ground floor, but we can’t seem to get off before the doors close and we go back up again!

I battled during the years before I lost my weight. It was a constant slog of trying to find the “right” diet, struggling to not want to eat “junk” food”, watching the scale with dread, and hating myself when I actually got on it. There were the doughnuts I couldn’t say no to and the pizza I’d never leave in the box. I figured I was just weak around food and the key was to stay out of the breakroom or kitchen, to put all the food out of sight where it couldn’t trigger me to start eating.

Even when I avoided the food, it would still call me from the pantry or kitchen or breakroom. My mind was on the food, and it didn’t really matter that it wasn’t in front of me. I needed more willpower – I needed to be strong to resist the temptation of the food!

What I wish I had known back then was this: Willpower is like a muscle and it fatigues. Maybe I wouldn’t have felt so worthless every time I gave in to a cookie after trying so hard not to eat it. You can grow your willpower muscle, but even at its strongest, you can still wear it out. Every time you think even the simplest thought about food when you’re not hungry and use willpower to resist it, you chip away at your willpower reserves. Little innocent thoughts like, “That looks delicious!” will start to deplete your willpower. After dozens (or hundreds!) of thoughts like this, resisting the temptation just wears your willpower out completely.

So how do you resist temptation?

By eliminating it in your mind.

Here’s the key: Your mind makes every feeling you have. So if you feel tempted to eat something off your plan, or to eat when you’re not hungry, you are creating that feeling of temptation with your thinking. If you think “I want that cookie” twenty times, you feel tempted to eat the cookie. But if you realize that your brain is creating your desire with its thoughts, you can choose other thoughts. You can go ninja on your brain and catch the thought creating your feeling of temptation. Then you can remember that the thought “I want that cookie” is easy, your brain is offering you the practiced thought, and you can choose a different thought instead. Your true desire is to lose the weight, right? You really want to see the scale go down more than that cookie. Besides, that cookie is from a supermarket and won’t taste that good. It’s not like it’s homemade and even if it was, would it be worth feeling like trash after you eat it, knowing you could have left it on the plate instead?

You get to choose a different thought. You get to practice the new thought. You can generate whatever emotion you need to feel great about leaving the cookie behind and you don’t need willpower to do it.

You just need a new thought and practice.

You don’t have to resist a feeling of commitment to your plan. If you feel committed instead of tempted, willpower doesn’t come into play. Commitment comes from practicing a thought like “I choose to eat to fuel my body”, or “I only eat when I’m physically hungry”, or “I stick to my plan from a love for myself”. Whatever thought you choose that generated that feeling of commitment, that’s the one you practice when you see the cookie. If you don’t feel tempted, you won’t eat it.

No willpower needed!

Yep, it’s simple. But I know it’s not easy. But we get to choose our hard, and whether it’s doing the work to lose the weight or continuing to stay overweight, both are hard. Hard is ok – we can do hard things! But sometimes having help to get through the hard is really useful. If you want help, I’m here for you. Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and we can set up a mini-coaching session. I’ll get you started on your weight loss transformation and we can make plans to work together to go the rest of the way!

Here’s your video help for the week!

1COMMENTS

Inspirations, Mind Management

Weight Loss Myth #4: I’ll Be Happy When I Lose The Weight

This is a tricky thought because it seems completely true when we think it. Our mind says that if we could just get this weight off, everything would be better. And we have reasons why this makes perfect sense. We would be happier if our clothes fit, and my diabetes was under control and I don’t need medicine for my blood pressure anymore and I can chase my kids around the playground and my knees don’t hurt when I walk stairs anymore. Of course I’ll be happier then!

Now don’t get me wrong, losing weight feels great! Watching the scale come down day after day, week after week really does feel fantastic. It’s an accomplishment and feeling like you’ve finally cracked the code to weight loss can make you feel like you’re on top of the world! Having the body you want to live in, the one that’s healthy and lighter and doesn’t have the aches and pains from extra weight really does feel good.

The problem is that losing the weight and living in a body you love isn’t what will make you happy. The weight is just the problem you have right now that’s in front. It’s loud and proud and is sitting in your way. So you figure that if you can remove this obstacle of weight that you’ll be able to get moving again toward your other goals and dreams. And when you get the weight from being the problem that consumes your time and thinking, you will be able to spend that time on building other things. And that’s great because the weight isn’t holding you back anymore!

But if you think you will be happy once you’ve lost the weight, you’re going to be disappointed. First, you don’t have to lose weight to be happy. Your happiness (or lack of it), comes from your thoughts. If you think that you can’t be happy and love your life now because of your weight, then you won’t be happy. You’ll create whatever emotion (discouragement, disgust, frustration) that comes from the thoughts you think. Even if you can muster the determination to force the weight off and use willpower and self-criticism to shed the pounds, you won’t magically arrive at happiness. You’ll be lighter – but you will have hated yourself the whole way down the scale. That will never end with self-love and appreciation. Even worse, do you know how long you’ll keep the weight off with self-hatred? Not long, my friend. You’ll be headed right back up as if you were on a bungee cord.

