SAMIA: Hello, Salam, Shalom, Namaste, Sat Sri Akal, Aloha, Holah, Ciao, Bonjour and Buna!So so very excited to be with you today and we have a very special guest with us today Hyesha Barrett who's a life coach and a Neuro Transformational Coach and I'm so excited to have you with us welcome… 

HYESHA: Thank you so much Samia for having me I really appreciate it I'd love to be on your show thank you so much…

SAMIA: Yay will you please jump right in and tell us more about who you are and what you do… 

HYESHA: Absolutely I'd love to... so my name is Hyesha Barrett as you've just said I have been a life coach for the past four years and I have been a neuro transformational coach for the past two years I'm now studying to become a master neuro transformational... master neuro transformational coach… it's a bit of a mouthful let's say… but it's an amazing profession that I love to be in and I basically help all my clients to go back into their past into their childhood to rework their neurology to rework their belief patterns that have been instilled in them from childhood and I love mainly to work with mothers... I'm a mother myself I have two young ones I've got one daughter who's sorry… who's called Saria she's nearly seven and I have my son Zavion he is nearly two… so my hands are full but they're full with beautiful beautiful memories and beautiful experiences that we you know explore every day and obviously I have my work as well… but it's all about finding the right balance and I feel that that's a very appropriate thing to talk about today because finding balance in our lives especially as mothers it's very difficult... we can feel overwhelmed we can feel stressed at times we can feel like we're not in alignment and that is when we get thrown out of kilter and that is when we feel like we are not going down the right path and we feel overwhelmed and stressed and we feel like you know things are not going the right way we don't feel grounded we feel like we are not in control and so yeah... it's all about creating that beautiful balance between work and family and relationships and you know with a husband as well and social life there's so many things which we can get into in a minute… 

SAMIA: Yes… 

HYESHA: Yes that is basically me in a nutshell Samia so thank you so much for having me here I appreciate it…

SAMIA: Oh I love it I love it and I love that you help moms because you know that is just so important and you know as you were talking about all the challenges that moms can deal with I was thinking about how usually it's such a thankless job to be a mom it's like people just don't appreciate it we don't recognize how challenging it really is… on the one hand I think there's this saying about how it's the most challenging job in the world and it's one of the jobs that comes with no instruction manuals… 

HYESHA: Oh yes no instruction manuals and no appreciation as you said in some way but that's why we as mothers we need to appreciate ourselves and we need to celebrate ourselves especially not only as mothers to mothers but definitely to really celebrate our wins daily because we can really get lost in the daily grind we wake up and before we know we're already putting the kids to sleep and we have some sick on our shoulder that we haven't washed off and you know we haven't had a shower in God knows how many days and we just feel like we are really out of alignment we're out of balance but it is such a rewarding you know job per se… it's you know the journey of motherhood is just so beautiful but the first few years are definitely very very stressful so to all you mothers out there who are experiencing it my hat goes off to you and honestly you're doing a fantastic job but do make sure that you celebrate your wins and you take time for yourself daily… 

SAMIA: Yeah can you share some examples of how you actually create better balance in your life as a mom or help other moms to do that and you know I'm sure as you have been saying a part of that is to celebrate this but what else is there what else does it take… 

