[00:00:00] They say when you pray for patience, God doesn't just magically make you patient overnight. He gives you opportunities to practice patience. That's kind of what's happening this upcoming Memorial Day weekend for me because last week on my podcast, I talked about this realization that I've been having that I've been spending years fighting myself, fighting my body, my energy, my expectations, and of course, right after recording that episode, what comes up?
A holiday weekend, which as odd as it may sound, holiday weekends have kind of been my arch nemesis when it comes to actually slowing down because I've always treated the extra time like proof that I should be able to do more. When the rest of the world unplugs, that's when I optimize. It's like God immediately gave me a chance to practice this thing that I have said I wanted and desperately need.
Here it is. And before we get [00:01:00] 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 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 at aleenebrennan.com/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 write the ending. [00:02:00] Hello, my friends, and welcome back to my MS podcast. I am so glad that you are here, whether this is your very first episode or you have been around for a while. Now, I have to admit, recording last week's episode was super hard because it was vulnerable and also freeing all at the same time.
I was literally talking through something that I was in the middle of processing personally. And it's so much easier to share stories on the podcast when you're past the hard stuff and you're just sharing the results of a success story. I do not like the messy middle, yet that's where I was. Right in the middle of admitting all of the ugly parts of me that I have tried to pretend don't exist and definitely don't wanna share them with anyone else, let alone recording them on a podcast.
That is not my comfort zone. So if you haven't listened to it, definitely check it out. I basically unravel years [00:03:00] of trying to override my energy just to feel more productive. Does that sound familiar? I kept believing that if I just tried harder, I could get more done. Meanwhile, my body was begging me, begging me to slow down, but I kept ignoring it.
And for what? I never reached a finish line because I kept moving it further and further away. And I kept blaming MS fatigue, and that's very easy to do because we know the reality of that. It is humbling. And I kept telling myself I was not going to let MS, quote-unquote, "win." But the truth is, I wasn't fighting MS.
I was fighting myself, my unrealistic expectations, and I was wrecking my nervous system in the process. Now, to be fair, this drive to be ultra productive and efficient did come from good [00:04:00] intentions, as it often does. But growing up, I had debilitating migraines. I've shared it a lot of times before, but they started as early as elementary school.
I was in and out of the hospital on a rainbow of medication. I would be down for the count either for a day or for sometimes up to a full week in a dark room, often ending up in the emergency room. There was zero chance that I was pushing through a migraine because the reality is sometimes just changing positions in bed made me vomit.
So from that young age, I learned that if I had energy, I needed to use it because I couldn't trust that my body would have it later. I never knew when a migraine was gonna come up and wipe me out. And that mindset did help me in many ways. I became responsible. For the most part, I was always prepared. So that pattern has well-intended roots, right?
Like, [00:05:00] it came from a good place. The problem is, somewhere along the line, the idea of always being prepared turned into pressure, and eventually that preparation stopped protecting me and started exhausting me. So having this come to Jesus moment in last week's episode was actually very freeing. It felt really good.
And there was something about sharing it on the podcast that also felt really freeing because it feels like when you share something, it, like, weakens its power over you. Kind of like a get behind me, Satan moment, right? Like, I am declaring that I am no longer living like this anymore. I will not let this pressure continue to take me down from a health perspective or just from enjoying life.
I mean, I shared that all of this went down [00:06:00] over Mother's Day weekend, which of course has significance in and of itself. My daughter is four now, and I'm in that phase of realizing how quickly time passes, and I want to slow it down. But also, Mother's Day weekend is also the 10-year anniversary from when I lost my mom.
So I'm often reflecting on just how precious life is and how I don't wanna spend my entire life being stressed out. And also, I'm just a few weeks away from my 10-year anniversary of being diagnosed with MS, so I can't not help but think about how much stress impacts MS, the very thing I am putting so much effort into slowing down.
So there was a lot wrapped into that moment, and it just felt so good to process it personally, but then also to share it here, feeling like it was a true declaration. But I'm not gonna lie, shortly after I sent out that email [00:07:00] to share the episode with you, I had this moment of like Wait, is this episode going to help you?
Or was it just about me? Because when I share stories, I share them not to talk about myself. I share them to help you, because I know that's how we learn best, through stories. And also, I've heard from so many of you, when you are diagnosed with MS, you go online, and what do you see? All of the worst-case scenarios.
You go on the Facebook groups, you see all the doom and gloom, right? Like, that's not what you want. You want stories of hope, and I don't know that necessarily last week's was the most uplifting, but it was definitely raw and real. And that is healing, not just for me, but I feel like it's healing for you as well when somebody else can put words to a feeling or an experience that you are having and haven't yet maybe fully processed.
