Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality
Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality with Charisma Freeman
Visualization is the key to making our goals a reality. Even if its just a weekend with no responsibilities. Dream your dream and visualize it. Every last detail. Gratitude is also important. We need to be grateful for every gift we are given. It makes our recharge time so much more energizing. Try it this week. Be grateful and visualize your dream.
About Charisma:
Founder of Charisma’s Caregiver Coaching LLC, aka Charisma’s Care, 15+ years of medical experience as a Registered Nurse and Adult Geriatric Nurse Practitioner, Disability Advocate, Special Needs Mom, Educator, Medical Curriculum Developer, Certified Life & Wellness Coach Featured on 11Alive News, GMA, FOCUS, etc.
As an Adult Geriatric Nurse Practitioner & Registered Nurse, as well as a Holistic Health and Wellness Coach. My specialty in disability and elder care in my medical practice. I am a proud mother of two beautiful children who I’ve raised myself since divorcing shortly after my son with special needs was born. During the time, I fought the medical system tooth and nail to uncover my son’s true medical diagnosis, while pursuing my Masters Degree in Nursing.
As I write this, my daughter is preparing for college to study Forensic Science and my son is thriving everyday despite his rare genetic disorder, KIF1A. I’ve also cared for my elderly grandmother for years until her passing 5 years ago. For fun I am first and foremost a Band Mom for my daughter, I fell in love with hiking during Covid-19, and I love to travel the globe. You can learn more about our family travels as a special needs mom in My Journal/ Blog. I talk about how you too can travel the world with disabilities.
I share this information because I know what it is like to feel alone, confused, and overwhelmed. To be at your wits end and not know if you will make it another day caring for your loved one. I’ve pulled myself from the bottom back to the top creating my “New Normal” and work everyday with clients just like you to do the same. We are the forgotten generation and it’s unfair. I am working to change this one client at a time.
I SEE YOU!
YOU ARE IMPORTANT!
YOU ARE APPRECIATED!
Over 15 years of Medical Experience
www.charismascare.com
www.ageucational.com
Full Transcript Below
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of educational. This is our fourth episode of our mini series, caregiver, happiness. We are, um, welcoming charisma back charisma. Thank you so much for coming back and for your time and doing this, this has been fabulous. You know, we started out talking about, um, about why we want to, you know, why have your, why pursue your happiness, who we are? You know, we, we wrote down because sometimes we get lost in the role in which we are in right now. So we talked about who you are. We've talked about setting some goals, and then last week we talked about visualization. So today we're going to talk about making our dreams and reality how we can make them come true. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to you.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (00:52):
Hi, thank you. So we are back for our final week. Um, you know, I hope we've learned some things we've done pretty deep. We've done some visualization. We wrote down some goals, some dreams, and, um, we've done, uh, the gratitude journal. So if that's something you like, hopefully you've continued on with that. I find it. If I do the gratitude journal in the morning, it makes me happy and some days I miss it, but you're not trying to catch it, catch up where I can, but just throwing those things in there some days, even if it's two or three times a week, excuse me, can make a big, big difference. Yeah.
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (01:28):
Yes. And we all have stuff even, uh, we have bad seasons in life, but there's still usually something that we can look around and be grateful for. So that's something, you know, I would challenge everyone to be able to continue on is let's just be thankful because there's always somebody that is a lot worse off. If we've got our health, our relationships, you know, we've really got it. All the other stuff is pretty trivial.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (01:53):
Yes, I agree. So that was your homework. You know, we looked at some things to dream and be grateful for, and you probably started doing that homework and you were grateful and you were going through, and then you got today two or three, and something happened something out of the ordinary. You know, you may have had to rush to the hospital, a bad visit with the doctor, a new diagnosis. You thought you picked up this medication, you forgot to pick up the medication. The news came out with something else on COVID, you know, it was just something. And you said, this lady is crazy. I go have time to write down a gratitude journal and write something down every day. I don't have time for that. What difference is that making? But you know, you do, you do have time and you should, because it doesn't take long when you jot that down, because now your stress levels back up, your blood pressure and your heart rate are backup your stress. You're overwhelmed because see, that was just a dream, right.
Terry - AGEUcational (03:07):
Was
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (03:07):
Just a dream. And a dream is just a dream. And now you have real life stuff to do, and you don't have time to dream. But the problem is that we as humans, we look at things in these large chunks, we look at big picture. We have to break things down though, because our mind doesn't, it doesn't take in things in that larger picture as much. I don't think the doctors, when they go to medical school or the attorneys, when they go to law school, they think about man, I gotta be, I gotta be 12th grade. And then I gotta do these four years and then let me add these other four years. Oh. And then I have to do these four years of residency, because if somebody thought about the fact that they got, they have to do 20 years, they would never start.
