Caregiver Reflection Practice As We Move Into 2024

Discover the resilience that lies within you as we journey together through a reflection practice. Get my free downloadable reflection practice guide, where we'll navigate a personal reflection practice of 2023 that goes beyond mere introspection, empowering you to embrace the gratitude and joy each year brings.

Ready to celebrate your wins and set the stage for an even more fulfilling year ahead? This episode promises to be your sanctuary for positive reflection as well ask recognizing the challenges and struggles. I share my own moments of pride, such as marking a retirement date, maintaining podcast consistency and juggling all the challenges to demonstrate the transformative power of positivity. It's about taking a moment to journal your triumphs, cherish the memories, and count your blessings. I'll prompt you with thought-provoking questions that will help you recognize personal growth and the profound impact of carving out time for oneself amidst the demands of caregiving.

As you set your sights on 2024, let's explore practical strategies for simplifying life and embracing self-improvement. From decluttering to scheduling, we'll discuss ways to reduce stress and enrich your caregiving journey with new hobbies and connections. It's not about grand resolutions but making manageable changes that count. Learn how to stay emotionally tuned and become a problem-solving maestro by committing to regular reflection, and utilize the reflection practice guide from my website to support you every step of the way. Let's turn the page together, and prepare for a year of simple shifts, fulfillment, and well-being.

Get my free resource:  17 SHIFTS TO TAKE CONTROL OF CAREGIVER STRESS that will take you to the best version of yourself.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Well, hello, my friend, and welcome to another episode of the Caregiver Cup podcast. It's Kathy here. Can you believe that this is the last episode of 2023? It's gone by so fast.

Speaker 1: 0:16

As this year comes to an end, it's a great time to reflect on 2023 and really look ahead to 2024. You may ask why should I do this? Especially if you're going through this caregiving hard season or hard time and you know you have you're going to have to rehash the challenging times, but I think you will be surprised at all. You've done all. You've overcame all the good, your strengths, your courage and your resilience. I also believe you will see patterns, good and bad. You will see holes of joy, holes of sadness, maybe even a bit of laughter in there as well, but you might also see the need to add time for yourself, the lack of rest that you've had and fun things, maybe, that you've done or maybe that you didn't do. As I'm closing out the year, I am definitely seeing this for myself. I'm proud of some things that I've accomplished or some things I've done, and I can see opportunities of things that I need to change.

Speaker 1: 1:35

So in this episode, my friend, I want to talk through and walk through the practice with you. I call this a reflection practice in hopes that you can take 30 minutes to do this sometime this week. This episode will walk you through my practice, why it's important, and I have a free download of this practice for you, so you won't even have to take notes during this episode. You can go out to kathyelvancom forward slash reflection to get this guide or worksheet that you you can just go through and look at the questions or print it off, whatever type of person you are, so that you can spend some time doing this practice. And if it becomes too much for you, I'm in soon as, as soon as I get through a little bit more. I'm going to talk about how maybe you can split this in half as well, because you might be even saying I don't even have 30 minutes to myself. Well, I'm going to talk about how you could kind of chunk that up and make it different.

Speaker 1: 2:42

But before we jump into how to do it and why to do it, I wanted to just spend a few minutes to really give you a huge shout out and a huge thank you for following this podcast, for subscribing to this podcast, because the caregiver cup podcast has grown in 2023, thanks to you, and I just want to share a few stats, and I've said this before this is a homegrown podcast. I am the, the person that does it all. I don't have a team yet. I don't have staff, I don't have editors behind the scenes. I do the creation, the editing, the publishing and the promoting all alone, without any help or without any monetization or sponsors, which that's going to be one of my goals for 2024. But this is homegrown. But I wanted to share some of those because I do have what's called a podcast host or a platform that I utilize, and they share the, they shared my 2023 year in review, and they're the ones who take my information that I record and then they disperse that and I pay just a really small fee and they disperse it out to Apple and Spotify and the world. And I have not missed a week in the caregiver cup podcast, and so I'm celebrating that. I had 52 episodes every Tuesday. The minutes that I recorded were well over 2250 minutes. I'm not sure how long this one's going to be. That's why I said over. I think when I got to the thing it said, I was at 2235 or something. Well, I know I'll be over 2250 minutes of recording or listening time for you.