You also will still have your life to live. Here’s a secret: No matter the circumstances of your life, it’s all pretty much 50:50 good and bad. In the good times and happy situations, there are things that aggravate and annoy or are hard. And in the tough times, there are moments of light and joy and goodness. Losing weight does not change that.

So we get to choose happy and love for ourselves now. It actually will make the journey of weight loss better and easier than any of your previous attempts. And when you get to your goal weight, you’ll celebrate not only the number you’ve created but also joy in who you have become along the way. And you’ll stay where you want to be in your weight because you’ve become the person who weighs that amount. Know this – you get to choose how you will think and who you will be right now. The creation of who you are becoming is in the thoughts you’re thinking now. Choose well!

You can do this! But if you’re running into obstacles that you can’t see your way around on your own, I can help you move them out of the way. Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and we’ll set up a consultation to get you moving on your transformation. You deserve it!

Here’s your video help for the week!

NOCOMMENTS

Help Getting It Done, Inspirations, Mind Management

Weight Loss Myth #3: I Can’t Lose Weight Because…

By the time I finally lost my weight, I’d been overweight for more than 20 years. For more than two decades, I’d been living in a body that was uncomfortable to me, that felt out of my control, that I didn’t enjoy living in. I’d lived for all of my adult life believing that this was the body I inherited and that there wasn’t much I could do about it.

Did you notice I said, “believe”?

What’s she thinking?

That’s the biggest difficulty we face when we try to lose weight – what we believe. I had so many reasons I couldn’t lose weight and I’d thought them for so long that I believed them. Fortunately, I was wrong. This is the number one reason why I teach that your diet isn’t the solution and that exercise isn’t the answer, because your biggest obstacle is what you believe about your weight. If you’ve decided that weight loss isn’t possible for you for whatever reason, then you will prove yourself right again and again. And if you have some temporary success at weight loss, you’ll sabotage yourself and gain the weight back. True long-term weight loss is actually in your mind.

It’s so interesting how our brains work. When we have a situation we want to change (like weight), we think that the weight happened to us. That’s what we say. “I started gaining all this weight after college” or “When I stopped being able to go to the gym the weight just came on”. We tell ourselves all kinds of reasons why the situation is what it is and we repeat them to ourselves until they become thoughts we agree with. That’s called a belief. Once you’ve created a belief in your mind, it’s much easier for the brain to keep believing it than to change it. Even if a new belief would be much more helpful than the current one.

For example, we often think that we inherited being overweight from our family. I thought this because most of the folks in my family were overweight. When my aunt lost weight and kept it off, I wondered what kind of magic she was doing so I could learn to do it too. I have patients tell me they can’t lose weight because they’re in menopause or because they can’t exercise due to their knee/hip/back injury or because of the pandemic or because the pool is closed. My thoughts about my aunt’s weight loss and my patient’s beliefs about their weight are just that – thoughts. As long as they think those thoughts are true, their mind will keep finding evidence to confirm their thought. We love to be right, and our brain is no exception!

Someone thinks they’re in charge…

But the truth is that you will create what you believe. You see people who’ve decided to lose weight in menopause or from a wheelchair or drop weight in a pandemic instead of gain. It’s not that these people are some magical unicorn beings. It’s that they’ve decided to believe differently and that causes them to act differently. That difference in thinking is the source of their success.

So don’t let your brain convince you that what you want is impossible. Just because you have been overweight for years, or because you haven’t ever been successful at losing weight and keeping it off in the past doesn’t mean that you can’t do it this time. The only difference between now and then is that you get to choose different thoughts than you did in the past. And when you turn those new thoughts into a belief, you’ll live in a way that confirms your belief and you will lose that weight!

I make it sound easy: Change your thoughts and you’ll change your results! It’s not easy. It’s simple, but it requires focus and practice. You can do it! If you’re finding that you’re having trouble finding the thoughts that serve you, or that you keep getting caught in your old thoughts, then you’re normal. Nothing has gone wrong – you’re human! Keep working at it and with practice, you will see change. But if the process is too slow, if you’re having trouble changing your thinking, or you want help to get your brain on track to lose weight, that’s where weight loss coaching can help. I’m here if you need me. Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and we can explore how working together can get you to your goal faster. You don’t have to figure it out alone!

Here’s your video help for the week!

