Prioritizing caring for yourself this summer is the opposite of selfish. And It’s what I want to push you to do for yourself.
I’m coming to you live from day two of summer break in this episode where I want to get real about navigating this time of year so you can have fun and feel like your best self. But first, this is not an episode about 100 awesome things to do with your kids over the next 2 months (although I have some help for that here!) These are my 4 keys to helping you feel supported throughout this season, so you can be awesome with your family and for yourself.
During the summer you are managing a lot more, you’re managing more needs, you’re managing more interruptions, and you are managing less routines. I will show you that by prioritizing your self in some ways, you will feel more successful in providing care to those around you. And I’m keeping this really simple with 4 straightforward tips that you can start working on right away to enjoy this summer instead of just surviving it.
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TRANSCRIPT
Monica Packer: Welcome to about to progress. I’m Monica packer, a regular mom and recovering perfectionist who uncovered the truest model to dramatic, but lasting personal growth it’s progress made practical. Join us to leave the extremes behind and instead learn how to do something to grow in ways that.
If you like this podcast, then you will love my new course called the sticky habit method. It’s all about how to form habits outside of perfectionism. And yes, it is possible. You can check it out at about progress.com/sticky habit method.
It’s summertime. And I am recording this on our second official day of our summer break. And the last two days I’ve had the song stuck in my head and it’s called summertime it’s from Gershwin’s opera, Porgy, and Bess and amazing opera. I’ve never actually seen it in full I’ve. Just listened to it a lot in full back to my music store job days where I would sit and I could listen to music, which was an assignment for my flute teacher. And this is what’s always with my favorites and now I wanted to play it for you. But I sadly can’t because of copyright. So what I’m going to do instead is urge you to please go listen to my favorite version of summertime with Audra McDonald.
And it’s linked in the show notes to this amazing rendition that she does. So summer time. Just imagine that like a hundred million times better. And that’s where we’re going with this.
Now,friends. I love summer love having longer nights. I love having more adventures. I love creating memories. I love being more relaxed, but honestly, summertime is also exhausting, especially if you have a care-taking role, whether you do paid labor outside the home or not. If you tend to be more in charge of people within a home, I’m thinking children, mostly, this means that during the summer, you are managing a lot more. You’re managing more needs. You’re managing more interruptions. You are managing less routines.
You’re managing more reactive needs. You’re also managing likely kids who are adjusting to life outside of school, or maybe that’s just us. So this episode is for you. If this is you now, there are so many amazing ideas for how to have great family summers and those are awesome. I actually have a free resource for this too.
If you’re interested in creating a summer of fun with your family, you can go to about progress.com/sof. That’s spelled S O F. That stands for summer of fun. If you want to create a plan as a family, to have a summer of fun. Again, I’m going on a tangent. There are so many amazing ideas for family plans, but what I’m going to offer to you today is not that it’s not about how to have the fun of summer ever as a family.
Although that matters. What I actually want to offer to you today is something very simple, but also very complex. And it starts with this thought your family needs you, you in all caps, Y O U. And if you are exhausted, stressed, overwhelmed, and stretched far too thin, you’re not going to do anyone any favors.
I want to paint two versions of a possible summer you could experience imagine having piles of laundry on the couch that have been waiting to be folded for a few days and your feet. Keep catching on these drips from popsicles while walking around the kitchen, it’s 5:00 PM and you have no idea what’s for dinner.
Your kids are wandering in and out of the house looking like rabid animals, more than recognizable children, and you are feeling so depleted, overwhelmed and even resentful. That’s version one.
And here’s version two. Imagine that you have piles of laundry on the couch. I had been waiting to be folded for days and your feet keep catching on drips from popsicles while you’re walking on the kitchen.
And it’s 5:00 PM and you have no idea what’s for dinner and your kids are wandering in out of the house looking like rabid animals, more than recognizable children. And. Are feeling settled, flexible, and. Yes, my friends. I know that almost word for word. Those were the exact same versions of two possible summers you can experience.
