Just Breathe

Warrior DIVAS | Real Talk for Real Women

Hello, and Welcome to Warrior DIVAS | Real Talk for Real Women and I am your host Angie Leigh Monroe and I am excited to be here this week. It's kind of a crazy crazy week because this is the week, as I'm recording this right now, we are actually launching our previous shows. So, let me just tell you something, if you ever want to be challenged and push to your limits, to say I want to launch something massive in 30 days, and then do it. Because, oh my goodness, the sleepless nights, the waking up in the middle of the night to jot down an idea, the technology crashes that happened in my laptop's gone down, I tried to do a Facebook Live earlier between my pages and my group, it made it to the event page, but it didn't even make it to the other pages that we were trying to do it too.
So, let me just tell you, all you can do during these times is just breathe. That's what we were talking about here in the studio right before we started today is just breathe, I have an Apple Watch, it tells me all the time to remember to breathe. Normally, I'm just going to “stop it, stop it, stop it stop telling me to breathe.” But I'm starting to embrace the goodness to be reminded to breathe. So today as we get started, I just want to remind you about our conference coming up in October; October 11 and 12th, it's going to be in Grapevine, Texas, and it's going to be a wonderful time for us to come together. It really just takes off some of the things that others have put on us and find out who we are behind all the masks we wear every day. So, our conference is called Unmasked, and we are going to be revealing some new layers of each woman that comes to that conference. We're just going to have a great time of tuning in to who we are, what we were created for, and how we can walk boldly and confidently.
But today, I'm going to start off again, reminding you that I am Angie Leigh Monroe, and I am your girlfriend. So, I talked about that probably a couple of episodes ago, where I want to be your girlfriend. It's not because I need friends. It's not because I have a lot of bandwidth for a lot of deep personal relationships. But I want to be your girlfriend because I want to be able to talk realistically with you. I want to be able to talk about tough stuff with you. The last week, there's been a resounding theme going on with the women I'm talking with and I felt it important to approach this subject today. Because if it's bubbling up that often in conversation, it means people aren't feeling connected to a solution for that problem. So, I've had several women coming to me talking about feeling overwhelmed, and I think what we do a lot of the times, like I said, we started the show talking about starting this podcast 30 days ago and getting launched and getting going and, and trying to get it all worked out, but that overwhelm that comes with all of that is, this isn't the only thing I'm doing.
You know, I have the Warrior DIVAS podcast, but I have the DIVAS Impact and Veteran DIVAS underneath that. I have a conference we're putting on, and I have Mike, speaking and coaching, and a training business that I do, consulting business that I do. So, I'm trying to get clients for that and work through clients that I already have for that, and we also own a plumbing business. Oh, and I have a husband, and I have kids, and I have grandchildren, and I've had a couple of funerals. Well, I've had four or five funerals this year, we've had to go to that we're family related. So, I mean, there is a lot that comes on and you start checking off the list of getting things done, but the list keeps growing as you're trying to get it done. And what I'm hearing from so many women is they feel like they're failing. They feel like they're not succeeding, they feel like they don't have time to rest, because there's so much to do. And one of my friends was talking to me the other day, she's recently recovered from a drug overdose, and she is a lifelong friend that's had a few problems down the road and had this drug overdose. We were just talking after she came out of recovery, seeing how things were going. And she said that she absolutely loved all the things she could get done while she was in her manic, high stage on the drugs and part of that was she felt super productive, but what she didn't realize is when those drugs wore off, and she crashed for a day or two, or a week, she was losing productivity. So, the same amount of work and effort could have been done along the hall if she had just taken time and periods of rest along the way. So, I'm going to throw some valuable stuff at you, you know, they talked about on the seventh day God rested, he created the earth six days and he rested. When we go into tilling soil and working the land farmers will tell you that every seventh you've got to give the land rest for it to be productive. So there's something about that seventh day and I know a lot of people right now they've got kids that play clubs, sports, they're constantly going, they're working just as hard at the church on Sundays, as they are at their jobs the rest of the day of the week. And then they have sports and all that stuff on Saturday. They're constantly going, going going, but they never slow down. See, we were the that family. Back in the day, we were at church every time it was opened. My kids, we had sports, my son played select baseball, we had other adopted kids that were always going to and doing things, my daughter was on the drill team and cheerleader. My other one was a trainer that worked with all the athletes. So, we were always trying to go places and be there to support them. Take drinks, do parent duties, all that good fun stuff and it gets exhausting, it really does. You work. At that time, I was going in at seven o'clock in the morning, leaving at seven o'clock in the evening and answering texts and emails to all hours of the night because I wanted to be that good employee for that job. But I was sacrificing time at home with my family. So, on the weekends, and when I did have time available, I was trying to be all in and be supermom. How many of y'all really tried to be super Mom, you know, and try and do everything, but I kept getting sick. So, what was happening was if I wasn't stopping to rest my body, my body was stopping me, and I had no control over when it would stop me. Because I was so tired, so worn out, so exhausted, so depleted, that I couldn't give to myself, or the ones I loved anything.