Speaker 1: 4:42

This podcast has touched 38 countries, which blows me away. The United States, canada, the UK, new Zealand and Cyprus are the top five countries of those 38. So I'm really excited that it's just not a local podcast. It goes out to the world. And and I even asked the the site or the survey what were my top five listening places? If I got really granular and they were all in the United States, but my top listening audience was in Phoenix, arizona, followed by New York, new York, followed by Needham, massachusetts and Denver, colorado. So, which is really kind of fun to know that, those were my places. I've been to Phoenix, I've never been to New York, I've been to Massachusetts, but never to Needham and I've never been to Denver, colorado. So thank you If you're in one of those cities for listening and if you're not, hey, give me a shout out and tell you. Tell me what city you're listening from, because I can go ahead and look at all the cities, but I'd love to be able to put a name with a city and then I have the top five episodes that were the most popular and I will put these in the show notes so that if you have not listened to these you can go back and listening to those.

Speaker 1: 6:16

But my first one is episode 144, called Relationship Changes with your Loved One as a Caregiver, and I talked about how hard it is and how much your relationship changes when you are a caregiver, because I used a lot of my analogies with my mom and being the daughter thing, our relationships did change in many ways. Number two is episode 156 and how to deal with grief when your loved one is still here and how you grieve your, your loved ones, present state, past state. You grieve your old life and so I talked about that a lot Episode. The third one was episode 183, riding the Waves of Caregiving, chaos and Guilt, and this was a fairly new one. That was back in late October or early November, I can't remember the exact date. And then an oldie one from earlier in the year was episode 151, preparing for the Stem Cell Transplant. I wanted to share my journey where my husband went through a stem cell transplant.

Speaker 1: 7:26

And then the the fifth one that fifth of the top five episodes was episode 159, breaking your Worry Habit Understanding an Overcoming Excessive Worry as a Caregiver, which I thought that one would definitely be in the top five, but it's nice to see because that helps me when I look at this data. It helps me see which ones you want to hear and which ones topics you want to hear. But, as always, you can always, always, always email me at Kathy at KathyLVancom and tell me a topic you want to cover, and that's going to be one of my things in 2024 is I'm going to provide you with more places to go ahead and talk to me about what you resonated with and what things you don't, because one of the disadvantages of having a podcast is not being able to see or hear your audience, because obviously it's. You put your headphones on, you listen to it, you move on to the next one.

Speaker 1: 8:35

Another stat that I am celebrating is the fact that that I got a ranking as a podcast host, and this one warms my heart, because caregiving, first of all, does not have its own category in Apple, in Spotify, in Google, whatever podcast application you listen to, because it's usually like self help, health and education, and then it gets into all like the crime podcast and all that. So it does not have its own space or category. So I have to really decide if my episodes are on health, if they're on education, and so it's kind of vague and it kind of irritates me, but that's just the way it is, and so my podcast, the I use the podcast host of buzz sprout, and it's a service that I have that does all the magical things behind the scenes after I edit it. And, based on their business, I ranked in the top 25% of their entire business or their entire client staff, based on because they looked at my downloads, my minutes and how often I do my podcasts, and so they called me the weekly warrior, and so that helped a lot getting me to the top 25% of recognition in their business or in their buzz sprout space, another place that I ranked. I ranked in the top 10% most popular shows globally out of over 3.1 million podcast ranked by listen score, and so that made me really proud when it comes to my my episodes as well.

