the Selfish Mom Podcast

Motivating YOU to find your motivation!

• Ali Kay • Episode 9

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What if embracing selfishness could be the most selfless thing you do? Join me, Ali Kay, on the Selfish Mom Podcast, as I reveal how small, consistent actions have sustained my motivation and self-care for over a decade. Learn about the transformative 5-5-5 exercise formula that keeps both body and mind in check, even on those dreaded funk days. Together, we redefine self-care by celebrating small wins and embracing the power of community. You'll discover how sharing personal achievements with loved ones can bring unexpected support, fueling your journey of self-improvement.

Looking for a blend of personal growth and adventure? I'm thrilled to announce an exclusive travel opportunity to Mykonos, where I'll be guiding a select group on a journey of community and personal freedom. With monthly Zoom chats to build camaraderie before our trip, this experience promises a perfect mix of group activities and private exploration. Plus, stay tuned for my upcoming YouTube series chronicling my move to a farm—a story of new beginnings and building dreams from the ground up. Let's celebrate progress and make self-care the cornerstone of our lives, one small step at a time.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Selfish Mom Podcast, a podcast for you, so you don't get burnt out like a mother. I'm your host, allie Kay, and this is the Selfish Mom Podcast. Learn to prioritize your mental and physical health first, so we can thrive and not just survive. Let's take action, become our best selves together and redefine selfish as the most selfless thing we could do together, and redefine selfish as the most selfless thing we could do.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Selfish Mom Podcast. I am your host, allie Kay, and on this episode let's talk all things motivation how do you stay motivated, how to start getting motivated, how to stay motivated. I am going to share some of my tips, like five, five, five and how to just start get yourself out of the funk and keep pushing forward. So stick around. On this episode it has been really like the question that I get all the time is how do I stay motivated? So I wanted to bring an episode for you that is somewhat of a quickie, you know, really quick, like refresher, share some of my motivation or at least like how I stay motivated, how I get myself out of the funk days and how to, how I kind of like switch that mindset so that you can finish 2024 off with a bang and kind of propel you into 2025. Because, whether you realize it or not, like 2025 is knocking at our door. That is really scary to think. I honestly feel like 2024 just started. But sometimes that's how life feels Like. It feels like life. Just, we just kind of flow with life and that's not kind of what we want to do. We want to be intentional and grab life by its balls and take a hold of it, right? So that's what I hope to bring today and inspire you. So I want to talk about motivation. How do I stay motivated? That is like the number one question I get asked all the time, and I probably have about four episodes just on motivation alone, If you want to listen back on those where I kind of elaborate basically what I'm going to tell you now. So what I truly believe in and you guys will hear me talk about this all the time, especially on my content on Instagram. I think this is like the core of everything that I believe in that has helped me the past 10 years through pregnancies, postpartum periods, through losing 70 pounds, gaining all the weight, losing another 50 pounds, like I've. I've been on this journey for 10 years and I've been able to kind of maneuver myself to keep pushing forward through it all, even when I've had a lot of setbacks. And that's what consistency is right. It's not perfection, it's about committing to the bare minimum action.

Speaker 2:

So, going back to the question of how do I stay motivated, it's committing to the bare minimum action. Small actions drive motivation. Now, what are these small actions? So, these are small actions that you can do every single day that bring you closer to your goals. And everyone's small actions are different and look different for everyone. So you can't compare someone's bare minimum to your bare minimum, because everyone's bare minimum looks completely different and you probably have like bare minimums in each category of your life.

Speaker 2:

So going to like just hit on funk days, when I get in my funk days and I am in that mindset where I don't want to do anything and I'm laying in bed and you know, everything just feels very overwhelming. What am I going to do? Today? My to-do list is like a million pages long and I don't even know where to start. Like my laundry's piled up, my house is messy this happens more than it should, but it's like what do I? Where do I even start?

Speaker 2:

And this is where the bare minimum action comes into play. It's about doing the smallest little action that you can do in that moment and that smallest action will drive more action. So when you have like a super messy house and you don't even know where to begin, I always say, like maybe just start with making your bed, and that small action of making your bed might motivate you more to do a little more action like unload the dishwasher. That dishwasher being unloaded that you just did might motivate you a little more to get the vacuum out. And so, before you know it, you're not thinking of like this whole picture, like the whole messy house. You're just focusing on these little small actions that will kind of motivate you to do more.