And the reason why I didn’t paint the picture of a perfect summer day, where you don’t have obstacles or annoyances or frustrations is because I don’t know what kind of summer that exists in, like what kind of world that exists. So the two versions here, there’s only one difference. And it’s you. And I want you to live more in the latter.
Obviously. I want you to feel more settled. And flexible and supported with all the chaos and the fun and also the not so fun stuff that’s going to be happening this summer. And the reason why it’s going to feel different, even though it might not look different is because you have prioritized caring foryourself.
This episode is all about four keys to a supported and awesome summer. I want you to have a really supported summer. And when I say supported, I mean, you need to be supported so you can support everything else that you want the summer to contain.
A quick note before I share those four keys. Prioritize caring for yourself this summer is the opposite of selfish I know that we want to make summer about kids, and I want to do that in my family too. I do want my kids to have a blast this summer, but I also want them to have a really flexible and stable supportive mom who is leading the ship.
So because of that, in order for me to guide the ship and be there for my kids and help them have the time of their lives. And also do a lot of chores because they need to do that too. I need to prioritize caring for myself, even in the smallest of way.
So that is what I want to push you to do for yourself. And you may think that is a super tall order, especially if your kids are really needy, whether they’re very young and need you at all times, even to like put a piece of bread in the toaster, or if they’re older and they want you to drive them around everywhere and don’t want anything to do with your ideas for summer plans, you need to prioritize, caring for yourself so that you can prioritize caring for others, whether or not you stay at home with them, or you work outside of the home. My four keys today are going to be as practical and as doable as possible. So that you can have an awesome summer with your family because you are not a walking zombie or a ticking time bomb.
Let’s take it in to my four keys to have a supported and awesome summer. The first is to honor your season. This is a key because even though summer’s a season and we’re like, yeah, that’s the season. I’m not talking about that type of season. I’m talking about a life season. Each of us have a summer going on right now, but each of ours looks different because of the stages of life we are in as a family, regardless of where the ages of your kids are, there’s also different needs within those same ages, because kids are different.
You are different to, maybe you have lots of good energy this summer, and you’re feeling like you have a lot to give, or maybe you have some health issues or some mental health struggles right now. And you don’t have as much to give as maybe you did last summer. Instead of resisting the obstacles that the season might be showing to you instead of ignoring them, instead of pushing the square peg into a round hole with your summer, I need you to honor the season you’re in and by honoring the season, what you’re really doing is honoring the obstacles that might be in your way.
And when I say honor the obstacles, I’m not saying like luxuriate in them and, and make it mean, so you don’t, you have, you’re just like I have these obstacles. I can’t do anything I want to do this summer. No, it’s just more honoring your season is weirdly freeing because you say, well, this is not our season for going to a waterpark every other day, but it can mean that we are in a season of reading books together in forts that we’ve made. Or vice versa.
As part of honoring your season, here is a practical way. I want you to do that. It involves one simple question. What can you let go of doing this Summer? I have some suggestions for you on what you can let go of. Maybe this is the summer of letting go of elaborate meals or even homemade meals.
Maybe you spend more money at Trader Joe’s getting pre-made stuff, or you just eat a lot of toast and eggs and smoothies or cereal. And that’s okay. You can let go of elaborate meals or homemade meals even. Can you let go of having as clean of a house as you typically have? Maybe you can let go of doing tons of, out of the house adventures, or maybe you can let go of having that idea that your kids need to be home and playing all the time because they should just be able to play.
And they’re not really into that right now. Okay. So. In honoring your season I want you to decide what you can let go of the summer. And I’m going to share with you. I know that there’s a garbage truck outside of my window, and we’re just going to keep going. I’m going to share my example with you this summer.
I actually like maybe a couple of weeks back my family, and I took some time we got out our essential calendar. I love the essential calendar, by the way, you should definitely check them out. That’s just a little free plug there. We got out our calendar for the summer. And it’s this three month long calendar that you can just put up on a wall.
