Ep 170: Rising Above the Storm: Six Strategies for Navigating Through a Crisis at Midlife

It's about having the clarity , self-confidence and unstoppable belief to go after and get everything you want . If you'll come with me , I'll show you how Well . Hello friends . I hope you had an amazing week this week . I wanted to share , or reshare , an episode from this time last year .

It's been a challenging week for me , one that marks the year anniversary of my father's passing and that was preceded six months before by my mother's passing , and so I've talked about it before in the podcast . But there was a period of I don't know 15 months that were just very , very challenging for me personally and for my family .

And with the anniversary of his passing this week , I thought about the episode that I did the week that it happened . I was talking about the journey that the past 15 months had been and the six ways that I dealt with it , and I was just thinking about everything that happens to all of us at midlife .

I mean a lot of times it is about losing a parent , sometimes it's about losing a spouse , but there are so many other things that can happen . Midlife is a time of I don't know turmoil .

Just kind of all starts to happen , and I thought this episode might help you deal with some of the bigger challenges that come our way at midlife , whether it's the loss of a job , some other sort of financial setback , the loss of a family member , a partner heaven forbid a child .

There are so many things that can go on at midlife that form some sort of a personal crisis that I believe this episode can help . There were six things that I did during that time period , which was very difficult for me .

I had just started a new corporate job in a new industry , one that did not allow for fully remote work , and a week later it all started my mom fell , my brother called and that's it .

Like we were off on that track , and it was a very , very , very challenging time to deal with a new job , the health and eventually death of my parents and a growing business .

So it was just a lot to deal with and it was a good episode from the perspective of while not being a lifting topic , I think it's a very practical one , that we're all going to go through things that our life feels like sometimes a bomb just went off in it , and that's what was happening for me when I recorded this episode , and I hope that , by sharing

it again , there's many that are new to the podcast , so you probably won't have heard it before .

It was from almost exactly a year ago , so I think you'll get a lot out of it , and even if you have been with me since the beginning , it's probably been a year since you've heard it , and I think the six things that I'm going to share in this episode are good reminders of ways to recenter yourself and take care of yourself and take back a little bit of

control or a little sense of yourself in the middle of just extreme chaos .

So , with that , I'm going to let you enjoy six ways to manage through a crisis , and my sincere hope is that , if you're going through anything that is more difficult , or if you just come out of a difficult season , whatever is going on for you , my hope is that this episode brings you something that makes it easier for you to get through it . Enjoy Today .

I want to talk about something that a lot of us don't like to talk about . I know I don't really like to talk about it , but it's something that happens frequently in midlife and that is how do you manage to keep everything going , everything being your life , your career , your relationships , maybe your business , if you've got one ?

How do you keep all that going ? And you're experiencing a pretty severe crisis and I'm going to talk about it through the lens of something that I've touched on on the podcast last fall , and that is the health issues that were going on with my parents , and I think I've mentioned before I lost my mother in August .

She passed away and then my father just passed away last week . So it's been a really bad year . It's been a really hard , hard , sad year and I would say a demanding year for my family .

But I want to share some of the tools that I use to get through it and to deal with it in the best way possible , because it wasn't just like we lost our parents that was the final part of it , but it was everything leading up to that and the demands on that .

I want to share it , not because it's fun to talk about , but I hope I don't get too emotional as we go through it . But I want to share it because I know this is just life right .

When you love people , whether they're your children , or if you're married , if you have a spouse or friends or , in my case , my parents you know we're humans and humans sometimes get sick and humans sometimes die and when you love them , it's really hard to deal with that .

When you're dealing with life right and I just want to talk about it because I focus on mid-career and it is a reality of mid-career you can very much end up being in a caretaker role . I know a lot of people have children in the home . They're dealing with all of that .

There's children who aren't well or their issues that they're dealing with as a family related to having the kids , and maybe a spouse gets sick , or you end up also taking care of aging parents , right , so we call it the sandwich generation in the middle .

