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CENTERED VISION

PUSHING THROUGH THE HARD THINGS TO MAKE ROOM FOR THE GOOD

 Modern Mommy Doc


PUBLICATION DATE:

Mar 07, 2022

PUSHING THROUGH THE HARD THINGS TO MAKE ROOM FOR THE GOOD

 Modern Mommy Doc

CATEGORY: CENTERED VISION

Here at Modern Mommy Doc, we talk about living a Centered Life a loooot. Like, if you haven’t heard us talk about it lately, you’re probably not paying attention (or ya know, you’re just living your life 😉) I see living your Centered Life as the answer to so many questions and the remedy to most sticking points working moms will face. And it would be so much simpler to live that life if we didn’t have to deal with…well, life!


Just like parenting would be so easy if it wasn’t for those damn kids, right?


But we’re not living our life in a bubble. We can’t just be all, “This is my vision board for my life. Now I’m gonna go live it.” There’s still responsibilities and ish that has to get done. So this month we’re gonna look at all the things that HAVE to happen, but don’t necessarily fit within your specific vision and how to deal with them.


We’re talking tasks, responsibilities, and obligations.

All the fun stuff.


This month we’ll look at The Swappables, The Contaminators, and The Heartstrings, and today we’ll start with The Non-negotiables.


Non-negotiables are the things that only you can do. It doesn’t matter if you find them enjoyable or not — the fact is YOU have to do them. For me, those things look like documenting patient notes at my office, answering personal emails, or breastfeeding. As much as I’ve tried to outsource it to my husband, he just didn’t produce enough milk. Plus, his nipple hair was really bothering the baby.


The biggest thing to remember with Non-negotiables is the same thing we tell our kids about doing their homework or eating vegetables: this process will go so much faster and will be easier for everyone involved if you can try to have a good attitude about it. I’m not talking about toxic and unrealistic positivity (“I’m SO grateful there’s pee all over this toilet when I clean it, because it reminds me that my children have healthy bodies.” No. Hard pass.) But when we go into something that we know isn’t our favorite and aaaalll we’re doing is reminding ourselves of all the reasons we hate it, it makes that task infinitely more terrible.


Here’s one way you can try to remedy it: go through your list of Non-Negotiables and see if you can create a habit around one by linking it with something that you DO enjoy. Clearing out that inbox? Do it with a glass of your favorite wine in hand. Breastfeeding? Make that the only time you’re reading that trash novel on your phone.


Or you could try turning it into a ritual that brings some form of joy or comfort. For instance, teachers have to grade homework and I don’t think I’ve ever met one who got into teaching because they were excited to grade papers on their nights at home. But what if everytime you had papers to grade, you put on your softest jammies and got to sit in your favorite spot in the house? Then you at least got to be cozy while you work through that stack of papers.


Lastly, with Non-Negotiables, you’ve gotta schedule it. It’s actual science that our brain will try to run away and avoid things that will cause us pain–even if that pain is just boredom. We can find every reason why we should be doing something else, ANYTHING else. If I’m not careful, I can be the QUEEN of avoiding a task for weeeeeeks that would actually take me a solid 20 minutes to accomplish. But when it’s on my calendar, I know when it’s coming up and I know that when my designated time is up, I can move onto something else (but don’t forget to schedule another time to finish whatever isn’t done!)


The Non-Negotiables aren’t something we love to do, by definition. Otherwise they’d probably be inside that circle. But when you can approach them with a different attitude, pair it with something else, and get it on your calendar, they’ll start to suck just a little less. And that’s how I’ll know I’ve done my job.


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About Our Guest: Whitney Casares, MD, MPH, FAAP, is a practicing board-certified pediatrician, author, speaker, and full-time working mom. Dr. Whitney is a Stanford University-trained private practice physician whose expertise spans the public health, direct patient care, and media worlds. She holds a Master of Public Health in Maternal and Child Health from The University of California, Berkeley, and a Journalism degree from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. She is also CEO and Founder of Modern Mommy Doc. Dr. Whitney advocates for the success of career-driven caregivers in all facets of their lives, guiding them toward increased focus, happiness, and effectiveness despite the systemic challenges and inherent biases that threaten to undermine them. 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ON THE PODCAST