And we went through and we brainstormed all these things that we wanted to do in home, outside of the home foods. We want to try, like just, you know, we made a big list as a family that we’re going to pull from throughout the summer. And when we made that, I was feeling pretty good. I was feeling more like me, myself.
I felt like I had enough energy to do stuff like that. But right now, I’m not. So I’m going to honor my season of not having a ton of energy to do crazy adventures every single day. So what I’m saying no to is a couple of weird things. One is I’m going to say no to doing cooked breakfast because I usually have cooked breakfast for our kids, Brad and I up and making it together sometimes.
But I’m just going to say that. We’re not going to do cook breakfast, it’s going to be toast or cereal and you get to decide. I’m also going to say to no, to a lot of my own work with social media, I’m going to spend less time on Instagram for my work. And the last thing I’m going to say no to is going on lots of big outings without Brad.
And I’m typically, we’re kind of a go, go, go household. My kids do better when we’re outside and doing adventures, but I just don’t have as much in me the summer to do that. So we are going to say no to lots of solo outings, meaning without Brad. How can you honor your season this summer by letting go of some type of expectation you have?
That’s the first key. The second key is. Have things to look forward to. In other words, have ways for you to find fulfillment. And there’s two ways. I want you to do this, to decide on some things to look forward to the first can be a shared activity with your kids, with your family, have something that you are going to look forward to, whether it’s camping in the backyard.
Like we did a couple of weeks ago, although that wasn’t on purpose in our backyard, you have to listen to the messy middle from the beginning of June to learn more about that. But whether it’s camping in the backyard or doing s’mores up the canyon or going to a local beach or a bigger like vacation, something like that having a shared activity that you all can look forward to, it’s just a wonderful way to add some zest and sparkle to a summer and really building that.
The second way, you can have something to look forward to as having something solo to look forward to. And I’m talking about just you. My suggestion is to set aside a day for yourself and the past on my DSLs, I have called this a mom’s day. It’s just where I take a day off. I take a day off it’s I it’s ironically worded.
I’m realizing because I’m taking a day off for my responsibilities. I’m saying no to all my mom responsibilities and Brad takes a day off of work, literally, to hang out with the kids all day and do the things I do with them. And before you go through all the reasons why you can’t do that, just listen to the ideal version.
The ideal version is that you do take that full day and your spouse or partner, they take over the responsibilities that you are going to take a day off from. And this is where you take the day for yourself. And you get to do the things you like to do, whether it’s going to a library or working out as long as you want the gym or not working out at all and sleeping in or reading books all day, or going to all these amazing bakeries or to a museum that you love to see or window shopping, whatever it is, it’s a day outside of your responsibilities.
And that’s the ideal version, but here’s another version you can do. It’s even having a couple of hours that are responsibility free and you can do this with your, your spouse or partner. You could also have grandparents come and babysit, or here’s the free suggestion trade a half day with a friend. You each get to take a half day to have a mom day or her day to yourself outside of responsibilities.
And that friend can step in with the kids and take care of those responsibilities if you don’t have another option. And I’m sure that there will be many friends willing to do that. And you can each take three or four hours and maybe it’s in the same day, or maybe you do it on different weeks, but you just take a couple of hours.
Away from your responsibilities, it will be so life-giving and it is something to look forward to for sure. And you can set it on your calendar and have that to look forward to one quick note on that. I want to remind you that you are working your behind off all summer and taking care of most often children, if you’re a caretaker or maybe you care for your elderly grandma grandparent or parent Deserve that, and you supporting yourself in this way of having something to look forward to like that is going to be so life-giving to the people that you are in charge of.
So that was my second key was to have something to look forward to.
We’ll share more keys after the. Does your family need a way to have some new kind of fun the summer? Maybe your old plans just aren’t really sticking right now. And you can see. More out of the box. We need to do things more outside of our norm that I’m encourage you highly to get the get-out pass.