Speaker 1: 10:35

So, okay, now let's get back into this reflection practice that I wanted to talk about, because it's it is the perfect time of the year. Most of us are setting resolutions or making changes and want to change and lose weight, or they want to focus on their health, or they want to exercise more, or they want to quit smoking or quit drinking. Instead, for us as caregivers, I want us to do a reflection journaling so that we get a better view of what's happened in 2023. And hopefully then we can go ahead and look at taking small steps to make 2024 a little bit better, and so you can do this reflection journal in one sitting, or you could do it in two, depending on your time. And if you want to do it in two settings, maybe you do reflection of 2023 and one time journaling and then next year in the following day, and that's how I did mine. I did reflection one day and then I journaled that 2024 the following day.

Speaker 1: 11:50

I want you, I want to encourage you, to find some time alone, to do this alone, under uninterrupted time. Maybe you go to the coffee shop and coffee shop and sit alone and do this, or maybe you have a personal office or a bedroom or a place where you can go in and shut the door and saying I'm going to just need some quiet time so that I'm you can take a break, I'm, you can tell you, tell your loved one, I'm going to go into a room and shut the door, so, unless there's a fire, don't interrupt me or something like that, or your loved one is taking a nap, so get creative, more or less trying to find that time. So here's the practice and remember, you can go out to Kathy L van dot com forward slash reflection to get these questions and you don't have to take the notes. And so I call it part one and we're gonna go through four parts here. Part one is to focus on 2023. Positive reflections. I don't want you to go into anything else but positivity right now, and what I did is I gave you four questions that will be able to spark some journaling for you.

Speaker 1: 13:08

Now. Some people like to write, answer each question and write underneath, or some people may want to go ahead and read off for the questions and then just start journaling. So whatever works best for you. But what are your? What are you most proud of, would be one question you want to think about. Think about all your accomplishments, your resilience. What did you do that you're most proud of in 2023. What were they? And they could be big or they could be small. What are you most proud of? And this is usually pretty hard for people to do, but think about it.

Speaker 1: 13:50

The next question is what are your best memories of 2023? Did you have fun doing something? Did you go on an outing? Did you have laughter? Where their milestones? Maybe Celebration of some kind? Maybe there was a baby born or a graduation. Think of your family, your friends, whatever would be. Maybe your loved one had something that you're celebrating as well. Number three question is what are you grateful for? Now, if you've been doing a gratitude journal, this is a fun way for you to pull out all of the years and just skim through it and page through it big and small. What are you grateful for? It could have been you know your advocacy or a doctor that helped you figure things out. It could have been a friend that went ahead and pulled you away and got you to just have a fun day away. I think about something that, like one of my best memories, was bowling with my girlfriend Julie. It was a fun time and we do it once a week and just in the winter months, but it was a fun time.

Speaker 1: 15:08

Another thing in the positive reflections question that I have is what worked for you this year? What really work things that you tried that worked? Was it your persistency? Was it? Were you fearless? Were they? Were they little or small, you worked for it and you are proud of yourself for not giving up and you worked at it and got it done. Maybe it was something as big as your. Maybe you got a degree or you finished a course or you learn the new hobby, whatever it was, and you did that. Maybe it was you took time for self care, or you signed up for that walk and you did a walk, or you changed your schedule, whatever it would be.

Speaker 1: 15:58

I want you to look at these four questions that I just talked about, moving a little bit, because I'm getting my journal book out, wanted to share with you what I did. I want you to focus on all of the things that went well. Now, if there's a question that I didn't ask and you, all of a sudden, you think of something, think of all the positive things that happened to you this year. Now, once you have this all journaled out and thought out, I want you to read these and just have a list of everything and really look at it and focus in on it, because what I wrote on mine here is I wrote some things from a positive ref reflection perspective is I identified my retirement date from my corporate job of 33 years, and it was a positive thing, because this is was a goal that I set. Three years prior to that, that, I wanted to go ahead and be an entrepreneur or full time business owner, but I just had to find the right time. And another one I want I allowed myself to heal. I set up breakfast dates with my siblings, I consistently podcast and got on this mic and talk to you, and so just those were some of the things that I was most proud of.