NOCOMMENTS

Help Getting It Done, Mind Management

Weight Loss Myth #2: Exercise Is Required

Someone is gonna hunt me down on this one…

I know – you’ve been told forever that diet and exercise are the way to weight loss. That if you can just find the perfect diet and manage to get yourself in the gym 4 times a week, that the weight will fly off and you’ll look like one of those beautiful people on the cover of TIME magazine.

But I lost 60 pounds and I didn’t exercise. Not at all.

Me before I lost weight…

Me after…

This is a tough myth to deconstruct because there’s so much truth and almost truth mixed up together. As a doctor, it seems like I should never tell anyone not to exercise. I mean, look at all the benefits of exercise! Why would I ever tell anyone not to exercise?

Let’s look at those benefits. First, exercise is wonderful for your mental health and well-being. It’s important to move to get your heart working and staying strong. Exercising is good for your joints, your flexibility, your bone density, and maintaining or growing your muscle mass. It keeps you young and keeps you healthy. Exercise is for moving and enjoying the feeling of movement in your body. It should be used as an act of self-love, not a punishment or weapon against yourself for being overweight.

There are some people who swear that becoming a gym rat or a runner changed their whole life and that’s how they got the weight off. I’m sure that this post is completely contrary to what they believe is true from their experience. But I’m talking to you here. You’re like the rest of us who have tried to get the exercise and diet balance right and have watched not one pound come off and stay off. I was overweight from adolescence through having my first child after residency, so I tried that too. Actually, I was a dancer throughout high school and college and worked out and danced hard for at least 4 days a week, and didn’t lose a pound.

Why doesn’t exercise make a difference in weight loss and why are some people exceptions to this rule? If you really talk to people who swear that their exercise routine is what changed everything, they’ll admit that they also changed their eating while they made their workout a focus of their life. For some people, it feels wrong to eat junk food after they’ve sweated it out in their workout. They feel motivated to eat differently and as they see changes in their bodies they keep adjusting their eating to support their weight loss.

But even more of us find that working out makes us hungry, so we eat more. We also listen to that tiny voice that says we deserve to have a treat, even a “healthy” one like a smoothie or a bar because we worked out, not realizing that we just ate every calorie and more than we burned in the gym. When the scale doesn’t change despite our workout, we get discouraged and stop exercising.

When exercise is the focus of our weight loss efforts, we teach ourselves that we can’t lose weight without exercise. We know this isn’t true when there are people who are wheelchair-bound who lose weight, or when people who can’t exercise have weight loss surgery and they lose weight without exercise. I think we doctors have unwittingly taught our patients to focus on the end goal instead of starting where change happens – at the beginning. It will be wonderful if you lose weight and incorporate exercise in your life as part of your healthy lifestyle, but if you can’t get moving because of the weight you’re carrying, you won’t have a lighter body or one that moves. Now, you can definitely exercise while you’re overweight! It’s just that if you have to focus on the strongest tool to lose weight, it won’t be exercise alone.

When we believe the myth that weight loss requires exercise, we also set ourselves up to dilute our efforts. This is the most important reason why people fail when they start a diet and exercise plan. Most of us need to change things little by little over time so that our changes last. If we try to change everything at once, we often do well for a while, but then something happens in our lives and we get overwhelmed and off track and we go back to our default options for eating and our exercise routine is the first thing to fall off our schedule. It’s too much, too fast. We can’t sustain sudden change for long without a compelling reason, and for most people that has to be on the level of a life-threatening diagnosis for themselves or their child. Seems dramatic, but I’ve seen it again and again.

Small, focused, sustained changes make a difference. When you make them normal over time, you don’t backslide and the weight doesn’t come back. We didn’t gain the weight all at once either. We did small things over and over that caused the weight to come on our bodies. We can undo it the same way! With focus, it can come off faster than it came on. But trying to make those eating changes and the mind drama that comes with it plus an exercise regimen requirement is too much for your mind to juggle at once for long.

Your brain can be rewired to do things differently. It takes sustained training to do it, but it can be done! That’s the good news. The bad news is that your brain prefers to conserve energy at all costs and will resist efforts to change because change requires energy. The old way of doing things is easier and more energy-efficient. So if you overwhelm the brain with lots of changes at once, you’re setting yourself up to fail. The practice of change takes time and your brain can’t focus on multiple changes at once. The default setting is easier. Your work is to change the default, and this happens one change at a time. This is the reason I recommend focusing on your eating plan and not exercise – you’ll see results faster and you’ll be motivated to keep going. The persistence is what makes the changes become your default!

It’s totally possible to lose weight without exercise! You can add exercise to your life once you’ve got your eating plan working for you if you want to do it. But you don’t have to in order to lose your weight. Focus is what you need to get those changes locked in. But remember what I said about making changes and mind-drama? That’s real, and it can be tough to find your way out of the drama on your own. I can help! Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and we can set up a free mini-session to help you decide if weight loss coaching is what you need to finally be successful at long-term weight loss. You don’t have to do it alone!

