Being An Effective Caregiver While Working And Pursuing Your Passions

Juggling everything can be hard now that you are a caregiver.  Before caregiving you were working on those personal and professional goals and now this caregiver life has complicated things.  In today’s episode, I want to talk about you, the working caregiver or the business owner caregiver or the student caregiver.  

Many of my clients and caregiver friends are just that.  They are working their professional career and now their parent needs them.   They are in their master degree program and their spouse is fighting cancer.  They are an entrepreneur and juggling time to take care of their sibling.  

Whether you choose to continue your goals or passions while caregiving or you financially can’t quit your job because you need the insurance, I want to talk in this podcast about managing it all with less stress.  Figuring out ways to reduce burnout and enjoy the journey.  

I’m here in this episode today to say, you can be an effective caregiver, work your job/career, run your business and be your best self.  You can pursue your goals and passion during this season if that’s what you want or have to do.  Life doesn’t have to stop.  You can manage this caregiving life.  

There are many caregivers that do this everyday.   The successful caregiver focuses on 

• what they want,  
• what they need 
• a caregiver plan 

When you become a caregiver manager vs a go-all-in caregiver, you find that you can find joy in the challenges.  

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Juggling everything can be hard now that you're a caregiver. Before caregiving, you were working on those personal and professional goals, and now this caregiver life has complicated things. Well, in today's episode, I want to talk about you. You the working caregiver, you the business owner caregiver, you the student caregiver. Many of my clients and caregiver friends are just that. They are working their professional career and now their parent needs help. They are in their master's degree program and now their spouse is fighting cancer. They are that business owner, that entrepreneur and juggling time to take care of their loved one. Whether you choose to continue your goals and your passion while caregiving, or you financially can't quit your job because you need the health insurance, I want to talk in this podcast about managing it all. Managing it all with less stress, figuring out ways to reduce burnout and enjoy the journey. It was a little bit of everything for me. And I laugh about it now, but I it truly was a little bit of everything for me. Back in 2017, I was working in a Fortune 100 company in the HR department, human resources department, as a senior onboarding consultant. I was managing the enterprise day one orientation experience for new hires coming into the company. I managed nine locations across the company, meaning that on Mondays, when new hires started, in those nine locations, the new hires would come into the facility and we would have an in-person event training them about their first day. I had facilitators at each of those locations and support people. I would travel about maybe once a month to various locations for support, for quality assurances, and just to check in. I was also involved in a major project in 2017, looking at opportunities to cut cost and deliver an online experience, especially for people that weren't in those nine locations, and so that they wouldn't have to travel and they could log right into their computer. Thinking now back at it, oh my gosh, it was one of the things that was so important because 2020 we couldn't travel. And I was super passionate and was excelling in the next steps of my career. I was the tenured associate and was well respected, and most importantly, had a great boss. All things were almost ideal at that time. But then the double whammy happened. I don't know why I picked double whammy, but the double whammy happened that my dad was diagnosed with stage four uh pancreatic cancer. And then two weeks later in fall of 2017, my spouse was diagnosed with stage four uh non-Hodgkins lymphoma. My presence at that time was needed at the doctor's appointments, doing all the behind-the-scenes work with health insurance and all of the advocating and asking questions and finding resources and most importantly the care. I couldn't continue to work my 50 hours a week like I did in the past. I had so many mixed emotions about that. I wanted to be in both places at once, but realized I didn't have the capacity personally to do it. Believe me, I tried. And I look back now and say, oh my gosh, Kathy, what were you thinking? Well, I would work early mornings and get up super early, 5 a.m. probably, and and work at my job and get onto the computer. Then I would take my loved ones or meet my mom and my dad, whatever it would be, at doctor's appointments and therapy and labs, and then get home later in the day. And then at night, I would work my job again at night. I even would bring my laptop along and log in when dad or my husband were getting their chemotherapy. Right now I think about it, and it was not the moment I'm proud of. Oh my gosh, just to think about it. I I would hide myself into a corner while they were doing their chemotherapy. On weekends, I would jam in all the extra work, the cleaning, the lawn, the outside work, bills, grocery shopping and meal prepping and more. I also ran a direct sales business in 2017 and committed to working on that for my lunch hours when I didn't wasn't at appointments, or I would cram it in when my loved one, when dad was sleeping or my husband was sleeping. And then I would commit Sunday evenings as long as it would take to finishing up