Now, I know this is an analogy that's heard a lot, especially in the Christian arena, is to serve from your overflow. So, imagine you've got an old antique teacup and it's sitting in a saucer. You know, a lot of times what we do is we pick up that cap and we start giving, you know a little bit of sip to our family, we give a little bit of sip to work, we give a little bit of sip to volunteer duties, we give a little bit of sip to our parents that are aging, we give a little bit of sip to our siblings because they need a hand right now. We give a little bit of sip to our neighbors because they need a hand right now. And we go to take a drink out of our own tea cup, and there's nothing there. So, what we need to focus on, and this is our challenge for this episode is taking care of ourselves. Finding that time to pause, push, reset, renew our mind, renew our spirit, renew our ability to think straight, because quite honestly, when you get in that frazzled state, and I've been there the last few days you get in this frazzled state and you start missing things, you start missing connections with people, you start missing deadlines and details that need to be paid attention to on a timely basis. So instead of filling that teacup up and giving everybody else's sip out of that teacup, let it overflow, let the picture of what's coming into you pour into that cup for me. It's my walk with God, it's my quiet time. It's my devotional time, it's my ability to tune in to what God's purpose is for my life and just listen to him for what's next. You know, so I turn that picture up, I say, okay, fill me. And then instead of letting everybody sip out of my teacup, it's now pouring out onto the saucer. I am full, I am refreshed, I am energized, and now they can have an endless supply too. Because as I keep tapped into what my calling is and where my purpose is, then the overflow continues to fill out.
So, I told you, I did a lot of work for my church, I worked for the church, I volunteered for the church. And I had been doing it for many years, and my friend Carrie Gant told me it was time for me to take a rest, take a sabbatical. Now sabbatical sounds like a scary term, whenever you're like, Oh, I can't work. I can't take time off work. But here's what you can do. You can start scheduling time, in your schedule for yourself. If it's getting up early in the morning, yes. I’m going to be real here if it's getting up early in the morning, so, you can sit quietly with your thoughts, so that you can be more organized for the day, do it. If you're going 90 to nothing and you look at your calendar and you don't see any time any day or any time in any day that isn't scheduled. set an appointment with yourself. Go to the beach, go sit by the pool, go to a park, go to bed. Some of you just need to go to bed because you're that tired and you're that grouchy. I'm telling you, yesterday, my husband, my assistant, Donnie who helped us launch the show, they got to see the real me yesterday and it wasn't pretty. I was tired. I was grouchy. I hadn't felt good. I had a stomach bug last week and I just hadn't bounced back yet. So last night, I still had things to do, but you know what I chose to do, I chose to put myself to bed.
My mom used to be a babysitter when we were younger. So, she would help supplement my dad's income, and we had a little girl, her name was Jody. She would come over to the house and she would do something and get in trouble, and as soon as she got in trouble for something, she'd say it's time for my nap. You know, and that has been such a great reminder for me, throughout my life, that anytime I'm getting overwhelmed anytime I'm getting hangry, anytime I'm getting too tired or too grouchy to be with anybody that I don't even like myself that I need to remind myself, it's time for me to rest. It's time for me to take that now. So, my advice this week to several women because I know what they were doing, and I know what they were trying to accomplish and wants to find time to rest. I know many people say well, I just don't sleep well at night. Well, there's lots of ways that you can help yourself with that. There's the herbal supplement, melatonin. Some people that works great for, some people, it doesn't work at all. There's counting backwards, as long as you stay focused on the counting. It'll help. There's playing the sound machines in your room to help calm you and peacefully take you away. There are reading books, but the one thing you need to stop doing is, stop getting your energy raised by looking at Facebook, and watching TV and doing all the electronic things right as you're trying to go to bed. Now, I'm not going to sit here and lecture to you all the time today. But what I want to challenge DIVAS on this week is finding time to rest. I want you to flood our social media with the opportunities you're taking to rest. I want you to send me a picture of how you're resting, how you're relaxing, how you're renewing your mind, how you're feeding yourself, because this is important. If you can't invest in yourself enough to rest so that you can be the best of the best for your family and your loved ones. How will you ever invest in yourself to move forward and walk more boldly and confidently towards your goal? See, we're still talking about mindset here. If you're going to tell me that you can't do the resting because you've got so many responsibilities on your plate and there's so much that has to happen, and your job requires you to be there, and all these things. Let me remind you that if you don't take care of yourself, you will not be there to take care of that.
