As we settle into this space between the winter holidays and the New Years, I want to invite you all to slow down and drop into the present moment with yourself. Let's just take a minute to check in. How are you doing? No really, how have you been.

I don't know about you, but I've been feeling a bit harried, overwhelmed, and honestly, burnt out. I always have this big push in December as I prepare for our annual 30 Days of Play Challenge, the winter holidays, and everything else, and this year has been no different. And with the added layer of another Covid Christmas... It's a lot. But one thing I have been doing that has made it all a bit easier is to take short, simple, self-compassion breaks. I would love to invite you try it with me, right now!

Place your hand over your heart and repeat these words (aloud if you're comfortable):

May I be safe & protected.

May I be happy in body, mind, & spirit.

May I live in comfort & ease.

That's it! Repeat these words (or similar phrases with the same energy of self kindness and grace) as often as you need to. A mindfulness practice does not need to be big or complicated to reap loads of benefits! LET ME KNOW IF YOU TRY IT!

And if you're looking for another way to invite more mindful presence, and connect with your kids at the same time, I would love to have you join us in our play challenge this year. I know you're likely thinking "Laura, what does mindfulness & kids play have to do with each other??" The answer is, EVERYTHING when you approach it in the way we do in my Annual 30 Days of Play Challenge.

In the challenge you will learn how to drop into a mindful, nonjudgmental and presence-filled state with your child and it has the potential to not only improve your own and your child's wellbeing, but that of your relationship too. Plus, folks who do this challenge see a dramatic increase in their children's ability to play independently, which is 100% my number 1 secret for taking good care of myself and staying balanced as a parent. As we know, to a child "love" is spelled "T-I-M-E"(Zig Zigler) and this challenge helps you figure out how to get the time that everyone needs to feel balanced & connected

As we discuss in this week's episode of The Balanced Parent podcast with guest Monica Berg, our relationships with time and how we spend it is of vital importance to our feelings of satisfaction and fulfillment in parenting.

Here is an overview of our conversation:

Reevaluating the way we spend not just our time but our life
Reconnecting with our old selves and finding non time as busy parents
Relationship between non time and un-busying our selves
How to get unstuck and un-busy

To get more resources, follow Monica on social media and check her website.
Instagram: @monicarberg74
Twitter: @monicaberg74
Facebook: @monicaberg74
Website: rethinklife.today

TRANSCRIPT

Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic overwhelm. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do; not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.

Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!

Laura: Hello everybody, this is Dr. Laura for again and on this week's episode of the balanced parent podcast we're going to be talking about how to become unbusy and to help me with this conversation I'm bringing in a guest and colleague, Monica Berg, she is a speaker thought leader and author of Fear is Not An Option and Rethinking Love and the host of the Spiritually Hungry podcast Monica, Welcome to the show. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do?

Monica: Thank you for having me. It's good to join you today. Basically I live my life with the intention of helping people rethink almost pretty much everything they think they know with the hope of people living their best life and finding their purpose and their passion and living a life where they're first and foremost honest with themselves and have no shame or guilt in pursuing the things that they truly desire.

That's why I'm really excited about the topic today because I think often we can get busy with the wrong things and distracted really by other people's desires and needs demands and that is a formula I think a recipe for a bit of unhappiness.

Laura: Tell me more about the piece where the getting busy with things that are not our actual priorities or goals. Why do we do that? Why did we get bogged down in that piece of things?

Monica: Well, I think it happens more with women to be honest, although it can happen to both sexes, but I think that women are raised to be caretakers and nurtures and you know, to really be in touch with their feelings and be empathetic with others. And so and that's okay. But if you don't find a time in your life or make it really a priority to really get to know yourself to hear what you desire to not be afraid to go after it, then that voice, that internal dialogue becomes almost muted.

And then what you really do here is the external demands, opinions, expectations of others. And then once you're in that kind of loop, it's hard to get away from it and it's hard to navigate, you know, because the voice that's really loud is somebody else's and then you find yourself and kind of a rut maybe you know, 20 years down the line, it doesn't happen right away.

Laura: Everybody struggles with this. I see it with the dads that I work with a lot too. So their partner will say like you focus on things that are not that important to our family. I think it's all of us get bogged down into kind of what we think we're supposed to be doing in the should, you know, and very much less on what actually would bring us lasting happiness and fulfillment, right?