So you tend to be at the peak of your career and then you're dealing with all of this very difficult adult stuff , you know , and it's challenging and we all know that . We all probably have our own versions of going through this .

So I'm hoping that the six things that I share today on things you can do when you're in the middle of it , to deal with it and deal with the aftermath of it . I'm just getting ready to start that , so I'm not really prepared to fully discuss that , because I haven't really processed through losing my father yet .

Like we're burying him next this coming Friday , so I need a little time before I can talk about that . But I want to talk about something I know very well , which is what do you do when you're in the middle of it , when it's not resolved yet ? Either they get better or , like my mother , they pass away and like my father .

So I just want to deal with it because it's important .

And it's important because , like when all of this happened for my family and I'll talk about like how it happened and what the impact was in my life and the ways that I dealt with it right , because the truth is like we have a life and we never structure our lives to deal with the over the top sad , bad things that can happen when you're human .

So this can , I think , apply in a lot of different ways depending on what's going on in your life . So I hope these six things help you . So before I dive into the six things .

I want to talk about how it all unfolded and so you'll understand then the context for the six things , because it really was about healthy ways to cope with what , for me , was a pretty extreme time in my

life . So it all started from my family last May Well , actually , I guess technically it was mid June I actually visited my mother for the last time when things were normal , last Mother's Day in St Louis .

I went there and we spent some time with her and dad and my brother and his wife live nearby , like 30 minutes away , so they , I think , came over and visited too and like we just had a nice visit and she looked healthy but frail .

And I remember telling her I took a picture of her because I had bought her a really pretty kind of pink thing to wear and took a picture of her and it's such a really pretty . And I remember telling her okay , you need to eat more .

And I remember feeding her a ton of carbs when I was there to fatten her up and I just said you need to eat more , you look really frail . And she said , oh , I feel good but my stomach kind of hurts . And I said well , you know , she got the doctor or whatever .

So we had these conversations and I left thinking that my parents are getting older and it's always hard when you don't live there and you go home you notice more , I think , than the siblings who live closer and saw them more often . So that always made me feel sad because I was aware of the passing of time .

But you know , I've always been grateful , like my parents were upper 80s my dad just turned 90 right before he passed and I was really grateful that they were able to live on their own and take care of themselves and that's what they wanted , right , and so I'm glad that they got that to stay in their house .

But it was a couple of weeks later that all of this happened . And what happened is my mom fell and she had been my dad's primary caregiver Because he had been diagnosed with dementia not Alzheimer's , but I guess there's different types anyway . It just he was just having cognitive decline .

He couldn't really care for himself just because of memory stuff and his state of mind , so , but it wasn't really severe at that point . And so , very long story short , my mom went in the hospital and they checked her out and then she had a stroke .

So what happened then is that my I have three other siblings , so there's four of us , and we each decided to take a week of the month and rotate . So Saturday to Saturday was the schedule . And so because we all you know , we're working Right , so you know , and everybody's got a life , and my sister my younger sister and I live across the country .

I live in Dallas , she lives in Alabama , and my brother lives about 30 minutes away and then my older sister lives about two hours away . So we all decided to rotate and that was tough , right . I mean , you have a career .

In my case , you also have a business with clients , a growing business with a growing roster of clients , and then you also now have to be across the country one week a month , and that week was spent not only caring for my parents but also working eight to five and also running the business .

So it was a lot and it was also very emotional because , you know , we were trying to figure out , like , how sick was my mom and all of that stuff , and shortly thereafter , having a hard time remembering the exact sequence . But we found out that she had cancer and it turned out to be a terminal diagnosis . But even getting that answer wasn't straightforward .

It wasn't like they told us , like it was imminent and you know , you could kind of see her decline and see that it probably was going to turn out that way , but we didn't really know . So there's lots more . I could say that I just won't go there .

But about the healthcare system and things like that , anyway , that was the life from June through August and then after she passed away , we were all dealing with that .

