Shifting Your Holiday Expectations (as published in "The Caregiver's Reader")

Shift Your Expectations of The Holidays
The holidays when caregiving are different, yet we bend over backwards to make them the same as they always were. At no other time are we so dedicated to pretending that nothing has changed. Preserve the simpler family traditions, but consider tossing out your more extreme expectations of the holidays, family members, and yourself. Stay in the present moment. Generate new, creative, simpler family traditions. Focus on gratitude for what you now have.

Shift Your Expectations of Others 
People are different too. The demands of the holidays compound the regular stresses of caregiving to push family members to their emotional limit. If they need to act out, if possible, let them be. As hard as it may be to imagine, they may be doing the best that they can. Have compassion while asserting your own boundaries. You can’t make other people happy, or make them act the way you would want. You can only tend to your own state of mind and heart. Do what you can. Let that be enough.

Shift Your Expectations of Yourself
As your own stresses mount, lower the bar on your expectations of yourself. Make a little more time to decompress. Focus on your relationships more than the trappings of the holidays. Ask for a little more help from others. The happiness and holiday spirit of everyone else are not your sole responsibility. Balancing the holiday house of cards on your shoulders is a vulnerable position for everyone. Tell them that, and then ask for their partnership to help everyone get through the holidays a little happier, a little more peaceful, a little more grateful for all that you do have.
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Questions for Caregivers

The following is an excerpt from my provocative interview with Byron Woodman of the wonderful website, QuestionsForLiving.com. 

So... if the quality of life depended on the quality of the questions we ask, what might that mean for caregiving?

The voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes but in having new eyes.

—Marcel Proust

Whiteside: I began to see “life through new eyes” at age 33 when I took the Landmark Forum. That transformational training and subsequent workshops taught me, among other things, the power of a question, taking me into a vital new career, through ten years of challenging yet successful caregiving, into my current work as a caregiver’s coach and Elder advocate, and now into yet another reinvention of my life purpose. Chapter Three of my book, “The Caregiver’s Compass” begins by applying the power of questioning to surviving and thriving on the journey of family caregiving.

QFL: -  What questions did you ask yourself as a caregiver? -

Whiteside: The questions that drove my caregiving decade of survival and personal growth evolved from, 

To what am I committed? and How can I give without giving myself away? 

to 

What is the source of my energy and peace? and then

What would be available to me if I opened my heart to my mother? 

Those four little questions, as you can see, cover a lot of terrain. They were answered by applying to myself the life coaching principles that I had been learning and teaching others over the previous decade. And, yes, by the end of my decade with Mom we had forged a loving relationship.

QFL: - What questions do you ask caregivers that mindful caregivers can ask themselves -

Whiteside: 
In this one-and-only moment, what are my choices, inner and outer?

Since all we have is the present moment, the choices we make Now cause everything that follows. Everything hangs on that momentary question and its subsequent choice.

What “stories” do I tell myself about caregiving that make it harder?

Our inner stories give us our emotional experience of life, so we’d better make up good ones. Life-serving ones.

What are my strengths and survival habits?

A kneejerk positive attitude can blind you to the truth. The need to be right can have you miss important learning opportunities. Which survival habits are undermining your effectiveness? Which will help you to succeed?

What am I resisting that I might begin to allow?

Most energy sinks are cause by resisting someone or something. Therefore the more we can accept and allow, the less energy we waste.

When is my helping actually disempowering my Elder/loved one?

Are you trying to fix your loved ones life, or empower her/him? The two frequently work at cross purposes.

What are my expectations?

Expectations will often trip you up. Identify your expectations of caregiving, your family members, and yourself. Some expectations degrade the quality of caregiving. Whenever possible, consider lowering the bar.

QFL: - How do we go about being happier and continually learning? -

Whiteside: 
Mind your own business.

Don't try to change others.

Focus more on who you are being, and less on what you are doing.

Focus more on what the inner world of others looks like, and less on trying to convince them that your way is right.