This is actually a year long pass, but you can start using it this summer, but it is, is that you pay one flat fee per pass and that pass gets you into a ridiculous number of places within your state for. When I was scrolling the list of how many places I could get into, like the scrolling just seemed to never add that it’s places like color me.
Mine are these ninja parks or trampoline parks. There’s amusement parks. There’s so many different ways of having fun. As a family on this, get out pass, you can get yours with 30% off using the code about progress@aboutprogress.com slash get out. I want you to get out the summer. So go to about progress.com/and get out and use about progress for 30% off.
just sharing a little bit about how the sausage is made. Grow best when Lil listeners share the show with their friends, truly that is the number one way that podcast grow. And another know how the sausage is made. Moment is summertime tends to be when numbers dip a lot with podcasts. That’s okay. We’re all doing our different things in the summer, but the point of me sharing all of this is to encourage you to share the show with a friend.
If you think of one while you’re listening to. Text him the link to the episode. If you think everybody, you know, needs to listen to that. Put it on Instagram, on your stories. And one thing we’re doing for fun for the next couple months is we are going to draw a winner each month for someone who has been sharing on Instagram, linking the podcast and tagging me at about progress.
And we don’t get a ton of submission. So your odds are pretty high. If you can share about the show, that will not only help my big goal to help the show grow this year. It will also help the friend or loved one that you think of when he listened to. It’s a win-win. Thank you so much for sharing the show and for helping us in our goals this year.
Okay. We are ready for the third key. The third key to having a supported and still awesome summer is to create a supportive habit for the summer. Now, this might seem like really boring. I know it’s boring, but this is also how you actually support yourself is by having a habit that makes it so you don’t have to constantly wonder each day where you were going to fit you in.
It is just a habit. Now I have a whole course for this. It’s called the sticky habit method. Go to about progress.com/sticky habit method, friends. It is affordable, and it’s also very doable. It’s designed for those of you who haven’t been able to complete courses in the past, it’s designed for you who don’t have much time or even attention, really go and check it out because it will help you create that supportive.
Any way better than I could share in the next couple minutes. But here is one thing I want you to know that right here, right now about this, a supportive habit does not need to be actually, it should not be a should. And I know I just basically contradict myself, but a supportive habit is about you. Your wants your needs, your season.
What are those? This. And what is one small way you can support yourself this summer? For me, I know the best way I can always support myself is having time alone. I’m an extroverted introvert, which basically means I’m an introvert in disguise. And I need a lot of time alone to myself. And I don’t get that very often if at all, the way that I tend to get it the most is the most consistently.
And because it’s a habit is like going on a walk a day. Sometimes that’s going to be just a little walk. Sometimes that’s going to be a longer hour long walk, but doing that habit helps me feel supported enough to meet my kids and their needs. Now, summertime as where we’re experiencing a lot of shifts and our routines, and we have to be more flexible.
And I know that that is likely happening for you. Maybe you’ve built up some good supportive habits and then summer has started and now. Unsupported that’s okay. In fact, this question came up within the sticky habit method course. And this is what one of the students said. She said, quote, it’s the first day of summer with my kids, not in school this whole past month has left me feeling like my habits in general are in tatters.
You know, May is crazy. She wrote this in the beginning of June. I know that’s not completely true yet today with kids out of school, it seems like the little bit of sanity and structure I had for myself disappeared next week will be a fresh start for some routines and fun. But I’m curious how you approach shifting your family from school routines to summer routines.
I just don’t want to be a martyr monster mom. I love how she said that martyr monster mom and I also want to take care of myself and not feel like I’m living in a complete disaster with our home and schedule unquote. Okay. If this is you, this is actually how I answered her within the course.
And I just was like, you know what? I know this is how most women are feeling. So this is my answer to you. For those of you who like, hear me say, this is the key, create a supportive habit. And you’re like, but all my habits are in tatters. This is my suggestion for you. The first part of the suggestion is to give yourself a shiz hit the fan window of time.