Terry - AGEUcational (03:54):
Right. Exactly. You would never throw in the towel
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (04:00):
That's that may have wanted it to be this. It was probably those extra 10 years that we, no, I'm not doing that. You know, but for the ones that went to law school, they say, okay, well, I'll just get my bachelor's degree. Let me just do these four years. Okay. Now let me go to the next step and get that degree. Okay. Let me do these couple of years. Okay. Now I'm done with that. So let me go to the next step and do that because you had your mind to really take it in. You have to break it all down. You have to break it down to the simplest form. You know, when I talk to my caregivers, a lot of times they're like, I just want a weekend. I don't want to lie. I just want a weekend. Can I just go to the mountains for a weekend? Can I go on a girl's or a guys trip? Can I go fishing for a weekend? And that seems so unreal. It just feels like, Oh my gosh, you know the idea of going somewhere for a weekend, you know, I don't have anybody to take care. You know, if mom and you know, I don't know about the medications, you know, I'll I'll, you know, it's just so nevermind. Forget it.
Terry - AGEUcational (05:09):
Yeah. Or your hands up again. Yeah.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (05:13):
And it happens a lot, especially with my caregivers. It's just, Oh no charisma. That's not possible. I know I can't do that. That we were just writing net down. That wasn't for me
Terry - AGEUcational (05:23):
[inaudible]
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (05:27):
It was because it's your dream. And that's why I had you write dreams. But I also had you write goals because goals are achievable. And one of the things we do is we break them down into smart goals. We make them measurable. We make them obtainable, but then we also have dreams and we can continue to dream. So let's start a little bit smaller. Maybe we're not, maybe we're not going away for the weekend. Maybe we're not going on that fishing. Let's just start with a hot shower or a bubble bath. How many times do we just want a tea? I just need 30 minutes to an hour to take an uninterrupted bubble bath. How do I get that done? Yeah. Yeah. Something that small. So what we do is we go through it. Our goal, our goal is a bubble bath, very, very small goal for a person that doesn't, that's not a caregiver.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (06:29):
And they're like, what do you mean? Your goal is a bubble bath. You know, you're listening to us, we're listening to you. And I thought it was under not the staff, but they're listening to us. And you're like a bubble bath, you know, but know that that's major a hot shower, a bubble bath that's major. So what, how do we get to that point? That we'll have that hour? Because we're thinking about the word. What is, uh, you know, I may go in there and in mom may fall, you know, she may slip on the rug. Oh, she may go unlock the door and get out the house. Oh, Oh my gosh. You know what? If she messes something up, man, what if she goes in the refrigerator takes out something she doesn't need to have and she's snacking. Oh my gosh. What if she has to go to the bathroom? All of these things are reality. And then we're like, you know what? No, I'm just going to jump in and jump out a quick five minutes. No, no, no. Don't do that because we still want to take this bubble bath so easily. We have to be committed. You need the finger.
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (07:43):
I was just thinking that the other day that, um, the, you know, the five minutes that I jumped into the shower, that's when the phone rings off the hook and people are knocking out the door, trying to get in. I'm like there are 23 hours in 23 and three quarters, other hours in this day. And everything has to happen within this one 15 minute time period.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (08:04):
Yeah. Yeah. And it happens. But you have to change your mindset. You have to change the way you think about things. You would have to say, I am going to take this bubble bath. I am committed to taking this bell bath. It is going to happen. So now we need to break. Now what we need to do, we first have to commit to it. When, when is the best time of day to take the bubble bath? Maybe mom gets up at night. She, she has sundowners. Yes, she's on. She's on her spirit. All she's, you know, she's on everything for sleep. We have the transit on it. Doesn't matter what we give mom. We gave her Seroquel. She's not sleeping at night now. It's not happening at 10:00 PM. Mom turned on the old school radio with the turn table. She's listening to music. Well,
Terry - AGEUcational (08:56):
We can't do the bubble bath then. No, but
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (08:59):
Know that at 10:00 AM, mom is knocked out. She is going to sleep.
Terry - AGEUcational (09:05):
Now tonight, I may not be the average
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (09:07):
Time people do a bowl bath, but we're not really average people.