Speaker 2:

And the same is true going to staying motivated with putting in the work towards your mental and physical health. Like some days I don't want to work out whatsoever. So I have a bare minimum action plan, the five, five, five that I just have myself do. And sometimes that bare minimum action of the 555 is good enough for me where I'm like all right, that's all I have in me, or sometimes that motivates me to do even more. So let me share the 555 with you. The 555 is a formula that I have come up with to kind of define my bare minimum action when it comes to moving my body. So I truly believe when I move my body it helps me feel better mentally, physically, all the things. That's like the foundation to everything for me is like moving my body for my mental health.

Speaker 2:

And there are definitely days I am not motivated, but what I have committed to is the bare minimum action, and my bare minimum action is that 5-5-5 when it comes to moving my body. So what the 5-5-5 is is I pick five different workout moves. So my basis of the 5-5-5 is exercise jumping jacks, squats, crunches, high knees and pushups. Sorry, I had like a brain fart right there. I'm like, yeah, that's what I'm talking about Five exercises. And what you do is you? So you pick five exercises, like I just gave that example, you do five reps of them, so just five times, and you repeat that five times. So five exercises, five reps, five rounds, that's the five, five, five. And something so basic like that that you continuously commit to every single day will gradually motivate you to do more action or build upon that bare minimum action. That's the entire goal, is like building upon your bare minimum action, because that bare minimum action will become a habit, like a habit of moving your body consistently. And again, consistency does not mean perfection. It means just doing something each day that will bring you closer to your goals, and the days that you do fall off track, or the weeks or the months you getting back on track to keep pushing forward. That's what consistency means.

Speaker 2:

Another way I stay motivated other than the bare minimum action is a mindset. It's a mindset of dropping the all or nothing thinking. So what is the all or nothing thinking? The all or nothing thinking is something that we are all victim of, and it's where we think everything has to be extreme or perfect or we just resort to doing nothing. So think of like a new year's resolution is the perfect example. January 1st, we're going to go strong, we're going to start running a mile a day, we're going to eat, you know, healthy, we're not going to have any sugar, and we're going to do that 24, seven. And you know, the day before we're going to binge and we're going to have all the drinks and party and all that. And then tomorrow we're just going to start this extreme new lifestyle. Well, I know you've probably tried this. I've definitely have tried this.

Speaker 2:

What typically happens is we're like on the grind. Monday and Tuesday we're doing it, and then by Wednesday we're like this sucks, I think I want a cookie. We probably have a bite of cookie. And then by Thursday we're like eh, whatever the weekend's here, we'll just try again on Monday. Right, that's that all or nothing, where it's either extreme and perfect or it's like nothing. We just resort to nothing and we'll try again later.

Speaker 2:

So the bare minimum action helps us to kind of get out of that mindset and get into this different mindset where the bare minimum is good enough. You know, something is 100% better than nothing. So it's doing something and allowing yourself to be okay with doing something with okay with doing the bare minimum action. And again, everyone's bare minimum action is different. So maybe the five, five, five is is a little too much for you. Five exercises might be a little too much, and that's okay. So maybe your bare minimum action, when it comes to putting in the work for your mental and physical health, might be one minute of journaling in the morning, one glass of water and five squats. That's something that you do every single day, no matter if you've had the worst day, the best day, um, you know a crisis situation. You can still commit to your bare minimum action. You can do it consistently and once that bare minimum action becomes a habit, it feels like second nature. Then you build upon that bare minimum action. That's where you add in, you know, another workout move, another healthy habit, like, maybe, eating protein in the morning, like being intentional about integrating protein in the morning and then keep evolving upon that bare minimum action.

Speaker 2:

The problem that we all have that is just something in our society is that we all want instant gratification. We want to lose that weight right away, we want to see changes right away, we want to be running 20 miles out the gate right away. And that's not the way it works. You have to put in the work and unfortunately, well, you can look at it two ways. You can say to yourself unfortunately, this sucks, it all takes time. Or you can kind of fall in love with the process, fall in love with the journey of taking it day by day and putting in the work each day to get better. That's the process, that's the journey, that's the journey, that's the most rewarding thing.