But then we had to continue because my dad we didn't want to my mom's wishes was that he wouldn't be put into a home until we had to , and so as long as we could , we maintain that rotation . Just until the last like couple of months we had to put him in a place . When he started to require 24 , seven care . Legroire just couldn't do it .

It was way above our capabilities some of the things he required . So we had to put him in a place and then he passed away . So it was seven or eight months of that and that's really challenging and I think it's something that those of us in my career it couldn't happen , of course , at any age , but it's very common .

Like you get to a certain age in midlife and you've hopefully still have your parents , but you may also have , you know , people in the home , like children or whatever that depend on you and then you know you might have you're usually at the peak of your career too , so that's demanding .

So it's a lot , you know , and I want to talk about the six things that I did to handle it , because there's a healthy way to handle it and there's an unhealthy way to handle it , and I feel like I did okay , not probably in all respects , but mostly .

And so I want to share the six things that I did because I remember , like when it all started and we decided on this rotation and I thought , oh my God , how am I going to , how am I going to do this ? I mean , I had just literally a week before my mom fell and it all started .

I had changed jobs and the job that I left was a fully remote job with , you know , the world's best boss and the world's best culture . And the job that I took was a hybrid job in an area of passion for me . It's in the entertainment industry , and I love movies . I'm very passionate about that .

So you know it was a very purposeful shift , but it required me to be in the office three days a week . So imagine starting being one week into a new job and deciding you have to be gone one week a month , when that's not really something that their policies allow . I mean , I didn't have a choice , right , I couldn't quit the job .

Anyway , if the order had been reversed , I wouldn't have taken it right , because I just didn't think it was fair to my new employer and you know , my previous job wouldn't . It didn't really care . It could have worked from anywhere in the world , it didn't matter . So it was tough , but they were very understanding , but it still was stressful , right ?

I still thought , oh gosh , this isn't great that I asked this of them in the early stages , but you know , it had to be done . I didn't have a choice . I wanted to be there for my family , and so I want to talk through the six things . I was so grateful that I had gone to the coaching certification in 2019 .

Because many points of the past 10 months , I really thought I can't do this . This is way too hard . I can't do it . Something's got to give you know , and when I felt myself go there , I used one of these techniques to help me calm down and get through it .

So I hope that , no matter what you're going through if it's the loss of a job , if it's a the health of yourself or a family member , or if you're dealing with the aftermath of the loss of a family member I hope that these things help you . So let's go ahead and dive in . So there's six things that I did .

I'll give you a little color on each as we go through . The first one is about being present . I call it be here now , and it is very important .

Especially , it's always important , I think , in terms of living the best life you have Like doesn't serve you if you spend all your time at work obsessing about the things going on at home , and it doesn't serve you if all the time you're at home , you're obsessing about the things at work .

We know this intellectually , but it's practicing it as another thing , and I think really having the discipline to be present in the moment is always important . But for me in the past 10 months it was critical because I had this super demanding job new job with all new people , none of which I knew , none were in my network , all new stuff , new industry .

So that's already going to be challenging . I had that and then I had my business , which is a side hustle right now but it's growing and because I have this demanding job , there's only so much growth I can do and all of that .

So you know , it's easy to get overwhelmed between the two and I keep myself from doing that by being very structured with my time and not overburdening myself with too many clients . I turn people away because I can only take on so many people and because I've got a day job right now . When that stops , then the business will go .

But it's like , for right now I'm not ready to give up the brand thing . I love it . Like I'm one of these people who what I do is a vocation for me , like I really enjoy brand . I get a charge from it , so I'm not quite ready to give it up .

Yeah , it'll be fun to run my own brand , but you know I'm not going to be doing it at scale for a multi billion dollar company . Right , not for a while . Anyway , it's going to take me a while to get my businesses at scale .

So anyway , you know I do it by being very structured and very present in the moment when I am in my 8 to 5 , I don't think about my business . And when I'm doing my business and with my clients , I don't think about my 8 to 5, .