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HYESHA: Yeah absolutely… before I go into that I'd like to also mention that there's not only… you know like the thing that creates balance in our lives is to have so many different... what's it called… environments… they're called environments which is what I teach my clients to work with where we basically make sure that everyone is in balance… so that's your body your health your fitness your well-being that's yourself which is basically your emotions your personal growth your money so everything relates to finances so that's cash in the bank that's your cash flow in your business if you have one or even your relationship to money that's your career you may have a career you may not have a career and that's an you know that's another ball game altogether but yeah so there's also that there's your core relationship so your partners and your you know your partner if you have a spouse or but basically love in general your support system so that's family that's friends that's accountability partners it's a coach if you have one which I highly recommend that you do because they can really keep you on track…It's your environment so getting out in nature that is definite in order for you to feel more grounded... to get out in nature barefoot to feel the energies of the world of the sand if you can walk in sand or in grass or in the woods it's very beneficial and our physical surroundings where we live so if we have too much clutter around us we have to make sure that we declutter a lot and there's also the fun and me time there's spirituality and there is contribution …So these are the ten things that if one of them is out of kilter it affects all the others and generally what a lot of us believe is that oh if I have a good relationship then I can't also have a career or if I have a good body and I'm taking care of my health I can't also take care of my kids… and it's not true... you can have everything you can really really create a perfect balance in your life it's all a matter of knowing how to say no… it's all a matter of creating boundaries it's all a matter of taking care of yourself it's all a matter of doing things that make sure that you are in alignment with yourself and that you don't give your energies to others because we are people pleasers… we like to help others we like to feel that we're helping and that we're of service it makes us feel good but then we get depleted our energy gets depleted and then we wonder why we're out of you know we feel overwhelmed… but the way that we if we think of it like I'm helping someone… I'm also someone… so let me help myself you know so that's a couple of things there's also make sure that you acknowledge and accept yourself you know you have so many resources like time and energy and money and you can't do it all so just make sure that you know you're not a problem solver for everyone and you cannot do everything all the time and that's okay you know… and manage yourself it's not time management but it's managing yourself so oftentimes we say oh I don't have enough time or if only I had more time but you know these are excuses you can have more time if you focus on the things that you want to accomplish and not spend hours let's say scrolling social media or binge watching Netflix you know you make your own decisions in life your own choices and that comes from an empowered state… There's this great management matrix that I use with my clients as well it's a great management time management tool... so it's like what is important and urgent so say for example there was a crises those are pressing problems those are deadlines accidents for example that happen or and the next one is what is important but not urgent so what's long-term planning or finding new opportunities your health your personal development and goal setting for example… the third one is what is not important and urgent so let's say you have visitors or you're opening some certain mails or you're doing some certain favors… and the fourth one is what is not important and not urgent so like social media watching tv or some certain activities… there's also a thing called add and subtract so do more of what energizes you and less of what depletes you as I said earlier you have to set your boundaries because that's a big thing and it's a lot... it's difficult for us to set boundaries but once we do that it's so rewarding if nothing feels better than being in harmony… and also as I said earlier it's good to say no and it's good to schedule time for yourself so those are a few things that I feel is very very important and I can help can help us for sure to find our inner peace and in term and in turn our alignment and harmony and balance… 

SAMIA: Ah you mentioned so many like really important aspects of how to create more balance... thank you for that… And it made me actually think about what is balance because there's so many things that you know you're dealing with and sometimes I know like when we think about balance we think about oh like there's this equal weight that we're giving to whatever we're trying to balance right… but it sounds like that definition of balance may not be the right way to think about balance when it comes to managing our lives... so how do you understand balance… 

HYESHA: So for me balance it's more the way that we handle our various elements in our life so all those 10 elements that I told you about it's all literally about being able to look at them one by one and be being able to assess where we are in our lives right now… so say for example motherhood we're talking about motherhood right now... so how am I feeling right now in terms of motherhood what is energizing me what is depleting me… forget everything else because I'm only focused on motherhood the more that we you know it with every with everything in life if we have too much of everything then we get overwhelmed so put all those other nine elements aside environments aside and just focus on one… so what's energizing me what's depleting me then so do more of what's energizing you do less what's of what's depleting you… and then you also see where you are in your life right now in terms of motherhood where would you like to be so you can follow certain people that you look up to you can follow you know either on social media or people that you know in person who you know is an inspiration and you say yourself okay I'd like to be I'd like to be in that position and see where they are get tips and pointers from them and work towards that so that's one… and when you it's amazing like the body knows the body will grow when it realizes that you are in a state of growth yourself you're in a state of learning yourself when you want to work on yourself and do better for yourself and you work on one area of your life it will start moving over to all the other areas of your life and then that's when you start creating the balance... otherwise there will always be imbalance… So yeah that is basically my overall thought of what balance is…

SAMIA: Yes that makes sense that makes sense... and you know so when you are for example mentioning about doing more of what energizes you and do less of what depletes you... 

HYESHA: Yeah… 

SAMIA: That sounds really wonderful… 

HYESHA: Yeah… 

SAMIA: I share that actually with my clients too when I work with them and like you know it really needs to be one of our goals for us to do more and more of what we love and less and less of what we don't love and eventually you know I know for me certainly the goal is to get to a point where I'm only doing what I love… 

HYESHA: Yes that’s beautiful… 

SAMIA: And so that is such a energizing and inspirational idea and vision for me honestly that's and also been really helpful for me in terms of how I make my decisions about what I choose to do or not do in my life… wonderful… and yeah... and I think the challenge that people can perceive when you first share this perspective with them is they're like oh but I don't have the resources… like if I for example as a mom there are things that absolutely energize you about being a mom but then there are things that drain you and it's also part of your… of what you have to do as a mom so for example I don't know like maybe the washing of the diapers is the part that you don't love to do but you're like oh I have to do it if I don't do it who will you know …yeah…. and so you feel like you have no choice but to just doing these things that are draining you so what do you do…

HYESHA: Yeah so say for example the diaper situation... so then you find different options you can go with disposable diapers you can you know allow your child to go to sit in the bath and just you know do his business in the bath for example those are certain things that can be done… what I mean is that there's always a plan b there's always another option… you know the one thing that came to mind was when you said about not having a choice so say for example in the west unlike where I live in Oman we're very blessed to have nannies very blessed here so I can concentrate on my work and I can concentrate on enjoying the good times with my kids and I have my nanny and my maid who can take care of the house to clean the house… but not all of us are fortunate to be in that position and I understand that and so there are people who feel very very stressed out because the laundry pile is you know building and there's more diapers to clean and you know the the baby is crying and you know you have to cook the food and the phone is ringing and yeah it gets overwhelming I get it I totally get it… breathe... you know stop and breathe... we need to connect to our breath we need to connect to our body and one thing that I've learned over time as well is that the more we have to do the more we want to do and the more we get in that spiral… take a breather step out step back call a friend call a neighbor call your mom call your husband say I'm sorry but I really need 10 minutes to myself and those 10 minutes are so amazing to just energize yourself just to get you into that zone again and then do something that you love to do it could be having a bath it could be listening to a podcast it could be reading a book it could be taking a nap you know and just to get yourself centered again... because if we're working on overdrive all the time not only are we going to be not beneficial to our babies but how frazzled will we be to ourselves and in the long term that's not going to help anyone… so it's so crucial to just take a step back… I remember when my first my firstborn was and we didn't have a nanny at the time and she was crying... she was crying a lot and I just got so stressed out to the point where they say that you shouldn't shake your baby but I was at that point where I was like oh my god I just want to just shake the baby you know I was so scared and I was like oh my god I should just stop my god and I got so freaked out I called my husband and I was like you have to come back from work I really need 10 minutes off he came back I took a breather I walked out in nature you know like I grounded myself and thank goodness it helps it really really does help... so honestly guys honestly beautiful mama's out there I commend you if you do if you have you know you're taking care of the kids you've got a job you're cleaning the house you're doing the laundry and all that… it's a massive massive upheaval but again celebrate your wins take things slow it doesn't matter if there's a big pile of laundry it's okay it doesn't matter if your house is a mess it's okay this will pass it will be okay and one solace one good thing to know as well is that we're all in this together you know and knowing that we have a community of people who are facing this these problems as well makes it a lot easier and we tend to not be so hard on ourselves… because as mothers we want to like get our body back we want to stop eating the greasy foods we want to feel we have it all together all the time… but we don't… behind closed doors we don't and I can say first hand yeah I've had many many moments where I've broken down and that's okay it's okay and it's good to get that emotion out of your body as well so I'm a strong believer in that… when we have these strong emotions where we need to cry and shout and scream don't bottle them inside if you bottle them inside where they're gonna go you're suppressing them you're just pushing them further into your body and how are they going to come out they're going to come out in other ways like an autoimmune problem in headaches and migraines in gastroenteritis in problems that your body is telling you screaming for you for help… so just scream it out punch a pillow cry you know get those emotions out and us as women we it's easier for us to do that and I'm sure you know that Samia as well that as soon as we release those emotions there's a relief right there's like instant relief… 

SAMIA: Yeah… 

HYESHA: So I'm a big blue believer in that as well… 

SAMIA: I love those both of those aspects of what you just shared about how to deal with a situation like that… one ask for help and take some time out to take care of yourself… that's all I mean like so important... and it made me think also about like this story of a dad actually that I was reading a while back… I think he was maybe a single dad or something I don't know all the details… but he was also sharing about how he was feeling so overwhelmed and stressed out by everything that he needed to do and one of the things that he was really stressing about in the moment… he was talking to his coach and this coach is the one who was sharing the story with us later on… so the coach asked him okay tell me one thing that's like really frustrating or stressful for you... and the dad said well it's that I have to one of the things is that I have to drive my kid to school every morning before I go to work and we have to sit in traffic and sitting in that traffic to drive to school is just the worst 30 minutes because we're like stuck in this like car and there's nowhere else to go and things get loud and wild and crazy in their back… 

HYESHA: Yeah… 

SAMIA: And it just really is driving me crazy and making me stressed out… and so you know similar to what I was expressing earlier like one of the thoughts that he was having about the situation and why he was so frustrated and stressed by it was that he didn't have a choice about the situation that it was something that he had to do because if he didn't do it there was no one else to take the kid to school… and so the coach who was sharing this story he said I want you to first of all switch this thought that you don't have a choice...