Monica: Yeah. And I also think it has to just be as simple as you know, how we view time. I mean it's something we all have the exact same amount of right. You and I both have the same minutes in this day, but unless you are really a timekeeper, right, and you manage your time, you guard your time. I'm gonna have a bunch of different tools and tips I can give you as we go through our conversation today.

But unless you really understand that the importance of your time, it's easy to say, okay I'll do this other thing right now and I'll get to the really important thing later, I'll do these five things on my to do list first and then I'll get to the other things later and before you know it, you know, the day is gone and the day becomes weeks and months and years and that's just your reality. And then you're like, how did I get here? How is it that I'm not actually manifesting, achieving or accomplishing anything that I truly desire?

Laura: Yeah. And so what's the solution? What do we do to not get caught up in that?

Monica:Well, there's a few, so let's go because I have a bunch of, I'm really a kind of person that, you know, immediate action. So you have first thought, right, you change your consciousness and then you follow up with immediate action because if not then, you know, it's a great conversation, but no real change occurs. And as you know, I call myself a change junkie, very much addicted to change, which was not how I came into the world. That was also an evolution.

So the first idea is something called non time, you know, it's very uncomfortable at first, especially if you're a type A personality because you're like doo doo doo. But non time is where you give yourself like fire to ask you to do nothing or think about nothing for 15 minutes, I would say that would really be a hard challenge for most of us. And in fact, if I asked you not to think about anything at all.

The first thing you're gonna think about, like the one thing I tell you not to think about right, if I say, please don't think about pink elephants, chances are, you're only the thing about pink elephants, but non time is something that actually very successful people do. A time or space you give yourself that is not with the demands of the world, it's not with all the noise of the world. You give yourself a task to do nothing.

So Albert Einstein obviously we all know about Albert Einstein how successful he was, but his non time was sailing and some of his greatest ideas came as he said, feeling the wind on his face being on a sailboat, right? Steve Jobs, we know how innovative he was, but he was also known to be a procrastinator and somebody who daydreamed a lot.

But in his day dreaming and his doodling, he found a great balance between finding work and play right in technology. My non time is exercise and for some that might not be might sound really tragic, but I work out two hours a day, six days a week. But in that time of not thinking and using my body, most of my creative thoughts and ideas actually come to me and I have to run to my phone after the workout and write them all down.

So non time is actually a way that you find something that you enjoy doing, that you're not giving yourself a task or a goal or, you know, something specific to do. And scientists have found and proven they've done numerous tests with different groups on giving them something to do and then nothing to do and then to see who was more creative and it's always those who were in a space of non time.

Laura: Interesting. Okay, so then how do we find the non time for ourselves? You know, I know that, you know, anybody who is a runner, I most likely identified with the exercise piece that you just said, I know that, you know, my dad was a runner that was his non time all the time. He had his best ideas, all of those things when he was running.

But how do we find that especially I don't know about you, but for many of the families that I work with as you transition into parenthood, you, it seems like you lose a lot of time for yourself and you almost lose the parts of yourself that did those non time activities. So like one for me was when I was before I was a parent,I would spend time just doing art for myself with no purpose and I just don't make as much time for that now as a parent. So how can we figure out and reconnect to that to our old selves and find non time as busy parents.

Monica: Yeah, it's interesting. I'm also a marathon runner and for sure that's, you know, people like I do it, I would get lost in that space. I think parents make that mistake though. They think that, You know, now I'm taking care of a child or four children are so clearly you do have less time in the day to do things that feed you.

But you know, that's the trap because, you know, my oldest is 22, my youngest is eight and the ways that they need you changes so much through time. And if you devote all of your energy and all of your purpose, just just raising children as that relationship changes, it can be really hard for you to find yourself. Then I really encourage you to go back to your art for sure. I think we have to be flexible about how we approach it.

So if, for instance, I call it like a modest spark, let's say that there's something you enjoy doing, but it's not like your ultimate end all be all but you enjoy doing it. So before I started public speaking, I used to, and I still do, I enjoy baking very much. Baking was something I could do at 11 o'clock at night or nine o'clock at night when the kids were sleeping and as I was creating things with my hands again, doing something. I was thinking about lectures, ideas, concepts, books and I was formulating them in my mind.