Terry - AGEUcational (09:11):
That's right. Yeah, that's right.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (09:14):
We don't live those lives. So maybe 10:00 AM is the perfect time to do the bubble bath. You know? So first find that day in time and stick to that, know that that's when you're going to do it. So, you know, mom gets up every night, we'll let her get up. We're going to have a good time. We're going to go in the living room and we're going to dance to whatever is the BGS Al green, whatever it is. We just not have a good time with that night because we know that once mom is not, we're taking our bubble bath. So the next day we have to put the precautions in place. So of course, typically mom will be sleep, but let's go ahead and put these precautions in place. So we want to make sure about the safety, you know, um, I always tell people if you're you, you have a parent or, you know, a child that gets up at night, put a bed alarm on their bed so that when they get up, you'll hear it. You know, you'll hear it going off. So you're not always getting up looking, Oh, we say she up. Oh, I thought I heard, no dad was the cat. Oh. You know, was that,
Terry - AGEUcational (10:20):
So do that.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (10:22):
Um, for me, I do, um, the, what is it? The Alexa, the one with the video, uh, you, you know, you can do Alexa and you can call them and you can see them as well. So, you know, out say Alexa Le uh, let me see such and such room, you know, so I can see them through the video, or you could do a baby monitor so you can hear them, you know, so you can still take that bubble bath, put that monitor in there. And you know, the only way you have to get up is if you know, there's an emergency or you know, something of that nature, but now you created those things that make you feel a little bit more comfortable about this, you know, and thinking about what worked in the past, you know, when she gets up, you know, like if you have a child will make it up, if they do well with the tablet, now, we don't always want to give them the tablet, but you know what, this one time I'm going to sit their tablet next to their bed,
Terry - AGEUcational (11:24):
Grab the tablet, because this is my one hour
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (11:28):
I'm taking. So I've had a patient. Gosh, I've had patients that, you know, they worked in, um, they weren't nurse for living. So they like to call out orders and write things down. So I would give them a tablet. I have one, she was a housekeeper. So what I would do with her, you know, they, Oh, she's always pulling the tiles in the washcloths down, you know, she's always pulling them there. And I said, well, give her four of 'em give her four washcloths. So she had the four wash thought. She had a little bag that we kept on her wheelchair and she would take her washcloths, fold them up neatly. And then we put them back in the bag and then she take her wash and then she was fine. Oh, Ms. Charisma, no, we need to give her medicine, know it all. We just need to give her some wash cloths, you know?
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (12:23):
So I would ask the family, what does she do? And this is how I work with my clients. And that's why I tell people, I'm not just a coach. I'm a, I'm a nurse practitioner. I've been doing this for years. So I think about these things find, you know, if they were a carpenter, you know, maybe we don't want to give them a hammer, but I mean, some of them are so, so sharp that they keep these skills because they beat him so long. You get him some wood, some wood glue and something else and just keep him occupied. You'll be amazed.
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (12:52):
Yeah. I had a story of a, um, it was a guy that actually, he was in, uh, a facility, but what, for a long time they fought him off. He would come in there and say, it's time for me to go to work. He'd be agitated. I'm running late. And they were, uh, basically shoo him away. And, uh, not, uh, uh, I guess just not, uh, you know, go with the flow with whatever he was thinking. And so somebody finally had a good idea. So what they did is they got a briefcase and a little hat and put it in the nurses station. So when he came in there it's time for me to go work. They gave him the hat and the briefcase, he picked it up and he would take off and he would walk around, you know, three or four, make three or four laps around the building inside of course. But, uh, you know, then he was home and he was it got it out of his system, finished with work. Yeah. But in time. Yep.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (13:46):
Hmm. But you have to think about it. Most people work at their jobs or at least doing their occupation 20, 30, 40 years, and then they get older and you just took their occupation away from them. Yeah. So I always ask my families when they say, Oh, mom, I'll do this. Dad won't do that. My husband won't do this. What did it, what did they do during the day? What was their hobby? What did, what kind of work did they do? You know, get, give them what, as long as it's safe, give them whatever they did. And you'd be amazed, you know, um, had a patient that used to SOA, close, worked in one of the factory, so, and things up. So we just got her a knitting set, got her some yarn, yarn is inexpensive. You get some yarn, the little crochet needles. And she would just go to work. Every time I saw her, she would have something new. Right.
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (14:35):
I might've brought her, some, my pants, I needed him.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (14:41):
Right. But you know, those little tid bits of information, those are the things that are going to buy us some time. Right. You know? So once we do that, we got that baby monitor. We do the bed alarm. We, you know, put on their favorite show. You know, I think 10 o'clock prices right. Comes on. If you can't get a shot, if you can't get a shower, bath door prices. Right. When I tell you, it doesn't matter what patient I visit at seven o'clock when prices riders on that see me is on prices. Right?
Terry - AGEUcational (15:14):
Yeah.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (15:17):
You know, those different things doing when they're at bed, if your, if your loved one gets therapy, you don't have to be at every therapy session. You know? And I need, that's. One of those things we, we don't think about is that that therapist is trained maybe the first couple of therapy sessions. But after that, when they come see my son for therapy or I'm going on a walk, right. Let me take this time to go on a walk. And if you need me, call me, right. Because you can get in touch with me because you're a professional, you went to school for this. You have to be first aid, certified CPR certified. That's an hour of therapy that is already being paid for. That should be tough for me. Exactly. Whether I'm walking, meditating, bath, shower, talking, communicating, whatever. So utilize those names. So once we utilize those things, Vala bubble bath,
Terry - AGEUcational (16:22):
The needs, right? Exactly. Yeah. The preparation covered your bases,
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (16:28):
All of those. Yeah. All of those different things. And now we can accomplish it. Did it take us a little longer? You know, we can't just jump in like everyone else. No. But once we can think it through and we can prepare ourselves, then we can do those things and then we can work up to those bigger things. So we can, you know, I brainstorm with you, I work through these things with you. Like what can we do? You know, because everyone's situation, isn't the same, you know? So what can we do to make sure that we can get this time for ourselves? Because as we talked about in the beginning, it's not just about happiness, it's about happiness. It's about your health. It's, you know, it's about just you as a person, you know, making sure that you're going to be okay, decreasing that risk for Alzheimer's, you know, decreasing your blood pressure, your heart rate, you know, maybe you're diabetic as well.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (17:25):
We need to make sure that you're taking time out to eat properly and do those things for yourself. So this is a, this is a big picture thing. It's not just, you know, Oh, just be happy. You know, charisma just said, be happy now it's not, it's not just be happy. It's so much more. So, you know, it's taken a bubble bath, it's reading over that gratitude while you're sitting in the tub. It's listening to those rain sounds honestly, on your soundtrack, you know, all of those different things, it's doing some of that visualization that we talked about earlier, you know, and we can do this with the small things. We can do it with the goals. We could do it with the dreams. Yeah. We just have to put the things in place so that we can dream so we can think bigger. Yeah.
