3 Tips For Empty Nest Moms To Set Up For Success
Don’t let those young adult children fool you! They may be of the Reddit Generation but you still got it goin’ on momma!
Our teenage and young adult children have a way of convincing us that we’re “too old”. Then we start to worry about our brain slowing down as we struggle to keep up with them. When actually we should be rejoicing that we’ve reached a point where we’ve accumulated an awesome amount of life experiences.
Researchers call this, "fluid intelligence versus crystalized intelligence.”
Back and Forth Thoughts
We ALL go back and forth with our thoughts, our decisions. The best, the richest, the smartest of us change our minds. Change our thoughts. Because we have many life experiences and lessons learned to choose from.
Did you catch two important ideas in that last sentence? “Even the SMARTEST of us CHANGE OUR MINDS.”
Yes, it’s perfectly normal for you to be having thoughts that waiver back and forth on a decision. After all, you’re smarter now. You’re an empty nester. You have more knowledge that is begging you to make better decisions. As a mom still raising up your teens and young adults in the home, even YOU have acquired a lot of experience along the way.
Get Strategic With Your Environment
Why not set ourselves up for success?! (Be sure to read through to the end of this coaching blog for my FREE PLANNER SAMPLE!)
We can’t control everything about our environments as we raise children and age gracefully, but there are some things we can control to set our future selves up for success. My top 3 tips to set your environment up for your future success as an empty nester or parent of young adults come from Scott H. Young and the further research he did after he wrote his book Ultralearning:
#1 Avoid multitasking or environments with distractions
If you’re like me, you. might enjoy going to a coffee shop to break out of your normal routine and get some reading or computer work in. Or multitasking doing chores while you catch up with your adult child over the phone. But frankly, I am noticing that it’s getting harder and harder to retain the efficiency of my work time and thought retention with so many distractions around. Thus, I can no longer boast the multitasking super power that I had as a single parent of three in my 20’s!
BUT I’m ok with this. Really! Why and how you ask? Because I can now boast that I’m older and wiser. DO NOT sell yourself short when it comes to this. Time and experiences have granted you this parental super power. Own it sweet momma!
#2 Be more strategic with creating cues and reminders for important information
We’re not all engineers or artist’s but this second tip is going to require us to get a little bit more creative.
The portion of your brain that “proactively” remembers things based on prompts, tends to slip up as you age. But you still got goals girlfriend! Setting up your environment creatively to keep your brain clued into these goals and tasks as an empty nester is crucial.
Making life easier on your brain, reordering your environment in fun and strategic ways is your best self working smarter not harder.
#3 Be more explicit in organizing what you want to learn
This just means that you will need to break down your goals in a little more detail.
I get it. Your daily To Do lists already seem a mile long and now I’m telling you to get more detailed. But hold the phone girlfriend! WHAT IF I told you that with this process your brain will actually feel less stressed and more at peace?
“Binding” pieces of information together to be “recalled” as a single chunk or goal gets harder for our brain as we age. All is NOT LOST with age though! You just need to be more deliberate in how you organize what you want to learn or accomplish.
While at first glance your action list might look more overwhelming, breaking each goal into more actionable steps puts less stress on your brain later when you go to work on that specific goal.
Check out a sample download of my MSB Empty Nester Mom Planner 2022 and try it out on your brain. Notice how I’ve kept the columns for the Goal and its correlating Binders , narrow, clean, and simple so as not to overwhelm your brain. You can choose to insert one word descriptions in your Binder column for the goal OR you can use multiple spaces in a Binder column for a single goal giving that binder more description.
A Backward Thought
Be kind to your brain. As you write down or work on you goal, pay attention to how you talk to yourself, the thoughts that come up in your brain. We are often harder on ourselves than a friend or family member. ESPECIALLY when it comes to working on a goal or task that we think we should have done by now. That is soooo backward and counterintuitive to our mental health!
With that, please notice on my sample planner the small spaces in the top right hand corner for a word and phrase of the day.
Love on you. Do one thing FOR YOU today. You’re the only you, you got my friend and you’re pretty freakin’ amazing!