When I say that, I mean, give yourself grace for a certain amount of days or weeks, even simply to get your bearings. It’s okay. That your morning routine. Has gone your night routine has gone your, your meal planning, routine, whatever the routines are that were keeping you afloat during the non-summer times.
It’s okay. That the shiz hit the fan and that you don’t have those right now. Give yourself grace simply to get your bearings. That’s okay. The second advice then is to, after you give yourself that, that window of time. Then get really real with yourself about which supportive habits are the most essential to helping you show up to your family and then of the supportive habits what versions of them will be able to help you enough and also help you be consistent, meaning kind of the easier versions of them.
So I like to usually go on an hour long walk. But right now today, my walk was a very slow 40 minute, two mile walk with two of my kids. And that counted today. So, again, my advice there is to get real with yourself about what supportive habits would be the most essential to helping you show up to your family the summer, and then of the supportive habits what is an easier version you can do of them that will help you be consistent with them so that you can feel supportive enough to show up? There’s always a balance, right? With these shifting rhythms and seasons of doing enough, but not doing too much. And summer is the perfect time to give herself both grace, but to still set a standard outside of the all or nothing so that you can be consistent in ways that are going to be supportive for you instead of being so impossible, you can’t do them.
Or if you do do them that other things are really paying the price. So I hope my example there worked for. Of just doing a shorter walk or doing it with my kids. Another example of this is maybe my weekly spiritual practice of like doing a big long hour study practice isn’t feasible right now, but what I can do is meditate on a walk, which we have a growth spurt about recently, or to listen to scriptural texts on a walk or something like that.
You can do a simplified version of a supportive routine this summer. Okay. So that third key was to. Create a supportive habit.
Now the fourth and final key as one that is often loaded with guilt and complete like outright, like women will shut this down when they hear this key. And when you heard the ski, you might be like, Nope, not me. Can’t, here’s the key. And then I’m going to walk you through it. The key is to consider outside help consider getting help.
Paid for or unpaid for that was weird to say so outside help, can you have that be within your family? Maybe your spouse takes over a couple of dinners a week. Maybe your kids make their own lunches. The night before you go on adventures, or even every day, they make their own lunch. Maybe you get outside help in more paid ways like hiring a cleaner just for the summer to come even once a month or once every other week. Maybe you hire a babysitter for a couple afternoons a week or once a week for two hours. So you can have time to yourself. My favorite version of this that I would like to suggest is hiring a mommy’s helper.
When I had younger kids, the way this looked. So when I had younger kids, I would hire a mommy’s helper for the summer. And that means we would have a girl from my neighborhood or my church. And I’m saying girl like a 10 or 11 year old girl, a brand new babysitter kind of girl.
So, or a boy too. So someone who hasn’t had a lot of babysitting experience, that’s exactly what I want. And there’s two reasons for that one is because. As a mommy’s helper, I’m just going to be in the home. And they’re just going to play with my kids for one afternoon, a week, or even a couple afternoons a week.
And maybe that means I can get some stuff done or I can have a supportive habit for myself of having time to myself and doing the things I need to do to be able to show up to my family. And they’re so young that they’re eager and they’re excited to do it. They don’t have a ton of responsibilities in the home.
They’re just there to play. So that means they don’t have to be paid an exorbitant amount. Now I have a lot of personal feelings on babysitters. I think babysitters are largely underpaid. I think we need to do a better job of valuing caretaking and that includes babysitters and paying them better. And I have like this whole raise system that I do with my babysitters, but when they’re brand new and they’ve never been babysat before, and you’re not giving them any responsibilities besides just read books to my kids for an hour or play with them or play with them outside or do this craft activity with them. And they don’t have to do a lot of work at all, just playing with your kids and you’re there to step in with fights to step in when someone’s hungry or something like that.
It is like a win-win thing. They’re learning how to babysit the one kind of babysit your kids. And you’re learning. You’re training them to be a babysitter without having to pay an exorbitant amount. In California and that was like $10 an hour. But in other states that might be like a lot. So, but where I was, that was pretty cheap.