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (18:15):
Yeah. And the first part of that is that thinking about it, you know, we, in order to achieve it, we have to think about it set out those steps. And I like also that you said about the little things, you know, we went for a walk in the other morning. It was a little Chris, but there was just a smell in the air. And I just tell him, Tara, I said, how lucky are we to be able to walk and just smell that freshness and that crispness, uh, you know, like being a kid again, it was amazing. It was small, but it was still, you know, something that we could take joy in invigorating.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (18:48):
Yeah. Yeah. And you just need to start somewhere and you build up, you know, I know we have some bigger goals and some bigger dreams that we want to accomplish, but we just take those small steps one step at a time and we'll get there.
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (19:04):
Yup. There used to be an old saying or no questions. Like how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? You know, when you run a marathon, you have to put one step in, you know, one foot in front of the other one step at a time. So, uh, that's the way that we can accomplish all, you know, whatever we want to accomplish, whatever those goals and dreams that we have. I think, uh, you know, this has been a great series, uh, not only for caregivers, but for just people in general. I mean, we know, you know, why is our happiness important to us? And part of that is that self realization, you know, who are we, what, and then who are we in? What do we want setting those goals and then visualizing them. We talked about you, can't ever, you can't get to the end of the journey. If you can't visualize how you're going to get there, we've set out some steps to do it. And then also, you know, just that finalization of realizing our dream and how rewarding it is.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (20:02):
Yeah. And you know, the last thing is just to make sure you have someone that keeps you accountable, you know, because a lot of times we do kind of give up on these bigger things and, you know, we're like, you know, just forget it, you know, I'm not going to try it, but you know, just having something that accountability, someone that you can talk to and you can say, and they'll say, Oh, well, you know, we can try it again. We can try it again tomorrow. Yeah. So, yeah,
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (20:29):
Yeah, no, it's very important. And uh, we can all reach out, find somebody, you know, to be that accountability partner. It makes a big difference. I love, you know, I'm thankful for Terry and my life because she helps me, you know, when things are looking bad and I'm like, I can't go on. She's like, you know, it's all right. We're going to, you know, we had a piece of equipment problem the other day. And it was like, ah, yeah. I mean, it was, it was kind of bad for a couple of hours, but, you know, she was able to kind of talk me down off the ledge and say, Hey, we're going to get this. Let's step outside with the dogs for a little bit, take a walk, clear your head. And you know, sure enough, we came back and, uh, things are better than they were before with this new piece of equipment. So
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (21:12):
No, anybody, nobody strangled me
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (21:16):
Having that partner to reach out to, and, uh, you know, it kind of gets it's, um, there's a lot of things that all go together that, that not feeling isolated. If you feel like there's somebody, you can pick up that phone and reach out to, it makes a huge difference.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (21:32):
Yeah. Yeah.
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (21:34):
All right, charisma. Well, thank you so much for this series. It's been awesome. Uh, before we go, please tell everybody, how can they reach out and get ahold of you?
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (21:45):
Um, I'm on social media, I'm on Facebook, it's the gram charisma care also on LinkedIn. And then my website is charisma care.com. Okay.
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (21:56):
We will put all that contact information in the show notes as well, so y'all can reach out. Uh, you've also got a lot of great resources on your website too. So reach out, check out her website. Um, it's, it's important. We've got to take care of ourselves before we can take care of others. Can't drive that home enough. So, uh, our wellness as caregivers is, uh, it's vital because you have to think about if we run ourselves down and we're not around to take care of our loved ones, who's going to do that. So, uh, let's do all we can to, um, to improve our wellness and our health. All right, well, that's going to do it for this first mini series. I think it was great. We've got some good, actionable, uh, items that we've been able to take away each week. So we're looking forward and maybe we can talk charisma to coming back and doing one more for us.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (22:50):
Okay. [inaudible] all right.
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (22:56):
Well, that's going to do it for this episode. You can find us, of course, at www dot [inaudible] dot com. We're on all the major social media platforms and videos of these interviews will be up on our YouTube channel as well. So until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your loved ones. Bye.
www.charismascare.com
www.ageucational.com
View all episodes
By Roy Barker
5
22 ratings
Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality with Charisma Freeman
Visualization is the key to making our goals a reality. Even if its just a weekend with no responsibilities. Dream your dream and visualize it. Every last detail. Gratitude is also important. We need to be grateful for every gift we are given. It makes our recharge time so much more energizing. Try it this week. Be grateful and visualize your dream.