Right Now , I had to add a third component to that , which was my parents , and not only my parents care , but getting to and from there right . So it was just a challenge , because they live , you know , in St Louis and I live in Dallas . So you know it's probably it depends on how fast you drive .

I can now do it in 9 hours , but you know it's a long way and plane is fast . But then you got the airport thing and the scheduling and all the stuff . So the trick to managing all of it and not getting overwhelmed is by staying in the moment , as tough as that is . But that was one of the key things that allowed me to survive .

When I was not in my week of care for my parents , I checked in on texts at night . We had a text loop so we always knew what was going on . I did not check that text loop during the 8 to 5 . Never . The only time it crept in is when my brother called me in the middle of the day and told me my mother had passed .

I was not there that week , but other than that I thought that is something that I deal with when I get home , I'm not dealing with it here . So 8 to 5 , I was all in at work . In the hours that I was with clients I did not think about work and I didn't think about my parents .

I thought about my clients , right , and then in the hours when I was with my parents that was a little bifurcated because in the week that I was there caring for them I still had to work . So I had to have just structured my they're eating routines and the things that I did for them .

I tried to structure them very specifically and schedule them within the day . So I would block off little 30-minute windows to feed them lunch or to do the things I needed to do for them , to let the nurse in or whatever , and then I would just go right back to the office and work . So I just had to stay very present and not let anything else bleed in .

I was like you know , there's a tornado going on in my life right now and I'm just gonna not worry about that tornado . I'm gonna take one little wind gust at a time . I cannot deal with the whole thing right . So b here now is a key technique , and it requires an unbelievable amount of discipline .

As any of us know , if we're dealing with a lot in our life Like , it's very easy to get lost in the overwhelm of all of it , and the only way I have found to get through is to pull it apart and look at all the different components and deal with the components In the moment you have to deal with a component , and when you not have to deal with that

component , set that component aside and get back to it when it's time to deal with it again . That is the only way I could do it is to pull it apart . So that's number one b here now . I honestly think we should all work on practicing that every day anyway .

Like doesn't do you any good if you're obsessing about your job when you're at home with your family , or obsessing about your family when you're at your job Doesn't help either thing .

The only thing that helps is to be exactly where you are and fully in it in that moment , and then when you're out and that time is passed , the 8 to 5 is over , you get in your car and then you go be with whoever else you're going to be with at night , right ?

That is critically important , I think , to a happy life and a healthy state of mind and high performance , too , at work . So

that's number one b . Here now Number two , I want you to do what I call a thought download when it all gets to be too much . Now , in number one , I talked about being present and not paying attention , not giving your attention to the tornado that's going on , just dealing with one little wind gust at a time .

Yeah , but we're human and sometimes it just piles on and you just want to collapse under the weight of it , and when that happens , it's best to take the thoughts from your mind and put them down on paper . That's part of the self-coaching methodology that I teach my clients in my practice and it's something that I do every day anyway . Just in general .

But specifically related to all of the things that were going on for me in that 10 months , mostly related to my concerns about my parents and my ability to continue at this pace . I wrote it down periodically when it just piled on . I made sure that I gave myself 30 minutes or an hour if I needed it , sometimes over lunch at work .

If I was feeling it creep up , I would sit there and eat my salad or whatever and I would do a thought download about whatever was happening . And I just want to describe how you do that . And then I want to talk about why it matters , because it might sound like it seems like a waste of time .

When I first heard about it in my coaching certification I was like I don't know , like how's that going to help anything ? I will tell you , it is everything . Because what happens is , even if we're aware of our thoughts , when they just stay in the ether of our brain and sit there , we don't fully understand everything that's associated with those thoughts .

Thoughts have thought friends , thought cousins that are like-minded , thoughts that follow on each other . When we have one thought , usually that spurs many thoughts and that's what leads to us getting to a place where we feel a little overwhelmed .

