Making Moves

This is episode 181 of the Empowered Team podcast.

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Welcome to the Empowered Team podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider.

Welcome. Welcome. Today we're talking about making some moves. If you had asked me four months ago if I was going to move some somewhere, move my home, I would have said absolutely not. Like there wouldn't have been a question in my mind. There's no way I was considering moving. Not a chance. And then within about three days, within about three days, it all came to fruition and this isn't something we were planning at all. So here's what's happening and I'm going to share. Massive making moves, massive change and how we cope. But specifically some of the things that we do personally in coping with major, major change. Because even if you're not making a home move or a business move or a major life change, ultimately this comes down to change and this is where we struggle. So I'm going to just let you know some of the things that are going on and how we cope with this so that you can use these tools as well for whatever major change you've got going on, whether it's, whether it's unexpected or expected, like the unexpected that we've gone through.

So to back up what happened was.

We'Ve known that my mother in law, Paul's mom, hasn't been remembering as much.

And we've known this for a while.

And we've just been being more and.

More close with her to understand what.

Her needs are and keeping an eye on things. And a few key things had happened.

That had us realize that, you know.

She'S, she's not doing okay on her own.

And ultimately it had Paul start to look at some properties and this kind of surprised me because we've only lived in our house for a total of two years. We moved in the beginning of the shutdown of the pandemic, when the streets were deserted. We were driving moving trucks and moving vans back and forth. So it was really not something we were anticipating doing. However, with Paul's mom.

We knew she.

Also did not want to go to a home.

And we made this real uncertain decision of having her move with us. And this is. This is one of the biggest. I hesitate in saying this because it's one of the hardest decisions that we've had to make. And it's because there's so many moving parts.

She's lived in her home for almost.

40 years, and in that home has just been accumulation and accumulation of memories and experiences, but also stuff and a lot. A lot of stuff. And a real challenge in getting rid of any of that stuff. And so Paul had the tough, daunting task of trying to purge and go through a lot of this personal stuff that comes from family deaths, that comes from a lifetime of memories, and also comes with the challenges of his mom remembering or not remembering and understanding the whole process of the move. Now, she understands the move and she understands that she's moving in with us, and she's agreed to that. And we've been doing all the things to sell her house and our houses and go into a house together, and.

She understands all of that.

But then there's the day to day.

Of not knowing when and exactly the details and re explaining and those types of things.

So there's a lot that is happening emotionally and psychologically that comes with change. And when it comes to moving specifically, what I like to say in business or in life is that there is a cause that then produces an effect. And this is true for anything in our lives. There's a cause and there's an effect. We might think that the effect is the thing that we are after, but often we have to take a look at what the cause is. So in this specific example, and this would apply to a lot of other examples, there are some causes that are really massive changes that we're experiencing. And it looks like major financial shifts in selling and buying, contractual obligations, purging. This hoarding situation would be another major, massive change and cause for the effects. And I'm going to tell you about the effects, and they're not pretty because some of the effects that we're having are, you know, snapping at each other, neck pain, not sleeping, all of those things. But those aren't the problem. Even though they seem like the problem. The problem is coming from the cause, which is the massive change. So if you're experiencing this in a work change or a renovation, you might think that the problem is, is the disruption of the employee or the mess in the house, those are the effects, not the actual cause. They are the effects. So the massive, the causes and the massive changes for us, or the major financial shifts and the dementia and Alzheimer's, those are the massive changes. The purging, this hoarding situation, selling houses, not just one house, more than one house, buying a house, going through all the contracts and lawyers and home inspections and visits, and the fact that this.

Home that we're moving to is an.

Hour and a half away.

This isn't just within the same city, it's in a different location that takes.

Travel to actually move to, let alone do the purchase. The day to day disruption that, that causes. Just the travel and all the extra appointments, the driving with the travel, the locating new services and connecting in a new community. There are so many massive disruptors that are going on right now. And ultimately there are effects. Now there's an effect that's called relocation depression. And when I did some research on this and dug into it, this relocation depression, what I realized is that it's so much like the identity loss that athletes experience when they leave sport, or that sense of loss that people experience when they've achieved the goal that they want. Relocation depression is that the person moves and at first they kind of think it's strange that they feel depressed after they finish the move because they've, they've achieved the move, they've achieved the goal. It's akin to feeling the depression after taking first place in a race. Why would you feel depressed after getting the medal or getting to the Olympics.