Speaker 1: 17:24

I have a whole page in my journal that I journaled about all of those positive reflections, and so, going out to that sheet, you're going to see all of the questions what are you most proud of? What are your best memories? What are you grateful for? What works for you this year? And then there's going to be a whole bunch of lines underneath it so that you could go ahead and focus in on that. Now, the whole objective of doing that is I want you to dig deeper. I want you to continue to think about all of those positive things.

Speaker 1: 18:03

Then part two of this 2023 reflection is now. I want you to go to the opposite side. I want you to look at the struggles, the challenges and the things that were hard. And here are some of the questions I have that you can ask yourself and this is my wording here but what's stunk or sucked in this year and really, what was the hard stuff? Just acknowledge it. I don't want you to spend time in the deep water of disappointment, but I want you to reflect on it. Maybe it was a car accident. Maybe it was your loved one's diagnosis. Maybe it was your diagnosis. Maybe it was your loved one's mental health or the lack of health. I just want you to put all the sucky or the stinky stuff there, just get it all out and just saying this was the challenges that I had.

Speaker 1: 19:04

Another question you can ask yourself is what hasn't worked for you in this last year. What didn't work? Be honest with yourself, as if you were the auditor Doing it all. Maybe it was doing it all and it didn't work for you this year and you said you were going to get help, but you chose to do it all. Or maybe you did it all and you tried to go ahead and get people, but it just didn't work. Maybe you are thinking that it didn't work. I wanted to get together with my friend and I couldn't, and now it stinks and that's what I lost. Whatever it is, acknowledge it, move on.

Speaker 1: 19:54

Another question is what were your biggest challenges and struggles? Maybe it's our loved one's health. Maybe it's your loved one's health. Maybe it was home repairs. Maybe it was your lack of setting healthy boundaries, maybe your loved one was failing and they fell, or whatever it would be. Or maybe the biggest challenge was you had to make that hard decision because your loved one was not physically or emotionally able to go ahead and stay alone anymore. Whatever it is, you have to think about that.

Speaker 1: 20:35

Another one that you could ask yourself in this 2023 struggles and challenges is what didn't I do well Holidays? Maybe this year you had great intention, but I didn't do well during the holidays. I was sad, I was emotional, I was stressed. Maybe your people pleasing tendencies took over and you didn't take care of yourself, and you know that now you are feeling it in your body and your mental health. Maybe I didn't take care of my finances well. Whatever it would be, and I don't want you to blame yourself here I just want you to acknowledge the struggles so you can see it, because now, once you have the positives and the struggles documented and journaled. I want you to say this is 2023. This is what it was.

Speaker 1: 23:05

Pause a bit and ask yourself what do you see in this journaling? What do you actually see? What are the patterns that you see in this? Are you seeing that you're constantly giving up on yourself? Is your health constantly getting worse? Over this?

Speaker 1: 23:29

For me, I was seeing patterns of not spending any time in that fun category or doing anything. In the past year, I didn't see Dennis and I doing much at all outside of being homebodies. It was intentional, but now I see that that's not what I want to do in 2024. I also want you to look at what opportunities can you see in there? I don't want you to what is it called? Put a sweep them underneath the rug. There's a disword and I can't think of it up the top of my head, but I don't want you to just wipe it away and saying I can't, I can't, there's no way I can. I want you to just say this is what I observed, because if I was the outside auditor looking at your list, I would say I would ask you questions like how much time did you spend on yourself? Did you take any time off, that kind of stuff, so that we could disclose what opportunities you had, think about what things you need or you need to change or at least work on. I want you to kind of be in that space now that you looked at 2023 and you can really kind of see where you're at. This is just a good reflection of it is, and remember it is what it is you, if this is the cards you were dealt in 2023, this is what happened in 2023. You can't go back in time and change it, but what you have the power to now is you can go ahead and look at it right now.

