6 Principles You Need To Master To Become a Productive, Healthy & Connected Power Parent

Jul 21, 2021

Are you a busy, burned-out parent, struggling to show up as the best Mum or Dad (or human being!) that you can be? Has trying to juggle the demands of your business or work, as well as the household chores, and trying to keep the kids alive and happy, got you feeling overwhelmed…and quite frankly, sick?

After working with over 2,000+ parents in leadership & business over the last combined 20+ years (and having experienced our own parental burnout, while trying to run our own businesses), we have gained a deep understanding of the three dominant problems professional parents face, and they are:

3 Problems Working Parents Face

Sick, tired, and in pain, with no root cause diagnosis. Slowly over time, you notice your body isn’t functioning as well as it used to. You might even feel like your body is breaking. You might feel a bit like death. You find yourself collapsing, exhausted, on the couch when you get home from work…or even curled up in an anxious ball. The kids are going crazy and it all hits the fan when their iPad batteries run out! You might also be suffering from brain fog, gut issues, food sensitivities, body-aches, or colds, flu, and infections. The GP blood results keep coming back: “everything is fine”…When in reality, YOU DO NOT FEEL FINE! And you’re left thinking, “is it all in my head?"
Relationship with yourself & your family, not the best. You’re overwhelmed, you’re feeling crappy, and this is showing up in your relationships too - with your family, your relationship with yourself, and you’re even losing love in your business or career. You’re losing passion, purpose. At home, you’re acting like Dragon Mum or Zombie Dad (or vice versa!) - snappy with the kids all the time, or feeling exhausted and disinterested. Romantically, your relationship with your partner may even be past bickering now…it’s just silent. Robotic and routine. Frigid. There’s definitely not much sex…or if there is, it feels forced.
Burned-out, stuck in hustle & grind. You’re running around like a chook with its head cut off, stuck in the hustle and grind, constantly being torn between building your business or career and achieving family/lifestyle satisfaction. As much as you’d love to take care of yourself, you’re constantly busy doing “stuff,” and rarely have time for yourself.

These problems are symptoms of burnout. Research backs this up by showing that working parents are very susceptible to physical & mental ‘burnout’ as they struggle to juggle work, life, and family (1, 2). Even careers & relationships have suffered after becoming a parent (3).

The Root Cause & The Solution

We have been on a massive journey over the last combined 20+ years, both professionally and personally, trying to nail WHY many parents are feeling the way they do, and HOW they can bounce back - physically, emotionally, in their relationships, and business.

We’ve identified 6 Key Principles that will take you from feeling sick, unhappy & overwhelmed, to:

Having better health, function & capacity!
Having better relationships with yourself and your family!
Know what you want out of life and in business and actively implementing your plan to get there!

The 6 Key Principles To Become A Power Parent

Principle #1 - BODY

To Function & Feel ALIVE Again!

To get to the root of what is causing the physical symptoms that are dragging you down, you first need to identify what body systems have burned out. We believe in testing not guessing, using specialised functional lab testing to identify what major body systems (i.e. the brain, the hormones, the mitochondria, the gut, the detoxification pathways) are out of balance and causing symptoms. These tests go far beyond what your usual GP would test for, and often discover some serious imbalances when even your GP blood tests have come back as “fine.”

Once you identify the imbalances in your body systems, you then need to kill off the nasty stuff (i.e. microbial pathogens, toxins) and/or kick-start the good stuff (i.e. hormones, neurotransmitters, nutritional deficiencies, etc). This should be done with a combo of therapeutic Nutritionals, as well as tapping into the following principles which often cause body burnout in the first place.

Principle #2 - THOUGHTS & FEELINGS

The Highest Frame Dictates The Game

The way you frame - or perceive - yourself and your experience in this world will dictate how you exist. We’re not just talking about having a positive mindset, here. We’re literally arguing that you can change the trajectory of your life by changing the neural pathways in your brain that lead you to think and feel (and then act) in a specific way. Neuroscience backs this up. Data shows that the brain has the ability to create new neural pathways and new brain cells, in response to intrinsic and extrinsic factors, which lead to new ways of thinking, feeling and living (4). This is incredibly important if you need to create a new set of healthy behaviours to help heal an exhausted body, relationships, and even career, which many busy, burned-out parents do.