Right In positive psychology , they call it catastrophizing if it's a negative series of thoughts , but it can also be a positive series of thoughts , but given what I was going through , of course , was going to be catastrophizing , sorts of thoughts like one thing led to another , led to another . So it helps to write it down .

And so how you do that is you put what's going on at the top of the page so in this case , health of my parents at the time and then you just start writing . You just literally put a pen in your hand and write down everything that you think .

When you look at that line , every thought that comes up , even if it doesn't make any sense , even if it seems really negative , even if it's scary , like whatever it is . You write it down and keep writing as long as you can . I like to tell my clients think of it as taking a dishcloth and wringing all the water out of it .

That's what you're trying to do . You're trying to get every thought related to that thing out of your head and down on paper . And what that does for you is it allows you to see all of the things that are looping in your mind .

That's what's causing you to feel the crappy things you're feeling , or the scary feelings , or the fear , or the self-doubt or whatever the overwhelm . That's where it's all coming from . So the power of the thought download is .

When you see those thoughts on paper , you understand that's what's creating your feelings and you get to decide something else that you want to think instead , and I will tell you for me in that scenario that 10 months I was like a soldier with it . I was incredibly disciplined and all of my siblings were . We were like a machine .

We had a schedule and we communicated during the week and we knew what time the other sibling was arriving on Saturday and they arrived . We did a download and a you know like a transfer , and then the other sibling left and went back to their life and then that continued on . It was a . I'm sure the neighbors are like , wow , this is a well oiled machine .

We got going on there , but I mean , it was really important . The only way I could do it . I was just like I'm doing this , I will my . I had wonderful parents and I thought now they need me and I'm doing it no matter what .

And so for me , when I felt the overwhelm creeping up , I would do the thought download and look at it and I'd be like you know what ?

Yes , to all of the fear and all of the sadness and all of that , but here's what you're thinking instead right now , you got time to feel that when they're gone , right now , that's about a hundred percent caring for them right now , right , and so that combination of like be here now and the thought download was , like 80% of it , critically important .

So and it's easy to do , you can do it anytime you're feeling that overwhelm of emotions , do a thought download and we get all the words down on paper . A couple of other things I want to say about it is don't put all the sentences like in a paragraph . Do one sentence per line .

And the reason you want to do one sentence per line is because we tend to think of the things that we think as stories and that they're true . And when there's just different sentences on each line , it helps you understand that they're just separate thoughts .

It's not this big complicated story , it's just a thought and then another thought and then another thought . It really helps . So , one sentence per line , period , that's the thing . And then , when you think you're done and you're running out of things to write down , just sit there quietly for a minute and ask yourself what else ?

Is there anything else and any other little random thought that flits by ? Write it down and then take a look at it and acknowledge it . This is everything that's in there , but if , like me , you have to shoulder on , you can't get lost in those things . You can acknowledge them . They're very important to acknowledge , but you can decide to something else .

You want to think right now to allow you to keep going . That's what I did and it was very helpful , kept me out of overwhelm and it kept me in the moment . I was able to perform at a high level at work , I was able to keep going for my clients and I was able to do what I need to do for my parents across the country . So that's number two .

Number three this is a hard one for a lot of us . I need you to feel your feelings .

So the thought download helps , right , because sometimes we just get overwhelmed with emotion and we don't , we're not really aware of the thoughts we're thinking , but we just feel overwhelmingly sad or just overwhelmed by too many demands , or we can feel a sense of hopelessness .

For in the middle of a crisis , like there's all kinds of thing that we can feel and the more negative side of the feeling spectrum .

And it's important to really feel those feelings Because if you don't , you're going to end up buffering , you're going to end up over drinking , you're going to end up overeating , you're going to end up doing some type of an escape thing Netflixing , you know , anything that we do in the extreme , the over consumption behaviors .

It's all because we don't want to feel the thing that we really feel . You know we're trying to escape it .