About Charisma:
Founder of Charisma’s Caregiver Coaching LLC, aka Charisma’s Care, 15+ years of medical experience as a Registered Nurse and Adult Geriatric Nurse Practitioner, Disability Advocate, Special Needs Mom, Educator, Medical Curriculum Developer, Certified Life & Wellness Coach Featured on 11Alive News, GMA, FOCUS, etc.
As an Adult Geriatric Nurse Practitioner & Registered Nurse, as well as a Holistic Health and Wellness Coach. My specialty in disability and elder care in my medical practice. I am a proud mother of two beautiful children who I’ve raised myself since divorcing shortly after my son with special needs was born. During the time, I fought the medical system tooth and nail to uncover my son’s true medical diagnosis, while pursuing my Masters Degree in Nursing.
As I write this, my daughter is preparing for college to study Forensic Science and my son is thriving everyday despite his rare genetic disorder, KIF1A. I’ve also cared for my elderly grandmother for years until her passing 5 years ago. For fun I am first and foremost a Band Mom for my daughter, I fell in love with hiking during Covid-19, and I love to travel the globe. You can learn more about our family travels as a special needs mom in My Journal/ Blog. I talk about how you too can travel the world with disabilities.
I share this information because I know what it is like to feel alone, confused, and overwhelmed. To be at your wits end and not know if you will make it another day caring for your loved one. I’ve pulled myself from the bottom back to the top creating my “New Normal” and work everyday with clients just like you to do the same. We are the forgotten generation and it’s unfair. I am working to change this one client at a time.
I SEE YOU!
YOU ARE IMPORTANT!
YOU ARE APPRECIATED!
Over 15 years of Medical Experience
www.charismascare.com
www.ageucational.com
Full Transcript Below
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of educational. This is our fourth episode of our mini series, caregiver, happiness. We are, um, welcoming charisma back charisma. Thank you so much for coming back and for your time and doing this, this has been fabulous. You know, we started out talking about, um, about why we want to, you know, why have your, why pursue your happiness, who we are? You know, we, we wrote down because sometimes we get lost in the role in which we are in right now. So we talked about who you are. We've talked about setting some goals, and then last week we talked about visualization. So today we're going to talk about making our dreams and reality how we can make them come true. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to you.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (00:52):
Hi, thank you. So we are back for our final week. Um, you know, I hope we've learned some things we've done pretty deep. We've done some visualization. We wrote down some goals, some dreams, and, um, we've done, uh, the gratitude journal. So if that's something you like, hopefully you've continued on with that. I find it. If I do the gratitude journal in the morning, it makes me happy and some days I miss it, but you're not trying to catch it, catch up where I can, but just throwing those things in there some days, even if it's two or three times a week, excuse me, can make a big, big difference. Yeah.
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (01:28):
Yes. And we all have stuff even, uh, we have bad seasons in life, but there's still usually something that we can look around and be grateful for. So that's something, you know, I would challenge everyone to be able to continue on is let's just be thankful because there's always somebody that is a lot worse off. If we've got our health, our relationships, you know, we've really got it. All the other stuff is pretty trivial.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (01:53):
Yes, I agree. So that was your homework. You know, we looked at some things to dream and be grateful for, and you probably started doing that homework and you were grateful and you were going through, and then you got today two or three, and something happened something out of the ordinary. You know, you may have had to rush to the hospital, a bad visit with the doctor, a new diagnosis. You thought you picked up this medication, you forgot to pick up the medication. The news came out with something else on COVID, you know, it was just something. And you said, this lady is crazy. I go have time to write down a gratitude journal and write something down every day. I don't have time for that. What difference is that making? But you know, you do, you do have time and you should, because it doesn't take long when you jot that down, because now your stress levels back up, your blood pressure and your heart rate are backup your stress. You're overwhelmed because see, that was just a dream, right.
Terry - AGEUcational (03:07):
Was
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (03:07):
Just a dream. And a dream is just a dream. And now you have real life stuff to do, and you don't have time to dream. But the problem is that we as humans, we look at things in these large chunks, we look at big picture. We have to break things down though, because our mind doesn't, it doesn't take in things in that larger picture as much. I don't think the doctors, when they go to medical school or the attorneys, when they go to law school, they think about man, I gotta be, I gotta be 12th grade. And then I gotta do these four years and then let me add these other four years. Oh. And then I have to do these four years of residency, because if somebody thought about the fact that they got, they have to do 20 years, they would never start.
