S8E4 Birthday Reflections Transcript
[00:00:00] It's my birthday, 46 trips around the sun, and instead of spiraling into where did all the time go, I'm doing something different. I'm asking a better question three specifically, I asked myself three questions that helped me see my time, my health, and my priorities in a completely new way. And I decided to share them on this podcast here because they're not just about my reflection.
It can be about yours too, because these questions you can ask yourself today, no matter where you are on your MS journey or what age you are, and they just might shift the way you see your life too. So let's reflect together. I promise it's not heavy, it's honest, and it may be exactly what you need right now.
And before we get started, I wanna invite you to something special. Living with MS can feel overwhelming, but one habit can shift everything. That's what I'll show you inside my [00:01:00] free webinar. How to help Slow MS progression, starting with just one habit. Think of it as your first step towards more energy, confidence, and hope.
Save your seat@allieandbrennan.com slash webinar. Welcome to my MS podcast, where women with MS learn how to slow progression and live a life they love. I'm Alene Brennan, your Ms sister and a practitioner who knows the science and the reality of living this too. Each week I share simple science-backed habits to boost your energy, stay consistent, and feel like yourself again, because Ms.
May be a part of your story. But it doesn't get to right the ending. Hello my friends. So today we are mixing things up a bit. It's my birthday, 46 trips around the sun, and it has been a ride. It's been a ride, [00:02:00] and I always like to be a little reflective around birthdays. At least I try. I'm not naturally the most like, reflect.
Person, but it's something that I admire in other people and I really would like more of for myself. Um, just kind of take a minute to slow things down, um, and reflect on things. So that's what I decided to do. This birthday I wanted to check in. Am I spending my time and energy towards the things that matter the most?
And I think if I'm being honest, most times I don't wanna slow down enough to answer that question because I worry that I won't like the answer and that I'm getting caught up in the busyness of life or chasing things that don't matter. But then I think about what's the alternative of not asking these questions, staying on that path, and then.
Reflecting on these years later, like, that's not gonna be effective either. So I thought I would bring you along on this year's reflections. My hope [00:03:00] of course, is that you'll enjoy the conversation, but also, and probably even more so that you'll start noticing your own reflections too. Not to compare, but to give yourself credit for how far you've come and give yourself the.
Ability to course correct where you might need to so that the next time you ask these questions, you feel like you are living more aligned with the things that matter most to you. So let's dive into question number one, and let me tell you, I hit the ground running as I do with everything in life. Let's go straight to the belly of the beast.
And this question is, where did all of my time and energy really go this year? And did it actually line up? With what I say matters most to me. I mean really, like let's just go straight to the belly of the beast here. But I guess I look at it and I'm like, this is where growth happens. Like this is where you start to have some honest, real conversations with [00:04:00] yourself so that you can make sure that you are again living aligned with the things that matter most to you, and not just on this hamster wheel of the.
Busyness of life or feeling really unsatisfied because you're constantly dealing with MS fatigue or brain fog. So this was my first question, and when I look back on this past year, it has been a year. It's been a year. So if you follow along on my journey, you know that last December was tough. It was tough.
I was in and out of the hospital. I had what, I think they just ultimately chalked up as, um, an irretractable migraine that had some nerve component to it, like it was just, it was a doozy. So I was in and out of the hospital and like, I literally, I, I. I barely made it home in time for Christmas, and that is not an exaggeration.
So it didn't really feel like a fresh start to a new year. But I do know when I come out of seasons like that, that I'm always so much more appreciative and more intentional with my time. So, needless to say, one of my [00:05:00] highest priorities at the beginning of the year was my health. I had to recover it and I knew that it was gonna take time.
So I, you know, took another look at my diet not to make any big changes that really wasn't needed, but to refine a few things here and there. Same thing with my supplements. I was in physical therapy, like where do I need to clean things up a bit? Um, and. Just really prioritize my health. So that was certainly a good portion of my time and energy at the beginning of the year.
I also started with some deep work with my business. So I spent the first couple months building my new program Healing Habits. And to be honest, this program was born out of years of watching women with ms, including myself, fall into the trap of thinking, healing had to be extreme and that it. Had to be all or nothing, that unless you transformed your entire life overnight, it wouldn't work.