Or winning the gold?

And there's these underlying issues that are involved with this. One of the most significant being that.

The goal is removed.

The thing that you are after is removed. And what that is for us, for most people, is that when you're after the goal, we've got dopamine giving us this little hit all the time. Dopamine is this motivation molecule that has us go, hey, you're on the right track, keep going. You're sniffing out the water as this primal animal, oh, I'm on the right track, I still smell the water. Well, that's the same for us in the move or the goal, whatever it is, that has us continue to take action because we feel that we're going in the right direction. And we have this molecule, this hormonal response of dopamine that is helping us.

To continue to keep going.

And so we have this feeling of once that goal is achieved, this loss, this uncertainty, this lack of excitement because.

We had this kind of stability that.

Was coming from all of the tasks and all of the work and all of the practice or whatever it was.

Taking you to take you towards the.

Goal that was creating this level of stability. So when people are in the process of moving, we're finding that stability. There's so much to do, there's boxes to find and things to pack and. And appointments to make, and there's all these task lists. And so this list of items requires this full level of attention and serves this purpose of keeping this focus on one thing at a time. And then all of a sudden, it's all attained, it's all achieved. And this is where this relocation depression comes in. And it's especially notable when, if someone is exhausted from the movement, it takes usually a day or two to replenish that energy to recover from that exhaustion. But if someone's feeling this lengthy fatigue and down feeling, then that's usually a sign of this relocation depression.

So this is very interesting for me to dive into because it parallels so many other things that would be an.

Effect, so some of an effect of.

The psychological effect of massive change. So the change is really the cause. All of those things that I listed prior. Another effect that we've been experiencing personally is neck pain. I have major neck pain and there wasn't one specific mechanism. I didn't feel something happen during a workout or sleep funny or any of those things. It just so slowly came in. And I know that it's this manifestation.

Of all the extra tension that's coming.

And then my old injuries from a car accident in the past are now just all coming out. I'm not sleeping well because of the neck pain and also because of all of the things that are still pending, all the things that need to be done, the decision fatigue. Both Paul and myself are feeling this decision fatigue because there's so many things to decide on that we're both having to say, no, I can't. I can't make a call on that in this moment because I'm still focusing on these other things that have a higher priority. Or the physical fatigue. There's the fatigue, but not being able to fully sleep as deeply, and then that compounds the physical fatigue. Hives. So Maeve broke out in hives the other day and she has some allergies, a peanut allergy. I didn't know if she was exposed. I didn't know. We couldn't find any exposure, so. But she had this hives breakout. It could just be the amount of change that she's surrounded with, but we don't know. I'm snappy and Paul's snappy, but we're really putting that in check because we are different people than we were two years ago on our last move. And we're very, very different people than.

We were from the 10 or 12.

Years ago when we moved from Turkey back to Canada. So we've done moves before, but we're not the same. And we're dealing with these new challenges and new changes as completely different people with a completely different tool set. So the overwhelm is another effect as well. And what the typical recommendations are in.

This situation are pretty standard. And they're things that are automatic for.

Us, things that we knew we'd be doing. We didn't even have to talk about some of these things because the things that are the recommendations are things that we normally do anyway. They are part of our lives. It's the planning ahead, it's the purging, it's the getting help. We've done all of these things. We got help. We're getting help with some physical moving, we're getting help with some of the packing, getting help with some cleaning. Those are what we already do, the purging. We did that two years ago when we downsized. But there's more purging to do with his mom's place. The planning ahead, the being adaptable. Another one that's recommended in moving is grieving. Allowing yourself to have the time to grieve the transition, grieve the loss, because it is a loss of the old neighborhood, of the old home, the old routines. That's a grieving process. To grieve the loss of that. And being aware of that is very helpful for me as a parent to not just encourage or push my child into only the happy things about the move, only the great things that she has to look forward to. But actually allowing the grieving process of letting go and moving on and being sad and about what isn't there anymore, and that's okay. And another recommendation is starting the new routines in the new place. So all of these things are basically autopilot for us.

