Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach parenting and
good communication skills all over the world through the lens of self-government
and in this video I'm going to be talking about how to do daily parent mental self-care.
When your parent life can be really draining and overwhelming, there was a woman actually that came
to me recently at a conference in California and she said Nicholeen, you know what you really need
to do is you need to create like a whole training or a video or something on self-care. She's like
you know we just get going and sometimes we forget to do the basic things for ourselves and I
know that that absolutely can happen. So in this video I'm going to be talking about self-care
and what we need to know about it and then share with you some ideas of things that you can do
to help with your mental self-care. There are different kinds of self-care. There's physical
self-care, emotional self-care, mental self-care, spiritual self-care. In this video I'm focusing
on mental self-care which is going to relate some to the spiritual and the emotional as well but
the thoughts that you have and the things that you choose to think about and how you interact with
other people can actually help you either mentally do well or can be detrimental to you mentally and
I know that parents get stretched thin mentally. They're solving all kinds of problems emotionally
and physically with their families throughout the day and it can be difficult. I remember that when
I was doing treatment foster care for troubled teens plus I had my own children and they were
toddlers, there would be many days where I would actually forget to even eat. I would just be going
along and I'd start thinking how come I'm so you know shaky and then I would say oh,
I think I didn't eat today that could make a difference and so I wasn't taking care of
myself. We do need to make sure that we take some simple steps to take care of ourselves.
When a person remembers to do just a little bit of self-care, it can actually go a long way. I remember
when I was a young mom I had a friend and she said to me Nicholeen, it's going to get crazy. I
think I was having child number three at the time and she said I've always had a rule for myself.
As long as I get a shower and I make my bed then I tell myself that I will have a good day,
that everything will be fine and I didn't really know why she would have such a low bar for herself.
I mean a shower and making bed then I had child number three and I went you know what? I just need
to have a shower and make my bed. If I can have a shower and make my bed then it will all be fine.
So one of the key things that I did to make sure that I could get a shower and make my bed was I
decided to wake up earlier. I know that that can be hard to fit in sometimes but it really proved to
be important for my mental self-care. If I could just wake up 30 minutes earlier so that I could
get that shower and make my bed then mentally I would be ready for the day. I felt like I had done
something for myself, I could walk into my room and there would be one room in the house that
looked like it was organized and put together. It might just be that you need to think of something
simple like that. If you are in some of those crazy stages of motherhood or fatherhood
where there are a lot of little children that need constant help with just the most simple,
basic things like getting dressed and going to the bathroom and going to bed and all of those
things, sometimes that can be really draining so make sure you get yourself a shower every day.
Just do it even if you don't use soap, just get in there and be in the shower every single day.
It's important to feel refreshed. I have a lot more ideas for you for self-care and we're going
to go through that list but before we do, click on the subscribe button now. There are a lot of
great videos on this channel that can make your life easier, can help all of your communications
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Early on like I mentioned, I learned to shower and make my bed but I also developed this habit of
sharpening the saw first thing in the morning. I know for some people who aren't morning people,
this could seem really hard. Now the thing about me is I can be a morning person but I also can be a
night person. So I decided would I rather have my nights or would I rather have my mornings?
Sometimes I have to admit I took both because sometimes I would get study in in the night that
I couldn't fit in in the day or in the morning but I did find key times throughout the day to sharpen
my saw and I feel like that's important. So what sharpens your saw? Hopefully it's something that is
productive. Sometimes we do things that are nice for ourselves like get our nails done or you know
eat a treat or something like that and while those are nice things, those don't sharpen this
off for most people as much as purposeful living does. So exercise, study, discussion with a person,
those are all things that usually sharpen the saw more than just eating sugar and by
the way they're better for the waistline. So pick something that you feel like will give you purpose
and that's going to probably be your best sauce sharpening technique to incorporate into your
day. So what I did when I was a young mom and was in the busy throes of homeschooling my children,
having treatment foster children, keeping up with running a garden, growing food, cooking food from
scratch and trying to do some of my own community service in other areas at my church and otherwise
I was busy. I decided that I was going to have key times of the day where I would sharpen the saw. The
first thing I did was wake up early. This was hard but I told myself if I can win that first battle
of the day and get out of bed then it would all be better so U decided to start waking up every day
around 5 or 5:30 in the morning and then I left the house. I actually gave myself a responsibility
so I got a little job teaching water aerobics over at the city pool and teaching the water
aerobics proved to be just the thing that I needed because it made me have to leave. I had to sharpen
the saw and get exercise and while I was there, I would talk to other people in the class too
and before I came home, I would do a certain amount of study time and often times even go grocery
shopping. So you wake up five am, I go teach a six a.m. class. At seven a.m., I shower at the pool, get
dressed and ready for the day then I went to my car or to a picnic table in the pool
area and I would study for like an hour or an hour and a half. Sometimes pick up a gallon of milk or
a couple of groceries, make it home by nine o'clock which was when my husband needed to leave for work.
