I'm not a fan of the term "self-care." It brings to mind long baths with essential oils and getaways with girlfriends.

I'm currently the queen of quick showers; I haven't soaked in the tub in more than a year. 

I see this, however, as a big step toward self-care.

I missed the last getaway with my group of nine coaches. 

This is self-care, too.

What I define as self-care are the commitments and promises we make to ourselves to support us as we go through the day.

Self-care is rushing through a shower so that I have time to take the dog (and me) on a walk.

Self-care is missing the coaches getaway because I needed quiet time to process the health issues that are happening with members of my family. 

Recently, I was working with a coaching client who is overwhelmed with many decisions she must make to move her life forward. Self-care wasn't coming up on her list of priorities; it didn't appear at all on her to do list. She was surviving on caffeine to get through the long hours of each day and couldn't even fathom how to fit in anything more than what she was already doing.

Water, I suggested. What about committing to drinking a 12-ounce glass of water every morning?

She blinked, surprised. That's it? 

We think of self-care as being an hour or more dedicated to ourselves, not a small moment in the morning.

We think of self-care as big things that we must plan for, make room for, get childcare for, and rearrange our schedules for.

I want you to ask yourself, "What is the minimum care I need?"

And then make it smaller.

And smaller.

And even smaller.

I want you to find your barebones minimum. 

Using your barebones minimum, I want you to make a lasting commitment to yourself by promising to do one small good thing for you, and only you, each and every day.

For my client, her barebones minimum is drinking a glass of water in the morning.

For me, I started with committing to taking my supplements and vitamins every morning.

Then, when that became a habit, I committed to drinking a green smoothie every day. 
When the smoothie became a habit, I committed to meditating. At some point each day - usually in the morning - I listen to a guided meditation by Oprah and Deepak Choprah. (FYI: They have a brand new - and free! - meditation experience starting October 29th. Go to chopracentermeditation.com/about-us to join.)

My next commitment starting this week is to do one Sun Salutation a day. Just one.

Reading the list, it seems like a lot until I remember that I started my barebones minimum project more than a year ago.

Little by little, with small moments of self-care, you can build a life you love.

I'm offering a free webinar on Tuesday, October 23rd at 10:00 a.m. PT to talk about the barebones approach to self-care. Can you join me? Even if you can't make it live, sign up and I'll send you the recording so you can listen to it later on your own time. 

In the webinar, I'll be sharing well-researched ways to build new habits, like how much easier it is to build a new habit rather than stopping an old one; how self-compassion is much more effective than negative self-talk (and it feels so much better, too); and I'll answer your questions (as best I can because this will be the first time I'll be doing a Q&A) to help you begin your own barebones commitment.

Click here to join.

Remember, my lovelies, you don't have to do it all or be everything to everybody. You only have to do your personal best, whatever that looks like today. 

And that's more than enough.
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Big hugs,
Kathleen

"The art of being helpful is behaving as if everything we do matters - 
 because we never know which ones might."
Gloria Steinem

I like to check in with my massage therapy clients, find out what's going on with them at work, in their relationships, with their kids (if they want to share). 

One of my clients told me about an inspirational conference she attended where the keynote speaker told the audience that if they have the ability to help and share their knowledge, they should.

Her enthusiasm inspired me and I reached out to support a colleague who is bouncing through a rough patch. We've been meeting for coaching sessions for the last month and she's grateful for the help.

I'm grateful, too.

Helping feels good. It's one of the paths to happiness listed in Sonja Lyubormirsky's great book, The How of Happiness. 

However, people can often feel self-conscious about asking for help and then accepting it from others. But accepting help can be as much of a gift for the giver as it is for the receiver. One research study showed higher levels of the "love hormone," oxytocin, in people who are very generous toward others. Other studies have shown the "helper's high" lights up the same reward centers of the brain as other feel-good activities, like eating good food. 

The next time you resist accepting help from others, perhaps because you believe that you're imposing or asking too much, think about how saying yes can bring big benefits, not just to you but to your altruistic friend, as well.

Photo by Chungkuk Bae on Unsplash
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It’s been a crazy week. Whether you spent Thursday live streaming the Senate hearings or not, there was no avoiding the drama unfolding in Washington D.C. For so many women I know, getting through the week felt like trying to stay upright in hurricane force winds.

Me, too. 

The crazier the world feels, the more I want to hunker down and wait out the storm in the safety of my home with family, trusted friends, and my beloved pets.

But that helps no one. 

And I want to help.

I'm offering $30 off your massage or coaching session until election day.

If you need nurturing and a place to relax, come find your sanctuary with me in a life coaching session or a massage (use coupon code SANCTUARY when scheduling for your $30 discount).

Massage therapy appointments* are provided in San Mateo. 

Life coaching sessions** can be in-person at my home office, over the phone, or via video conference call, whichever you prefer.​

“From what we get, we can make a living; 
what we give, however, makes a life."
Arthur Ashe​

Schedule your session here. Use coupon code SANCTUARY to receive your $30 discount.