Data also shows that stressful thoughts & feelings impact body function, which can lead to many diseases and pathological conditions (5). Even emotional suppression (where you constantly ignore or bottle up your thoughts and feelings) has been linked to the risk of early death from chronic diseases (6). While we can never get rid of all stressors, stress itself can be reframed and perceived differently which lead to improved physiological function.

It’s clear that if you want to become productive, healthy and connected, you will absolutely need to tap into the hidden power of your thoughts and feelings.

Principle #3 - BEHAVIOUR

Be-Do-Hav

Behaviour naturally comes next. The ancient physician Hippocrates said: “It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.” Are you behaving in a way that is making you sick, or preventing you from healing? Are you repeatedly doing things that are causing a chaotic lifestyle, or conflict within your family?

The truth is, chronic diseases are on the rise in western countries due to poor behavioural habits - i.e. processed foods, sleep deprivation, sedentary living, higher stress, especially associated with long work hours and overwhelming work environments. Even in the last 25 years, chronic illnesses have risen steadily from 44.7% of the population to 48.3%, and this is predicted to increase with time (7). Interestingly, data reports that 75-90% of all physician office visits are for stress-related ailments (8).

If you want to be, do or have anything different to what you have now, you need to DO things differently - you need to BE-HAVE different.

Principle #4 - ENVIRONMENT

You are a product of your environment

Now to your environment. Is it toxic? Is it set up for success?

By toxic, we’re talking about physical toxins - like harmful chemicals in your home or workspace, dirty electricity, mold. The world has never been more toxic (9) and these toxins can do damage to our health (10). Living in a toxic space will burn your body out, make you feel more overwhelmed, and could quite literally be causing you to feel like Dragon Mum or Zombie Dad, or reduce your productivity and joy at work. Cleaning up your environment is essential to becoming a high-performance power parent.

You also have to consider: is your environment set up for success? Is your kitchen stocked with healthy foods? Is your office organised? Is your bedroom set up like a ‘cave’? Is there anything in your environment that is causing you to think, feel or behave in an unhealthy way?

Principle #5 - LIFESTYLE

Finally have the lifestyle you’ve always wanted!

What is your vision for you and your family? How do you want to live your life? What does your ideal life look like?

Do you want to be successful, with a fulfilling and financially rewarding business or career? Do you want a work-life balance? Do you want time to play and enjoy life? Do you want to put your family first?

Are you living in a way that is working towards achieving your ideal lifestyle, or are you feeling stuck?

Do you even KNOW what you want? The problem is, when people aren’t clear on what’s important to them, they find their ‘to-do list is full of stuff that keeps them busy but gets them nowhere. Getting clear on where you’re at now, where you want to go AND who you want to be and what’s most important to you, allows you to live a life of meaning, fulfilment and excitement.

Principle #6 - RELATIONSHIPS

Feel Love! And Grow In Love With Your Self, Others & Your Purpose

To establish healthy relationships, it has to start with YOU. You cannot pour from an empty cup. Entrepreneurial parents (particularly mums) do so much for others - their kids, partner, staff, clients, colleagues, extended family. It’s a constant juggling act. If you are not refilling your own tank, you will inevitably burn out. In time, this will have a detrimental impact on all your other relationships, including your relationship with your career. So the first step is to grow in love with yourself and care for yourself.

Self-love often naturally opens up the door to stronger relationships with your family, and your professional sense of purpose. However, if it has been many years of feeling disconnected, frustrated or apathetic, it will require some extra work to reignite connection again with others. This all comes down to understanding how you and others ‘tick’, and prioritising space and time for meaningful communication and interaction.

Master These 6 Principles

Master these 6 Principles - a healthy body, thoughts & feelings, behaviours, lifestyle, environment, and relationships - and you will finally be able to show up as a power parent, more healthy, connected & productive. You'll finally feel joy and a sense of purpose in this world again, both within your family and professionally.

Now we know this all sounds like a lot, and it may even feel a bit overwhelming. But we are big believers in making small changes. So just pick one thing from each principle that needs working on, and make a list of all the things that you could do to start mastering that principle. And if you’d like some support along your journey, head over to our free Facebook Group “Power Parent Society - Secrets of Healthy, Happy Mums & Dads” - https://www.facebook.com/groups/chrisandfilly/

References

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