by alishagri3 | Jan 17, 2020 | Podcast, Podcasts
Today have another au-mazing being I want to introduce you to on The Dr. Ali Griffith Show. It’s none other than the incredible Dr. April Jones, aka Sunshine. Seriously guys, you can just feel her radiant glow in this episode.
She is the author of No Mess No Message – now y’all know we’re going to get into that! She’s also the co-founder of the Drifted Drum Company and a Medical Director with Pfizer Oncology.
Tune in to listen as we dive deeper into April’s story and her keys of wisdom on staying motivated and hopeful during difficult times.
To visit the podcast visit www.thedraligriffithshow.com
More about April:
Dr. April Jones is a speaker, author of No Mess No Message, and owner of The Drifted Drum. As an Oncology Medical Director with Pfizer, she holds an MBA and B.S. in Chemistry and doctorate in Pharmacy. Along with her many professional credentials, it’s her personal journey that makes her an authority on transforming pain into purpose and struggle into strength.
Dr. Jones is the mother of three boys and lives near Nashville, TN. Her oldest son is a cancer survivor, amputee and internationally competitive adaptive athlete. Through love, faith, hope and inner discovery, Dr. Jones’s story helps others heal while finding comfort and courage during the most difficult times.www.thedrifteddrum.com
Follow Dr. April Jones:
@livebeautiful_dr.mom on Instagram
@thedrifteddrumco on Instagram
Make sure to comment, leave your reviews, rate this episode, and subscribe to The Dr. Ali Griffith Show.
For more episodes of The Dr. Ali Griffith Show, autism parenting resources, business tools and coaching, free gifts and more, visit www.draligriffith.com
by alishagri3 | Jan 10, 2020 | Podcast, Podcasts
Malorie Nicole helps entrepreneurs and corporate executives that are wanting to grow create massive shifts in their life by removing their subconscious mental barriers and implementing energetic changes to create a fully fulfilled life. www.malorie-nicole.com
by alishagri3 | Jan 10, 2020 | Podcast, Podcasts
In this episode of The Dr. Ali Griffith show we have a dope interview with one of my tribe sisters from the Motivating the Masses family, Vickie Gould.
She is an incredible global leader extraordinaire. What I love about Vickie is that she has an au-mazing smile, she has a real authenticity, and she helps regular folks who want to share their message to become best-selling authors. So to all my aspiring authors out there, she is the ONE you need to be paying attention to.
Today we’re going to learn more about Vickie and what motivates her. So grab your pens and paper, and get ready to take notes on the bomb nuggets of wisdom that will help you accelerate your life into the next stage!
More about Vickie:
Vickie Gould is a book coach and content marketing strategist. As a result of her FAME Formula™️ for Legendary Impact, successful entrepreneurs write a best selling book that helps them bust through their current income ceiling, grow their reach worldwide, create impact and legacy and turn their readers into clients while they sleep.
Vickie is the author of 10 international best-selling books like Easy Writer and Standing in the Gap, and has also helped 100 others become worldwide best-selling authors. She has been seen on ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox, Entrepreneur.com, HuffPost, Tedx U of M and has been featured in virtual events along side great thought leaders like Lisa Nichols, Joe Vitale and T. Harv Eker.
Vickie lives in Michigan with her husband and three children, is obsessed with shoes, enjoys karaoke, dancing and cooking.
Follow her on social media:
https://www.facebook.com/vickiegouldcoach/
https://www.instagram.com/vickiegould/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vickiegould/
Make sure to comment, leave your reviews, rate this episode, and subscribe to The Dr. Ali Griffith Show.
For more episodes of The Dr. Ali Griffith Show, autism parenting resources, business tools and coaching, free gifts and more, visit www.draligriffith.com
by alishagri3 | Jan 10, 2020 | Podcast, Podcasts
Oh snap, it’s the first episode of The Dr. Ali Griffith Show of 2020!
In this episode, I’m sharing my key strategies on how to get CLEAR on your goals for the new year without getting overwhelmed.
Plus, I let you in on some of the exciting events I have coming up this year to learn more about getting clear on your goals and purpose that YOU are invited to, including:
For more episodes of The Dr. Ali Griffith Show, autism parenting resources, business tools and coaching, free gifts and more, visit www.draligriffith.com
by alishagri3 | Jan 7, 2020 | Uncategorized
Today on The Dr. Ali Griffith Show, www.thedraligriffithshow.com, you will hear about the power of “receiving” and techniques to ask yourself when in the midst of “emotional constipation”. For an individual consult with Dr. Ali www.draligriffith.com
Our guest today is Neal Phalora, a speaker and mindset coach. He helps high achievers become masters of their mind so they can achieve more in their lives without giving up anything to make it happen. Neal has reinvented himself multiple times from Medical School, to Corporate, to Entrepreneur. His biggest journey was a chronic illness that left him sleeping 3-5 hours a day. Which led to discover the powerful capacity of the brain over the last 6 year. He has combined 10 years of life coaching with brain science to crush limiting behaviors and beliefs…TheBrainWarrior(TM)Method. He is devoted husband and father to four year old twins.
by Adriana Santiago | Nov 10, 2019 | Uncategorized
Dr. Ali:
What’s up, what’s up, what is up? Welcome to the Dr. Ali Griffith Show: Mindset, Meditation and Motivation. So we have a special guest today and it is Dr. Laura Lewis who will be here sharing a little bit more about the psychology of mindset, meditation and motivation. She’ll be giving us some of her amazing tips and strategies that she’s used to help her through the challenges that we all go through life – she’s been through some also. So today we welcome you, Dr. Louis. Welcome to the Dr. Ali Griffith Show.