Speaker 2:

When I started my first journey after losing weight you know the 70 pounds and that really propelled me into, like, this whole new fitness journey that I fell in love with I had to realize that there was no finish line, like, yes, I lost the 70 pounds, but then I realized I wanted to get stronger and I also wanted to start running longer distances. You know, there was always a new goal that I was going after and and so, like I said, with weight loss or anything, it's not about like crossing this finish line. You might lose 50 pounds and that might be your goal number on the scale, but it's not like you can just like lose that weight, cross the finish line and then resort back to your old habits right. It's about creating and building a new, sustainable lifestyle that works for you and, I think, getting into that mindset of just taking it day by day rather than being like, oh, once I get here, then I'm just gonna, you know, chill and go back to my old ways. It's. It's falling in love with the process. It's falling in love with the work and it's also celebrating your small wins, like if you reached your bare minimum for that day.

Speaker 2:

Celebrate yourself like. Post it on social media. Some people, that's not their thing. Tell a friend about it, you know. Tell your significant other about it, tell your kids about it. Let me tell you the biggest cheerleaders. You will be surprised how hyped up your kids will be for you. I love telling my kids about like guys, guess what? I squatted a new weight today. My 10 year old son will be like wow, mom, that's really awesome. And then the next week he'll ask me about it. And sometimes I hadn't, like, squatted that week or I hadn't really lifted weights, and I'll be like, yeah, you know what I? I didn't do any weights today. Thanks for asking me about it. You know, like that kind of keeps my accountability going because I've told someone about it. You know my kids and they're asking me hey, how's it going? And that's, that's really awesome too.

Speaker 2:

There's, there's nothing wrong with celebrating your small wins. So celebrate yourself. Get in the mindset that something is better than nothing and give yourself grace for doing the bare minimum. The bare minimum is good enough, because it's better than resorting to doing absolutely nothing. And remember, if something's easy like if you can get something easy then what we like to say is it's sleazy, like great things require work, putting in that work. So it's about falling in love with that work, falling in love with the process. Understand that it's a journey. There is no finish line and the greatest gift you can give to yourself is putting in the work each and every day to become your best self, mentally and physically, and that's this exciting journey that we're all on. So I hope this hyped you up just a little bit. Get you in that right mindset that 2024 is coming to an end, but we want to finish 2024 off strong. We want to get ahead of the holidays. We want to welcome 2025 with a bang, and the way you do that is you set your intentions, come up with a bare minimum action plan that you can commit to every single day, no matter what type of day you're having, and stick with that bare minimum, evolve on that bare minimum and watch yourself create this sustainable lifestyle that works for you, and don't forget to celebrate your small wins.

Speaker 2:

So that has been another episode of the Selfish Mom podcast. We have a whole new season coming up. I know it's been a long time waiting, but we're getting organized. We're going to release a whole new season with all new guests. And if you have not done so, please go to theselfishmomcoachingcom. Get yourself on the list. My new app online coaching with meal plans, custom workout plans, habit trackers, workouts that you can follow, video workouts with me, chat with me all the things is coming out Black Friday that weekend. So get yourself on the list so that you can receive emails about that.

Speaker 2:

And if you are somebody who has never given yourself anything like, if you are someone who doesn't really, you know, do things for yourself. Then I just wanna put in your mind I have a trip coming up to Mykonos, greece. It is an all planned Greece trip to Mykonos Six days. We have an amazing itinerary. It is for anyone and everyone who just wants to have a great group experience, travel, explore Mykonos and get away, do something for yourself. And what is going to happen is the trip is the end of May and you can sign up now. There are only seven spots left for the early bird special, which is over $300 off, and the great thing is that you can pay over time for this trip. So there's still, you know, six, seven months out, so there's plenty of time to plan, kind of set your budget.

Speaker 2:

If this is something that you want to do, I will be happy to answer any questions, but I will be your host on this trip.

Speaker 2:

It will be a small group, probably between like 15, 20 people the most. I'll be doing zoom chats, like monthly, with everyone who's going on the trip, so we're all kind of comfortable with each other. But even though we're traveling as a group and we have the itinerary together, there'll still be time, like downtime, that you can go explore on your own, or maybe you and a friend are coming on this trip. You guys can go do your own thing. So it's a great kind of like balanced trip, a way to get out to Mykonos, explore it with some great people, but also, if you want that time alone or with a friend that you're bringing, you can have it as well. So more information on that. You guys know where to find me on Instagram, tiktok, and pretty soon I will also be releasing the monthly YouTube series about me moving to my farm and building my house. So stay tuned for that and I will catch you next time.