If you keep getting disappointed, lower your expectations.

Be authentic.

Release control in favor of movement and resilience.

Notice resistance in your body, identify what you’re resisting, then let it be.

Repeatedly throughout the day step back from what is happening and just notice it without judgment.

Look for multiple ways of interpreting whatever is happening.

If life is just a series of stories we tell ourselves, continually ask, "What story would now best serve me?"

QFL: - How do you frame your coaching questions to help your clients optimize their learning -

Whiteside: I begin by giving the client ...

QFL: - - What questions do you think people should ask themselves to make this world a happier and healthier place to live? -

Whiteside: Byron, I’ve come to the belief that the only way to make the world happier and healthier is...

(see the full text at http://www.questionsforliving.com/categories/health/questions-caregiving)

Holly's Bio on Questions for Living:  http://www.questionsforliving.com/users/mindfulcaregiving

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A Wake-up Call From Which We Heal

We've been issued a wake-up call for mid-lifers (Boomers), caregivers, and humanity. In many of his writings, Dr. Bill Thomas wakes us from denial about aging, shakes up the way we think about elderhood, and reshapes it as a beautiful thing. I’ve just read his latest searching and rattling article, and would like to offer a few reflections on the parts that made me sit up straight. They left me with more questions than answers, and that is good—in the questions is exactly where we need to be. You can read Dr. Bill's article in full in the AARP Journal, (linked below) but here is where it took me. Dr Bill says,

“The postwar generation’s dim but growing awareness of aging is beginning to generate intensely private concerns that people are reluctant to discuss openly.”

So, we as a generation (and culture), have mounting intensely personal concerns about aging that we keep bottled within us? Yup, that rings true, but join me in thinking a little deeper. A challenge of this proportion to our collective sense of reality can only continue for just so long before something gives. How long before we’re all turning to meds to appear functional? Oh, right, that’s already happening. But what are the implications of this cultural blindness for the quality of Boomer caregiving? How can we do caregiving well when we not only don’t understand it, we resist the very fact of it? Fortunately, Dr. Bill points us to a more forgiving way of seeing.

“We can learn to read the story of our lives as it has been written around our eyes and mouth and across our foreheads and cheeks. We can begin to reinterpret the changes as signs of important signifiers or our unique journey through life.”

So, our ultimate "pill for inner peace" isn't to be found externally, in products and services, pills and liposuction. This is good news (and much less expensive)—there is a broader context within which we can begin to make sense of our lives as a whole. We can achieve a new way of holding our lives that brings us to a kinder and gentler place. Dr. Bill elaborates:

“The path to personal happiness and fulfillment I am offering to you has just two steps:

1. Stop pining for what is already gone.
2. Start searching for the person you are meant to become.”

Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. This quest for the person I am meant to become is a mission I can get my heart around, is big enough to call on all of my life’s learning. This is, really, my new purpose for this stage of life. I’m 58, post caregiving, post 9-5 corporate treadmill, and I’m smart enough to refuse to settle for anything small for the second half of my life. Nope, I won’t settle!—I will fulfill. How profoundly exciting! He’s speaking directly to me when he says,

“Elderhood contains a revolutionary and liberating developmental potential. Persistently and deliberately misinterpreted as mere decline, elderhood is actually the rich reward that goes to those who manage to outgrow the frenzied jangle of adulthood and enter voluntarily into a new and much more soulful way of being.”

Over the last five years since my mother died I have been experiencing this shift to a “more soulful way of being”. It feels so right. But what are the implications for society if we do heal what is broken in our relationship to life before it is too late? I’ll leave it to you to read that provocative part of Dr. Bill's article.