Here’s your video help for the week!

NOCOMMENTS

Blog, Mind Management

Weight Loss Myth #1: Diet Matters

Last week I was doing a day of procedures. It was a great day, taking care of problems for a bunch of my patients and enjoying the day with a fantastic team of nurses and the anesthesia team. We were wrapping up a successful day and I was finishing my notes at the nurse’s station. I closed the last one and stood up to take off my scrubs. Now, this was fine because I had another outfit on under my scrubs. Since COVID, I never wear scrubs to and from the house. You’re not supposed to anyway when it comes to going to the OR, but I definitely don’t now, no matter what part of the hospital I’m in. I show up dressed in leggings and a top, put on fresh scrubs over that base layer, and take off the scrubs and leave them and any germs in the hamper at the end of the day. Then I throw a coat or sweater over my workout-style outfit and head out.

So I’m “undressing” at the nurse’s station and one of them mentions that I’ve lost weight (I haven’t, but they’ve not seen me in anything but loose scrubs). That brought us to talking about my weight loss story and a couple of the nurses mentioned that they needed help with getting their weight off. I wrote down the URL for the blog and explained how to find me on YouTube and put on my coat. As I picked up my bag and got headed for the door, one of the nurses said that she guessed she’d have to start eating a lot better if she was going to lose weight.

I turned back around.

(I had to say something!)

Presto! Doctor to coach…

You know, it’s really common taught that in order to lose weight we have to “eat right” and exercise. Your doctor tells you that, everywhere you look there’s a diet to teach you the”right” way to eat to lose weight, and heaven help you if you’re not a gym rat or marathoner because you can’t possibly lose weight if you don’t exercise. This thinking is so common that every time I talk to one of my patients about weight the first thing they say is that they need to eat “better”.

But when we tell people to “eat right”, we don’t explain what that means. One big problem is that there’s not even agreement about what that means, and most doctors don’t have a lot of training in nutrition at all, much less in weight loss nutrition. So we believe this vague thought, that we have to eat “better” and we have no idea of what that means.

If you have no target, you’ll never hit it.

So the first step is to define what you mean when you say “eat right”. And that’s where it gets sticky. We’ve thought for so long that there’s a magical perfect diet out there that we actually believe it. If we could just find the one right diet for us, the weight will melt away and we will be thin and daisies will sprout at our feet and rainbows burst from our hearts like a Care Bear (ok, I’m dating myself).

That’s myth number one: Diet matters. There is no one perfect diet for you that will solve your weight battle. Any eating style or diet you choose will work as long as you stay with it. And that’s where the problem lies: Most of us choose diets that we won’t stick with for the long term. We want a quick fix, get the weight off, and we’ll figure out how we keep it off later.

But that doesn’t work.

We lose some, get sick of the diet, go off the plan and gain back the weight we lost and gather a few extra pounds along the way back up the scale. Then we say that the diet didn’t work. What happened was that you stopped doing the diet. This is why I don’t prescribe diets. When I work with a client on an eating plan, we build one that she can live with. It has to be something that you will do for the long term. You can tweak it over time and you’re always free to change your mind or plan a time off the plan (birthday cake, anyone?). But no diets!

You know how you know that the diet doesn’t matter? Because when you look at all the options out there (keto, plant-based, macrobiotic, vegetarian, juicing, intermittent fasting), there’s someone who has been successful in losing weight on it. There’s also someone who did it and gained the weight right back or says it didn’t work for them. It’s not the diet. It’s whether you are willing to stick to your plan when you’d rather eat a bag of cookies or drown yourself in a bowl of ice cream. It’s whether you’re going to eat the meal you planned or chuck it in favor of the drive-through because you’re too tired to cook. It’s whether you’re going to drink a few glasses of wine instead of the one glass on your plan because your day at work was chaos and the kids are on your one last remaining nerve. It’s whether you know how to feel your feelings or whether you choose to eat your feelings. It’s not the diet.

The first myth of weight loss is that the diet matters. Are there some ways of eating that may make weight loss easier for you? Sure. But the eating plan you develop and stick to is the one that is going to work. I help my clients design a plan that they can love and we adjust it as needed. I have a client who lost weight eating fast food several times a week. You start where you are and make adjustments until you get where you want to go. That works!

You might be saying, “You make it sound easy, but I still don’t know what to do to get this weight off!” I know it’s not easy. It’s simple, but making it work after years of dieting isn’t natural or easy. Having a coach to walk with you helps! I can help you get started. Set up a mini-session with me by emailing drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and let me show you how weight loss coaching can help you get to permanent weight loss. You can do it!