And that was my belief [00:06:00] too at first. I mean, it's kind of how I approach everything in life. If it matters, it must require maximum effort, right? I feel like I have been like that since a child and it has not served me well, but it certainly does not serve you well when you try to apply that to healing because something like an MS diet, especially something like the Walls protocol, that mindset can.
Actually make things so much harder than they need to be. You're trying to use food to slow down progression of ms. I know that sounds wild, but for me, within six months of my diagnosis, the lesions on my brain shrunk and went inactive. And nearly 10 years later, I'm still stable. But over time, in my nutrition coaching practice specializing in ms, I saw that the women who were most successful weren't the ones who tried to do everything at once.
They were the ones who paced themselves, [00:07:00] who took smaller, consistent steps. So I started to take a look at. All of the clients that I had worked with over the years, what were some of the patterns? What were some of the habits, what worked and why? And I started studying the brain more, like how it responds to change and how you can actually work with it instead of against it.
I looked for any pattern I could find, which habits were the easiest to start with, which gave them the fastest results, which created the most resistance or overwhelm. And from there I built Healing Habits, a program with the top 12 habits in the order that makes the most sense to implement. It makes implementation.
Feel easier, not heavier. And to go along with the program, I created daily calendars. So you just wake up and you just know exactly what to focus on. And here's the checkbox, check it off when you're done, get that little dopamine hit. Um, I did video lessons. [00:08:00] I created guided meditations, recipes, supplement trackers, movement guides like it was.
All the pieces you need for sustainable transformation. And when I look back on what consumed a lot of my time and energy this year, that certainly topped the list. At the beginning of the year, it was winter, so family time wasn't like necessarily competing for a lot of attention. 'cause not too much is going on in the middle of winter.
So I had a little margin to kind of go all in, but. As I look back on this past year, that is one of the biggest things that I can say consumed a lot of my time and energy. So by the time summer rolled around I needed a shift and thankfully Summer is a very conducive for that. My daughter joined her first swim team.
She's three. And she had daily practice on her swim team, which just cracked me up. But it was such a great [00:09:00] experience and I grew up with my mom taking my sister and I to, um, the local swim club every day. So like, there was something just really sweet and nostalgic about that. I knew that my daughter was enjoying it, but I loved it as well.
And then I live in New Jersey, so we spend our weekends going down the shore. And then of course in August we took our first, but also ultimate family vacation. We went out to Hawaii. I have family that lives out there. Um, and truth be told, my aunt is not doing well and I really wanted to go and visit her.
She hadn't met my husband. She hadn't met my daughter yet. So I really wanted those introductions to happen and then of course, I mean, it's why so, um, you cannot go wrong with that, but that was also a big driver. Why in the beginning half of the year, knowing how I was starting the year that I really needed to, um, prioritize my health because if we were taking a big trip like that one, I needed the strength and the energy for it.
But also I didn't [00:10:00] do well last summer from a heat perspective, so I really needed to do everything that I could in the first half of the year to make sure that I could show up well in the summertime. And I'm really happy and grateful to say that I tolerated the heat so much better this summer than.
Ever before. So it felt like the first portion of the year was very like deep work in my business. And then summer lightened things up a little bit. So now we're here in the fall and this feels like a major squeeze because it's not one or the other. It feels like all areas are getting really intense.
I'm having so much fun growing our community on social media, releasing these podcasts, growing the community of women who are doing the Healing Habits program, like the community in there is so special. It's so special. We have our weekly calls, we have our monthly office hours, we have our private Facebook page, like it just [00:11:00] feels like you found your Ms.
People you found your MS. Besties. Um, and I pour a lot of time and energy into that. And this is also a season where there's a lot of family things that we do. I mean, my daughter's just about to turn four. So like this is the height of apple picking, pumpkin, picking the hay, rides the chunk or treat events, the parades trigger treating all the festivals, and you roll right into the winter holidays.
And oh, by the way, my daughter's. Birthday is tucked in there. Um, so there's like that fun stuff, but then there's also some like heavier things from an extended family perspective that are certainly requiring a lot more time, energy, and heart. So the season that I'm in right now feels really intense, really intense.