For now, I am brought back to what this means for caregivers. As we embrace our own aging, can we stop resisting the aging of our Elders, and how would that feel? As our individual hearts open to a life-serving way of being, might we, as a culture, be empowered to heal our relationships with our Elders? Can we embrace their aging and ours? Could we all heal simply by each of us asking, "Who am I meant to become?" What do you think?
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Stuck in Caregiving, Part One - In a Stuck Relationship

How do you get movement in stuck relationships, when you're stuck in spirit, when you're stuck in limiting beliefs, or when you're simply stuck in fear.
What are the things that make us caregivers feel weighted down, or out of oomph? Feeling greater freedom and ability to cope with caregiving requires staying in motion emotionally and spiritually, moving forward so that you can rise to the occasion of each day. If, as chiropractors tell us, life is movement and movement is life, isn’t that even more true during caregiving? With all of the complexities of caregiving, and all that you have at stake, the last thing you need is to feel stuck. So how do we get stuck, and how can we free ourselves?

Part One - ARE YOU STUCK IN A RELATIONSHIP?

I’m not talking about being in a relationship you’d rather be out of. I mean are you stuck in a committed relationship that isn’t growing, so you don’t feel alive in it? You might be in a stuck place with the person you’re caring for, or a friend, or loved one. Being stuck in any relationship is going to effect your caregiving experience. How does it feel to you to be stuck? Like a tight space with no air to breathe? Like your energy is being sucked right out of you? What makes that happen?

Whatever our opinion of others, their choices and their actions, we may be wasting precious energy resisting who they simply Are. Judging others, trying to fix others, resenting others for not being who we would like them to be is a sure way to kill the life of in ourselves, let along the relationship. I remember feeling a rush of freedom when I learned that my mother had been who she was before I was even born! Maybe it wasn’t up to me to change who she was! How would it feel to not be phased by an other’s personality traits, or the choices they make in their lives? Stop for a minute to imagine that. Imagine yourself free of that concern or focus. We may get from being worked up over others, but does it outweigh the release and freedom if we were to let it go? A funny thing happens when you go to the other extreme and look for ways to make someone else Right—they all of a sudden get so much better.

Or perhaps you’ve been allowing someone else to tell you how you should be, think, or act, until you feel so very small and constricted. Self-confidence ebbs. Your intuition, one of the caregiver’s strongest allies, becomes muffled. How would your life feel if you were free of such restrictive forces? What might you say, think, or do differently? Stop for a minute to imagine the sense of power and freedom, and then what you would do with it. Whatever belief or fear caused you to sacrifice your self-confidence, does that thought or fear outweigh the exhilaration that you would feel living life on your own terms? There’s no need to start a war. You can start in small ways to draw lines, to stand up for yourself.

Finally, in caregiving we can feel stuck because we feel a limited ability to be straightforward. After all, we're here to help someone else, right? Aren't we meant to keep them calm, to be secondary to their needs? It turns out that by being present, by expressing what we see as true or necessary, telling our personal truth, your relationship may suddenly become alive and begin to grow again. What was draining can now be energizing and uplifting, to both you and your loved one. For more on this, check out "The Caregiver's Compass", chapter six, where you apply MindfulCaregiving principles to your effectiveness.
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You Are Not Alone

Our sense that we are an island, 

an independent self-sufficient individual, 

bears no relation to reality.
~ Geshe Kelsang

Caregiving can be such as a emotional bootstrap operation —we try to pull ourselves up without much to hold onto. The way I handled it at first was to pretend  that, really, everything was all right. I was all right. I focused elsewhere, on the to-do list, on work, on anything that would let me sidestep the emotional pitfalls so as to stay in motion. Staying in motion felt like progress. Doing tasks felt useful. So much of caregiving is change, we caregivers need to feel we are having a positive effect on Something.

When we do talk about our emotional experience, it is often as a drama, focusing on the ways we feel stuck. In fact we can get stuck in our drama, one of the most prevalent energy sinks in caregiving. (Better to talk about our experience in ways that give energy rather than sap it.) But many of us don’t speak of our inner experience much at all.

Having never been taught how to do this complex work, it is possible in caregiving to feel horrendously alone, alone in a sort of double life—there is our personal experience of caregiving, and then there is our "life as usual" that we hope will keep rolling along. But this experience of isolation is, I believe, a state of our own making. In the long run, separating our caregiving from the rest of our lives weakens us. By refocusing on the connections in our lives, we can heal a good deal of the strain.

As Geshe Kelsang says in one of the Kadampa Lojong books, Eight Steps to Happiness:  “Without others we are nothing. Our sense that we are an island, an independent self-sufficient individual, bears no relation to reality. It is closer to the truth to picture our self as a cell in the vast body of life, distinct yet intimately bound up with all living beings.”  The new movement toward person-centered care-partering is finding that Elders whose carepartners focus first on human connection are measurably healthier and happier (http://www.edenalt.org). If that is true, then the divisions we impose on our lives are false. Caregiving has an effect on our home lives, whether we want it or not. By not focusing on our connection with the others in our lives, we diminish ourselves and our relationships. Our caregiving becomes functional. Our family and friends lose an opportunity—if we don’t let others in, we prevent them from helping, leaving them only to experience the residual strain that we bring home with us. Better to let our connection with others support and sustain us. So focus first on connection with your loved one, your family, and yourself. Everyone will feel the better for it.
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LIVING OUT OF POSSIBILITY

Everything can be taken from a man but the last of the human freedoms -
to choose one's attitude
in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
~ Victor Frankl, holocost surviver, author of "Man’s Search for Meaning"


My beloved eldest sister has Parkinson’s Disease. I serve her as well as I can long distance. One day on the phone she was telling me about her mounting insecurities. She said, “I don’t know how to tell whether I’m not going out and driving because I’m afraid, or because I’m being sensible.” It's an important question, one worthy of reflection.

During any major life transition, the way we act and live is often similar to the way we have always lived , only more so. The stakes are higher, but so is the potential cost of acting without reflection.

By contrast, let’s say my life happens to be going along uneventfully. I’m in a “life as usual” phase, that moderate standard against which I measure my ups and downs. Many decisions can easily be made in an ordinary day...
...without questioning the place in me from which I make them.
Do I think, act, and live from fear? from commitment? or (as my life partner does) from gratitude and awe? When a crisis surfaces in my field of awareness, I see what I hadn’t before. My eyes have been opened by these new circumstances. For many of us, when crises hit, the wind picks up, and the way we steer our little boat of life becomes critical.

Are you driven by a need to feel competent or useful? Or by the need to be recognized? Are there saner criteria for prioritizing, more creative ways to accomplish practicalities that leave you spare cycles for tending to your heart and relationships? Maslow tells us, “When all we have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. What might be possible if we all stopped trying to nail down life? What if we embraced change to see “crises” as full of possibility?

My sister was contemplating fear vs. practicality. What if the options were fear vs. possibility? How do we know, when we say No to life, if we’re unnecessarily limiting ourselves and others? How often are daily decisions merely fear masquerading as common sense? Who would we be if we lived first out of possibility, then tempered it with discernment?
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THE INTENTIONAL CAREGIVER - PART FOUR

Here's another sneak preview of the “The Caregiver Hour” April radio show series entitled “The Intentional Caregiver” (see more info below). Here, we're looking at the weekly topics through the MindfulCaregiving lens. On Monday, 4/25, in this final show in the series, Kim and I will wrap up the month by sharing the most powerful key to a caregiver's peace of mind. Our guest will be Debra Young, Owner of Empowerability, LLC. See below details for tuning in or catching archived shows.

Part 4 — The Payoff of Intentional Acceptance

What you resist,
persists
— Carl Jung

Caregiving is littered with opportunities to practice the opposite of acceptance, resistance. It is normal to resist the behavior of others, the aging of your loved one, your own feelings of powerlessness, or the undeniable facts of aging and caregiving. That grip of tension in the jaw or solar plexus can be a sure sign that resistance to something is kicking in.