So you can decide what the rate would be for you. The mommy’s helper was wonderful now that my kids are older. Here’s another suggestion. Another version of this hire one of your older kids to take care of the younger kids and pay them. And guess what? Because of your own kids. You don’t have to pay them even as much as a mommy’s helper.
So my kids do this and I even do this, like where my older kids get paid like $2 for the time. Like I want them to babysit and the younger kids get paid a dollar for being good for the other ones. So it’s kind of like another win-win situation. So the point of this is having kind of a regular way to get help.
What are your biggest obstacles? Is it the cleaning. Is it time to yourself? Is it just having a moment to breathe? Is it having someone take over a meal? How can you consider outside help? Maybe it’s getting one of those meal services for the summer. And again, this is kind of going back to something you can let go of to that the, the, the first key, but getting outside help, whether it’s paid for or not, because there are many ways to get help.
Paying for it. It’s going to give you the gift of being able to give to yourself so that you can then give more to others. This is a total like reciprocal cycle relationship, please consider out side help and friend that does mean you might have to inconvenience someone you love that might mean you have to ask a spouse to do more and that’s okay.
This is what it means to be in a relationship. That’s what it means to be in a family. Maybe it means your kids have to step up with more chores that they are more capable of doing. Then maybe you’re recognizing that can be part of this outside.
I hope this episode gave you the hug and kick in the pants that you need to. I’ve been on a lot of soap boxes. This episode, I want to review the progress pointers from this episode, which is just the four keys that I mentioned. And for those of you who are on my go get our newsletter, you will get these progress pointers in a graphic form.
Okay. So the first key was to honor your. And as part of that, what can you let go of the summer? The second key was to have something to look forward to. The third key was to create a supportive habit. And the fourth key was to consider outside help. I want you to feel supported this summer so that you can have an awesome summer.
It will never be perfect. It will never be smooth and seamless. And stress-free, but you do not have to be a martyr mom. The summer, you can be supported your two something challenge is to pick one of those keys and to think on it, just think on what it could be. So I want to hear though, what ideas you come up with, and this month is a dare progressor episode at the last episode of this month, and they only have.
Very occasionally when we have a fifth Thursday in a month. So that’s this month, and this is where I’m going to give you the little push to take this opportunity, to share your voice and what you come up with about ways that you are going to support yourself this summer. So that at the end of this month, those who are still trying to adjust to summer and are struggling with it, have more ideas and more suggestions from this incredible community on things they can do to better support themselves this summer.
And they can. Move forward to having a better summer. It’s never too late to have a more supported summer. So here is the prompt. I’m going to give you to share your own to submit your voicemail for this. So here’s the prompt. One way I’m supporting myself this summer is. And you can share your one way, keep it, keep it simple.
Keep it imperfect, just like I do on this podcast. And the way you can do that is two ways. One is to record a voice memo on your phone, all phones have a voice memo app. You record the voice memo on your phone. And he can email it to me@ahelloataboutprogress.com. So that’s one way you can send in your voice note for this dear progressor episode.
But the second version means that you leave a voice message at a number I have set up for you. The number is 9 2 5 4 0 5 6 2 2 9. We will link to that in the show notes though. And honestly that’s the most popular version because it’s less steps. You just call that number. I say a little something in the beginning.
Feel free to ignore any advice or suggestions that don’t relate to the depressive episode. And then you just say hi, one way. I’m supporting myself this summer. And then you answer it and that’s it. And then I take care of it from there. So please, please consider submitting your voice note to the dear progressor episode and do it sooner rather than later, if you think, if you’re thinking about it, do it now.
And again, the prompt you’re answering is one way I’m supporting myself this summer is. And answer that question. I cannot wait. I hope that you will share. I want your suggestions. I want to hear from you. Cause I know I’m not the only one who has ideas here and in fact, I need your ideas. So that has it.
My friends for this episode on four keys to having a more supported summer here’s to you here’s to having a more supported and a more awesome. Thank you so much for listening now, go and do something with what you learned today.