I hope to see you soon.

Big hugs,
Kathleen

* My life coaching/massage therapy practice is women-centered. I work with men who are referred by friends or trusted clients.

** In my life coaching sessions, we focus on current issues and find ways to work through obstacles that are in the way of making a life you love. If you’re feeling the need to process through old hurts, you may need the help of an experienced therapist. You can do an online search to find one here: findapsychologist.org

If you’re a worrier like me, here are ways you can ease the effects of worry:

1. Recognize that worry won’t prepare you for real life tragedy. Write this statement down where you’ll see it often, like on a sticky note on your bathroom mirror or on the inside of your journal.

2. Stopping worry can be like trying to ignore a tiger in the room. Acknowledge the issues you’re worrying about – keeping a journal is great for this – and then try to let the worry go.
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3. Find practical solutions for what you’re worried about. If you’re worried about a situation at your child’s daycare or school, can you make an appointment with the director or principal? If you’re worried about your child’s cough, can you call the on-call night nurse?

4. Notice if your worry might actually be anxiety. Worry tends to be temporary, controllable, and focused on a specific issue while anxiety lasts for longer periods of time, impacts the ability to function personally and professionally, and has a more global perspective. If you’re concerned that what you’re experiencing might be anxiety and not worry, a good first step is to check in with your primary care provider.

5. Start a small but powerful gratitude practice to crowd out the worry. Worry and gratitude can't easily coexist because your brain has difficulty focusing on positive and negative stimuli simultaneously. Your gratitude practice can be as simple as writing a list of five things you’re grateful for on a regular basis, like before bed or every Sunday. You could also involve your whole family by having everyone share what they’re grateful for at the dinner table each night.

​6. Breathe and use the power of your parasympathetic nervous system to calm down. Just like Yoda lifted Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing out of the swamp, you, too, can use The Force within you to lift yourself out of the murky waters of worry.

xo
Kathleen

photo credit: Photo by Chiến Phạm on Unsplash

​There have been many times when I've felt like I don't have a clue about what I'm doing as a mom, like when my first son was born and no parenting book or parent education workshop truly prepared me for life with an infant; when my second son was a baby and fussy all the time; and during the terrible twos and even more terrible threes when there were days that wrung me dry. 

As the mom of two teenagers, I'm again unsure, wishing for a roadmap on how to parent my sons into young adulthood. There aren't major roadblocks but the territory is all new. My husband Bill often turns to me and asks, "What should we do?" and I wonder why he's asking me. I have absolutely no idea. 

My inner critic is loud and a constant voice in my head these days. Friends tell me I'm doing a good job, I'm a great mom, my boys are lucky to have me. The inner critic doesn't agree. 

Am I the only one who feels like she's failing as a mom of teenagers? Logically, I know that this can't be the case. But most of my close mom friends either have young adult children now or they're parents of little kids. The moms with older children offer advice and are highly empathetic. The moms of younger children are sympathetic but don't fully understand how the balance of life with teenagers can shift in one brief moment, one unsettling circumstance, one regrettable argument. 

Recently, my husband and I met with a parent educator at Parents Place, a family support organization with several Bay Area locations. The parent educator approved of what Bill and I are already doing and offered additional ideas for parenting our teenagers. 

My biggest takeaway from that meeting, though, was to trust my intuition. I've fallen away from that place of trusting myself. I've been afraid I'll push my kids away. I've been nervous I'll make a mistake that I won't be able to undo. I've often acquiesced to Bill's decisions even if I don't agree with them, mainly because I don't know what else to do and I want to keep the peace. 

I've been thinking too much, which creates fear and indecision. Lately, rather than searching for ways to avoid not knowing, I'm learning to lean into not having a clue, allowing the unknown to shape my way forward. 
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I'm discovering benefits to not having a clue of what to do. Here are four of them, whether you're a parent of an infant, toddler, grade school kid, or teen:

1. When you honestly don't know what to do next, you may be more likely to stay in the moment and respond to what's happening right now, whether your crisis is an inconsolable baby or incommunicative teenager. When you find yourself not knowing, take a few slow breaths and ask, "What's the next best step?" and do that. If the first thing doesn't work, breathe a little more and ask again. Avoid the shoulds, supposed tos, and have tos, if possible. Thinking that way takes you down a long, bumpy road where you can't hear the quiet voice of your intuition.

2. By staying in the moment, you can ease stress and reduce your inner chaos by making choices and creating solutions based on what's really happening rather than coming up with a long list of worse case scenarios, most of which will never happen. 