with all of my orders and my calls and so on. I filled every ounce of my time. And at first, I thought, huh, I had this thing down. I know you can relate if you are a high achiever or you're disciplined or you're trying to figure it out. But as you know, and as you can tell within just a few weeks, I really felt it. I was exhausted and I could feel the effects. So I reached out for quick fixes because I became more and more fatigued and couldn't focus and was losing my energy and motivation to do things. Guess what my quick fixes were? They were so bad. But again, when you were in that situation, you're looking for quick fixes. And so I grabbed caffeine, as much coffee and soda, and even energy pills, anything, all natural ones, but I still reached for them. I would look to say, could I take a power nap somewhere? I would go ahead and get Dennis all situated into his chemotherapy chair and saying, Hey, I'm just gonna go out and take a quick power nap, and I would see if I could get a power nap in. Uh I reached for sugars, thinking, okay, yeah, um, you know, something sugar or chocolate to to boost my energy. Then I realized, well, that wasn't working. Maybe I need to go ahead and just maybe every other week right now, take a half a day off or a full day off so I could catch up on things. And and I would take that PTO or that paid time off so I could catch up with doctor, doctor in insurance calls, work around the house and do errands, that sort of thing, because I everything just kept piling up, piling up, piling up. That worked for a few more weeks. And so I got through those first initial month or so, then I real, then reality kicked in, and the overwhelm struck with an array of symptoms and emotions, as you can imagine. I was so tired. But then when I would try to sleep at night, I was overtired and I couldn't sleep. I would cry. My I would be find myself laying in bed, crying, crying and thinking of how stuck I was. I felt like I, since I traveled so much, I felt like I was in the airport, getting off one plane and transferring to another plane, and I had within minutes to get from one end of the airport to the other, and they were saying the gate was closing. That's kind of how I felt. It's a sickening feeling when you know what has to be done and you can see it, but you don't have the energy, you don't have the focus, you don't have the time, and you lose your motivation. Then when I did fall asleep, and probably I couldn't fall asleep because I was drinking too much caffeine as well, just a sidebar. But when I did fall asleep, usually it was 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. And my alarm would go off at 5. Sometimes I'd snooze it till 6 or 6:30. And I would get up and just not be myself. I would continue my crying. Morning, some mornings I would cry in the shower because I was just so exhausted. And you know how that feeling is when you're so tired, you feel sick, or everything was just a big blur because I couldn't function. I was forgetting things. I I just was a zombie. When you don't sleep at night and the stress gets the most of you, you start missing things and you're not at your best. And so, as you can see, my performance then at work started suffering, or you could kind of feel it. My work suffered because at one point you were just looking for just a fast and easy way of doing something. I couldn't get into anything, and so I wasn't doing my best. I became angry and resentful at my loved ones with my loved ones because I was getting mad at the whole situation because nothing was working out. I snapped at my husband. I didn't want to be in situations, and you probably could see my body language and my facial uh language. I was rude to the doctors and the team of uh professionals that was helping my my loved ones. I became this unhealthy, unhappy Kathy. I was not myself. So some of you may have heard my park story, and that's at that point, is when the whole reality came in. And I I've shared my my story on different webinars that I've done, free webinars that I've done. Um, I've shared it on the podcast, I've shared it as a guest speaker in some of my um my talks that I do, whether they're on stage physically or they're um on other people's podcasts. But I'll give you a version of this so you kind of understand what what is Kathy's perk story. Well, it it came to the point where I realized I was unhealthy and unhappy and just things were just I don't know what it is, so heavy that I couldn't even hold up anymore. And so I made the decision one morning that I called in sick. I called my boss and said, I can't come in today. I'm just emotionally drained, physically drained, and I need to figure out what's going on with me. And we've had those uh conversations, but um, I I had to go ahead and take the time for me. And so instead of driving into work that day, I drove to my local park and the park that I've gone for walks and runs in, and I just drove into a parking lot and it was it was just a beautiful sunny day, but inside the car, I was just drove into the spot and I just balled my eyes out and had to sit with myself and just listen and pay attention to what I was feeling, thinking, and all of the things that were happening to me. And I had a notepad there and I journaled everything out, and I finally got it off my chest and out of my system. And then eventually I got out of the car and went and sat on a park bench and really said, okay, now I know what the situation is and what I'm feeling. How can I fix it? And that was my turning point where I feel felt that I knew that I was over my head. I came to the reality of it, and now I had to do something about it. I'm here today in this episode to say you can be an effective caregiver. You can work