So I think that, you know, even if you need to do it at a weird hour or you know, or you need to wake up a little bit earlier, you need to ask your partner to fill in this time or maybe the kids have pizza for dinner and they don't have all their food groups in that one night, you know, that's okay, but just to find that and create that space because it will allow you actually even to be a better parent, you know, for so busy on our children and and focused on making them happy and being the perfect parent and we're running them from karate class and the other one has ballet class and the other one has soccer practice and you're yelling in them in the car because they didn't eat healthy at the birthday party and you want to, you know, you want this balanced kind of life and really your goal is to be a great parent.

But you're not actually giving yourself that non time, how are you going to think differently about approaching parenting, you know, while trying to do all these great things for them, you know, are they gonna remember what you did or how you made them feel?

So I think giving ourselves that space just to be, there's no reason not to, you know, I often say to people because that's a question I get a lot like how do I have time to focus on my growth or change my consciousness or whatever we find that's important to us that we want to work on, but we just don't have the time. If you stop and ask yourself, how many times did I think a negative thought today or did I break myself about not being good enough in this or that area? Or I spoke bad about somebody like how much of our time and energy goes towards something negative. You know, if we actually cut that out of our lives, I guarantee you'll have time for non time.

Laura: Yeah. So what is the relationship then between non time and being kind of unbusying yourself? How are they related?

Monica: So non time you're being busy with something, but you're not being distracted I think right? It's very much something that you enjoy doing, like vigorous exercise or you're like coloring or like it's something that you're actually participating in. It's giving you the space just to absorb your surroundings that you want, right? Sitting by a window and looking out at the trees are looking in nature. It's that space.

Unbusy means you stop participating in things that just don't serve you and that's a different thing, you know? And so I think that, you know, often people ask another question about anti goals, which is the opposite of having goals, right?

And I like where this conversation is going because it's like they seem so similar and they seem that they contradict each other at the same time, anti goals or when you write down things you don't love doing and you just stop doing them. So for instance, if you hate having board meetings and you don't feel that they're effective, then you just stop doing it.

It's like and by doing that, you're going to find a solution in how to spend more time with the things that you love because you've removed so much of your energy and participating in things that you just don't enjoy. Like if I were to ask you, you know, solve hunger in India, right? That's a big question. But if I said to you, why don't we look at what's not working in India in terms of poverty and starvation and let's stop doing those things, then the solution will be a lot clearer.

Laura: Sometimes I channel I feel like my listeners as they're listening to these things and the question that's popping up in my brain, I can't just stop doing laundry, you know, like the laundry has to get done.

Although in my relationship in my house, I at one point I did just stop doing it and it got done by my partner who is wonderful and great, but like there's a certain level, like there are things I do have to get done, you know, as parents, so how can we approach them in a way that is more conscious and intentional and fulfilling?

Monica: Absolutely. There are some things that we have to do. I do find though, that we, we have to check ourselves that we're coming from a controlling place for this idea that we have to be a perfect parent. That pressure that we put on ourselves means laundry has to be done every Monday Wednesday Friday has to be folded, put it back in place organized.

If somebody comes over, they're gonna see how neat my houses and I have everything under control. I don't think we have to do all the things we say to ourselves that we need to do. You know, kids can use a towel more than twice, you know, uh, they can make their beds to the best of their ability. It's okay if they get into a bed that maybe isn't made, if it doesn't bother me, if it bothers them enough, they're going to learn how to start making it right?

It requires more effort in a way because you have to be disciplined. You have to kind of repeat yourself. But that effort that you put into the beginning actual payoff. So I think a way to get around this, it's another tool, it's called create your to be list before your to do list, but to do list is one that is long. It's usually things again like laundry is on there or pick up vacuum cleaner bags or, you know, a bunch of to do’s and again we do need to do some of those things.

But do we have to do them when we think we have to do them and that, you know, detail of every, you know, these schedules that are so regimented. So if you create your to be list first, right? Let's say on your to be list was to write a children's book. And so if that was important to you, then on your to-do list would be, you know, take an hour a week, let's say, if you're really, really busy with kids and schedules in a lot for one hour a week to writing. Surely you can find an hour, right?

Laura: Can I just ask a question just to clarify? So is the to be list kind of your goals for who you want to be?