So you need to allow yourself moments where you're taking that thought download , you're looking at it and , depending on the sentences that you see there , acknowledging that emotion , allowing yourself to just sit for a minute in the sadness or in the anxiety or in the fear and just realize that that emotion is in there , but it isn't real and it isn't permanent .

It's just an emotion that you're feeling right now because of all the things that are in your mind . And I'm not telling you to deny those things , because in my case a lot of those things are really happening right . So denying it wasn't going to be helpful , but allowing yourself to feel it in , I would say , a structured way .

You know you don't want to sit there at work in a puddle of emotion , unable to do your job , but when you get home at night , doing a thought download , taking 30 minutes for yourself to do that and then sit there in those feelings and just allow yourself to feel sad in that moment , is very healthy and it keeps it from bleeding into inappropriate moments .

So that is number three feel your feelings and taking some time to do that in a structured way . Number four is , I think , reframing it . I talked a little bit about this in the thought download .

That is what I did was I decided I acknowledged all the things that were in my mind when I did the thought download , but I selected a new thought to think instead , because when you're going through something that is requiring you to be fully there in every moment and it's pretty extreme the best way to get through that is by choosing on purpose a very specific

thought that you can keep coming back to , to center yourself . And for me it was just I'm doing this , I choose to do this . My parents never would have asked that of us , but we four chose it because of the parents they were . They deserve that and we were determined to be there for them in the moment when they needed it .

And so that helped me , it gave me strength and it allowed me to really stay centered and in the moment and to , in those moments when I felt really sad or whatever , to let myself to feel sad . But then I just came back to that thought .

I'm doing this , this is what I choose to do , and this period of time isn't going to last forever and I'm going to be there when it counts . Like that was critically important to me and I kept coming back to that . That was my North Star . So don't let your mind run you in this time period .

It's always important to be in control of your mind , but especially important when you're going through something like this . You have to just decide . This is what I'm doing and this is what I'm going to keep , anchoring back to not going to let fear take control or overwhelm take control , or feeling sorry for myself .

I'm going to come back to this thought and I'm going to get on with it because that's what I got to do , right ? So that's number

four . Number five self soothe take care of yourself . I was a little hit or miss on this . I'm going to be honest with you . It wasn't perfect , but there are little things that you can do for yourself to take care of yourself .

Don't forget your routines , like the things that you do on a daily basis , you know , to take care of your skin or to get ready for the day , like to put on your makeup , to get your outfit together , even like little luxuries , like finding time to have a nice luxurious bath . When you have the moment , you know whatever way you define that .

I do love the movies , so making time on the weeks when I wasn't there to sit in the dark in theater and lose myself in a wonderful movie on the screen was one of my favorite things to do . So , just for a moment to escape my life and enter someone else's , was a nice way to do it . But find the time in ways that are important to you .

I'm just now getting back in the gym . I took a hiatus in that time period . There was not . I did not successfully structure that into my day and I wish I had . You know I did . Sometimes I would do at least some stretching , but it feels good to kind of be working out again .

So find ways to take care of yourself in the ways that matter to you and be sure to do a little bit of that every day , because it is very easy for that to come last and I would tell you it needs to appear on the list and it needs to be a priority . It's important to not lose sight of taking care of yourself .

And number six is something I believe very strongly , and that is gratitude . When I was going through that time , I decided it was the summer . So I don't know if you remember last summer if you had any travel plans I know you do . It was a hot mess .

They kept canceling flights and so for me , I couldn't just not show up , like we promised each other , the four of us kids that you know . We coordinated the time we need , the exact time the person was going to get there .

Because you think about it , you know you're there for a week , you're away from everything your family , your home , all of that , your pets , all of the stuff in your life and you want to be there . But when it's time to leave , you want to go back to your life and take care of that .

And so I couldn't buy a plane ticket and have the airline just decide that they couldn't . You know they were canceling flights for three days , so it was just a crazy summer for that . And so I just decided you know what I'm going to drive , and I'm not a driver on vacation . I don't like to fly and get there and do my thing .