In, in all areas. And it made me think of a quote that one of my previous bosses, um, I worked at a hospital system many years ago and she was the COO of the [00:12:00] hospital and she was leading an event, um, with a lot of the women executives that one particular day, and she's speaking to us on the topic of work-life balance.
And she's like, listen, I'm gonna be all the way real with you. She's like, everyone says that they want to achieve work-life balance. It doesn't exist. Some seasons work is gonna need you more. Other seasons, your family will need you more and you're gonna have to learn how to ebb and flow with that. But stop expecting that this is a 50 50 split.
That's not how it works. It doesn't exist. So you're setting yourself up for failure. If you're telling yourself that that is your ultimate goal or that's where you need to be. So I think of that so often, one, to help release the guilt if you're spending more time on work that you're not showing up for family as well, or vice versa.
And it's, it's been so true. It's been so true that yes, there are seasons where. Work needs you more, or family needs you more, [00:13:00] or, hello, we're living with ms. Your health needs you more and recognizing that everything is a little bit of a give and take. So when I ask myself this question, where did all of my time and energy go and did it line up with what I say matters most?
My answer, it went to work, to family and healing. And yes, those are things that matter most to me. It was not perfect by any stretch. And if you know me, I can be very, very hard on myself, even when I am quote unquote winning. I don't even know what that means, but like even when I'm doing something, well work, family health doesn't matter.
My mind is constantly telling me, but look over here at all the things that you're not getting done in this moment. So quite honestly, this question was actually really helpful for me because how often do you take a step back and look at the whole year? More often, we just look at ourselves in a [00:14:00] particular moment or a particular season and say, yeah, you're doing this, but you're not doing that.
But when you can step back and say, okay, this year. Where did my time and energy go? Yes, it went to all of these three things. It did not get split, even Steven, every single time. But I can say over the past year, it went to what matters most. It just looked a little clunky and really imperfect along the way.
So I would love for you to ask yourself this question to where did your time and energy go this year, and does it match up with what. Really matters most to you, and do your best to drop any guilt, drop the stories around it. Just look from a place of curiosity and maybe challenge yourself to see where you did show up really well and maybe where you would've done things differently.
And then that gives you information that you can choose to do things differently moving forward. Some years it's a small tweak. Other years it might be a bigger step. [00:15:00] Until you pause to reflect, you are just gonna keep repeating the same things. Okay, so question number two, what lesson kept showing up for me, whether I wanted it to or not for me, this year's lesson was slow.
Down. As I've suggested, I always have this tendency to squeeze one more thing in with ms. You can't just out hustle yourself. You can't outrun fatigue, and sometimes that's a blessing in disguise. For me, this has been one of the hardest lessons that I have had to learn. But it's also been the most important and most powerful message.
I often say, MS is the gift that I didn't know I needed. And it's so true. It's so true because when you don't have endless energy, you have to be more intentional with how you're spending it. So I've noticed that certainly from an MS perspective, like slow down so you don't. Burn [00:16:00] yourself out and then spend all this time having to recover from it.
And also, I mentioned my daughter is so young, and if you are a parent, you know how quickly time passes. The only thing I want is to slow that time down with her. I want to slow that time down with her. So I'm seeing for the things that matter most to me, my family and my health, they both need me to slow.
Down, take care of my body, rest a little bit more, so that I have the stamina and endurance to keep doing the things that are most meaningful to me. And in the process, slowing down. I can also be more present with my daughter. All she wants is me. All she wants is mommy and daddy. And I find myself so often doing all these extra little things, and then at the end of the day, I look at it and I'm like, they didn't mean anything to her.
I did. She just wants my time. So this is my life work I [00:17:00] feel like, of constantly like pumping the brakes and interrupting that pattern. So I talk a lot about neuroplasticity and the more you repeat patterns over and over and over again, whether they're beliefs, whether they are habits that you do throughout your day, whatever they may be, the more you repeat them, the more they become ingrained.
In your head, and therefore the more they become your automatic pilot, but the more you can interrupt them and say, this doesn't have to be my automatic default anymore. I can actually do what I have the energy to do right now, then rest, and then come back and do the rest of it. Don't need to constantly squeeze one more thing in.