Here’s your video help for the week! There’s an intro video and week one of Weight Loss Myths out now, so two videos this week to get you on your way…

NOCOMMENTS

Blog, Help Getting It Done, Mind Management

How To Stop Hijacking Yourself

You know, this week the couch and Netflix look really good to me. It’s calling…

There’s a lot going on right now. Isn’t there always? I’m still doctoring, I’m life/weight loss coaching in my business, the kids need a new homeschool plan for the fall, it’s time to record a new YouTube series, my online course needs the video classes to be recorded, and my professional website isn’t ready and I want it done yesterday. And oh yeah, I’m facilitating a virtual class on prayer for the women at church that I’m pretty sure is really a class for me in disguise. The syllabus needs to be done too.

It feels like everything needs to be done right now and I can’t figure out where the hours in the day are to do it all. With a teenager and two preteens in the house, the hormones and attitudes are flying. Add a homeschool teacher who needs guidance and a husband with a huge work project this week, and I’m feeling both overwhelmed with all the needs and alone on the island at the same time.

Lord, help!

So yes, a Netflix binge looks really appealing right now. I’ve never done a full-on TV binge (I’m just not a big TV person), but I can understand the attraction. Seems to me that drowning my worry and overwhelm in a few hours of TV would make it all go away for a while. And, I work really hard, so don’t I deserve a break? Balance is important in life, and I ought to practice what I preach, so a TV night might be a nice mini-escape for me. Right?

No. Absolutely not.

Now, I’m not saying never watch TV or even spend a night on a TV binge if you want to. The problem isn’t with the activity – it’s how I’m using it. Go back and watch my thought progression – my brain is quietly suggesting in a very well thought-out and reasonable fashion why I should escape from what I know needs to be done. It doesn’t like that I’m uncomfortable and it wants to offer me a way out of the discomfort. Here’s what will happen if I follow my brain down that path:

I burn a night that I could have made some progress on the things I need to do.

I stay up later than I plan in from of the TV.

I’m tired the next morning, and I don’t get up on time.

I rush through the next day trying to catch up.

I feel more behind than I did before the TV “rest”.

My overwhelm gets deeper and I start considering eliminating some of my goals.

TV isn’t the problem. I can make space for TV if I want to watch for fun. But as an escape? Very effective and incredibly sabotaging. So as attractive as that big screen is, I’m going to have to say no for now.

Instead, I went to bed early the other night. What I needed most was a little extra sleep. I woke up the next day shortly before my alarm and got up to write. Since the morning felt less rushed, I could take a minute to plan where I could fit in some of my to-dos. with my mind more clear, I can see how my brain has been sneaking in these thoughts that have been tempting me to lose my heart and my focus on what I’m here to do. So instead of my brain running amuck, I can move back to being in charge of my brain.

So yes, rest and recreation is important. But self-sabotage is not the way I want to get that in! The way to get the never-ending list of to-dos done is to plan and execute. Take a step back with a clear head and see what makes the most sense. I get tripped up by being in a rush to get everything done immediately, as if when I’m done I can take a break. The problem is that there’s always something to do, so a break never comes. My best plan is to incorporate the break into the plan of the to-do tasks. That way I make progress and I don’t burn myself out in the process.

Do I get this right all the time? Absolutely not – that’s how I ended up staring longingly at the TV as if it was the solution to my overwhelm! But catching my brain in the act of trying to find an escape from my discomfort in a way that works against me in the long-term is crucial to getting to the things I want much more than TV. I appreciate my brain for trying to take care of me. I just choose to use it to help me get where I really want to go instead of finding comfort in the moment. Momentary discomfort is how I grow, so I’ll choose that option!

It takes practice to catch your mind in the act of sabotage – it’s subtle and really good at what it does! But it can be done. It’s a lot easier to learn to retrain your brain with help – that’s what coaching does! If you want help, email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and we can set up a 30 minutes mini-session to get you a taste of how coaching can help you get to where you want to go. You don’t have to do it alone!

Here’s your video help for the week!

NOCOMMENTS

Blog, Help Getting It Done, Inspirations, Mind Management

Stop The Mind Spin

Ever feel like you just can’t get back on track, no matter how much you’d like to? I do. It used to feel like I’d set a goal, like getting the garage organized or exercising three days a week or lose 10 pounds and then I’d look up and three months had gone by and I hadn’t done it. Not even gotten closer to the goal by a little bit. And I’d be so frustrated and discouraged that so much time had passed and I hadn’t made any progress that I’d wonder what was wrong with me. Turns out, nothing was wrong. It was my brain that was hijacking my plans. I’ll explain how it was doing that and how I learned to turn it around. But first, a story…

More than five years ago before I started writing this blog, I’d started going on prayer walks in the early mornings. Rain, cold, dark – didn’t matter. I was out there. I needed the quiet morning time to get my mind tuned in to God in a way that I wasn’t able to do in the warm house. Mostly, I couldn’t pray while being still because I was too sleepy from the work of having four little ones. So I started walking to pray. Some days I just listened. And one of those days God told me that I needed to start writing a blog.