So, I really want to focus on this today with you. I really want you to find ways start making lists of things that help you rest and relax, whether it's getting a massage, getting your nails done, going and getting a pedicure, some of those. Some of you even get frazzled getting those things done, because it takes time and you just don't have the time. I want you to start, we're going to have everybody see this like the plank challenge. Everybody sees all these other challenges out there. If you say you don't have the time, I want you to schedule just five minutes, five minutes of something you want to do, something that you are finding that will energize you, get you excited, and help you renew. Then the next week, I want you to put it to 10 minutes. And we're going to work on this week, by week, by week, by week, five minutes, 10 minutes, the next 15 minutes, until you’re getting at least an hour a day and we're going to work this up. After we hit the hour mark, we're going to boost it by an hour. Because you'll need start working this into having a full day of rest once a week.
Yeah, it can be done.
My kids used to get so upset with me because I would look at their schedule. If we had Saturday games, I would make sure that our Sunday games had the had the whole day blocked out. So whatever day of the week that we had the most activity on, I tried to find a day that we could block out, sometimes it wasn't a full day, sometimes we had school and work and all that stuff. But we made a commitment on Thursday night to come in, unplug from everything, and just be quiet, have family time. It's really not a huge challenge unless you make it so.
My daughter's boyfriend was talking to her not too long ago and she was talking about feeling the weight and the pressure of all the responsibilities she had at her work, and she couldn't take time off for this or she couldn't take time off for that. And her boyfriend who works in management for another company, he told her; he says, “you know, the best advice I ever got was this company was standing and running before you got here and it'll be standing and running once you leave.” And it took the weight off his shoulders, to not have to dig deep for every little thing, didn't mean that he didn't do his job with excellence, but he didn't carry the weight of the whole company. See, when we say things like that. Now I'm going to touch back on another episode. When we say things like that, what we're saying is ‘I'm being held hostage’ and that kind of puts you in a victim mindset. And we're not victims, were victorious, the V in Warrior DIVAS stands for Victorious. So, if you can say I'm responsible for everything, I can't have my own life because I am committed to this job so much that I can't have my own life.
So today, I want you to start putting in your calendar, five minutes for the next week that you can carve out a day for yourself five minutes a day, you can carve out for yourself. The next week, I want you to go ahead and schedule before anything else gets on your schedule, scheduled 10 minutes a day that you can put to yourself. These are things that you put on your schedule and they never get taken off; they may get moved to different parts of the day, but they never get taken off that day. We're going to work this up to being a weekly thing that we do on a weekly basis to where you have at least a day that you take time you rest, you renew your mind and you set yourself up for success. Now this is going to look different from for each of you. Some of you want to go on a hike. Some of you want to go on a walk, some of you just want to just read a book. Some of you would just like to sit in peace and quiet because you've got little ones around the house making noise all the time, and that's understandable. But whatever it looks like for you, we want you to get onto our DIVAS Impact page, start sharing pictures of it and encouraging other women out there to do the same. Tag us with tags like #DIVASRest, tag us with tags, like #BeADIVA, #MakeAnImpact using those hashtags. Those are ways that you can help us spread this word to help other women. This is not about me sitting behind the microphone and telling you what to do. This is about us empowering and equipping a global community of women and we need all of you invested in this. Now, somebody asked me the other day how I get so much done and part of it was I had to submit to myself, I had to give myself some rest. I had to give myself over to have somebody else, look at my schedule, look at my blind spots, and help me find those times for slowing down.
That brings us to today's EVERYDAY DIVA. See today's EVERYDAY DIVA is Candyce Evans. Candyce is my right-hand girl. She grew up with my daughter. When she was looking for a job last year, I said, I've got some help while you're looking for a job. Let's see how this works, and she has literally come in and helped streamline what we do here. She keeps everything on point, she keeps me on task and because of that, I have been able to step back and breathe. I don't schedule any appointments; all my appointments go through her because she knows my calendar. She knows what the plan is. She knows what we have coming and then she also, is fiercely protective of my family time and my quiet time. Because she knows that I not only have my daughters that live at home, I have a son that's in the military, I have grandchildren that live at home with us, and I have another business. And that time with my husband that we get so seldom together, just the two of us is vitally important. But you know what? The other part is, is Candyce is going to school right now. Candyce is working a job. Candyce is a wife. Candyce is a mom. So, what she's having to figure out now is how to balance it all for herself. And, I don't believe that there's a work life balance people, I believe that there's an ebb and flow to life, there will be times that are more chaotic than others. But today Candyce is my EVERYDAY DIVA because she is already putting into play, steps to protect her quiet time and protect her family time, and she's doing it at a young age. I am so super proud of her for doing that, and so as we continue, as we do these things, you'll see Candyce at events and things like that. Now I want you to challenge her and ask her how she's resting and I want you to again, go out there and share those pictures of how you're finding them time to carve out each and every day for the rest that you need to be productive, to be a diva, and to make an impact. So that's going to be our show for today and I look forward to seeing those pictures on our page. And don't forget to connect with us on DIVAS Impact Inner Circle on the Facebook page as we get to continue being a diva making an impact. The choice is yours. See you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai