What is up, you guys? Welcome back to the Dopamine Diaries Podcast. This is Coach Kate. I miss you. I miss you all. It has been hard. It has been hard to get these episodes up as regularly as I want them to come up because we have been without childcare for five weeks. Baby girl also got RSV. I have been using all of my free time to work, and podcasting has just honestly had to come last. But we're here. I've got like 12 minutes to spit at you guys, and spitting at you is actually what I'm going to do. So my mantra, my mantra for 2024. It is, this is probably the last podcast that you guys will get from me in 2024 because New Year's, let's go. But I want to share with you this. So this is going to be for all my parents. And even if you're not a parent, listen anyway. Because if you have any intention of being a parent, or even if not, you can you can apply this with your loved ones as well. So really it's for everyone. Don't don't shut me off just yet. Keep listening. But I just hit one year postpartum. First kid, this is all new to me. I have no idea what I'm doing, figuring it out every single day, while also essentially unraveling my identity around being type A control freak, high achieving, high-producing workaholic. I love my work. I love my work. I'm an entrepreneur. I coach women, I do everything that I do from scratch. It is a grind. If I didn't love my work, I would not be doing this because this job is in fact hard. Sometimes, sometimes I miss the nine to five. I'll be fully honest with you. Sometimes I miss it because that clocking in, clocking out, and then not thinking about it, wow, the luxury. But that's not what this is about. My first year motherhood, my first year unraveling all of these pieces of myself that I thought I wouldn't have to set aside when I became a mom. And that has been really hard. The the statement that I have said to myself over and over and over again this year, and I will say this while also letting you know that I've not been perfect. I have messed up so many times this year when it comes to this intention and this statement. But ironically enough, this is the same intention and statement that I'm carrying into 2025 as it pertains to being a mom that also runs a business and in fact loves what she does. Be present or be absent, but don't be both. I'm gonna say that again. Be present, be absent, but don't be both. And I want you guys to think about this, especially if you're parents, and especially if you're working parents, and especially if you're working parents that also run a business, because unfortunately, the mental tabs are always open. The thoughts, they never shut off. I dream about the entrepreneurial side of my business sometimes. It never goes away, it can't go away. There's so many things that go into it. And when you become a parent, it's really, really, really hard sometimes to be fully present. I would argue that a lot of 2024, I was present-ish. I was present-ish, but I also had to spend a lot of 2024 present and absent. And I say this to you guys because it is exhausting trying to do both. It is exhausting trying to be both present and absent, both present and distracted, both here but also there. It's tiring. And I feel like we all live lives and we're in a society where things are tiring enough. So why are we adding to that? The challenge is when we have grown up and when we've spent a lot of our adult lives in highly stressful situations. For me, my background is high stress. I've always been in um high stress careers, um, corporate sales, medical sales, like high pressure, high stress all of the time. I've always had to be on. And in fact, it's programmed me to believe that if I was to shut off, I would fall behind. I wouldn't hit quota, I would be let go, I wouldn't be good enough, right? And pair that with just beliefs and wiring that I developed as a child with certain situations that have gone on in my life. So I stepped into motherhood this year with a system inside of myself, an operating system that is highly attuned, highly sensitive to always being on, always looking for the next thing, always looking for the next goal, always checking off the next to-do, always reaching the next milestone, because that is all I know. That is all I know. Being off is not something that I know very well. And unfortunately, what I've noticed when I really reflect back on this year, new mom, working mom, I spent the first eight, nine, no, I spent the first October, yeah, I spent the first 10 months at home with my daughter full-time, no childcare. And when I look back on it, I'm proud of how I did it, but I also can recognize that I could have done it better. And I could have done it better had I really challenged myself to fully be present or fully be absent, but continuously check myself when I was trying to be both. A lot of the mental exhaustion that I had, a lot of the overwhelm, a lot of the overstimulation, a lot of the man, I'm just exhausted, my head is gonna explode. I just I need a I need silence. A lot of that happened because I was trying to do both, right? The same argument can go um for people that multitask. I say this all the time like multitasking is like the biggest brain drain you can do. We're not meant to. And I know as mothers, we feel like that's like our superpower, but guys, we're not meant to do that. Our brains are not meant to multitask in that way. So, really being able to just challenge yourself, be present or be absent, but don't be both. Why does this matter for me so so much as I go into 2025? Well, first and foremost, it matters for me because when I look at my daughter and when my daughter looks at me, her system, her operating system is learning how to behave and to react and how to move within her. It's it's looking at me, it's learning from me, it's mimicking me. And if I am all over the place and she is seeing that I am all over the place, she is going to grow up and expect to be all over the place because that is all she knows. And doing anything other than that is gonna feel unsafe for her. Guys, this is why my generation of women, people my age, this is why we're all so fucking burned out. This is why we're all so fucking stressed. Because we are operating in a way that it's the only way we know how to operate. We don't want to, but we like we can't do anything other than this. It's like very natural, it's very like autopilot for us to be 65 mental tabs open all the time and let me multitask because I've become super efficient at multitasking. I'm a queen at it. That is all we know, but that's also why my generation of women have tons of health issues, infertility issues, um chronic disease at an early age. So many things that I could go down the list on. These like it matters to prioritize this, even if you're not a parent, because it affects your health. It affects everything that you do, but even more so if you're a parent. I don't want my