Are You Ready To Give Up The Busy Badge?

I’ve been seeing this topic popping up a lot … and when I see something this much, I know it is time to talk to someone about it and find an expert! And it has to do with BEING BUSY! How do you finally slow down and make time for yourself?? Do you feel like you are in “BUSY”, mode all of the time! I mean, doesn’t it seem like EVERY single time you talk to someone their response to asking how they are doing is, “Girl, I am just busy!” So how exactly do you un-earn that busy badge, start to make time for yourself, and just slow it down!? Dr. Tamara Beckford is the expert on this ladies and she has some really helpful information on how to do this! She is so relatable and has really has some golden nuggets that you are going to want to take notes on!

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Dr. Tamara Beckford is a wife, mom, and emergency physician. She is the CEO of UR Caring Docs and the UR Caring Society, where she helps busy professional women put their health and wellness first without guilt.

During the pandemic, there were a lot of things that were brought to life for Dr Beckford. Like, what is important and what is just not that important. She started to look around and realize she was more than surviving she was thriving. There were so many people burnt out around her, they had tons of guilt and so many other things! At the time medical director mentioned to her that she looked like, she was much better than others on the staff. It got her thinking, what was she doing differently? One of the things she started to do was work on SELF. In the moment she hadn’t reflected that she was working on herself, her mind, and her time. And during that time, it actually became one of the happiest moments in her life, which felt super weird to her!

“Emotionally I was so happy. So, what was it that I did? I was taking care of ME! I had to take care of myself in order for all the other duties in my life to fall into place.”

I am not only an ER physician, but I am also a mother and I wear many hats. My body said, we are going to get through this, but we are not going to break. We are going to build! You are going to need to work from the inside out, not only resilience for now, but for the future. You aren’t going to just bust it out, it requires working one step at a time. Now I can look back and pat myself on the back and say, “WOW I did this by working from the inside out!”

I started to align my mind, body, and spirit. And that right there is self-care! I started this by blocking out a lot of the access noise. In order for me to keep caring about my patients, when I left for home, I didn’t let myself get bombarded with things and left those things at work. I left work at work and let my home be an area of peace and recharge! I was practicing what I was preaching. As simple as that is, that can be your first step for anyone reading this!

When you take an inventory of your life and daily life, what is the excess baggage that you are bringing home that you really don’t need to bring home? When you step through that door, what is it that you want that home to feel? This is not to ignore your emotions and what goes on, and yes, we all need somewhere to talk and discuss, but HOW MUCH? What percentage of this? And what percentage of your time are you spending on this? What is the difference between the environment at work and at home? Where is your level of zen? What is your level of clarity? Where can you get clarity? Where is it if you bring everything consistently home?

The point of me and my self-care isn’t to say, “Oh, I set boundaries. It’s for me to show up better.” When I am showing up better, it’s because I worked on myself and built myself up. I no longer have guilt for taking time off to take an extra 30 minutes to do something so I can build myself up and show up for my best self.

“I don’t have time…” This is something that I hear a lot. So, I challenge you to take inventory of your damn time. Get out of squirrel land, put down your phones and write down what you are doing every 30 minutes. This doesn’t have to be fancy, just so that you are aware how you are spending your time. Where can you free up time? Where are you wasting time? If someone says they are busy, you can find that time. Trust me!

This is a big one, a place where we could free up a little time to reach our goals. And that has to do with sleeping or sleeping past your snooze. And I like to call this Mind over Mattress! If you really think about it, what is it that we love to do? It’s sleeping! We sleep on our mattresses! This extra time we are snoozing and lying down, just snuggling all warm. To get up and get going is so challenging. But there are things we know we need to get done in order to fulfill the goals we have set for that day, week, or month. You see a lot of books on leadership and achieving your goals, and many of they say getup when the alarm goes off or before the alarm goes off.

Having a wake-up routine!
This is where I have incorporated the mind of the mattress. The alarm goes off, and I get up and go! That extra time we have all circles back to providing your more time or that extra time you needed for yourself. The extra 30 minutes is my time to myself. I do the routine that helps to power me for the day. I want to enter into my day. I don’t want my day to enter into me. Mel Robbins recommends moving the phone or alarm to the other side of the room, so you have to get up. ( Or look into her 54321 get-up concept.)