We're very aware of.

We have them in check. But here are the little things, the details, the behind the scenes. Here are the things that are really helping us right now that I think will help you in whatever you have going on. That's massive change, whether it's a move or not. So what's making the biggest difference for me is meditation. And this is. This is partially just a physiological brain recovery that I'm getting midday that is helping make up for the demand, the decision fatigue and also the lack of sleep. And I'll even see I have an OURA ring that measures my physiology and it measures my heart rate, my breathing rate, my heart rate variability. All of these fantastic measures that can tell me where my stress response is. And I'll have a low recovery score if I haven't slept well at night. But if I get as little as 15 minutes of a meditation in the.

Middle of the day, I can take.

My recovery score from a 63 up to a 76 with that 15 minutes. And it's very powerful and those are the numerical metrics. But for me, I feel the difference. My clarity of thought is so much better. My energy is up, my calmness is reset. So I feel calm and focused again. And that's a 15 minute meditation. And I'm usually cutting it about as close as I can for a time purpose. And my old self would have said, oh, you know, you don't have time to do this, don't do it, just keep going, get this other box packed. And myself now knows that that 15 minute meditation will save an argument. It'll save, it'll increase the number of boxes packed. It will have a greater experience, a more powerful and beautiful experience of the day. So meditation has been incredibly powerful and it's been something I've even Paul has done with me as well. And he usually falls asleep. But that little 15 minute nap is just as efficacious as the zoning out in the meditation or zoning in. So really powerful deep blue. My deep blue rub has been a game changer for my neck. I typically don't take Tylenol or Advil or any medication that way, but will if we needed to. And with this neck pain, I took some Advil and it didn't touch it. But the deep blue has been a. This deep blue rub, which is essential oil based, has been a game changer for me being able to sleep. So that's been a real, a real bonus. Food planning. We typically plan our foods in the week or meals in the week. But what can go out the window when you don't have the cooking utensils.

And you've packed a bunch of plates.

And everything's who knows where then what I've found in this, in this particular move is that I planned our hellofresh so our food delivery so that I made as much of it ahead of time as possible so that we could eat from the leftovers. We've planned pizza, of course, for the moving. And also one of the other things I made was an egg bake so that we didn't have to cook breakfast. We just had little egg bake ready for us to eat in the morning with fruit. And then travel lunches. So we're commuting the hour and a half to one way to get to our new place and having those travel lunches that we're eating on the go is so much better than grabbing something through a drive through. So those things are keeping our energy up, our focus and our physiology in check. Uh, workouts, yes. We are still working out and this might surprise many people because there's so much physicality with the moves and there's so much extra energy output. However, if we weren't doing our workouts, we would be less energetic. It is part of our physiology that if we made that much of a big difference or big change in our workouts that it would actually drain our energy because it's something that's such a staple for us. So workouts are still daily. However, if for instance today we know that Paul's going to do a bunch of heavy lifting, it means that yesterday we did an initial two carloads of things when we had our final walk through to the house. We take possession today. So we're doing the major move from Paul's mom's house today. And tomorrow we have movers coming doing the bulk of our home move, which will be the last step. So there's three major steps here. But today for our workout, Paul did. I suggested that he reduce his sets because he was doing so much extra physical work today, which he gladly did. But that would be just an adjustment. We either may reduce intensity or reduce volume in order to account for all of the extra activity that's coming with maybe some of the physical moving. We have a daily plan. So this is another thing we do is we check in and say what needs to happen today? What needs to be adjusted from the original plan? Where are you at? What are you doing? Specifically what am I doing? So we know our role. If we don't do that, we usually have some sort of disruption or maybe even disagreement if we haven't set this plan out so we understand where we each are. Another one is that there's a clear priority and there's a clear priority on the bedrooms and the kitchen because we're moving my mother in law and she might have some confusion around once she gets there, you know where it's her stuff, where does she get to relax? I want to make sure her room is ready and that our sleep areas are ready for us to recover. And that the kitchen is at least bare minimum with the staples set up so that we can have the food and the sleep that we need. The recovery is going to be priority. Another one that we've personally done is that last month, every March, we typically do no sugar. And what this looks like is with no sugar is for the last month we haven't had any extra sweets. Now I've found, and I've learned especially in this past month, because there's been so much extra demand with the move, I've learned that I am craving more sweets on this one than I have in our past months of no sugar. And it's because of the emotional challenge, the changes. I want that little sweet to buffer.