Monica: Yes, exactly. And based on who you want to become, you create your to-do list. Okay, so again, you will have the other things on there. But when you have that list combined with your to be list, right, then all of a sudden it becomes really apparent like is this really important or maybe I won't do it this week.

Or like let's say, you have to prepare food and you want to find a few extra hours in the week. Maybe you do your fruit prep on Sunday. You make your menu, you do your shopping, you already cut all the vegetables, you put them in mason jars and you set all that up. So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you've now gained a half hour for an hour in that day because you're not prepping on those days, you're just cooking, but you've now you can put that to something else that's really important to you. So I think a lot of it is just shifting your perspective.

Laura: Yeah. And and I really do, I feel like we've kind of been screwing around this a little bit, but it seems like a big piece of this is letting go of the expectations that you hope for yourself or the expectations that maybe you've borrowed from society and culture and the big piece of this is letting go of those things and instead intentionally choosing what matters most to you.

Monica: 100%. You know, my husband and I, as you mentioned, we have a podcast, it's called spiritually hungry and we did an episode parenting and, you know, there are many doctors, I can't remember the one specific one way we had quoted right now, but saying this idea that you know, you just want to be a good enough parent.

Because if you're a good enough parent, right? It means that you of course you care and you're trying to do your best, but you're also well aware that your children will have their own process. They're going to have their own journey in life and it's not our job to control that process for them and by doing that, you really kind of let yourself off the hook a bit.

Laura: Yeah, the good enough parent is absolutely so important. It's from Winnicott, the researcher from the 50s who coined this term. And it's so, so important to embrace that idea of being good enough.

Monica: Again, I think a lot of ideas like letting go, that could be so field, so difficult to master first. If you just shift your consciousness right, then everything will follow. You have to just decide that that really is ok to be a good enough parent and from there, you're okay. If that's really what I think, then that means I'm going to make this other decision on this day. I'm going to let go and that area on that day.

Laura: Yeah. And how do you do that? Like how do you just decide? I think that lots of people, parents and non parents struggle with that aspect of it, of can you just decide? And if limiting beliefs linger in there, what do you do with them? Why?

Monica: I think expanding your consciousness, it's like a muscle, you have to work, right? It's not just something you do want something you choose every single day. I think that if you wake up in the morning and you really have this conversation with yourself, right? I want to be a conscious person that really directs my day, the way that I wanted to go, the way that I intended to, the way that I'm enjoying it and then I'm driving purpose and meaning, right?

So if that's how you start your day and that means when things unfold in the day and they don't go out the way that you want or things didn't happen the way that you want, you're able to stop and say okay, it's not what I expected, but how can I make this work for me? Once you start to do that right, you start to change the way that you look at life, the life happens through you, not to you, you've become part of solutions, everything is purposeful, even the things that are not what you had intended or wanted.

So you know, and if you find it really hard to do that, then you're gonna, those negative belief systems that we created long ago will come up. You have to listen to them and then you have to challenge them. It doesn't have to be that hard. I mean the simplistic answer is you know, how do you let go of a piece of hot coal in your hand. I mean simply you let it go, you drop it, how do you let go of heavy baggage, you've been caring come home from the airport, you just drop it and let it go right, simply we understand that.

So if the decision is I don't want to be such an angry parent anymore or I don't want to be such an upset spouse or I want to, you know, then you have to say, okay if I don't want to be those negative things anymore, then how will I change my experience in those roles? That's the choice you make right?

Laura: What do I need to let go in order to step into who I want to be,?

Monica: Right. So if you're fighting with your partner all the time because they don't acknowledge you, why is it important for them to acknowledge you? And you have to be able to to be honest with yourself about what the challenge is. And then ask yourself the question why do you need that outcome by asking yourself those two questions with an answer yourself with honesty, then you'll have the information in front of you and from that space you can choose something else, but you really need to be able to put that lay it out in front of you to be able then to say okay. Like that's why I named my book Fears Is Not An Option.

When fear is no longer an option, you need to look for other options. It's the same thing here. If being that whatever it is right that is upsetting you is no longer an option for you in your life that you don't want that. We're gonna look for different options.

Laura: Yeah. And I almost like would feel really good to me to, to frame this as a, like almost like from a place of curiosity, like if fear was no longer an option, what would you be? You know, if being defensive with your partner in the midst of a disagreement was no longer an option for you, what would you choose?