No. Why? What would I even write about? Why would God ask me to write a blog when I could barely manage to go to work and take care of these children? Surely I heard that wrong. But again and again in the dark quiet of the early morning hours, I heard it again. I needed to start writing a blog.

Eventually, I finally decided that a blog might be important in the future. It might be useful to share some of the things that I was learning as a mom and physician and holistic living advocate. Maybe there would be some use for writing these lessons down. At the very least, it might be a creative outlet for me, and it might even help someone out there. So I decided to do it!

Immediately my brain put up all the objections. The biggest one was, “I don’t know how to create a blog. I’m not good at tech things.” I spent months waiting for a blog site to drop out of the sky for me magically to start writing into. I allowed my brain to believe all the reasons it created for why I couldn’t create a blog, mostly because I didn’t have a technical knowledge around how it worked. Mind you, I didn’t look into how to create a blog, or whether there were sites that made it easy, or whether I could get help with the technical aspect of starting a blog site. I just didn’t do anything except know that I wasn’t doing what I was called to do.

Does this sound familiar to you? We all have things we could do and don’t. It’s not usually because we aren’t smart enough or because it’s too expensive or because we really don’t have the ability. It’s because we let our brains stop us.

Think about the last time you wanted to try something new. Seemed exciting, right? That’s inspiration, and it feels wonderful! The issue comes up when you have to put in the effort to take the dream into reality. That requires effort, mistakes, and discomfort. Your brain wants none of that – it wants you to be comfortable and to conserve energy at all costs. So when you try to get out there in the unknown, it will try to stop you to keep you safe and not have to work too hard. It’s ok – that’s its job. Your brain is working perfectly! But if you want to grow and accomplish new things, you have to override your brain’s default mode and be willing to get uncomfortable.

How do you practice overriding the default mode of your mind? The first step is to recognize the pattern. When you say, “I don’t know how”, you think you’re just reporting the facts. But really, your brain is offering you an obstacle. If you buy into it, you won’t go any further. The way to move past the obstacle is to ask your brain quality questions and watch it go to work. When you think, “I don’t know how”, you ask your mind instead, “But if you did know how, what would you do?” Your brain will stutter for a second – that’s ok. Don’t let it get away with the I-don’t-know-how excuse. Let it start looking for solutions instead – that’s much more constructive and your brain can do it if you put it to work. If you add to the good question the thought “I am capable of figuring this out”, then you’ve made a constructive assignment that your brain will love. And you’ll get stuff done that you thought you couldn’t!

Giving my very first Food As Medicine talk…

You know the next part of the story, but you don’t know how I did it. I started writing my blog and posting weekly in 2016. So how did I do it? I decided to start talking about the dream of writing a blog to other people, and one suggested that I talk to a web designer in our church. In the process of talking to him, I realized I could put together a site by myself, but I’d do it faster and better with help. So he helped me, and A Journey To Wholeness was born! My lack of technical knowledge wasn’t the barrier I made it to be – it was just a thought that was designed to keep me safe in the cave. But I’m much more interested in achieving my dreams than I am in being comfortable. I’ve heard it said that discomfort is the currency of your dreams. So I’m getting better at being uncomfortable. And to me, the minor discomfort is worth it!

It’s not easy. Even if you know what you want to do and maybe even how to make it happen, you still might find that your brain wants to hijack you from your success. If you’re having trouble getting out of your own way, that’s what a coach is for! If you want to finally lose that weight, repair that relationship, or get your life in order, you don’t have to do it alone. Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and let’s set up a mini-session to see if we want to work together. I want to see you succeed!

Here’s your video help for the week!

NOCOMMENTS

Help Getting It Done, Mind Management

How To Get Out Of The Cave

It’s six am, the thunderstorm has just passed, and there’s a hush over the house. No one else is up except me and I’d really like to crawl back into my warm bed and sleep more. My brain is up to its usual tricks, trying to convince me that I don’t need to write this post. I’ve been writing weekly for more than four years, so maybe that’s enough? It’s not as though my posts have gone viral and I have sponsors paying me to get these posts out, so if I skip a week or stop blogging altogether then no big loss, right? My YouTube video is already out for the week and that seems to be going well, so maybe I should just focus on recording videos – at least that’s done in the light of day instead of before dawn.

It’s a good thing I’m watching my brain.