Resistance is one of the caregiver’s biggest energy drains. When you’re angry, frustrated, or judgmental, you’re locked into negative energy. The more you resist, the more time and energy you waste, the more resistance there is, and so on in a self-perpetuating drain cycle.

So, what to do with that? We start where we must always start, by looking straight at it. Even as we’re groping for a different action to take, it can be that the only right action is inaction. Stop. Take a breath. Notice what is. You can’t get beyond resistance until you clearly see it. What do you resist in caregiving? Make a list. Just seeing the list in front of you can give you some power over it.

What then? “What You Resist Persists” means also that “What you focus on is what you get.” Focus too long on being angry and you experience more anger. Focus on another’s annoying behaviors and you see only those annoying behaviors. Or, as Abraham Maslow put it, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. So we don’t want to focus too long on our list.

Then what can we do? Steadily and intentionally question the source of the resistance and then seek out opportunities for acceptance, or allowing. Your greatest freedom rises from your power to intentionally choose to accept as much as possible in this caregiving journey of change. As the serenity prayer suggests, accept the things you cannot change, change the things you can, and be aware of the difference. I would add to that, then REfocus. When you see things you cannot change yet have a hard time accepting, refocus.

You can’t change other people, you can’t change many things in the course of caregiving, but you can wrest some peace from the grip of negativity, fear, and judgment. It takes no time at all. In fact, you can save precious moments, reclaiming them through acceptance and refocusing.


Check out “The Caregiver Hour” Radio Show

Throughout April, the topic of “The Caregiver Hour” weekly radio show will be “The Intentional Caregiver”. In four shows, Holly will join host Kim Linder and her guests to empower caregivers to approach caregiving with mindful intentionality.

“The Caregiver Hour” airs every Monday at 11:00 EST online at http://www.thecaregiverhour.com/ or on Tampa Bay radio WHNZ Station 1250 AM.
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RECAP - THE INTENTIONAL CAREGIVER - PART ONE

Here's what happened this morning on show #1, "The Cost of UNintentionality"...

We had a rich first show in “The Intentional Caregiver” April series on The Caregiver Hour radio, with host Kim Linder. Kim had graciously invited me to co-host the show, and we had two fabulous guests who spoke from quite diffrent perspectives about “The Cost of Unintentionality”.

Michele Gravelle, President of “Successful Conversations Now” is an expert on making relationships work. She is also long-distance caregiver for her 83-year-old parents. She brought the caregiver listeners deeply personal and powerful insights as she shared how she applies her knowledge to her caregiving. My take-away from the show? That Michele knows when she is acting UNintentionally (automatically) by the feelings in her body. Tension in her gut tells her to stop, take a deep breath, and question whether the way she is being is the most effective. She gets back in touch with herself. From that point, she said, numerous options and choices become available. Michele can be reached through http://successfulconversationsnow.com

Susan Avello, VP of AgingInfoUsa.com, broke wide open the much needed conversation about the “juggling act” experienced by working caregivers. She not only encouraged caregivers in the workplace to talk to their HR person about how the company can support their caregiving workers (20%-30% of employees!), she also emphasized the business advantages to companies ensuring that their caregiving employees are supported at work. Informational lunches led by local support services are one (often) free and effective way to give employees access to the support they need in order to keep working, and to minimize stress and downtime. AgingInfoUsa is a national company that advises corporations on how to put caregiver support programs in place.

The show also included Linda Burhans, Author and Caregiver Advocate with Harmony Home Health. They're having a contest for caregiver stories! Linda and Harmony Home Health are writing a book that is a collection of caregiver stories. For more, go to http://www.harmonyhh.com/caregiver-contest-tell-us-your-story/

Join us next Monday, 4/11, from 11-12 noon (EST) at www.thecaregiverhour.com for show #2 in the series. We’ll be talking with two more great guests about “The Payoff of Intentional Self-awareness”.
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THE INTENTIONAL CAREGIVER - PART FOUR

Here's another sneak preview of the “The Caregiver Hour” April radio show series entitled “The Intentional Caregiver” (see more info below). Here, we're looking at the weekly topics through the MindfulCaregiving lens. Last week's topic was "The Payoff of Intentional Connection", now available in the archive below.