By SYSTEMIC CHANGE 18 Apr, 2024
About Our Guest: Whitney Casares, MD, MPH, FAAP, is a practicing board-certified pediatrician, author, speaker, and full-time working mom. Dr. Whitney is a Stanford University-trained private practice physician whose expertise spans the public health, direct patient care, and media worlds. She holds a Master of Public Health in Maternal and Child Health from The University of California, Berkeley, and a Journalism degree from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. She is also CEO and Founder of Modern Mommy Doc. Dr. Whitney advocates for the success of career-driven caregivers in all facets of their lives, guiding them toward increased focus, happiness, and effectiveness despite the systemic challenges and inherent biases that threaten to undermine them. She speaks nationally about her Centered Life Blueprint, which teaches working caregivers how to pay attention to what matters most amid pressure, at multibillion-dollar corporations like Adidas and Nike, and at executive-level conferences. She is a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics and medical consultant for large-scale organizations, including Good Housekeeping magazine, Gerber, and L’Oreal (CeraVe). Her work has been featured in Forbes, Thrive Global, and TODAY Parenting. She is a regular contributor to Psychology Today. Dr. Whitney practices medicine in Portland, Oregon, where she and her husband raise their two young daughters. About the Episode: Dr. Whitney shares the principles she's learned as a solopreneur in the health and wellness space, the failures she's faced, and the truths she wishes she would have known from the very beginning. Episode Takeaways: This is not an episode about “how to grow a multimillion dollar business” or how to double your following overnight. I really shy away from talking about business because it’s disheartening to see that most of the people making online are people who are trying to teach you how to make money online. This is an episode that comes from many conversations I’ve had recently with people who are wanting to start a side hustle or even a full blown business, but are curious how to do that with the rest of life that’s going on around them. I’ve recently made a hugely drastic shift in my career and have moved from private practice into a company called Blueberry Pediatrics . It is a shift that still allows me to practice medicine as well as still running Modern Mommy Doc full time. The thinking behind this shift really is born out of these 8 tips I have about running a business while you’re working full time or maybe still taking care of your family. 1) Know your why. We’ve heard it a thousand times, but if we don’t know the driving force behind why we want to do a certain thing, it’s infinitely easier to stop doing it when things get hard. Ask yourself why you’re so committed to this one particular area. In my business, my why is to help, support, and encourage women (specifically working moms) so they don’t feel alone in their journey. So when I’m pulled away from my family for a time period or I’m exhausted from traveling, I remember the greater mission behind what I do. 2) Expect that you’re going to fail. I just pulled the plug on a project we had been working on at Modern Mommy Doc for two years: the Modern Mamas Club app. I thought it was going to be so valuable for moms, when in reality it was just duplicating what we already had. I learned so much through that process and at the beginning, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Failure is a natural part of growth. 3) Prepare to invest in your business. With your time, with your money, with your emotions. People ask me how I grew and I told them it took a lot of time and a lot of my own money. There were times that that was discouraging, but because all of this was tied to my why, I was able to push forward. 4) Figure out what you can outsource and what has to be done by you. At the beginning you might not have any money to outsource with. But set yourself up for success and know what you’ll hand off when you get to that point. Don’t waste time trying to do it all. 5) Network based on what you love & pay for good PR. When you want to grow your business, network with the people that you genuinely connect with, not just because you might get a sale. Figure out who it would be mutually beneficial for you to get to know. And when it comes to PR, you’ve gotta pay to play the game. PR isn’t for instant leads, but is also a long game like networking. You show up, do the interviews, and every once in a while something will pop and you might get a ton more exposure. 6) Prepare for other people to not be on your level and to try to pull you back down to theirs. No one wants the homeostasis to change. That’s why it’s so important to surround yourself (even virtually) who believe in you and/or who are on the same journey with you. It doesn’t have to be in the same industry, but look out for other working moms that you can get to know. 7) Give something back to yourself along the way. If you aren’t making a single dollar and giving it all away to the business, you’re down a quick path to resentment. I understand all the moms who just over-function and grind it out to get things done (I was one!) but you’ve got to get a reward from the thing that you’ve been putting so much into. A small way I do this is by working at a coffee shop a couple times a week. It reminds me that I’m so grateful for my job, that it’s flexible so that I work where I want, and that I’m in control of my life. A big way I do this is through a travel rotation with my kids and husband. Each trip I go on while consulting, I’ll rotate through taking one daughter, then the next, then my husband, then I’ll do a solo trip. These are trips they never would have been able to take on their own, and it’s a cool way my business gets to give back to my family. 8) The way you set up your business is a marker if you will be successful. Not the way you structure it, but the mindset you have around it. In fact, there are so many parallels between the way I run my business and the things I taught in my newest book, Doing It All: trying to build efficiency into how I do my tasks, batching my work, not spending extra time on stuff that doesn’t matter at all, swapping out for what others can do for me, pairing things that aren’t enjoyable with things that are, not letting things contaminate my time, and making sure my desk, home, and calendar are decluttered. More Blogs on this Topic: T he forgotten boundary: setting limits with yourself Thanks for the cookies in the breakroom, I’m still tired Wake up, working mama. Are you wasting your life? More Podcast Episodes on this Topic: T ranslating “mom skills” into “boss skills” How to be an ambitious, out of the box, career maker and an engaged mom How to claim your confidence as a working mom
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