How To Take Care of Yourself (while taking care of others)

Hey, everyone, it's Brendan. And in this episode, we're going to take on one of the most common questions I get asked all the time, which is, how do you manage it all and take care of yourself while taking care of other people? You know, because I'm sure you've got family or team or other people that you care for and love, and you want to support them and champion them, empower them, take care of them, be a good mom, a good dad, a good leader, but also take care of yourself so you don't burn yourself out trying to help everybody and sometimes sacrifice your dreams at the cost of supporting everybody else around you. How do you make that balance between taking care of yourself and others? Well, that's such a great question. It comes from the spirit and the heart of just saying, you know, I really love other people and I also love my own life and how do I just deal with it? And so sometimes you hear a lot of frustration or stress with that. And I hope that this episode just helps a little bit, break that down. You know, I think the first thing we all have to get used to in this modern era is the reality that we don't have to take care of everybody. You know, today with everyone pushing into your inbox, pushing onto your text, pushing into your voice message, pushing into you 247 all day long with requests, requests, requests, emails, emails, emails, we feel like we have to get to everybody and reply to everybody. And the reality is we don't. You need to identify the circle of people who you deeply need to care for, support, mentor, champion on, and realize that everything else that hit you from other areas, those are people who are doing marketing, those are people who are not in your true circle of influence. Those are people who just want, want, want, want. And it is not your job to reply to everybody in the world. And sometimes you're spending so much time replying and serving and helping the people who. It's not that they don't matter, but they are not your key priorities. They are not the people who deserve your most focused attention. And just by stop feeling like you need to solve everybody's problem and fight fires for everybody over here by learning to say no or frankly learning to ignore those who are outside your circle of influence, it gives you more time for yourself and for others who do matter, who are the highest level of priority. I really believe that most people, they're not lacking time to serve themselves and take care of other people at the same time. They're giving away all of their time doing things that are, frankly, distractions and not that important. You know, the average American today, as an example, watches four hours of television per day. It's like, okay, and maybe your drug isn't television. Maybe you're clicking or feeling distracted or directionless throughout the day. Well, that time could be applied to taking care of yourself and other people. And I think we all need to get a better accounting of where we're really spending our time, because if we could get just a little bit more of the. That pie of time back, we could dole it out in more fulfilling ways. I think the other thing that we have to learn to realize is that other people in our lives don't need us to support and take care of them the way we feel like they do. We feel like often because we're caretakers, we're leaders, we're managers, we love those. We feel like we have to do everything for them. Our mindset needs to switch from I need to take care of everybody to I need to equip and empower everybody to take care of themselves. You don't have to cook the kids lunch every day. They can be taught to get their own lunch. I'm not talking about hand them a gun, make them go shop or shoot their own cows. I'm talking about, like, look, a kid can be taught to make a sandwich. You know, empower them to handle their own stuff. And I don't mean just your children. I mean your team. Your team doesn't need to be micromanaged. Let them run with the ball. You know, learn to equip and empower people versus take care of them. And all of a sudden, you're getting hours and hours and hours time back for you to follow your own dreams, time back for you to sleep, time back for you to take a bigger picture of the world, for you to find your own sense of creativity and contribution again, versus micromanaging every little element of your day. Stop micromanaging. Start empowering, and you'll see a sudden huge shift in everything in your life. I think another thing is we have to learn the difference between doing the small things that matter and outsourcing the things that don't. You know, we all think we have to remember, you know, oh, Gosh, I got 50 birthday cards to write this month. It's like, you know what? There's services that do that, that once a year, you can just one time ever, you can go in and type everyone's birthday and it will remember to send a card out to them. And you never have to touch it and deal with it again. Awesome. Do that. Except maybe the handwritten notes you want to write to people you really, really, really care for. Guess what? You can do that in advance too. Like all of these things that we think like are just sucking at our time. These little tiny things that we feel like we have to do. Usually we can automate those. How can you automate the correspondence or the things that you feel like must be accomplished? Automate it and step out of the way so you don't have to do it again. Sometimes it takes advanced planning using the apps and the tools that are available to us today. But once you set it up, you can forget it and you can return to time that matters. Which really leaves me my last point here. People think that they have to take care of everybody. They have to be there all the time. And I think the reality is what people want from us isn't necessarily our full time. What they really want is to make sure that that time they have with us matters. That it's felt, that it's real, that it's authentic and spontaneous and alive. That you are there when you're there with people. Make that quality time. It's not about quantity, giving every hour of your day to everybody, you, it's about when you do give that time, be present, be fully aware and alive, vital, attentive, conscious in those moments and give people what they really want. Your joy, your positivity, your champion, your support, your cheerleading. Give people a positive experience, emotively and energetically in the little amount of time you have with them. And look, they'll take 20 minutes of you being in incredible space, fully attentive versus you. An hour at lunch, sort of chatting with them and checking your phone the whole time. If you just learn to. When you realize when you do have that time with people, to make it vital, you know, to make it really count, as if this was your last time with them. If you really gave them full energy, full awareness, full, conscious, you vitally there in the moment with them. If you can learn to teach yourself to do that when you are with them, it's okay, they don't need as much time. And then you get more time back with yourself then in your time with yourself. If you learn to avoid the distractions and the belief that you gotta serve everybody. Learn to focus on what is it I really want right now versus kind of bumbling through, trying everything, accepting everything, doing everything. What do I want really? What do I want to experience? If you're more clear about what you really want, to experience about what you want. Then taking care of yourself becomes optimized. You don't have to sit there and wonder all day. Well, I guess I'm not sure what to do with myself. It's like, no, I'm clear about what I want in my free time. And now in my free time, I know I need rest. In my free time, I know I love to read a book and get creative. In my free time, I love to journal or browse music. And you find what to do in your free time and you do it well, then you feel like effective in your own life. And now with all these other things, you feel effective in managing, equipping, empowering, serving, being present with other people. Suddenly you start to feel like a renewed sense, like you are handling it all because you got rid of the distractions, because you focus on those who did matter. Because you gave those who did matter what they really wanted. You fully present because in your off time, you realize what needed was necessary for you to recharge and take care of yourself. You had clarity on that and you executed. You did it. You start to feel this new energy about life. You start to experience what we call the charged life. Hey guys, it's Brendan. Did you like this episode? If you did, you can do three things right now to continue your journey. First, you can subscribe right here to my channel, which I hope you will, so I can keep sending you videos on a weekly basis to change your life. Second, you can get my brand new book for free by clicking the link right here. And third, you can also go to my website, sign up for my newsletter so that I can send you free offers, free products, free programs, updates on my events, new podcasts, and everything else that we don't do on this channel. Here, here. If you like to do that, just go ahead and click any of these buttons you see right here. Look forward to seeing it on the next video. Until then, go out there every single day of your life. Live fully, love openly and make your difference today.