Part 4 — The Payoff of Intentional Acceptance

What you resist,
persists
— Carl Jung

Caregiving is littered with opportunities to practice the opposite of acceptance, resistance. It is normal to resist the behavior of others, the aging of your loved one, your own feelings of powerlessness, or the undeniable facts of aging and caregiving. That grip of tension in the jaw or solar plexus can be a sure sign that resistance to something is kicking in.

Resistance is one of the caregiver’s biggest energy drains. When you’re angry, frustrated, or judgmental, you’re locked into negative energy. The more you resist, the more time and energy you waste, the more resistance there is, and so on in a self-perpetuating drain cycle.

So, what to do with that? We start where we must always start, by looking straight at it. Even as we’re groping for a different action to take, it can be that the only right action is inaction. Stop. Take a breath. Notice what is. You can’t get beyond resistance until you clearly see it. What do you resist in caregiving? Make a list. Just seeing the list in front of you can give you some power over it.

What then? “What You Resist Persists” means also that “What you focus on is what you get.” Focus too long on being angry and you experience more anger. Focus on another’s annoying behaviors and you see only those annoying behaviors. Or, as Abraham Maslow put it, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. So we don’t want to focus too long on our list.

Then what can we do? Steadily and intentionally question the source of the resistance and then seek out opportunities for acceptance, or allowing. Your greatest freedom rises from your power to intentionally choose to accept as much as possible in this caregiving journey of change. As the serenity prayer suggests, accept the things you cannot change, change the things you can, and be aware of the difference. I would add to that, then REfocus. When you see things you cannot change yet have a hard time accepting, refocus.

You can’t change other people, you can’t change many things in the course of caregiving, but you can wrest some peace from the grip of negativity, fear, and judgment. It takes no time at all. In fact, you can save precious moments, reclaiming them through acceptance and refocusing.


Check out “The Caregiver Hour” Radio Show

Throughout April, the topic of “The Caregiver Hour” weekly radio show will be “The Intentional Caregiver”. In four shows, Holly will join host Kim Linder and her guests to empower caregivers to approach caregiving with mindful intentionality.

“The Caregiver Hour” airs every Monday at 11:00 EST online at http://www.thecaregiverhour.com/ or on Tampa Bay radio WHNZ Station 1250 AM.
Read more!

THE INTENTIONAL CAREGIVER - PART THREE

Here's another sneak preview of the “The Caregiver Hour” April radio shows. (More info below) Here we look at “The Intentional Caregiver” topics through the MindfulCaregiving lens. Last week's topic was "The Payoff of Intentional Self-awareness".


Part 3 — The Payoff of Intentional Connection

The time will come when,
with elation you will greet yourself
arriving at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome
— Derek Walcott from “Love After Love”

Connection is our life’s blood—our connection to others, and our connection to ourselves. Some would add our connection to a Higher Power. Yet, like clothes in a washing machine, the intensity of caregiving’s “agitation cycles” can weaken the connective tissue of our lives. Relationships strain. Personal time dwindles. It takes intentionality to notice what we are sacrificing. We can even become so focused on Doing actions and service for our loved one that we forget to simply Be with our loved one, but that may be a thing we can’t afford to neglect.

The burgeoning movement promoting person-centered care ("Real Care Reform") in long-term care facilities is finding that putting human connection first when caring for another actually improves the well-being and physical health of everyone, the cared-for and the caregiver. The staff of the Eden Alternative Green House nursing homes know intimately the way intentional connection combats the three plagues of loneliness, helplessness and boredom (the three plagues that cause a person to lose interest in life.) They see people who have taken to walkers, or stopped speaking, begin walking on their own and speaking again. (See YouTube on “The Green House Nursing Home Alternative”, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4Ap1ByNgKE. ) In these revolutionary nursing homes, human connection precedes and infuses the offering of medicines, baths, and especially meal times. Relationships thrive, while medical regimentation is virtually non-existent. Eden even has a program that bring the Eden principles into the home, teaching family caregivers how to create an environment for thriving. (To learn more, check out http://www.edenalt.org/eden-at-home.) (For more on "Real Care Reform" check out Eden founder Dr. Bill's blog at www.changingaging.org.)