Get up and get out to get things done!

Ladies, there is no ideal scenario here when it comes to doing something for yourself. It’s individualized. That is why it’s called self care. Can you create something within your family that allows you to have a set amount of time and space for you? Take the time out to work on your mind! Our minds can either build us or break us! We are humans, we are flawed by nature, and we learn from whatever mistakes we have made. We course correct and move on. We cannot wallow in those mistakes. Loving our bodies and thanking our bodies are so important. As we go through all these phases in life it’s so important. We are trying to be healthy, and it’s so amazing whether we do self care or work out. It is getting us closer to loving ourselves more than ever before!

Broken down into the 5 B’s to help us work on ourselves. These 5 B’s are additional building blocks to really find the essence of you to get to that space where you can be at your best for yourself and those around you.
1. We need to give up our Busy Badges.
2. We need to figure out if what we are doing is breaking us or building us.
3. Then we have to start to build resilience around our boundaries.
4. Being okay that we are setting those boundaries.
5. Blocking out the access noise.

You have to regularly give yourself grace.
You didn’t arrive at the mind over mattress. You were like, “How do I jumpstart my day and stop these snoozes?” This isn’t something that comes naturally to you. This was 2 years in the making. As with every habit you build, it takes that 1% change at a time and it accumulates. Then it turns into a part of who you are. I start with these small techniques from what others are doing. I look at what they are doing, see what speaks to me from that, tweak it for me and work on what I can do right now. Take that laundry list of things and what feels drawn to you. What is challenging BUT doable?

Choose to own your shit.
If you say, you know that I am a night owl and I like to stay up, you can’t complain about why you can’t get up in the morning. You have to OWN why you cannot. If you have a characteristic that you would like to change, and you are not ready, then you are not ready and that is okay! Acknowledge it! It’s not that you can’t do something, it’s that you choose not to. So just own that and be okay with it!

Example..
If you are trying to wake up earlier, start with 15-minute increments. I didn’t muscle myself to mind over the mattress overnight. It was a small drip every single day. If there were days when my mind didn’t want to do it, our minds wouldn’t want to change! So, when you are trying to incorporate change and understand how the mind works, you will understand why it feels so challenging in the beginning. When you try to incorporate those changes, your mind will start to change and become less challenging!

It’s not going to be a smooth process. You will have setbacks. But just be sure that you are owning those setbacks. Be like a CSI – what happened? So that way you know what the obstacle is. You will know what you need to do to work around that obstacle! The goal is to train yourself to get up WITH that alarm. You know that you have chosen at that time to accomplish those goals you set. That is your promise to yourself so that you can get those goals accomplished.

Dr. Tamara Beckford is so relatable and all that she does is so doable, you can find what gives you your zen! If you live that busy badge life, what are some of the ways that you can bring a little bit of this so we can have our zen time? Even if it takes 15 minutes or a car ride home. How do we create that resilience that we need?

What makes you feel magical?
I think my magic comes from within and being able to give throughout. My magic is inside and one of my zen that I recognize is that I have this really nice ability for people to feel at ease very quickly. With that, I am able to motivate others because I am able to hit them at the core. This is a beautiful gift that I did not realize that I had until I tracked it with another retrospective analysis of my life, and this is probably why I do ER medicine as my practice. You come to the ER nervous, anxious, and angry and as an ER doctor, I have to get into the essence of you and connect with you in a very short period of time and bring you ease. I recognize that is my magic and that is what makes me spark!

LINKS

Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/kimbarnesjeffersoncoach

Facebook Group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/fitgirlmagic/

Website:
https://www.kimbarnesjefferson.com/

Podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fit-girl-magic-healthy-living-for-women-over-40/id1476883661

Alcohol Guide:
https://www.fitgirlmagic.com/alcohol-resource-guide_organic/

Dr. Tamara Beckford Website:
www.urcaringdocs.com

Life Balance Through Selfcare Program:
https://www.urcaringdocs.com/offers/rRfQoodt/checkout

Dr. Tamara Beckford Show:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dr-tamara-beckford-show/id1553710706

Dr. Tamara Beckford YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/c/URCaringDocs

Dr. Tamara Beckford Twitter:
https://twitter.com/URcaringdocs

Dr. Tamara Beckford Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/urcaringdocs/