This is an example of what I mean by being in the cave. It’s hiding, going for what’s small and easy and comfortable instead of being willing to try and not see immediate success. Because I know my brain wants to conserve energy and stay safe, I’ve learned to catch it trying to shift my plans from what’s best to what’s easy. It’s very adept at finding all the reasons why the easy way is the right way, just like I did above. There were even more reasons, like the fact that today is my day off, and although I have a massive list of to-dos, I have the whole day and the kids will be at their homeschool group so I could definitely write this later. So why am I up now?

If I go back to sleep, my brain wants to convince me that I’ll be more rested and efficient later today. Surely I’ll have plenty of time while the kids are in class to get lots done. But here’s what will actually happen: The kids will oversleep, and I’ll be rushing around trying to get them to school with their lunches and books and masks, and by the time I sit down it’ll be about an hour later than I planned. Then I’ll spend my hour planning out the rest of the week and because I have coaching clients to meet with I’ll realize that my wide-open day is actually only a few unscheduled hours before the kids return. Those hours will be quickly assigned to the aforementioned to-do list items, and before I know it the kids will be back. Dinner plans will be approaching and then I’ll be meeting with my last coaching client. See, the day went by really fast!

It’s always a mistake to trust your brain to make the best decisions on the fly instead of planning ahead. Because our brains are designed for efficiency and energy conservation, the default settings are not in favor of well-thought-out plans because they take more work and energy. So how do we get ourselves to get out of the cave mode and back onto implementing our plans and goals? I have a few tactics for you…

Let’s zero in on your target…

Plan in advance.

It’s best to use your most advanced brain functions to work on your goals, and that’s your planning brain. That part of your brain is called the prefrontal cortex and it allows you to make future plans. Your puppy can’t do this higher brain function, but you can. It takes energy and your brain will resist and try to convince you that you can figure things out as they come. Don’t be fooled – decisions in the moment are made by a different part of your brain and it’s not as good at choosing the best option for your future. When you plan in advance, you have your highest good in mind. If you’re trying to lose weight, you plan your meals in advance with the goal in mind. Your plan gets highjacked when you try to decide in the moment if the doughnuts in the office can be added to the plan.

Watch your brain

Once you’ve made the plan, you think that’s the end of the story. But there’s another part of your brain that despite your excellent planning will get involved and try to change the plan. It’s not that your primitive brain doesn’t want you to succeed, but it wants you to be comfortable more than it wants you to grow. Growing and changing requires you to come out of the cave, and that’s scary and threatening to the primitive brain that wants you to stay safe. So when you make the plan, expect that when you get to the part where you have to execute the plan, you won’t want to do it. This is normal. You have to practice overriding the impulses from your primitive brain that want to convince you away from the plan. When you do this (especially at first), your brain will fight back with more reasons why you should chuck the plan. Notice all the chatter against your well-thought-out plan. Just know that your brain is trying to keep you safe and do what you planned anyway.

Trust your future self

One of the benefits of planning in advance is that you get to decide what you want and make it happen. You get the opportunity to envision who you will be in the future and create her. You meet who you will be in your mind and by taking day-by-day steps, you become her. The you who is 20 pounds lighter? She’s the one who’s helping you meal-plan. The you with a successful business? She’s the one who told you to set your alarm for 5:30 am and get up and write before the kids get up. She has your goals and dreams in mind when you plan. Trust her.

Stick to the plan

When you wake up and your brain wants to convince you that you can sleep 30 more minutes – don’t. When you think that one slice of cake from the farewell party at work won’t matter – it does. Remember that your brain always wants to conserve energy and do what’s easy, so expect it to resist when you get to the work you’ve planned. When you deviate from your plan, you’ll always get a lesser result than if you’d done what your planning brain had in mind. Know that when you made your plan, you had your highest good in mind. The more you practice making the plan absolute, the less your brain will think that your plan is optional. That means you’ll get less mental chatter and resistance (not none), and you’ll be able to do what you planned more easily. When you stick to your plan, you get closer to your goal. Add all the forward steps together, and you’ll make it!

Learning this practice is excellent for reaching your goals, but it can be tricky to retrain your brain without help. That’s what coaching is for – I can help you! Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and let’s set up a time to show you how coaching can help you finally achieve your goals – you don’t have to do it alone!

Here’s your video help for the week:

NOCOMMENTS

Blog, Help Getting It Done, Inspirations, Mind Management

What If It’s Too Much?

It’s been a whirlwind the past couple of weeks! So much has happened recently in the world that it can feel overwhelming to keep moving ahead. I know the temptation to “go in the cave”, the instinct to withdraw and hide from my life has been front and center recently. It can be tough when it feels like you’re carrying as much weight as you can possibly bear and something else happens. I can feel like wanting to run and hide – I dream of huddling under a pile of blankets in a warm dark place and pretending that I don’t have to deal with any of it.

Have you felt that way? I know I’m not the only one. I know some of the challenges you face in your lives – the learning disabilities your kids have, the illnesses you or your parents face, the work struggles on top of trying to keep your family life running. Each of us has something we’re dealing with.

And yet we started 2021 with a big sigh of relief that 2020 was over and we looked forward with hope to the promise of a new year. Isn’t hope a beautiful feeling? The resiliency of the human spirit to keep reaching for possibility is a powerful and inspiring thing. So many of us started the year with a place for really tackling our weight problem this year, or getting our small business going, or building a consistent meditation practice. We were starting over and this year was going to be better!

And then the invasion of the Capitol building happened on January 6.

Well, at least it wasn’t this bad…

It was shocking to watch people walk by armed Capitol police and put their feet up on the desks of our legislators. It was maddening to see the lack of preparedness for these protests when contrasted to the show of force for the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. It was discouraging to realize that the instigators of this riot weren’t condemned by everyone and that even around this situation we as citizens couldn’t be unified. And then we had to prepare for the possibility of more violence and chaos as Inauguration day approaches. What is this world that we live in?

And many of us said, “It’s just too much.” Some of us were ready to get into that cave, to try to get back to only the absolute requirements of our lives. That weight loss plan, the business project, the meditation practice – all that would just have to wait. There was just too much going on to build and grow and be creative. So we stopped. We let go of the meal prep and planning and organizing for the business and setting the alarm a few minutes earlier to make room for the meditation exercises. We just let it go.

Especially as Black women, the strain can be unbelievable. (I know everyone reading isn’t a Black woman, but a lot of you are and I am, so I’m going here for a moment.) Between the structural racism and sexism at work, the unequal household burden most of us shoulder in childcare and home maintenance, the eldercare some of us do, and the background narrative of the strong black woman who can’t let anyone see her sweat, the pressure is immense. It’s easy to believe that we can’t do one more thing and taking care of ourselves isn’t as important as all the other things we need to manage and all the other people who need us.

I know how you feel. Three of my kids are on the puberty roller coaster right now, and it seems like I can’t get a handle on what they need anymore. I thought I had it down – and then their needs changed. The challenges in raising them in this online world are different and often very scary. Navigating the hormones and emotions and threat of online pornography and the social media dangers and guiding their very impressionable young minds is a daunting task. Knowing I have to prepare them for this world we live in and wanting to protect them from it at the same time is a balancing act I don’t think I’m doing very well. Add that now they actually have opinions and sometimes they don’t want to share them because they are afraid they’ll disappoint us or get in trouble and now we have to navigate secrets and hiding. I’ve been hearing that voice that says it’s too much to raise these kids and be a physician and have my coaching practice and keep a strong marriage going. I’ve been looking around to see if there’s an opt-out button on any parts of my life – can I unsubscribe to any of this?

Yes, you can. But it’s not what you think and it won’t do what you want. Sometimes you need to constrain and stop doing optional activities so you can focus on a crisis in your life. Pray and listen and you’ll know what you should do. But what happens most often is that life happens and we give up on taking care of ourselves. We think that by letting our own growth and care go that we’ll have more time and space to manage everything else. But then we delay losing that 20 pounds or getting that dream business off the ground and our mindfulness work doesn’t become part of our life and life keeps happening anyway.

You know, from New Year’s Day to January 6th, we thought we had a fresh start. We let the Capitol invasion make us think that the world was out of control and we needed to give up the “optional” and focus on the “essential” We were in a dangerous world and we’d better get safe. But here’s the reality: the world before January 6th was no different than the one after. It’s the same world. We just see some of it more clearly than we did before. It may be that we’d like this world to be better (I do!), but it’s not true that things are worse than they’ve been or everything is going downhill. If anything, the events of the past four years have revealed the truth of the world we live in, which gives us a chance to decide how we want to live in it, what part we want to take to change it. Giving up on our growth won’t make the world better, only less, because we aren’t becoming what we’re called to be in it. Losing your weight alone might not make you into the person you are designed to become. But not having the noise in your head around wanting to lose weight will give you space to grow into that person. If weight isn’t your struggle, the same goes for you. You have something getting in your way and putting it off until life “settles down” is how you make sure you never deal with your obstacle.

The world is what it is. We get to choose how we want to show up in it. So let’s get going on our plans and dreams and become who we are here to be!

If you’re still here, you may be one of many wondering how to do what I’m encouraging you to do. It may seem impossible to do what you are already doing and get moving on your plans too. It’s not. You might not know this, but you’re the only thing in your way. And that’s great news because you can change you. But you don’t have to do it alone! Set up a free mini-session with me by emailing drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and I’ll get you the boost you need to get started!

Here’s your video help for the week!

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