If tending to connection with a loved one can improve the health of your loved one, what could more self-connection mean for your own well-being? Self-connection is found in the places, moments and experiences that fuel your spirit and balance your life.

If your own well-being were a priority for you, what would you do differently? Might you ask for help more often? If you are a can-do person, asking for help can actually empower you as it strengthens your connection to others. You become less alone, more flexible, your approach to life softens.

If you were to intentionally begin to notice the people, experiences and thoughts that drain your energy, and then eliminated most of these energy sinks, how much better would you feel on a daily basis? Eliminating energy sinks is a key way to rebalance your life so that it fuels you, day to day.

So take a deep breath. Intentionally focus on connecting with your loved one in ways that historically have been deeply meaningful to her/him. And in your private moments, do less of the things that drain you and more of the things that renew your spirit. Think empowering thoughts to leverage your well-being. Caregiving will be a kinder, gentler experience, a healthier time for everyone.

More about “The Caregiver Hour” Radio Show

Throughout April, the topic of “The Caregiver Hour” weekly radio show* will be “The Intentional Caregiver”. Over a series of four shows, Holly will join host Kim Linder and her guests to empower and enlighten caregivers on approaching caregiving with mindful intentionality.

“The Caregiver Hour” airs every Monday at noon EST online at http://www.thecaregiverhour.com/ or on Tampa Bay radio WHNZ Station 1250 AM
Read more!

THE INTENTIONAL CAREGIVER - PART TWO

Here's a sneak preview of the “The Caregiver Hour” April radio shows. (More info below) Here we look at “The Intentional Caregiver” topics through the MindfulCaregiving lens. Last week's topic was "The Cost of UNintentionality".

What’s Your Winning Formula?
The Payoff of Intentional Self-awareness

“We need to let go of fixed ideas, behaviors, attachments...
Unfettered, your true self flows to the surface
and moves you toward your purpose...”
~ Gabrielle Roth

Most of us think we know who we are. Our personalities, skills, attitudes, and values give us survival strategies for building a life that feels safe. Then caregiving hits. As we shift into full gear, how we respond is determined by our habitual tactics of the past.

At some point familiar ways of operating can stop working. As Sydney Rice-Harrild tells us in her book Choice Points, “We all have an internal system for producing results that operates on its own, helping us to produce consistent results without our even having to think about it, but it doesn’t work in our favor when what we want is managed change.” Caregiving IS change.

Not to worry —with a bit of intentional self-awareness you can prepare yourself. Start by making a list of your personal skills, traits, and strengths, sometimes called your “Winning Formula”. What’s Your winning formula? Notice how these tactics can serve you during caregiving. Yes, you came equipped.

But as you look at your list, also consider the caregiving situations in which these might not work as well. Do you take charge, telling others what to do? That may not always be appropriate. Do you isolate yourself to get your bearings? There might not always be time for that. Knowing your habitual tactics will allow you to adapt when they don’t work. Being mindfully aware will let you intentionally unattach from your habitual behaviors, allowing you to be flexible. On some level, there are no good or bad character traits—there is only what works in the moment. Be a learner. Caregiving will be easier and you will be more effective.

Now broaden your effectiveness still more by noting on your list the opposites of those tactics. Might not these be useful tools to add to your caregiving toolbox? Ever-changing circumstances can require new approaches, new ways of thinking and being. An outspoken person may need to learn tact. A reticent person may need to take charge. Tuning your awareness to who you are being throughout a caregiving day gives you more options for effectiveness. Know who you are, and you can choose who you need to be.