And here's the thing, when I do that, I actually enjoy the process better and the outcome is better because I'm not coming from this place of resentment or fatigue or rundown, or just constantly feeling like I'm running on [00:18:00] overdrive. And this feels like the most freeing thing in the world. One of the hardest things to change.
Also the most freeing. So question number three, what's one habit or choice that made my life feel lighter this year? The answer to this question I feel like just goes hand in hand with, um, the answers to the first and second question. So, 'cause this one was an easy one, it's learning to lean on small habits instead of trying to power through.
So I just talked about the, um, the importance of slowing down because for most of my life. I was a plow through it kind of person. One more load of laundry. One more podcast episode, one more rep in a workout. I was always chasing one more thing, and honestly, I built a lot of my identity around being that person.
The productive one. The dependable one. The one who got it all done, but Ms. Completely pulled the rug out from underneath of me. With this identity and this lifestyle, [00:19:00] that way of living was draining me pre ms, but it was impossible. Once I got my diagnosis, it was costing me weeks, sometimes months, to recover when I pushed too hard.
And the turning point, as you know, with my story, came in the middle of our move. I was on overdrive with. Decluttering and packing and doing all the things. And a doctor looked me straight in the eye and said, Alene, if you do not slow down, it will take you the better part of a year to recover. And that stopped me dead in my tracks.
So my husband and I tried something different instead of like exhausting ourselves with marathon packing sessions. We set a timer for 30 minutes every night after dinner. That was it, just 30 minutes. And you know what? It worked. We were more focused and more efficient during those 30 minutes because we knew the timer was eventually gonna run out.
So we had to stay focused, and [00:20:00] because we knew that we weren't pushing ourselves to fatigue, we actually were consistent with it because we knew there was. Defined ending, and we use the same approach this past fall when we looked at our yard and it was like overtaken with weeds. We set a 15 minute timer and we were shocked with how much we were able to knock out.
And it comes full circle because just as I was talking about all of the work that I put into my program of Healing Habits, it was on finding these small habits that you could start. Building that didn't require a lot of energy to get started. That helped you get some early and easy wins that built momentum, that allowed you to stay consistent, that got you results.
Like that's what this is all about. And with it comes lightness. It's not about squeezing more in to a smaller window of time, it comes from doing less. Consistently, and I know that that sounds wrong in your head, [00:21:00] but this approach is actually becoming so much more a part of who I am and I am so grateful for that because it feels so much better in my body.
It, I'm still able to get things accomplished and I'm enjoying the process and I'm not burning myself out. So my reflections are still a little messy, but as I look back, did I spend my time and energy? Well, this year, yes, it was family health and building this community here, and those are some of my greatest joys and my greatest priorities and the things that are most meaningful to me.
Did it look perfect? Every step of the way. No, actually it looked really messy every step of the way, and it isn't until I take this step back to really reflect. That actually helps me see, I did have a good year and here are some things that I can tweak so that I can keep this momentum going. And also [00:22:00] here are the things that I keep needing to reinforce that I need to.
Cut ties with, again, this constant desire to do more so that I can keep living the way that I want and spending time on the things that mean the most and with the people that mean the most. So that is where I'm landing at 46. I hope that you enjoyed this conversation and getting a little behind the scenes peak of my reflections on my birthday here.
But more importantly, I hope that it gives you kind of the opportunity to reflect on where you're at, whether it's your birthday or not. You can. Pretend that it's your birthday, join me on mine. Just give yourself credit for the things that you are doing. Give yourself grace for the things that you need to adjust and give yourself the opportunity to see things on a bigger picture, if nothing else, to look at the things that you are doing and remembering.
You're doing them all with a chronic illness with MS that most people do not see hashtag [00:23:00] invisible illness, but you are showing up. You showed up to this podcast and that shows that you are looking to learn more, is to stay connected and to live the very best you can with this diagnosis. And I'm so, so glad that you are here and I'm looking forward to seeing you next time.
Take care. And that's it for today's episode of my MS podcast. I hope you're walking away with one small step you can put into practice today, because that is how real change happens. And if you're ready to take the next step, I created a free webinar just for you how to help slow MS progression starting with just one habit.
Save your spot at alene brennan.com/webinar. I'll see you inside.