Terry - AGEUcational (03:54):
Right. Exactly. You would never throw in the towel
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (04:00):
That's that may have wanted it to be this. It was probably those extra 10 years that we, no, I'm not doing that. You know, but for the ones that went to law school, they say, okay, well, I'll just get my bachelor's degree. Let me just do these four years. Okay. Now let me go to the next step and get that degree. Okay. Let me do these couple of years. Okay. Now I'm done with that. So let me go to the next step and do that because you had your mind to really take it in. You have to break it all down. You have to break it down to the simplest form. You know, when I talk to my caregivers, a lot of times they're like, I just want a weekend. I don't want to lie. I just want a weekend. Can I just go to the mountains for a weekend? Can I go on a girl's or a guys trip? Can I go fishing for a weekend? And that seems so unreal. It just feels like, Oh my gosh, you know the idea of going somewhere for a weekend, you know, I don't have anybody to take care. You know, if mom and you know, I don't know about the medications, you know, I'll I'll, you know, it's just so nevermind. Forget it.
Terry - AGEUcational (05:09):
Yeah. Or your hands up again. Yeah.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (05:13):
And it happens a lot, especially with my caregivers. It's just, Oh no charisma. That's not possible. I know I can't do that. That we were just writing net down. That wasn't for me
Terry - AGEUcational (05:23):
[inaudible]
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (05:27):
It was because it's your dream. And that's why I had you write dreams. But I also had you write goals because goals are achievable. And one of the things we do is we break them down into smart goals. We make them measurable. We make them obtainable, but then we also have dreams and we can continue to dream. So let's start a little bit smaller. Maybe we're not, maybe we're not going away for the weekend. Maybe we're not going on that fishing. Let's just start with a hot shower or a bubble bath. How many times do we just want a tea? I just need 30 minutes to an hour to take an uninterrupted bubble bath. How do I get that done? Yeah. Yeah. Something that small. So what we do is we go through it. Our goal, our goal is a bubble bath, very, very small goal for a person that doesn't, that's not a caregiver.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (06:29):
And they're like, what do you mean? Your goal is a bubble bath. You know, you're listening to us, we're listening to you. And I thought it was under not the staff, but they're listening to us. And you're like a bubble bath, you know, but know that that's major a hot shower, a bubble bath that's major. So what, how do we get to that point? That we'll have that hour? Because we're thinking about the word. What is, uh, you know, I may go in there and in mom may fall, you know, she may slip on the rug. Oh, she may go unlock the door and get out the house. Oh, Oh my gosh. You know what? If she messes something up, man, what if she goes in the refrigerator takes out something she doesn't need to have and she's snacking. Oh my gosh. What if she has to go to the bathroom? All of these things are reality. And then we're like, you know what? No, I'm just going to jump in and jump out a quick five minutes. No, no, no. Don't do that because we still want to take this bubble bath so easily. We have to be committed. You need the finger.
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (07:43):
I was just thinking that the other day that, um, the, you know, the five minutes that I jumped into the shower, that's when the phone rings off the hook and people are knocking out the door, trying to get in. I'm like there are 23 hours in 23 and three quarters, other hours in this day. And everything has to happen within this one 15 minute time period.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (08:04):
Yeah. Yeah. And it happens. But you have to change your mindset. You have to change the way you think about things. You would have to say, I am going to take this bubble bath. I am committed to taking this bell bath. It is going to happen. So now we need to break. Now what we need to do, we first have to commit to it. When, when is the best time of day to take the bubble bath? Maybe mom gets up at night. She, she has sundowners. Yes, she's on. She's on her spirit. All she's, you know, she's on everything for sleep. We have the transit on it. Doesn't matter what we give mom. We gave her Seroquel. She's not sleeping at night now. It's not happening at 10:00 PM. Mom turned on the old school radio with the turn table. She's listening to music. Well,
Terry - AGEUcational (08:56):
We can't do the bubble bath then. No, but
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (08:59):
Know that at 10:00 AM, mom is knocked out. She is going to sleep.
Terry - AGEUcational (09:05):
Now tonight, I may not be the average
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (09:07):
Time people do a bowl bath, but we're not really average people.