Intentional Caregiving opens the way to greater ease, smoother relationships, and an increase in personal power. You can gradually learn how to build your resilience and move with the prevailing winds of caregiving.

In the next article we’ll dig deeper into this practice of intentional focus, looking at “The Power of Intentional Connection“.


And Check out “The Caregiver Hour” Radio Show!

On the four Mondays in April, the topic of “The Caregiver Hour” weekly radio show* will be “The Intentional Caregiver”. Holly will join host Kim Linder and her guests to empower and enlighten caregivers on approaching caregiving with mindful intentionality. All shows are archived on-line for later access.

“The Caregiver Hour” airs every Monday at noon EST online at http://www.thecaregiverhour.com/ or on Tampa Bay radio WHNZ Station 1250 AM
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THE INTENTIONAL CAREGIVER - PART ONE

Throughout April, the topic of “The Caregiver Hour” weekly radio show* will be “The Intentional Caregiver”. Over a series of four shows, I will join host Kim Linder and her guests to empower and enlighten caregivers on approaching caregiving with mindful intentionality. (See below for more details.)

Here on TransformingCaregiving over the next few weeks, I’ll share with you a sneak preview of the shows by looking at the topics through the MindfulCaregiving lens.

The Cost of UNintentionality

People avoid change until the pain
of remaining the same is greater
than the pain of changing.
—Unknown

For most of us most of the time, our ordinary mode of operating is fairly unintentional. We run on automatic. We systematize, schedule, and routinize our days, trying to maximize effectiveness while minimizing insanity. We respond to others in habitual ways. We solve problems using familiar strategies.

Though these ways of operating seem to work in the early days of caregiving, later on they can undermine us and our best intentions. Over time, our habits carry costs to both the caregiver and their loved one, costs that may sound familiar: emotional and physical exhaustion, frustration, diminished self-worth, deflated spirit, and even disempowerment for and dimished connection with the loved one.

But it’s not our fault that we fall into difficulties as caregiving intensifies. There is an old proverb about frogs that explains how we can find ourselves in hot water. If you put a frog into boiling water, it will jump out. But if you put it in cool water and slowly heat it, the frog won’t jump—it will die. Like frogs, we can refuse to notice when the water we swim in has changed. Because our familiar ways of operating have kept us safe and in control in the past, we are very leery of changing our approach. But if we don’t learn to change and change to learn, we will end up in hot water.

There’s a saying that “You get what you focus on.” If caregiving isn’t all you would like it to be, where are you putting your focus? Focus on struggle, and you get struggle. But focus on challenge, and you get more energy. Start observing how you habitually think and operate, and begin to experiment with other ways. Less and less will you let your energy leak away through focus on past regrets or future fears. Bit by bit, over the coming days and weeks, intentionally refocus your attention on who you are being and how you are thinking. More and more you will nurture your presence to your loved one, as well as your connection with yourself.

Intentional Caregiving opens the way to greater ease, smoother relationships, and an increase in personal power. You can gradually learn how to build your resilience and move with the prevailing winds of caregiving. In the next article we’ll dig deeper into this practice of intentional focus, looking at "The Power of Intentional Self-awareness".

*”The Caregiver Hour” airs every Monday at noon EST online at http://www.thecaregiverhour.com/ or on Tampa Bay radio WHNZ Station 1250 AM. The topic of the first “The Intentional Caregiver” show will be “The Cost of UNintentionality”, and the following three shows will explore the gifts of intentional self-awareness, connection, and acceptance. Expert guests will address the topic from a wide variety of perspectives. We are especially excited to have invited Chris Perna to join the conversation. Chris is the CEO of The Eden Alternative (http://www.edenalt.org) the organization leading the movement for person-centered long-term care. Thanks to Kim for letting me partner with her in the design of this series, offering caregivers a "new thought" approach to caregiving.
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