Speaker 1: 25:17

I'll give you a little bit of an idea of what I did in 2022 with my practice. I journaled about a lot about in 2022, my journaling was about my mood and my energy and I was more sad and angry and resentful and crabby and exhausted and stressed more than I ever was Because, obviously, I was going through the stem cell transplant with Dennis, my mom was lung cancer, was back and then she had enter hospice. I was edgy and had some pretty harsh thoughts about my caregiving and how I didn't want to be a caregiver anymore. I really did. When I went back and looked at my journal and got honest with myself. I realized, after assessing it and reflecting on it, I was not taking time for myself and I was not listening to my emotions enough. I had this thought and I kept saying to myself I was feeling robbed of my time. I felt like caregiving was stealing everything from me and I was losing myself.

Speaker 1: 26:40

And then, when I went into the next part, which we're gonna talk about in just a second, I came up with three to six things that I wanted to focus in on, when I really said I needed to go ahead and identify what I needed to do in 2023. It doesn't mean I fixed it all. It doesn't mean I jumped in in January and flipped the switch. It took me the entire year and I broke them down into baby, baby steps and I came up with my plan in 2024 of I wanted. My whole purpose for 2024 was I wanted to heal. I wanted to go ahead and figure out how to be a better version of myself from a healing and health perspective. That was my focus for this year.

Speaker 1: 27:37

So let me get into part three and part four, which is the 2024 stuff. And so in the part three piece is what part? Three pieces what we're going to go ahead and talk about two questions what do you want to do more of in 2024? And what do you want to do less of in 2024? Who? This took me a bit. This took me a minute to kind of figure out. What do you wanna do more of in 2024? And what do you wanna do less of in 2024? And now it's easy to say I wanna stress less and sleep more. But is that enough? And I want you to really think about it. Take time to journal this out. Don't stop yourself from the dreaming or brainstorming and saying this is never gonna happen, because you wanna get it all out and look at the pipe dream, but then you also wanna look at reality and then you can find things to work on.

Speaker 1: 28:45

As caregivers, we close our mind to thinking outside of the box because we're in this stress and overwhelm state. Well, here's an example I had a client that was taking care of her loved one, her spouse, and there was no way she could ever see her kids, which are outside of her state because her loved one was disabled and needed really 24-hour nursing care, and she kept saying to herself there's no way I can go ahead and see my grandkids. I'm gonna have to keep looking that through Zoom and pictures and talk to them on the phone. And she kept saying that and I kept challenging her saying put it down in your journal. And I want you to really think about what can you do to reach your goal of spending time with your grandkids. It's January. Maybe you can't get to it until you know middle to later in the year, but if you start looking at opportunities you can get to a goal if you try hard enough and fast forward.

Speaker 1: 30:03

She figured out a way to go ahead and fly and visit her grandkids middle of the year for an entire week and she has memories that are priceless and what she did is she kept. She had a serious conversation with her loved one, she started looking at resources and friends and family and neighbors and she started working that and eventually she trusted and was confident enough to go ahead and leave her husband for a week and spend that time with her grandchildren, her daughter and her son-in-law. And it fueled her, it gave her the confidence and from that point on she was able to go ahead and if she could do that, she said I can do anything, and so I don't want you to not say that. So what do you wanna do more of in 2024 and what do you wanna do less of? And it might be negative conversation, whatever it would be, or negative thoughts, I mean, or whatever.

Speaker 1: 31:20

Okay, part four of the final piece here for 2024 is now what can you work on? Just like my client, you want to pick the one thing you are going to work on and Start working towards it, or making the shifts, that one thing that would make an impact for you in 2024. The reason I say one thing is because most of us, even with a new year's resolution, somebody's going to say I want to lose 20 pounds in 2024, right, and? And they go ahead. And in January 1st, they're exercising, they gave up sweets, they gave up fast food, they gave up drinking soda, they gave up you know all of these kinds of things and it's too much. They're going to after a week or two, they're gonna say I can't do all of this instead of taking the baby steps. So let me share mine again.