He would get the children up, get them fed and dressed and going for the day and starting at 9am,
I would start doing school and I was refreshed and ready. See if there's a way that you can fit
in something like that. Now I had a friend who said my time is from seven to nine every night,
my husband plays with the children and does things with them during that time from seven to nine and
I plan the next day school day. There were some times where I did that too but most of the time
I did my planning in the morning. Your planning does not have to take a long time or be difficult
but just pick out a couple of things that you want to do in the day. So maybe say to yourself
I want to read a story to the children and teach them how to do hopscotch. You know and so then
you're going to have chalk and you're going to go outside and do hopscotch. This is another thing,
do fun things with your family. If you don't have fun doing the types of fun that you want to do
then they won't have fun with you either. Whether you're homeschooling or not, you should do things
that you enjoy with the family. Something that you can look forward to whether it's making your
favorite cookies with them or whether it's doing a little house cleaning and inviting them to be
part of it. Do something that you enjoy but try to do something that makes fun memories too because
then you'll want to take a picture and you'll make sure that you remind yourself how great your life
is. Another thing that I did every day to make sure that I helped myself mentally was I would have the
children have a rest time during the day or some sort of independent study time if they were a
little bit older. During that time, I did a little bit of my independent study. So I would study in
the morning, study during independent study time and oftentimes study a little bit in the evening
too. So that gave me three opportunities to take a break and sharpen the saw. Study time did that
for me. If I could read a good book, write a paper or work on a presentation or a book I was writing
for someone else, that made me feel like I was living with purpose. It really is the purposeful
living that helps you feel the most refreshed. Another thing I did is I set up a mother's day
to happen once a month. So I asked my husband or sometimes even my mom if my husband was busy
if they would watch the children for one whole day and I would go out and I would go out to breakfast,
I would go scrapbooking the entire day long and then I would go out to lunch with whoever I was
with, usually my sisters and then scrapbook some more, have dinner and then come home and be with my
children in the evening. I was so ready to see the children at that time. I was so energized because I
had some time to work on something for me but it wasn't just for me, it was a creative outlet but
it served the whole family. It was something that I had to show for my time too. So it was a little
bit more purposeful work, not just something to make me feel like I had a little bit of pleasure.
So find something again purposeful, see if you can have one day a month and you'll be surprised about
how much energy that gives you for all of the rest of your days. There is nothing that drains
a mother's brain more than figuring out which food she needs to make that day. So one thing I did
was I decided that by 11, I would have planned what I was going to make for the day,
that freed me up and if I needed to cut up some things for that night's dinner or put something
in a crock pot, I would just make sure I did it by 11 am so that dinner prep was always easy.
Another thing I did was invite the children to make dinner with me later on. This was better
too so I could teach them something and then not have to have all of that resting on me as well.
Now here is a tip that you might not think of as mental self-care but it is. Looking people in
the eyes when you talk to them. Looking into their hearts and remembering how much they matter to you.
When you look at someone in the eyes, you connect deeply with them. Connecting with them actually
improves your mental state. Just try it. In fact today, just go right after you watch this video,
find someone, have a conversation with them and look at them in the eyes for at least 15 seconds.
Another thing that helps your mental state is being grateful. So expressing gratitude to others
through praise or expressing gratitude to yourself by making a gratitude list in the day actually
helps you have a better day. You can choose to be happy, you can choose to be grateful which
actually decreases your mental strain. You will have a lot more emotional energy if you're looking
for the good. The other day I was driving down the road with one of my colleagues, we found out
that we were going to possibly be late for a speaking event that I was going to be at.
I was one of the main speakers at the event. I had to be there on time. Some of my packages
were lost by FedEx which didn't usually happen but it happened there. I had so lost packages
and we're driving further away than we thought we had to, the traffic was bad and I was going
to be late and I'm driving down the road and I see this tree in California in full bloom
and I said to my colleague wow, look at the pretty blossoms on that tree, that's so beautiful and she
said did you really just appreciate a tree when we're not gonna make it on time? You took the time
to appreciate that. She said that amazes me and I said well I've just trained myself to look
for the good things, the happy things, to find the God moments in life because to me. I feel like God
shows me all the time all the good things even if other things are happening that are outside of my
control. So be grateful. Make a list of things you're grateful for. Teach yourself to notice
things you're grateful for and you will have a lot more mental and emotional energy. Another tip that
many people share with self-care which really does work is keeping a journal and keep the type of
journal that's positive. List the things you did that day that you want everyone to remember as
your life story. Make the life story that you want to share with the world which hopefully is one of
optimism and overcoming instead of one that is depressed. I know we can have down moments
but let's focus on how we can overcome, put those things in our journal and that makes everything
better. Finally calmness. Do you know how to be calm when someone else isn't and how to help them get
calm without losing your calmness at the same time? Well if not, I have something for you. I have a calm
parenting toolkit that can help you in the moment each day when things are starting to go out of
control or get a little bit crazy, the children are fighting, you can use some of your calm tools so
that you can be calm no matter what is happening, that right there is huge self-care. Teach yourself
how to be calm no matter what's happening, get the skills and the tools that you need for calmness.
So in the description below this video, there is a link to my calm parenting toolkit and I would like
to give it to you for free. So if you go to the link which is teachselfgov.com/toolkit, you can
have my 10 lesson call parenting toolkit for free. Click on that link now and I will see you there.