But I instead , what I did was I thought , well , okay if I've got on . So , on top of the seven days that I was gone , I had 18 hours of driving nine nine to nine and a half hours each way , and what I decided to do was use that time in ways that that soothed me and that served me .

So I use that time to think about the things that I was grateful for . Like , I was glad that we had the time to say goodbye to my parents and the time to show them how much we love them , right by being there for them in their moment when they needed it , just like they were there for us when we were young .

So I was grateful for that and I was also . I use the time in the drive to think about things in the business . I would listen to some of my favorite podcasts and I would just spend the time as an escape . It was kind of like a little world I lived in and I chose not to see that long drive as a burden .

I saw it as a chance to charge and decompress .

So on the way there , I was grateful for the time to get ready for the week ahead , which I knew was going to be very demanding , and taking care of my parents and then on that long drive home , it was my chance to let all that go and to not spend all the time obsessing and worrying about my parents and what was going to happen , but instead to start

thinking about okay , how do I get ready for my week , my work week , right ?

So you know , using gratitude and your time in a way that serves you when you're going through moments like that , I think , is really really important and it can be one of the key mechanisms you use to kind of center yourself and to get through it in the most healthy and productive way .

So just to run through the six again number one be here now , so be present . Don't let all the different things bleed into each other , kind of be in the moment and then be in the next moment , like don't blend the moments together . Number two write down your thoughts .

Even if you think you're aware of them , it's healthy to get them out of your head and down on paper .

There's something powerful that happens , puts you in charge , right , you understand what's in there and it makes it very clear why you're feeling the way you're feeling right , and you sort of get back a little bit of control , I think , and you can then more productively manage your life . Number three feel your feelings .

Don't try to escape them through eating , drinking or any other overconsumption behavior . Give yourself time 15 minutes , 30 minutes at appropriate moments . You know when you can be by yourself , not in the middle of your work day where you can just say I feel really sad right now and allow yourself to feel that way .

Get it out , sit in that emotion and let it process through so it doesn't stay with you . Number four reframe it . When you do the thought download and after you feel your feelings , I want you to just decide what do you want to anchor back to ?

What are you choosing , like how do you want to think about what's going on in the most productive way that serves you ? It's not about making stuff up . It's not about being falsely positive . It's about just deciding . You know what do you want to come back to and how .

You know it needs to be something that , hopefully , will help you get through it in the most productive way . Right , and mine was I'm doing this , I choose to do this , I'm going to be there for my parents , right , and that gave me strength . I just kept coming back to it and saying , okay , this is it .

This is where I'm at right now and I'm going to do it . And number five self soothe . Take care of yourself . Don't forget the self-care Super , super important . And number five gratitude . So you know , be grateful For me . I was grateful for the time .

I was grateful that we were able to show my parents and that , instead of just saying I love you or whatever , they knew they felt the love they felt , they knew we were caring for them and I will always be grateful for that time that we had a chance to say goodbye and all of that .

So , anyway , this is a little bit more of a downer of an episode , so I don't usually talk about really sad things , but I thought it was important and somewhere down the line I'll talk about grief .

And I'm just two in the middle of it now , so I don't have anything helpful to share right now , but I will say that these six things will help you get through anything that you're going through in your life without feeling overwhelmed , so that you can handle it in the best and most productive way and be there for those situations and the ways that are

important to you . So I hope you found this episode helpful and if you're going through something , anything , whatever it is in your life that it just feels like it's just too much whether it's a job loss , the health of a loved one , the loss of a loved one I want you to know that you're not alone and this , too shall pass .

It feels like when you're in that moment it feels like it's always going to be that way and it's not always going to be that way .

You're going to get through it and they're a brighter days ahead , and you know , just try to get through it in the most healthy , productive , self-care oriented way that you can , and use these six techniques , because I know that they will really help you . They certainly did me . So with that , I'll leave you until next time

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