HYESHA: I was just gonna say that Samia…

SAMIA: You have to...

HYESHA: You have a choice… 

SAMIA: Yes... and he was like you do have a choice because you could just choose not to drive your kid to school and if you make that choice then what would happen… and he was and the dad was like no I don't have a choice because if I don't drive my kid to school there's no one else who's going to be able to do that and my kid will you know basically be at home and not going to school and not grow up educated and all of that… and so the coach said so what so what if that happens you know like you know… aren't you actually making a choice a decision that it's more important to you that your kid get educated and go to school rather than you know not have that happen for your kid… so it's like you're making a choice that your kid going to school is more important than what you have to give up when you take the time and you know the you know the energy and so forth to drive him to school even if you don't want to... so you are making a choice… 

HYESHA: Yes… 

SAMIA: And it's based on your values and what you want for your child and I was like oh oh my gosh there's like a both for I think the dad in the story and for me as a listener and something like a light bulb went off… 

HYESHA: Went off…

SAMIA: Yeah… 

HYESHA: And also Samia the thing is I completely agree with you there it's a matter of perspective right it's all a matter of I don't have a choice to actually I do have a choice and the thing is okay yes he wants his child to be educated so he chooses that he has to go and take his child to school... those 30 minutes in the car he can change how he views them instead of like oh my god I don't want to be stuck in this traffic and road rage and ahh panic look at that opportunity to spend 30 minutes with your child before you go to work you know sing nursery songs ask him how his day went or how his night went ask him what he's planning on doing for you know for the day talk to the child like view that as a beautiful time to bond with your child… because I also have the same thing where we're stuck in traffic where I'm driving my kids to school and to tell you the truth I have road rage I really do that's one thing where I feel a little bit out of balance because I'm not in control of that… when I'm in control I feel I'm in balance but when I'm when my surroundings throw me out of balance I feel a little bit out of control but I've learned over time to just put on some songs that the kid likes you know and sing along with the kid because they love to sing they love to joke they love to just be with you know have daddy time you know and I get it being a single father you know there is guilt there there's resentment there... there's sadness there… and sometimes looking at your child going oh gosh I wish that you know having these negative thoughts does not help but then once we realize that wow I am providing an education for my child I am spending time with my child in this car before I go to work things start changing you know your whole energy starts changing and your whole perception starts changing and then the child also will go oh look daddy's in a happy mood daddy's smiling today I'm going to smile too you know when the child is very perceptive when he sees that daddy is angry people like oh daddy's angry I'm going to create a crazy fuss in the back too you know… 

SAMIA: Yeah… 

HYESHA: So the energy is it's electric so once the once the kid sees oh daddy's having a fun time we're singing songs together he's asking me how my day is you know like we're gonna we're planning what we're doing on the weekend or we're planning what we're gonna do when he picks me up you know and then it becomes beautiful and it becomes a beautiful daily practice of gratitude you know… 

SAMIA: Yeah… 

HYESHA: And yeah... So I do agree with you it's a matter of choice and it's a matter of changing your perspective of things… 

SAMIA: Yes yes… because oh my gosh I think that's such an important key because like you said when it comes to something like traffic it's not something you can control... so the only thing you can control in that situation is your perspective your mindset and if your mindset is that of I don't have a choice then you know of course it feels terrible because you feel out of control and that is such a… I mean one of the fundamental human needs that we have is to feel a sense of power and control in our own lives and so no wonder it's so stressful and frustrating when we don't have that need being met… but yeah... okay cool nice… Any last words of wisdom that you would love to share with us… 

HYESHA: Nothing really comes to mind right now Samia but I really appreciate being on this call and I really do hope that the tips and what we've talked about has helped at least one mother out there you know and I... I'm a strong believer in really really just believing in yourself… we have to believe in ourselves in order to move forward because who else is going to believe in us if we don't believe in ourselves no one else will…And we made a choice talking about choices to have a child I know there are some people who haven't made a choice and some situations have happened where they are in you know in a bad place where they are put in a position to take care of their child so my heart goes out to you in that front but... and even in that point you're also at choice... so we always have to remember we are always always at choice so yeah... thank you so much Samia…

SAMIA: Thank you so much I really appreciate your perspective and your wisdom and especially because you're coming not just from a place of theory but you're actually practicing and sharing from you know a place of real wisdom of you know like living through what you're talking about and teaching and sharing so I really appreciate I appreciate that... thank you so much for that…And for our listeners please know that we are adding Hyesha's links in the show notes so you can connect with her please check them out… and yeah until we connect next time I just wish you lots and lots of peace and joy...