daughter to grow up and mimic a behavior that I have of being here and being there and being all over the place. It's gonna train her operating system to be on guard, on all of the time, hyper-vigilant, always looking for the next thing, and not feeling safe to slow down. I don't, I don't want her to grow up and expect that that's how she has to go about every single day. It's not, right? And if I can start modeling to her that I am either fully present or I am fully absent, her operating system is going to learn the same way. It's it's one of those things where, you know, I think a lot of times we could argue like it's good parenting, or it's like we want to break generational trauma and generational curses and all of those things. Sure, all of that. But at the end of the day, isn't it self-sabotage to try and be present and and absent? Isn't it self-sabotage to try and multitask? Multitasking is just sabotaging giving 100% to anything. And and like, why? What like what's what's so bad about giving 100% to something and pausing the rest? I'd rather be fucking excellent at one thing than fucking mediocre at five because I try to do them all at the same time. I'd literally rather be exceptional at one, master it, and then go on to the next thing, then literally give like stale, stale ham sandwich vibes to all of these other five important things in my life. And I'll be damned if I give stale ham sandwich vibes to parenting my daughter. Absolutely fucking not. But it's been hard. It's been hard because it is a it is a very automatic response for me to try and be here and there and everywhere in between all of the time. And it's a very natural response for me to also expect that I could be good at it simply because I've been doing that my whole life and my life is successful, right? Sometimes because we don't have any concept of what our life could be if we just worked on certain things, sometimes because we don't have any concept of what that success actually looks like, we'll sabotage it. Because why? Right? Like we don't know what it's gonna look like. We don't know what's on the other side of actually just like giving our full focus to something. Sometimes we'll sabotage those things that we really, really want. The last thing that I want to say is this, because I said I was gonna cap this at like max 15, maybe 12, and we're at 10 minutes. Um and I've said this before, but I just want to make sure I put it here too. If you guys want to help your kids, get your fucking shit together. Okay? If you want to help your kids, get your fucking shit together. Why? Kids are emotional sponges, they soak up every single thing that you do and you say, or worse, the things that you don't say, but you absolutely show, the being kind of absent, kind of present. Even if you're not saying that you're distracted, they see that you're distracted. The snapping at your husband, the meltdown in the pantry, the housing a sleeve of Oreos, the throwing the dishes when you thought no one was watching, right? The slamming the door shut, the crying over spilled milk, literally not holding your shit together, not showering for four days, the picking yourself apart in the mirror, saying these clothes don't look good on you, or saying you feel fat. Yeah, all the shit that you think they're not picking up on, they're picking up on. Okay. What do they learn when the day throws a curveball and the shit hits the fan and you remain steady and calm now? What do they learn when they see you model steadiness in an absolute shitstorm of a day? They're gonna model how to be steady when their lives become shit shows, when shit hits the fan in their days, no matter what age they have. They are watching. So when you freak out, they are going to learn to freak out because you are the caregiver and they look to you as the authority and they will mimic the things that you do, assuming that they are okay. When you breathe through it, they learn to breathe through it. It's as simple and it's as brutal as that. Your energy equals their safety. When you stay calm, when you stay regulated, when you bring yourself back down to the moment, even in chaos, your kids are gonna feel more secure. They're gonna grow up feeling more secure. How many of you guys as adults feel insecure as fuck? Ask yourself that. I have spent a lot of my I've spent most of my life feeling insecure. Are you kidding me? Hello, me, right? This is where kids, our kids, learn to regulate their emotions. They learn it from us, okay? Home becomes the vibe. A grounded you means a more peaceful house. And trust me, our kids need that more than we even realize. So, if you made it this far in the episode, I want to say this. If you are not an HBA and you are a parent, and you can't sit here and tell me confidently that you are so happy and proud about how you react to stress, how you react to chaos. If you cannot confidently tell me that you are super proud and confident about what your reactions are modeling to your children and you are not an HBA, what the fuck are you doing? Pardon my French, but what the fuck are you doing? I will tell you this. I have a therapist that is going to co-lead one of the coaching calls with me. This therapist is also doing the program and she's giving me real-time feedback. Every single piece of feedback she is giving me is telling me that this is fully in line with therapy. If you think that this is just some fun, like, ooh, little healthy program, no, it's not that. This is truly an experience. HBA, I've been saying it wrong too. We're gonna keep going. We're at 13 minutes, I'll cap it at 15. I'm not gonna shut the fuck up. I've been saying HBA is a program. It's not a fucking program. Okay, make no mistake about it. HBA is an experience. HBA is like taking massive amounts of fucking therapy, blending it with neuroscience, blending it with trauma-trained coaching, blending it with nervous system education, blending it with cognitive restructuring, blending it with neuroplasticity, blending it with like true human behavior change and throwing it into an experience that is delivered straight to your fucking cell phone from a text message from me. It's literally me. I am in your phone as Coach Kate. The system is set up, it adds me to your phone as Coach Kate. The entire program is delivered to you via a text from me. It doesn't get more simple than that. If you are a parent and you do not feel fully confident or 100% about your reactions and you're not an HBA, I'll say it one more time. I don't know what the fuck you're doing. I don't know what you're doing. So if you want to get into HBA, let me know. It's a deposit to join,$122. Your balance for the program isn't due until the end of the program. It is as easy as that. It is HSA and FSA approved because it is in fact that fucking good. So that is all I have for you guys today. I'm gonna go hang out with my kid and finish up some work. Bye.