your job or your career, you can run your business and be your best self in this caregiver space. You can pursue your goals and your passion during the season if that's what you really want and have to do. Life doesn't have to stop as a caregiver. You just have to go ahead and figure it out. You can manage this caregiving life. Like I said earlier, if you have to work or if you want to do what you love, all it takes is to figure out how to be a manager and have that mindset and then take action of the situation. There are many, many caregivers that do this every day. The successful caregiver focuses on three things, and they focus on what they want, what they need, and they implement a caregiver plan. Well, hey, my friend, I wanted to take a moment and tell you that registration is now open for the caregiver cup circle. You might be asking, what is the caregiver cup circle? Well, it's a community of women that gather together and we share our experiences, our struggles. We offer support, we lift each other up. You'll be able to bring your struggles and your challenges and connect with other caregivers and leave each meeting feeling like you are not alone and you have hope. This is a monthly membership where you can meet or where you'll meet twice per month. And we use the Zoom technology. And in February, we start already on the Thursday, February 9th. In addition to the two meetings that we do in Zoom, I also offer a caregiver workshop for the members and I send you an invitation. Each month we tackle a caregiver topic and find new ways, skills, and techniques to release this caregiver stress and burnout that we eventually get. Being a caregiver can feel so lonely, so stressful, and downright overwhelming. And that's why finding a community of women that understand and have similar experiences was one of the best things I did and the first decisions I made as a caregiver. And you know what? I want that for you. So you can go out to KathyLvan.com forward slash caregiver circle and join us in February. The link will be in the show notes. You'll be so glad you did. And so let's jump back into the episode. So we I want to talk about these three what you want, what you need, and then the plan that you want to take action on. And if you can do that, then you can start working towards a better self. Now, have you ever sat and thought about what you want as a caregiver? What you want in your life right now, what you want. After I sat in my car that day in the park listening or listening, writing down all of my struggles and emotions, I realized that I could figure this out, but it took me days to really let it all sink in and really days for me to continue to ask myself what I want. And once I could figure out what I wanted, then I knew that it wasn't going to be this quick fix, this happy pill. It was going to take work and it will find its way, months to find the best mix that worked for me. So these are just some of the things that I wrote down, and I want you to just really use this as a guide. But I want you, if you truly want to go ahead and be an effective caregiver, especially if you're working, pursuing your career, going back to school, doing multiple things, you can think about this as the first step to being an effective caregiver. What do you want? The very first thing that I wanted, and it was really hard at first to admit this, but I had to take time for myself. I couldn't go ahead and continue to take care of everybody else. I wanted to make sure that I got enough sleep. I want to have time to go for my walks because they re-energize me. I like to continue to learn and finding 10 minutes away to go ahead and read a self-help book. I wanted downtime where I could turn off everything and just binge watch Netflix for an hour and just zone out. I know I wanted that. That meant I had to dig into my overwhelm. I had to dig into my schedule and everything I was doing and figuring out what I needed, what had to stay on my schedule, what needed to be added to my schedule, what needed to be deleted from my schedule, what things could I delegate and let go of? One of the things I had to ask myself is who could help me? I couldn't do it all. I couldn't. I had to be honest with myself because I was doing it all, but I couldn't sustain it. Where could I make better use of my time and my talents and my passions? This was very hard for me too. You know, could did I need to do all the cooking? What other options do I have? Did I need to have an immaculate clean house all the time? Or could I delegate it? Or could I go ahead and just do surface cleaning for a while? Did I need to do the lawn work or could I go ahead and and and ask somebody to help me with that or hire somebody? Or could I get some help with anything that I had? So I had to list all that out. I wanted to be a good advocate. I know that's what I wanted to do. But does that mean I have to be at every appointment, every therapy session, every lab, every vaccination? I had to lean on family and friends. I think about my mom. My mom had to go for dental cleaning, she had to go for vision appointments, you know, all of those things, you know. So did I have to be there for everything? I had to prioritize when I need to be there, especially when she was diagnosed with lung cancer. I needed to be there. Or where could I delegate things? My mom was just going in for an eye exam. My brother could do that, or a hearing test. You know, where where could I go ahead and delegate? This may require you to get an outside perspective too, because when you're so close to it, it's hard to see it. It's hard to let it go. It's hard to go ahead and say, I need to let it go. When somebody looks at it from an outside in and challenges you, that's