Terry - AGEUcational (09:11):
That's right. Yeah, that's right.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (09:14):
We don't live those lives. So maybe 10:00 AM is the perfect time to do the bubble bath. You know? So first find that day in time and stick to that, know that that's when you're going to do it. So, you know, mom gets up every night, we'll let her get up. We're going to have a good time. We're going to go in the living room and we're going to dance to whatever is the BGS Al green, whatever it is. We just not have a good time with that night because we know that once mom is not, we're taking our bubble bath. So the next day we have to put the precautions in place. So of course, typically mom will be sleep, but let's go ahead and put these precautions in place. So we want to make sure about the safety, you know, um, I always tell people if you're you, you have a parent or, you know, a child that gets up at night, put a bed alarm on their bed so that when they get up, you'll hear it. You know, you'll hear it going off. So you're not always getting up looking, Oh, we say she up. Oh, I thought I heard, no dad was the cat. Oh. You know, was that,
Terry - AGEUcational (10:20):
So do that.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (10:22):
Um, for me, I do, um, the, what is it? The Alexa, the one with the video, uh, you, you know, you can do Alexa and you can call them and you can see them as well. So, you know, out say Alexa Le uh, let me see such and such room, you know, so I can see them through the video, or you could do a baby monitor so you can hear them, you know, so you can still take that bubble bath, put that monitor in there. And you know, the only way you have to get up is if you know, there's an emergency or you know, something of that nature, but now you created those things that make you feel a little bit more comfortable about this, you know, and thinking about what worked in the past, you know, when she gets up, you know, like if you have a child will make it up, if they do well with the tablet, now, we don't always want to give them the tablet, but you know what, this one time I'm going to sit their tablet next to their bed,
Terry - AGEUcational (11:24):
Grab the tablet, because this is my one hour
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (11:28):
I'm taking. So I've had a patient. Gosh, I've had patients that, you know, they worked in, um, they weren't nurse for living. So they like to call out orders and write things down. So I would give them a tablet. I have one, she was a housekeeper. So what I would do with her, you know, they, Oh, she's always pulling the tiles in the washcloths down, you know, she's always pulling them there. And I said, well, give her four of 'em give her four washcloths. So she had the four wash thought. She had a little bag that we kept on her wheelchair and she would take her washcloths, fold them up neatly. And then we put them back in the bag and then she take her wash and then she was fine. Oh, Ms. Charisma, no, we need to give her medicine, know it all. We just need to give her some wash cloths, you know?
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (12:23):
So I would ask the family, what does she do? And this is how I work with my clients. And that's why I tell people, I'm not just a coach. I'm a, I'm a nurse practitioner. I've been doing this for years. So I think about these things find, you know, if they were a carpenter, you know, maybe we don't want to give them a hammer, but I mean, some of them are so, so sharp that they keep these skills because they beat him so long. You get him some wood, some wood glue and something else and just keep him occupied. You'll be amazed.
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (12:52):
Yeah. I had a story of a, um, it was a guy that actually, he was in, uh, a facility, but what, for a long time they fought him off. He would come in there and say, it's time for me to go to work. He'd be agitated. I'm running late. And they were, uh, basically shoo him away. And, uh, not, uh, uh, I guess just not, uh, you know, go with the flow with whatever he was thinking. And so somebody finally had a good idea. So what they did is they got a briefcase and a little hat and put it in the nurses station. So when he came in there it's time for me to go work. They gave him the hat and the briefcase, he picked it up and he would take off and he would walk around, you know, three or four, make three or four laps around the building inside of course. But, uh, you know, then he was home and he was it got it out of his system, finished with work. Yeah. But in time. Yep.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (13:46):
Hmm. But you have to think about it. Most people work at their jobs or at least doing their occupation 20, 30, 40 years, and then they get older and you just took their occupation away from them. Yeah. So I always ask my families when they say, Oh, mom, I'll do this. Dad won't do that. My husband won't do this. What did it, what did they do during the day? What was their hobby? What did, what kind of work did they do? You know, get, give them what, as long as it's safe, give them whatever they did. And you'd be amazed, you know, um, had a patient that used to SOA, close, worked in one of the factory, so, and things up. So we just got her a knitting set, got her some yarn, yarn is inexpensive. You get some yarn, the little crochet needles. And she would just go to work. Every time I saw her, she would have something new. Right.
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (14:35):
I might've brought her, some, my pants, I needed him.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (14:41):
Right. But you know, those little tid bits of information, those are the things that are going to buy us some time. Right. You know? So once we do that, we got that baby monitor. We do the bed alarm. We, you know, put on their favorite show. You know, I think 10 o'clock prices right. Comes on. If you can't get a shot, if you can't get a shower, bath door prices. Right. When I tell you, it doesn't matter what patient I visit at seven o'clock when prices riders on that see me is on prices. Right?
Terry - AGEUcational (15:14):
Yeah.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (15:17):
You know, those different things doing when they're at bed, if your, if your loved one gets therapy, you don't have to be at every therapy session. You know? And I need, that's. One of those things we, we don't think about is that that therapist is trained maybe the first couple of therapy sessions. But after that, when they come see my son for therapy or I'm going on a walk, right. Let me take this time to go on a walk. And if you need me, call me, right. Because you can get in touch with me because you're a professional, you went to school for this. You have to be first aid, certified CPR certified. That's an hour of therapy that is already being paid for. That should be tough for me. Exactly. Whether I'm walking, meditating, bath, shower, talking, communicating, whatever. So utilize those names. So once we utilize those things, Vala bubble bath,
Terry - AGEUcational (16:22):
The needs, right? Exactly. Yeah. The preparation covered your bases,
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (16:28):
All of those. Yeah. All of those different things. And now we can accomplish it. Did it take us a little longer? You know, we can't just jump in like everyone else. No. But once we can think it through and we can prepare ourselves, then we can do those things and then we can work up to those bigger things. So we can, you know, I brainstorm with you, I work through these things with you. Like what can we do? You know, because everyone's situation, isn't the same, you know? So what can we do to make sure that we can get this time for ourselves? Because as we talked about in the beginning, it's not just about happiness, it's about happiness. It's about your health. It's, you know, it's about just you as a person, you know, making sure that you're going to be okay, decreasing that risk for Alzheimer's, you know, decreasing your blood pressure, your heart rate, you know, maybe you're diabetic as well.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (17:25):
We need to make sure that you're taking time out to eat properly and do those things for yourself. So this is a, this is a big picture thing. It's not just, you know, Oh, just be happy. You know, charisma just said, be happy now it's not, it's not just be happy. It's so much more. So, you know, it's taken a bubble bath, it's reading over that gratitude while you're sitting in the tub. It's listening to those rain sounds honestly, on your soundtrack, you know, all of those different things, it's doing some of that visualization that we talked about earlier, you know, and we can do this with the small things. We can do it with the goals. We could do it with the dreams. Yeah. We just have to put the things in place so that we can dream so we can think bigger. Yeah.