Speaker 1: 32:24

Last year, it was the year of health in healing for me, and I explained that a little bit about Having those issues in 2022 and I all of those challenges. I Wasn't healthy, I wasn't taking care of myself, I was putting most of my health on hold and I wasn't doing enough and I kept gaining weight and it was extremely fatigue and my emotions and energy were In the gutter, put it that way. So I decided to to one of the things. I looked at everything that I possibly could do and I did them in baby steps, maybe a month at a time. I took one thing and then I did another thing and I then I did another thing. I didn't do it all at once. Like I said, in 2022, I said I I could finally wrote, wrote down that I wanted to retire from my corporate job and work my business full-time. I needed that fulfillment. Well, it didn't happen until January of 2023, but I actually Announced my retirement in August. But I had to work that whole plan through the year and figure out everything. Can you imagine? You know I had to figure out everything from a financial perspective to health insurance To you know, my business plan, all that kind of stuff. So it didn't go by really fat. I mean, it didn't go by just like that.

Speaker 1: 34:07

Another thing I had to ask myself is how could I change my health and my nutrition? And it took me Reality. I I was the person that was walking all the time. I was drinking my water, I was eating my salads, but I loved my sweets. And Finally, in April, I said, hmm, I Think that I have to give up on sugar. And it was like, oh my god, how am I gonna do this? And so I researched, I read books and I made a plan and I worked on no sugar and I found myself and I lost 28 pounds.

Speaker 1: 34:52

Now I gained a little bit from my surgery and the holidays, but I did that and I came up with a plan and it's not like I turned the switch off. I Came up with plans. I. I mixed my sugar yogurt with no sugar yogurt and did half and half. I and I gradually weaned myself off of that. I added meditation Eventually, because I wasn't Allowing my body to calm. I was doing I love doing Cardio, but when you don't go ahead and mix it and and give your adrenal In in all of the, the stress time to calm down, it's just gonna keep your body in in, in motion. And then also in 2023, I found myself a good, good doctor surgeon To help me with all of my prolapse issues that I had, and I had my surgery in November, so I feel really confident. It wasn't something that I had all of these things in mind, but I couldn't do it all in January and so I just took baby steps.

Speaker 1: 36:07

Now I realize that you may be in a hard season and thinking, huh, I can't even focus on this right now. I want you to think about this and I want you to think about about simple and easy changes. Maybe it's your year to simplify and you want to just take some simple in simplify, or maybe it's your year to declutter. Whatever it is, you're going to pick one thing. Maybe pick one thing for the month of January to make it easier. Maybe you look at automating your bills or your loved ones bills. Maybe the next month you say, okay, I'm going to go ahead and try I Different grocery options, and so I keep. Maybe I'm going to pick up groceries or I'm going to go ahead and Subscribe and have things delivered. Whatever it would be.

Speaker 1: 37:07

Come up with a list of things that could make your life simpler. Maybe you're going to come up with a schedule, or maybe you're going to go ahead and only do appointments on a certain day of the week. Whatever, you're going to pick certain things and you're going to try to simplify. Maybe it's decluttering things, or Because people who are stressed when they see a lot of clutter. Maybe you're going to do that, but working on that, or this year, you wanted to not feel alone and come and you come up with a plan. You're you're tired of feeling lonely, or, and so you want to go ahead and you know that when you stay connected with people, it improves your mood and your energy. And so you talk to your friend. Maybe that's the first step.