3. Being clueless also allows you to get ideas from your child. When your child is part of the decision-making process, you're more likely to come up with a negotiated solution that your child will accept. With younger children, finding solutions may look like offering your child two options from which to choose, like asking if your child wants to wear the blue shirt or the green one, eat apple slices or cheese and crackers, play in the backyard or go to the park. Tweens and teens can be involved in a bigger way, like working with you to resolve differences in curfew instead of you as parents dictating the time. Working together to come up with solutions might lead to your teen, tween, or "threenager" actually doing what's best.

4. Not having a clue allows you to be in beginner's mind, a place where you are open to possibilities and not reliant on preconceived notions of what's the right solution or what you should do. A study published in  The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology showed that people who consider themselves to be experts are more closed-minded. "In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few," wrote Shunryu Suzuki in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

So, when the baby is screaming, the toddler is whining, or your teen is sullen, scowling, and sequestered in her room, see if you can allow the moment to be an invitation. Wrote Wendell Berry: "It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey."

My son owes me and my husband money for some purchases and a broken iPhone screen repair. Instead of having him do extra chores (above and beyond his regular household help), I put him to work for my business instead. I'm creating a new life coaching program that includes a crafting kit for each mom; there's a lot of prep work involved in gathering, organizing, and packaging the supplies. My son and I agreed to an hour of work a day during his spring break. 

Every day, I eagerly anticipated that hour. My son and I sat side-by-side at the dining room table and built an inventory spreadsheet in Excel, ordered supplies, measured and cut paper, and divided up larger quantities of items into small ziplock bags and plastic containers. 

This time with my son was the shortest hour of my day. 

Based on the number of times that my son looked at the clock on the screen of his newly repaired iPhone, it was the longest hour of his. 

This is where we are now: the years when my boys would much rather be with their friends than family - or doing anything but spending time with me, the years when my husband and I are too embarrassing to be introduced to friends, the years when planning for family time activities is met with barely restrained groans. 

Looking back, I see it started early, my son's leaving and my letting go. Like when he was three years old and ran off to be with friends at daycare without looking back. When he was six and didn't want to hold my hand anymore. When he started asking at nine years old if he could just stay home instead of going with me to run errands. 

Last Sunday evening he came home after spending the night at a friend's house followed by a full day of hanging out with his friends at the mall, the park, another friend's house. I met him at the front door with a big hug and said I missed you. He pulled out of the hug and replied with a smile that it had only been a day, then walked to his room and shut the door. 

He's growing up, pulling away, doing exactly what he's supposed to do. 

I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to do, too: slowly letting him go, whispering quietly to myself as he walks away, I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. 

We adopted a dog in December, a little rescue poodle from DPS Rescue in Palo Alto, that we named Jasper. In her early explorations of our home, Jasper found Angry Bird stuffed animals, discarded and forgotten under the boys' beds. She carried the toys one by one to the family room, delighted by her discovery. 

As Jasper made our home her own, she found balls, more stuffed animals (some determined to be off limits by their human owners), a rope dog toy that I had bought for a previous foster dog, and a cat toy discarded by Traviesa the tabby cat.

Jasper likes to collect her toys in one place. If I'm working in my office, she'll bring an Angry Bird stuffed animal upstairs with her. On her next trip up the stairs, she'll bring the cat toy. Then, the ball. One by one, all of her toys end up where she is, whether it's upstairs in my office, in the family room, or on the rug in the hallway. 

Watching Jasper surrounded by her toys, joyfully launching an Angry Bird stuffy into the air, a long-time massage therapy client asked me if I had anything in my life that brought me as much joy as Jasper's toys bring her. 

I had to stop and think. In my coaching work with moms, I teach them a self-coaching tool called the Five Delights to help them figure out what brings them happiness and joy. It's been a while since I've done the exercise myself, though, so here's my Five Delights list for today:

My Five Delights:
1. My bed at the end of the day with my two perfect pillows and warm comforter
2. Bergamot essential oil (its citrusy scent eases stress)
3. Rubbermaid stainless steel travel mug (it keeps my chai tea hot for hours!)
4. OverDrive app connected to the Peninsula Library System on my phone so I always have something good to read, for free!
5. My box of vintage buttons

Now it's your turn. What delights you? Take a moment and write down five things (or people, furry critters, or activities) that bring happiness into your life.

The Five Delights self-coaching tool is a gratitude practice, of sorts, allowing you to focus on the happy things that are already present in your life. Research shows that gratitude is a powerful shortcut to happiness. A gratitude practice can increase your happiness set point; make you more resilient to psychological, mental, and physical stress; and even improve your sleep. 

A gratitude practice like the Five Delights is simple: take a few minutes a few days a week to discover what's already good in your life. Just like Jasper the dog uncovered joy in the stuffed animals hidden under the bed, your happiness, too, is waiting to be found, waiting to be brought into the light, to surround you with so much joy.


Interested in learning more self-coaching tools to help you to build the life you love? Schedule a life coaching session with Kathleen Harper, certified life coach and author of The Well-Crafted Mom and Signs of a Happy Baby. Use coupon code NEW30 for 30 percent off your first session! ​