I've actually had several women reach [00:08:00] out to me after attending my free master class that I teach on MS, and they say that they were literally in tears watching it because they finally felt like somebody understood them in a way that they have been feeling and believing that they were all alone in.
Storytelling is healing. So first, I will say, if you wanna join that class, please do so. It's free. It's amazing. I would love for you to attend. You can join over at alinebrennan.com/webinar. But I share this because I was wondering if this was just me feeling this kind of pressure of the constant, like, wanting to be productive, wanting to be efficient, wanting to have that same level of activity that I had prior to my diagnosis, or are other people feeling it, too?
So I posted a poll on Instagram Stories and asked, "What do you lean on most during MS fatigue days?" The highest response [00:09:00] Are you ready for it? Pushing through. That's what we lean on most during MS fatigue days. That was the most popular answer, pushing through. And I saw that, and I was like, "Okay, it's definitely not just me."
And this is a topic we need to be talking about more because the struggle is real, and the reality is it's so tempting because we live with an invisible disease to try to pretend like we have the same health and the same energy prior to our diagnosis. You look the same on the outside, but we all know your body performs very differently on the inside, right?
So again, I had this come to Jesus moment like I'm not doing this anymore because I have been living in two modes, push or crash. That was it. I was in either/or, black and white, one or the other, [00:10:00] A or B, nothing in the middle. Trying to maximize every ounce of energy I had or completely depleted because I just pushed too far for too long again And I am not going to constantly override what my body needs anymore, especially when I spend all this time prioritizing my diet and supplements and hydration and sleep, like, all of it, right?
I know this logically. All of those things matter, but I can't ignore stress. I know enough about the body to know you can eat all the kale in the world, but if you are under a constant state of stress, you can only heal so much. So here I am, Memorial Day weekend is coming up, and I'm kind of already feeling anxious about not being able to plan my normal way.
So I decided this Memorial Day weekend, I'm making a new rule for myself. Not 10 priorities, [00:11:00] not maximizing every single second, not trying to catch up on my entire life in three days. I am such a rule follower that that is why I knew if I set a rule, I would be far more likely to stick with it. And here it is.
For holiday weekends, I pick one priority, because one of the things that I teach in my Healing Habits program is that when you focus on one habit at a time, you are eighty-five percent likely to be successful. If you focus on two habits at a time, your success drops to thirty-five percent. If you focus on three habits at a time, your success plummets to ten percent.
The more you focus on, the less efficient and the less successful you are. And I think that could be similar for making plans. We try to make too many plans, and one, you spread yourself too thin, so you don't have the energy to show up for any of them, or you're not giving [00:12:00] yourself the opportunity to actually be present and enjoy them.
So I had to pick one priority for this weekend, and I decided the most important thing to me was to take a family bike ride. Now, we've been talking about this for probably over a year now, and for a variety of reasons, it just hasn't happened. And we didn't have any other plans for the holiday weekend, so I was like, "This is perfect.
This is it. Here's my priority." But are you ready for this? We don't have bikes, so we have to buy bikes. We need to teach my daughter how to ride a bike. And just for good measure, I decided that it was also a good idea to clean out the garage while we were at it to make space for the new bikes. Like, what?
What is happening? How am I fitting all of this into one weekend and expecting to have the energy to actually ride the bike? And this was me picking one thing, which is clearly like ten things in one. And that is [00:13:00] exactly why I needed the rule in the first place, because my brain does not naturally stop at one thing And I see this so often when women are starting an MS diet for the first time.
You tell yourself that you're going to start eating clean this week or start an anti-inflammatory diet on Monday or start getting nine cups of veggies in this week. And it sounds like one thing on a list, but the reality is it's like 20 steps tucked in there because you have to figure out what foods you can and can't eat, write the grocery list, go to the grocery store to shop all for those new foods.
And let's be honest, it's never just one store. Bring the groceries home, unpack, which means cleaning out the fridge in the process, which leads to dishes in the sink. And then you need to figure out how to store the new foods so they don't go bad before you eat them. Plan your menu for the week, have the energy to cook, [00:14:00] make the food taste good, and have the energy to clean up.
Is this validating to hear? This is why one of the bonuses inside my Healing Habits program is a meal planning walkthrough. I teach you how to break this process down into simple steps so you can get started even when you're dealing with a lot of MS fatigue. And I teach you how to vary it up so you're not eating the same boring foods week after week, especially when you're trying to make one meal for the entire family.
I saw that this was such an obstacle for so many women, so I created the resource to help remove it for you. But let's zoom out for a second. We are using an old, outdated operating system that survived on over-functioning. We are trying to run our lives on this push-through mentality, the one that says, work harder, maximize your time, squeeze just one more thing [00:15:00] in, catch up, don't slow down.