Speaker 1: 37:58

You talk to your friend and saying I know that I want to go ahead and stay connected and I've been here a terrible friend with you in 2023 and this is something I need, but I have a lot of barriers and challenges, and so maybe then you say I want to come up with creative ways so that I'm not I'm not neglecting my loved one and I don't feel guilty about it. Maybe you can come over and I will put a pot of coffee on and you bring the, the, you know A sweet or the coffee cake, or whatever, or maybe, or maybe you say my loved one gets chemotherapy once a month, and I know that with chemotherapy it's it's two or three hours, and so during that time Maybe I can meet you in the cafeteria for a half hour and we could go ahead and meet at the hospital, if you're okay with that. Whatever it would be, you want to stay creative. Or, and then eventually you get that feeling and you're getting the momentum and then maybe by the time spring comes around, you talk to your loved one and saying hey, my girlfriend, julie's going to come over on this week and while you're taking your nap, I'm going to go for a walk, I'm going to have my phone, I'm going to set a phone by your bed and if you need us, we're going to be within blocks of here. And then maybe eventually you get the courage to go ahead and find somebody to sit with your loved one While you get away and you go have a lunch together, whatever it would be, so you can go ahead and get creative. Or maybe you commit to a yoga class or a painting class, because not only can you go ahead and and do something fun and do something, but you're going to meet new people and maybe you figure out a way to do that and you're interacting, or maybe you find a time or a day that you can go ahead and do something special for yourself.

Speaker 1: 40:07

Now, this practice is great for this time of the year. It's great because everybody's trying to figure out the. It's just kind of a refresh time. But to be honest and Maybe I'm a little anal and overkill I like to do this once a month at a faster pace. What went well this month, what can I improve on this month, what can I make the next month do differently the next month, and it becomes this habit every end of the month, first of the month, kind of practice. Now you don't have to do that. I know some of my clients do it quarterly, which means every three months. But it's just something there.

Speaker 1: 40:50

Reflection and this habit of reflection allows you to slow down and recognize your wins, your struggles, your risks and, most importantly, your overall health. It makes you become more emotionally aware, you become you think critically, you become a better problem solver and you identify areas of your own growth and improve your caregiving. I'm optimistic for this new year ahead. As you do this practice, think of this as as your fresh start. It's the permission to self improve and make shifts and changes. Don't forget to get the self care Reflection guide that I have for you at Kathy L van comm forward slash Reflection, because I know this can make a huge change in impact.

Speaker 1: 41:44

I would love to hear from you on and tell me what your, your reflections did for you. What patterns or insights did you see and gain from doing this and remember look at this time of the year and and time to say I'm going to take one thing. I know if you're an overachiever, you want to tackle more than that, but I'm telling you, if you do more than one thing, you're gonna quit or you're gonna get frustrated or you're gonna blame yourself for not doing it. You have enough stress on your shoulders right now. So if just doing one thing at a time is, is more than enough and you can be proud of it, you can document that as a win. Most people make it, like I said, for a week with their New Year's resolutions, or maybe two. So don't set a high goal that is hard to reach or adds to too much stress.

Speaker 1: 42:42

If you want to focus on let's say you wanted to focus on quality sleep, because you're just not getting enough sleep and it's affecting your stress and your health and your mood and all that kind of stuff. Brainstorm everything that you can do, google it, look at my episodes on sleep, whatever and then Pick one thing a month. You know, maybe one thing a month is I'm going to. I'm going to go ahead and go to bed 30 minutes earlier, because I know I lay in bed and I don't fall asleep for an hour. Well, now you're gonna be in bed and in getting a 30 minute sleep.

Speaker 1: 43:23

Maybe you discover that Taking a, a warm bath before bedtime Helps you unwind. Well, maybe that's one thing. Or you stop drinking caffeine at a certain time, or you stop eating dinner after a certain time. You're going to pick one and continue to try to see if it's improving your sleep. It's, it's. You're working towards it. In some months you might not have it happening, and but if you're still going to bed 30 minutes earlier, that's nicer because you're getting a little bit more sleep. So I'm gonna stop here now and I just want to say thank you for listening. You are Doing such a wonderful pleasure or wonderful service to yourself by going ahead and self-improve and, my friend, I am here to cheer you on, to saying I want you to have a better 2024 or make improvements in 2024. Happy New Year and we will see you next year, which is next week in 2024. Bye for now.