the important piece. Um, that's what I do with a lot of my clients. We map out what their plan is, and I just ask the good questions. You make the decision, but you have to go ahead and be comfortable with that and realistic and asking yourself, can you sustain all of this? You have to pursue one one other thing that I wanted to wanted to um think about what you want or what I wanted is I wanted to pursue my passions and my goals. I didn't want to give those up. I was willing to um, I'm trying to think about um minimize it for a while or make the window a little bit smaller, but I wasn't able, I wasn't willing to give up on my passions and goals. And that's at that point, then I talked with a coach. I talked with a business coach and said, okay, here's my situation. I went in and said, I think I need to quit. I think I need to quit this because I don't have time and this is what's happening. And she asked why. And I gave her, and I'm quoting here, my canned responses. And I think these are pretty much yours. I don't have any time. My loved one needs me. And what will everyone think if I go ahead and start up a business or start my podcast or whatever it would be? And then she asked me, How would I feel if If I quit though and I didn't pursue my passions anymore, oh my gosh, I would not have any purpose anymore. I would feel like I'm dying inside. And she said, would you be be um I'm writing down my notes here? Would you be content with quitting? She asked me that next. And I said, No. And only you can answer these questions. If you have a passion and you have a goal, are you willing to stop it? Are you willing to work on just part of it? Or do you really need to go all in? Only you can answer that. Then she asked me, How much time would you need right now to pursue it and feel good about it? And that was a really good ask because I wasn't willing to go ahead and shut it down or quit. So I said, Well, I don't really know, but I'm gonna just pick four hours a week and make the most of my time. And you know what? That worked. That worked. I actually in 2018, in the midst of all of this, I started a subscription box business because I wanted to learn more about marketing. I wanted to go ahead and do a product sale. I wanted to do it all. And, you know, long story short, it was very successful for about a year and a half, but the pandemic came and I realized that I couldn't sustain and it wasn't profitable. And so I just flipped my my business and started my podcast. And I need that because I am truly a business owner and I needed, I need to continue to pursue my passions and goals, and that's what I want. I also wanted at that time to work my job. I needed the to work the job from a health insurance perspective. I liked what I did. I was gaining more skill sets and and and feeling just total content, but I wanted to work my job without the guilt from inside the job because I couldn't work 50 hours anymore, and on the caregiving side because I had to work. And I wanted to work my job without guilt and to the best of my ability in this time. I had to determine how to work smarter, how to work during this caregiving time. So I made, I made an you know, scheduled some time with my my boss, my leader, and said, this is the situation, this is how I'm feeling. I can't sustain this much. I I have to find a better balance for a lack of a term. I had to talk with my team members. I had to decide what work I was going to be committed to and what work I was going to go ahead and take off my plate. I also had to talk with my loved one to say I'm going to be working. I actually lessened my load and picked the pieces that I felt were my strengths and my talents and really did that uh for quite some time. All in all, I wanted to make the best of this new normal with being with being my better self. I need, I needed to be healthy. I needed to make changes that I could control and know that it is important to know what you want. And so I want to challenge you to think about what do you really want during this time? I just skim the surface. Maybe you want to go ahead and you know have the socialization. Maybe you want to go ahead and continue to pursue your hobbies or you still want to travel. Nothing's off the plate. You have to just figure out how you can make that happen for yourself. And that's the important thing. Now, next is remember, I said what you want. Now it's what you need in this caregiver life. What you need. And need means the the pieces that will keep you together. You need this from a health perspective, from a physical health, a mental health, a spiritual spell self, a socialization self. I know right now you think about what your loved one needs, and that's true compassion. That is truly compassion. But you personally need these things to be healthy, to be your best self, to be happy, to feel purposeful and fulfilled. And so these can kind of overlap. That's that's important because I think the purpose for me was not so much what fills in what category, but as long as I was kind of making sure I thought about the whole picture. You could probably put it all into one sentence and and do it all. But what I thought about is I needed to think about myself first. What do you need to be your best self? What do you need to stay healthy? What do you need to go ahead and get up in the morning? Right away, the basics are the simple answer, but why are they the hardest for us to achieve? Because we love our loved ones and because women tend to go ahead and put themselves last. And so I needed to think about what self-care I needed to do for myself. You need to think about what things are you going to do to move your body, to fuel your body, to hydrate your body, to feed your mind, to go ahead