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (18:15):
Yeah. And the first part of that is that thinking about it, you know, we, in order to achieve it, we have to think about it set out those steps. And I like also that you said about the little things, you know, we went for a walk in the other morning. It was a little Chris, but there was just a smell in the air. And I just tell him, Tara, I said, how lucky are we to be able to walk and just smell that freshness and that crispness, uh, you know, like being a kid again, it was amazing. It was small, but it was still, you know, something that we could take joy in invigorating.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (18:48):
Yeah. Yeah. And you just need to start somewhere and you build up, you know, I know we have some bigger goals and some bigger dreams that we want to accomplish, but we just take those small steps one step at a time and we'll get there.
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (19:04):
Yup. There used to be an old saying or no questions. Like how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? You know, when you run a marathon, you have to put one step in, you know, one foot in front of the other one step at a time. So, uh, that's the way that we can accomplish all, you know, whatever we want to accomplish, whatever those goals and dreams that we have. I think, uh, you know, this has been a great series, uh, not only for caregivers, but for just people in general. I mean, we know, you know, why is our happiness important to us? And part of that is that self realization, you know, who are we, what, and then who are we in? What do we want setting those goals and then visualizing them. We talked about you, can't ever, you can't get to the end of the journey. If you can't visualize how you're going to get there, we've set out some steps to do it. And then also, you know, just that finalization of realizing our dream and how rewarding it is.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (20:02):
Yeah. And you know, the last thing is just to make sure you have someone that keeps you accountable, you know, because a lot of times we do kind of give up on these bigger things and, you know, we're like, you know, just forget it, you know, I'm not going to try it, but you know, just having something that accountability, someone that you can talk to and you can say, and they'll say, Oh, well, you know, we can try it again. We can try it again tomorrow. Yeah. So, yeah,
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (20:29):
Yeah, no, it's very important. And uh, we can all reach out, find somebody, you know, to be that accountability partner. It makes a big difference. I love, you know, I'm thankful for Terry and my life because she helps me, you know, when things are looking bad and I'm like, I can't go on. She's like, you know, it's all right. We're going to, you know, we had a piece of equipment problem the other day. And it was like, ah, yeah. I mean, it was, it was kind of bad for a couple of hours, but, you know, she was able to kind of talk me down off the ledge and say, Hey, we're going to get this. Let's step outside with the dogs for a little bit, take a walk, clear your head. And you know, sure enough, we came back and, uh, things are better than they were before with this new piece of equipment. So
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (21:12):
No, anybody, nobody strangled me
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (21:16):
Having that partner to reach out to, and, uh, you know, it kind of gets it's, um, there's a lot of things that all go together that, that not feeling isolated. If you feel like there's somebody, you can pick up that phone and reach out to, it makes a huge difference.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (21:32):
Yeah. Yeah.
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (21:34):
All right, charisma. Well, thank you so much for this series. It's been awesome. Uh, before we go, please tell everybody, how can they reach out and get ahold of you?
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (21:45):
Um, I'm on social media, I'm on Facebook, it's the gram charisma care also on LinkedIn. And then my website is charisma care.com. Okay.
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (21:56):
We will put all that contact information in the show notes as well, so y'all can reach out. Uh, you've also got a lot of great resources on your website too. So reach out, check out her website. Um, it's, it's important. We've got to take care of ourselves before we can take care of others. Can't drive that home enough. So, uh, our wellness as caregivers is, uh, it's vital because you have to think about if we run ourselves down and we're not around to take care of our loved ones, who's going to do that. So, uh, let's do all we can to, um, to improve our wellness and our health. All right, well, that's going to do it for this first mini series. I think it was great. We've got some good, actionable, uh, items that we've been able to take away each week. So we're looking forward and maybe we can talk charisma to coming back and doing one more for us.
Charisma - Charisma’s Care Coaching (22:50):
Okay. [inaudible] all right.
Roy - AGEUcational - Caregiver Happiness Series, Episode 4 of 4 - Dreams Turn Into Reality (22:56):
Well, that's going to do it for this episode. You can find us, of course, at www dot [inaudible] dot com. We're on all the major social media platforms and videos of these interviews will be up on our YouTube channel as well. So until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your loved ones. Bye.
www.charismascare.com
www.ageucational.com