153: Put Your Oxygen Mask on First and Take Care Of Yourself

The Remarried Life

Brian Mayer talks about taking care of yourself. In a blended family we often get pulled in so many directions that we exhaust ourselves to the point of upset and frustration. This episode to help give you permission to slow down and refresh. That being said, I am going to practice what I preach and take a short break from the podcast of about 3 weeks and return refreshed! We hope you are inspired by today’s message. For more information and additional resources please visit our website at http://www.theremarriedlife.com

Today's Goodies

• Do you need a break? Do you need some time for yourself? In blended families, that time seems pretty much non-existent. But in order for you to run the full marathon sometimes you need these breaks. In today’s episode we will talk about this and more.
• And to begin, I wanted to let you know that the podcast will be taking a short 3 week break, so that I can do what I am asking you to do and that is to take better care of myself.
• Have you ever been on an airplane and heard the flight attendant that in the event of a loss of cabin pressure, the oxygen masks will descend and that you are encouraged to put your own mask on first. This might seem cruel that you are putting yourself first but the ultimate goal is to keep yourself alive so that you can help others.
• The same goes for your blended family experience. If you are not taking care of yourself then eventually you will be no good for anyone.
• I often think about running a marathon when I compare it to the life of a blended family. I ran my first and only marathon to this point about 4 years ago. The training for the marathon was an interesting parallel to how I think life should be run.
• First, you start off slow with some short runs. This might be compared to the initial period in a blended family where you might not be fully and completely engaged in all areas because you are busy getting your bearings.
• The runs then get longer the more comfortable you are and the same with your blended family. You will begin to put yourself into situations around things like helping the stepkids with homework or discipline of them.
• Then throughout the training there is usually one day a week that you will do a sprint. You know what these days look like in the life of your blended family. Unfortunately you don’t have much time to think. It is all about getting the family up, breakfast served, kids out the door, then onto work, then dinner, then cleanup, then homework, the off to bed and then do it all over again.
• Also throughout the training, there are usually a couple of days a week where there is complete rest. This is the hard part of the blended family experience. Getting these breaks for full days is sometimes hard if not impossible. So you must find moments, minutes and maybe sometimes hours to rest.
• In the midst of all of this physical training, you must also take care of your body by eating right and hydrating. Emotionally and mentally you must take of yourself by limiting or dealing with stress in better ways.
• All of these things are done so that you can run your best race on race day which is often months away. The same goes for the blended life, in that you must have periods of both exertion and rest so that you can run your best race as life goes on.
• So all this is great in theory, but how do we make this practical? Let’s talk about some simple ways to make this happen that hopefully won’t take too much energy.
• • First I want you to take some deep breaths and really think about how your body is changing in how it feels when you do this. Deep breathing over periods of time can produce calm in the body.
  • Go for a walk and use all of your senses. Think about what you are seeing, smelling, and hearing especially. Be grateful if you can do this and for what you are experiencing.
  • Stay in your pajamas just a bit longer. Give yourself permission to fight against the expectations of others. This one is hard for those of us that always think we should be doing something.
  • Look at what tasks can be delayed, temporarily not done, or permanently deleted from your life. Don’t take too much time thinking about this because that defeats the purpose of removing some pressure and stress.
  • Tell your family what you are doing and ask that they do the same. In other words model some of the behaviors and let them know it is okay to do these from time to time.
• So after I am done recording this podcast, I want to take some deep breaths and maybe take a walk around the work complex and soak in the sun, trees, and bird for just a bit.
• Please take care of yourself and each other while we go on this short hiatus from the podcast. We will return again in about 4 weeks.

Resources:

• None

Thanks For Listening!

• With so many things that take time in our lives, I more grateful than you know that you took time to listen to this podcast episode.
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As always remember that marriage is not something you have, it is something you do. Talk to you next week unless you are binge listening in the future in which case I will talk to you in about a minute! Take care.