and keep your energy up. Those are the self-care things. And you have to think about how that self-love will go ahead and make you feel better, make you think better about yourself. And so, I mean, that's a whole nother episode. We will definitely touch base on, and I've touched on this a lot in other podcasts. Another thing that I thought I needed, and what you need to think about, is what do you need to feel good about yourself? We talked about that and what you want, but be realistic. What is that? Are you an introvert or are you an extrovert? Do you need people or do you need to be alone? Do you do you need to go and work your job because that is structure and it lights you up? Do you need to go ahead and pursue a passion and keep your brain and everything exciting because if you shut it down, that depression and sadness and loneliness kicks in? Do you need social interaction and what type of social interaction? Do you need to be working on a hobby or something to keep your mind off of the challenges? Do you need to do certain tasks and caregiving to make you feel good? You know, what pick those things and especially think about what things don't light you up. For example, my mom, she um she all of her life, she was always the cleaning person. She had a cleaning business where she cleaned homes, but she couldn't hire people to do it. She felt alive when she was actually cleaning and cleaning homes and interacting with those families and making sure that they had this beautiful clean home when they came to home to that smelled good, that was organized, that sort of thing. For me, I had to think about what I need. I love speaking, I love learning, I love continuing to push myself to learn and pursue new goals and passions. When I stop that, I don't feel like Kathy anymore. And so, what do I need? I'm more of an introvert, so I need my downtime. I don't like a lot of people where I can go ahead and speak on stage and go to events, but it drains me really, really fast. And so knowing what that is. And so when I when Dennis would be in his stem cell transplant process, there were people all over the place and nurses coming in and doctors talking, and um, you know, waiting in line and sitting in waiting rooms, that would exhaust me. And so I needed downtime. And so knowing what you need will give you a really good perspective. Um, you also need to think about you need the best care for your loved one, right? When I got beyond thinking I was the only one, I could think about a team for my loved one. That's when it was the tipping point for me, and that helped me think. Think about what that care or what they need from a care perspective and what it looks like, and who you want to have on your team. Now, right away, you think about external resources and money. Don't think about that just yet. Think about though all of the options. You are the manager of the care. Your team can be family, it can be friends, it can be neighbors, it can be volunteers, it can be services, it can be the doctors, the nurse navigator, the teams, and more. So if you look around, you already started a team because you're going to the doctor, you're going to the you're meeting with the nurses, you're, you know, you're you probably have a case manager for your loved one. You may have neighbors or friends and family helping. They're your team already. You just have to get them, assign them a job internally for yourself. The, for example, could your family be chauffeurs and bring your loved one to appointments? Or could they help with the errands picking up things for you? You think about where their talents and skills are. Could they could you assign them to dinner with your loved one one night a week so that you could go ahead and take advantage of your passions and your goals? Uh, I think about my girlfriend Julie. When I was in Milwaukee, um, which is about two hours away from my home, and Dennis was in having a stem cell transplant. I had friends that would check in on my mom. I had friends like Julie that would walk my dog. So those little things were teams of people that could help. Think about volunteer opportunities. Maybe there's uh an organization that delivers food, or there is uh volunteers that um go ahead and can help with your loved ones by making a delivery for you. Um thinking about outside of the box, thinking about different services. I know for my mom, there was in her senior apartment, there was a, and I don't know what the name of the volunteer is, but they would actually on Tuesdays, they would bus the seniors over to Walmart or to the grocery store, and they could go ahead and do their shopping, drive them there, pick them up, and they would be all set. Um, maybe there's surface serve services where a certified nursing assistant can come into the home and help with something and you know, checking out all of the different types of services. The doctor's team you have. Do you have a social worker? Do you have a hospice team? Do you have a nurse navigator? I know one of my team members that I used right away was the financial support in the hospital to say, okay, what are all my financial options? Because I know this is going to be pretty intense as far as the cost and that sort of thing. I also collected neighbors' phone numbers because if I was running late or I didn't hear from my mom, or the neighbor next door helped my husband and I with the with the shoveling uh or the snow blowing in the winter months, I could reach out to them and ask them if they would wouldn't mind helping, or they could go ahead and do spot check-ins for me. Also, your team doesn't have to be physical people, it could be automations as well. Uh, and you know, maybe it's the your bills are automated, or you can order groceries online, or you can see them see your loved ones' records or their summary of their visit that you didn't weren't at, but you can see their blood pressure and their lab results and all that kind of stuff. So the sky's the limit when you think about how I can build a team. You think about the challenge and then you brainstorm the options. Now, I want to do just a visual activity right now. And if you're driving, obviously you can't close your eyes. But if you are sitting somewhere and you can close your eyes right now, do this. Or maybe you can just visualize it now, or tonight when you go to bed, do this before you go to bed. Vision what the most ideal worker working caregiver looks like, what you look like in your busy life right now. I want you to close your eyes if you can. I want you to think about are you there for your loved one? And what does it look like? You are there for your loved one. Once you figure this out, what would that ideal situation look like? But you are also there for yourself. So picture your healthy self. Picture your loved one being taken care of. Picture yourself now. You are connecting with your team and you have the help. You have the help, you have it covered, you're staying connected. You are very lucky to have this team of people. Your loved one accepts and sees you at your best. You have had conversations to say that, and your loved one is actually enjoying different things happening and enjoying the variety that you've created. Now I want you to vision yourself being so proud of yourself, even during this hard, even during the hard days and the challenges. You are growing, you are creating a better life for yourself. So I want you to kind of keep thinking about that because that this is kind of like a manifesting activity where you're continuing to look at things and thinking about how you can go ahead and make it better and make it better and make it better. And it's one challenge at a time, inviting in one team member at a time. I want you to celebrate each and every growth that you make, each and every step that you make. Celebrate that you feel totally uncomfortable letting things go and letting in help. I want you to celebrate that because you are growing. Celebrate that you know that you can't do it all. Celebrate that you realize that. Celebrate that you are making choices that are needed for you. Celebrate it. And celebrate that you are making choices for your loved one as well. It's going to be hard, but it's something that needs to be done. It needs to be done. And keep visualizing yourself as your best caregiver self with all of these people that you're just grateful for, that they're kind of all helping you through this journey. Yeah, there's going to be people that you're going to think, oh, I could just do it better myself. But no, people want to help. Your family and your friends are willing to help. And when you hear somebody say, just let me know if there's anything that I can do, you're going to say, hmm, I'm going to take you up on that offer because I have a lot on my plate and I know mom loves you, or I know dad loves you, or I know my spouse really would appreciate seeing you and visiting you. It can be something as simple as asking a friend to say, Hey, do you want to come over and play cribbage with my loved one for a little bit? They need the social interaction. I need to go ahead and get a few things done. And I know the company would do me good. That's help. You can continue to do that. Now, the biggest mistake, and if you haven't opened your eyes yet, you definitely want to, but the biggest mistake I see many caregivers make is that they try to do it all, right? High achievers, if you're a high achiever like I am, high achievers think in their brain that they can do it all. They figure it out. I was tracking and figuring it all out. And if they don't do it all, it's a bad thing, right? They feel guilt and ashamed that they can't do it all. And sometimes your loved one makes you feel that way as well. But I want to tell you, when you feel the guilt and you feel the shame, I want you to tell yourself, BS. That's a bunch of BS. That's untrue. Do you want to become a caregiver statistic? I know you don't want to. And I'm just going to repeat just a few of these that I found the the online, and they are from reputable organizations like um the uh the uh caregiver societies, the oh, I can't think of the name. What is the one that um elderly people follow? Oh my gosh, I I just lost it, but I'll I'll remember as we get through here. But 70% of caregivers have symptoms of depression. You want to be that caregiver statistic? Because depression will continue to be worse and worse if that's all you do and all you're staying. 70% of caregivers experience isolation. And these are from AARP, by the way. I couldn't think of the initials. 32% of caregivers have suicidal thoughts because they're over their head. 11% of women caregivers reported stroke or coronary heart disease. I could go on and on and on. I know you don't want to become a statistic. I know that you want to find, you want to find a, for lack of a term, balance. You want to find a healthy way to be an effective caregiver. And especially if you want or have to be a working caregiver. I'm not saying my solution is the one all and all. I am not a therapist. I am not a doctor. I am not a licensed uh person at all. I'm saying this from my true experience. You can't do it all. But I know my I'm saying my solution is not the one-all and all. But when you take control of your caregiver life and you know what you need and what you want, your art, your odds are much better. When you become a caregiver manager, a manager of your loved one's care versus a go-all-in caregiver, you find that you can find joy even in the challenging times. You can continue to have passions and goals. So adopt that manager mindset that you are the manager of everything. A manager doesn't do everything. They see that it's possible, but they see it's possible with a team of people. CEOs, if you think about a successful CEO of a company, they put themselves first because they know how important their role is. Then they find Focus on their role and manage their team. They have people managing the responsibilities. They run the, they make the hard decisions, they look at the statistics, they audit, they whatever they do. A manager plans, a manager prioritizes and it prioritizes, and a manager makes the decisions. They don't do it all. Now, you can be a working manager and do bits and pieces of it, but knowing that you have to manage the rest. Now, before I end today's episode, which I think hopefully you find this really, really good, I want to tell you it doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't. When I work with my clients and in the caregiver cup circle, that community of people that meet once are in this monthly membership that I have, I would encourage them to start small. And when I work with a client, we kind of talk about everything. We we get all the challenges and everything out on the plate. And then we talk about what are the possibilities and we start small because really we want that satisfaction of something working. I call this the low-hanging fruit and get a few wins under your belt or in your head first that will keep you motivated, that you kind of see some progress. Uh, one of the things that I did right away with my mom is we started a wall calendar for her to visually see. And what we did is we put all of her appointments on the calendar, everything from her hair appointments, her dental appointments. She needed to go to the grocery store, she needed to pick up her pharmacy, whatever it was on the calendar. And then each and every Sunday, I would the Sunday, and then we would map out the the following week or the first two weeks, and I would say, okay, yeah, let's go ahead and see what what availability the family has. Can John, my brother, take her to appointments? Are there family or friends that can help? And we would go ahead and do all of those things, and then I would take the picture of it. I kept it really simple. Take the picture of the calendar, and I would just monitor it and making sure I said to each and every like John and other family members and friends, just text me the day before and just confirm that you're taking mom and everything's all set. And eventually my mom did that. She would see that on the calendar, you know, Colleen would do this and John would do this, and the neighbors, there was the neighbors would go to the grocery store with her, whatever. And then that was motivating because that was less off the plate, and I would just be able to go ahead and follow up. And then once you have like the the first few wins done, then you can start working on your list one at a time without overwhelm. The worst thing you want to do is have too much overwhelm. So to end today, I want you to tell you, I want to tell you how proud I am of you. I am so proud of you for listening to this podcast, for hopefully recognizing that you need to go ahead and make some changes and choices to go ahead and make sure that you can sustain this. If you stayed till the end, I know you want to be a better caregiver. Kudos, you want to be a better caregiver. And we should shout that from the rooftops. You want to feel good about yourself, and it's possible, my friend. Now, you can if you need the extra push, the extra support, you want to bounce ideas off of it. There's two ways that I can help. And one of them was the podcast, and there's two more ways here. If you're looking for a community to help you think through this, to cheer you on, the Caregiver Cup Circle is opening back up. Registration is now opening for the February uh membership. And so you can go out to Katylvan.com, Caregiver Circle, and go ahead and check everything out and click the join button. We would love to have you in that. And you know, we can go ahead and work on that. I check in with everybody before the circle meetings happen and saying, Do you have a topic that you want to talk to? Where are you at in your journey? If you want to go ahead and move faster than just twice a month and meeting twice a month, I can help you map out a plan. I we will sit down and figure out a plan. I offer caregiving coaching. The first one is a free 30-minute chat to see if it truly is something you want to do. And so I invite you to go ahead and really just kind of look at everything. I will put the um link to the to my calendar in the chat. Otherwise, go to KathyLvan.com forward slash coaching to kind of look at my page because I think if you want to go ahead and do that, for some people, it only just takes two or three um sessions, one-hour sessions with me. So for some, we meet more than that. For some, we meet as little as that. So I would love to be your coach and welcome you as my client if that's what you want to work on fast and start seeing results. Because remember, my friend, you don't want to get so deep that it's harder to dig out. And if it's hard right now to dig out, I'm here for you. We will figure it out together. So to end the day, I want you to have a great rest of your day and know you can be your best caregiver self. And it happens when you go ahead and really focus on you, figuring out where the challenges are, figuring out what the possibilities are, and most importantly, continuing to fill your cup each day. Bye for now, my friend. We'll talk to you soon.