Like that curiosity piece feels really good and I really appreciate the reminder that it's an active practice that it's a muscle you have to exercise, that it's not a set it and forget it kind of one and done, you look at it once you're like open up there it is and then you move forward. I think that's what people are hoping it will be and it's not, it's a conscious active choosing each and every day.

Monica: We become more part of a quick fix society. You know, you don't like your butt you know, there's a solution for that, you know, like your whatever, you know, we can, we can fix that too and it's just like in a heartbeat, real joy fulfillment that comes from everyday choosing that, you know, and we understand this when it comes to physical activity, you'll get really fit, you work out and then you stop working out and you eat like differently well your body is going to change also, that's just the way that it is.

So I think having help with the understanding that you really need to participate in your life. I think that people forget that, you know, while you still care about it, by the way, so after people like, oh, you know, I'm going to do this first, it's the kids or the priority or you know, I'm just gonna keep doing these things, I don't love it, but I know like five years from now, I don't have to do it, it doesn't work like that, you don't know where you're gonna be in five years, right? So you have to really say, okay, I care enough about me and because they care about me, I'm gonna do something today to change things that I'm not happy about.

Laura: Yeah, I always say like our lives are not waiting rooms we’re in them now, we're living our lives now, we have to be actively participating and choosing our lives. And you know, I think that oftentimes as parents, we do feel like we don't have a lot of choice that we don't have a lot of power. We are at the whims and mercy of our kids' developmental stages and what's going on in the world and it can feel quite empowering to recognize where you do have the ability to choose.

Monica: I mean, honestly, I can understand why people are terrified if they think in that way, like, just hearing you say that I'm like, my heart's beating because that for me, sounds like suffering. I mean, I would never want to live life like that. I think, you know, as far as your Children's development and being part of that at every stage, there needs to be room to allow something greater in. I believe in God, I believe in something far greater than us.

So I think it's about having certainty in the process of life and stop trying to control it and I'm you know, I was very much a control freak, I was very much a perfectionist and I think that's why I've gone the extreme the other way and really embracing change because I was miserable in another version of myself then life was not working for me, you know?

So I started to really challenge the things, you know, exactly like what I shared a little bit earlier in the show and also, you know, with children, you want to raise them I think to be able to think for themselves, So if you're controlling every stage you're basically teaching them to follow authority. To follow other people's beliefs and opinions, to be a follower and guess what, when they enter high school and you're not the voice in their head anymore, you're not the strongest influence then they will follow their peers that are now greater influences over them.

Laura: None of us want that. We want people, grown-ups. We want to raise people who when they're grown up and they yeah, they're independent, they know what they want. They know how to advocate for themselves, you know, they know how to stand up for themselves, they follow their hearts, they define their own success, this is what we want for our kids and it's so important to remember that like that starts at birth, like that starts now.

Monica: You know my kids ask me for advice or they share a problem with me, I don't try to fix it, what I do is I say to them, what do you think your options are? You know, what do you think you should do about that or you know, if you did x, y and z, how do you think the outcome would be, you know, to really get them to and dive the way that was a restriction on my part when I first started learning how to do that over a decade ago or more. Now, it's just the way we speak, but I would really encourage people first of all, that needs to be the voice you have with yourself, right? And when you do that then you can offer that to your children.

Laura: I so agree. It always starts with us always Yeah, and we want to be modeling this for our kids too. I think that that's something that's really powerful to remember in this conversation of kind of unbusying our life, like we are an advertisement for adulthood for our kids, you know, and we have to be really conscious of that of what we are modeling for them.

Monica: 100%.

Laura: Well, Monica, thank you so much for this conversation, it was really fun to talk about this kind of broad topic. I feel like we win a lot of different places, but it all connected. It was really a great conversation. Thank you.

Monica: Thank you.

Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review that really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from.

And if you're listening, grab a screenshot and tag me on Instagram so that I can give you a shout out and definitely go follow me on Instagram. I'm @laurafroyenphd. That's where you can get behind the scenes. Look at what balanced, conscious parenting looks like in action with my family and plus I share a lot of other, really great resources there too.

All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this!

Laura Froyen, PhD

Laura Froyen, PhD

Balanced Parent Podcast

Laura Froyen, PhD

Welcome to the home of The Balanced Parent Podcast!

Episode 97: Becoming Unbusy with Monica Berg