That mental operating system wasn't sustainable, MS or not. But it has become impossible to ignore after you get that diagnosis of MS. Because now there's less room for pretending. You cannot override that burnout anymore. You don't have the luxury of borrowing tomorrow's energy. And that's why it's been such a hard adjustment mentally and emotionally.
Because even after living with MS for 10 years, part of me still expects my body to operate like it did before my diagnosis. Meanwhile, my body's over here like, uh, no, absolutely not. We can't expect our body to perform like nothing changed. We need a new operating system, i.e. a new mindset around this.
And just like when you're updating the operating system on your phone or computer, what's [00:16:00] the first thing it tells you to do? Before it allows you to start the upgrade, it requires you to plug into a power source. So for us, that's like saying, "Okay, I know that you have been in overdrive for a really long time, and you're going to adjust how you're living.
But first, you need to start giving yourself some rest." Create a little margin. Create some breathing space. 20 or 30-minute naps may feel super uncomfortable for you, so maybe it's literally just starting with three breaths. Like, let's do it right now. I love doing this on the podcast. Ready? Deep breath in.
Deep breath out. Deep breath in. Exhale it out.
One more time. Inhale.[00:17:00]
Exhale it out.
What did that take? A couple seconds? And you can feel a difference in your body. This is what I'm talking about. Plug into a power source Your breath is the perfect starting point. And then remember, installing a new operating system takes time. You can't expect immediate results. Just like that progress bar moves across in small increments on your screen, that's the same with your body installing a new operating system or way of living.
It's not a flip of a switch. It's small changes, small decisions that you start to make one at a time that start to build progress. It's not one giant life overhaul. It's small decisions, small boundaries, small moments where you stop overriding and ignoring what your body is [00:18:00] trying to tell you. That is progress.
It takes time, but it's one that we can no longer ignore. Because just like when your phone needs that upgrade, what starts happening? It starts slowing down. You max out your storage and eventually it stops working. Don't wait until your body stops working or in other words goes into a full on flare or has massive MS fatigue.
We want to start now. The cost is too high. The cost is our health and our quality of life, my friends. I'm not saying this to scare you or me, but I don't wanna sugarcoat it either because we need to wake up and realize that overachieving, over-functioning, running on burnout mode is not the answer. It's not.
It wasn't the answer before MS, and it's definitely not now. This is why I [00:19:00] say MS is the gift I didn't know I needed because it gave me this wake-up call to live differently, and there is a better way. And that is what I am learning right now, not how to squeeze more out of myself, but how to build life around the energy I actually have instead of the energy I keep wishing I had.
We know that living with MS, our body's mitochondria aren't performing the best, right? And our mitochondria are what helps to create energy for our body. It takes the energy from food and helps it to convert it into energy that our body can use. And when you're living with MS, your mitochondria aren't functioning optimally.
So that's kind of a big deal, which is why an MS diet is so heavily focused on supporting mitochondrial health. But we also can't keep living like [00:20:00] that doesn't exist inside our body. Living with MS and expecting your pre-diagnosis energy is like taking a pay cut but continuing to spend your money like nothing changed.
Eventually, you end up in debt, except the debt isn't financial. It's the energy and nervous system debt. You're borrowing energy from tomorrow to survive today. I remember seeing this quote once on the cover of People magazine. This was probably, like, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago. And it said, "The only thing left to do is to build memories."
And at the time, I remember reading that and, like, my heart heard it, but I don't think my mind was ready for it yet because I was still living like productivity was the most important thing. But I think I'm ready to hear it now. I think I'm finally ready to build a different kind of life, one where I don't spend every holiday weekend trying to optimize myself [00:21:00] into utter exhaustion, one where I'm actually protecting my energy to build memories and enjoy the life that I do have.
Because maybe the goal of the weekend isn't to maximize it. Maybe the goal is actually to experience it And that's what my new rule is really about. It's not restricting myself. It's not lowering my standards, but finally giving myself permission to stop turning every window of time into a test of how much I can accomplish before I collapse.
One priority, one meaningful thing, one weekend I actually get to experience instead of optimize. So now I wanna ask you if this message resonated with you, which I hope that it did, what is one priority that you wanna experience this Memorial Day weekend? Big or small, doesn't matter. And if you're up for sharing it, [00:22:00] I would love to hear.
Send me a DM over on Instagram. I love hearing from you because I get to hear your stories, and that reminds me who I get the opportunity to speak with when I'm on this mic in my podcast studio, i.e. the closet in my bedroom. But seriously, send me a DM. I would absolutely love to hear from you, and happy Memorial Day weekend, my friends.
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 remember, MS has its own biological clock, which means the sooner you start, the more power you have to influence your future.
The best time to begin is now. That's why I created my free webinar, How to Help Slow MS Progression, [00:23:00] starting with just one habit today. Grab your spot at alinebrennan.com/webinar. See you there.