The feelings of uncertainty, the feelings of stress, the feelings of overwhelm.

I want that sweet to make me feel better. And I don't normally indulge in that anymore because I process how I'm feeling. I manage my overwhelm, I manage my thoughts so that I can really adapt.

Either process the feeling I'm feeling or.

Understand where the feeling came from with my own thinking. And so I don't have as many of those sugar cravings or anything anymore. So it was interesting to notice how I was craving sugar more than I have in past sweet free months that we've done. So that was an interesting one. But the no sugar has been very powerful because by not having sugar over this last, this last month, it is meant to that I'm not. I'm not if I have one little tiny sweet thing that's plenty. My palate is reset, which I'm really grateful for in a time of a move. Cause it's so easy just to grab things on the go and be eating things you don't want to eat. Another one that's been really key for us is extra water. So between the move and so much extra activity and decision making your brain, when you're making so much more, there's more cognitive demand. Then it's typically needing more calories. And I'd rather have those calories come from fruit or the meals that we've planned and not from the sugar. And also not put myself in a state of dehydration. So the extra water has been critical as well. And then the other part of that is no extras. We're saying no to things that we'd ordinarily say yes to because we know that we're in the middle of the moving part of it. But there's still this transition part of it. We don't know our neighbors. We don't know the community that we're moving to. We don't know what we're going to face with living with a new family, family member with Alzheimer's. We don't know what we're facing. So there's so many new transition things that we're simply saying no to, things that we cannot put the extra energy to. So no extras. Saying no has been really powerful. And the last one that I personally want to add in here is I get coached. I get coached every week. And it's part of what keeps me performing my best and. And managing myself and leading myself. And the last time I got coached, my coach, she asked me to reflect. And I reflected on something that I was really proud of for Paul and myself. I was really proud of how we were showing up for each other and showing up as individuals and in. In the way that we were interacting with each other. We're really honoring our relationship, putting our family first, not really noticing and acknowledging any time that we were a little bit off or snappy or anything like that, and apologizing right away or taking ownership for it. So I was really proud of us. And I told her. And I was reflecting on how I was so glad that I was. Was pointing that out to him and pointing that out to myself, saying that I was proud of myself and I was proud of him and really proud of us and everything that we. How we're handling things. And one thing she coached me on in that. In that reflection was she said, that's amazing that you're saying to him that you're proud of each other and of him, but then tell him what it means to you. And that really made me take notice, because his interpretation of that feeling that I was having, that I was proud that I felt that pride in our relationship, in how much we've grown, feeling that pride in each other. He would fill in the blanks to interpret what that means. And so what she coached me in was to tell him what it means to me by saying things like, you know, it really helps me that you are so aware of how I'm feeling, or I feel so grateful for the way we can communicate around some of these really tough topics in our move. So that getting coached was a very helpful thing in expanding on a reflection that I already thought, you know, this is a great thing. But there was more to it than that, because this expansion of letting him know what it means to me, how it helps me how I feel. That deepens our connection and it has us understand each other more fully and what that will do for us in these kind of challenges. With the change that we're facing and the change that we're going to face even after this move is complete, that is exactly what we need. We need to have that connection and have that understanding and continue to learn about each other so that we can handle what's coming at us. So that is the topic today on making moves. And I hope that these real life tips of what's really helping us right now, instead of the just generic typical recommendations, I hope those serve you for whatever major changes you have going on in your life or your business or your family. Because they're gonna come. Those changes are gonna come and these are the things that are really making a difference for us.

So go for it.

Handle your changes with all you've got. I know you can do it. We know you can do it. We've got your back. And keep living your best Empowered life. Have a beautiful rest of your day.

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