Dr. Laura:
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be here and talk about this important topic.
Dr. Ali:
So tell us a little bit, if you were to do that quick elevator spiel, tell me who is Dr. Laura Louis?
Dr. Laura:
So I am a psychologist and couples therapist. I teach couples how to stay together when life and the outside world is trying to pull them apart through stress and all the other things that couples just have to manage. So that’s my jam. That’s what I do.
Dr. Ali:
So we have a lot of listeners out there that are trying to figure out how the heck do I balance or manage being a mom, being a dad (for my few dads that do listen), figuring out how to manage having a job or a business, I’m going to start parallel-preneurs like myself and still get their business on and popping. So how do you create that balance where you don’t feel like if, and I don’t like to call it balance anymore, I know it’s harmony because we definitely can’t put the same amount of time into one thing than we do into the other. What is it that you tell your clients when they come in feeling like they are so stressed out they don’t know what to do next?
Dr. Laura:
So I have three major tips that I would recommend and the first one really starts with mindset. And there there is something called limiting thinking patterns. And so limited thinking patterns are any thoughts that we tell ourselves that are not in alignment with the future that we want to create. So we have to be mindful of limited thinking patterns and really focus on just speaking life into what you want to happen
Dr. Ali:
I’m all about mindset and that’s what we always speak about here on the Dr. Ali Griffith Show guys. If you have not by now make sure you are subscribed, make sure you’re following, share this with a friend. Someone’s going to need to hear this today because they may be going through that moment where they don’t know what to do and it always comes back to our mindset. If we are not balanced in our mind, if we not working on how to create that Zen, that place of you know, alignment with the best sense of self, then how can we handle everything else – which is the external world? What’s number two?
Dr. Laura:
Number two is self care. So busy moms a lot of times just taking care of everybody else, taking care of the kids, taking care of their extended family, taking care of like work and business and taking care of every single thing else except for themselves. Like a lot of times I see busy moms that are like, okay, I got the kids doctor’s appointments but then you haven’t gone to the doctor, so let’s have a doctor’s appointment on the list. That’s part of self care. Another part of self care is just having fun. Like once a week I have my massage therapist comes to the house and it’s my time to just relax and just get my back like straight and down and just get my spirit right. And my husband knows that like when I’m having that weekly massage, just come off me, give me my moment. And so maybe it’s not massaging for you. Maybe it is taking a hot bath, lavender candles, having some absence all in just letting everybody know when I’m in this town don’t come to this home. And so I just think that it’s important that whatever the thing is that you do, you get clear about it. You make time forward, you do it consistently and you don’t let others, things that get in the way of you taking care of you.
Dr. Ali:
Moms, you need to hear that. You know that too. We get so caught up in making sure everything else and everyone else has set up that we completely, completely, absolutely forget ourselves. I am a huge proponent for setting that time up for that massage. I am a huge, huge advocate for taking that time out for self. That’s why we do the meditation part of the Dr. Ali Griffith show. I’d like to call them au-meditation where even amidst the storm, even through the chaos, even through the cycles and the circles of life we can find, we align ourselves and go back to our breathing and really get connected to source just by ourselves in the midst of storms. Which many people have asked me, “Dr. Ali, I don’t get how you stay so calm and balanced?” When Zachary, my son with autism, is running around then business is going this way and my first job I make my business and all these other things that are happening all at once. Because of that realignment, because of finding some time for self care and self love and self alignment so that I can then go out there and pour into others. I love your tips. So give them what is your number three, magical number three?
Dr. Laura:
Okay. Number three is to ask for help. Ask for help. Sometimes I’m black woman and sometimes we get super woman syndrome. We put out on our cape, I got it, I’m good, I’m fine, I don’t need any help. But no, ask for what you need from the people in your life and be clear about it. Like sometimes I may see that people get tired. Sometimes as women we may get tired, exhausted and we need to just ask for help. Like, I need you to watch this, I need you to come here and cook twice a week, can you fold up the clothes? And sometimes we need to release the need for it to be perfect and just say, you know, “however the clothes get folded. I don’t have to have all the corners lined up. If you could just fold them the best way, you know how and put them away. I’m good with that.” And so I want to really encourage people out there to make sure that you’re asking for what you need. Don’t just expect for the person to know you’re tired. Tell them what you need and be specific about it. Kids up in the morning -can you get them dressed in the morning? Can you make break like these specifics?
Dr. Ali:
I love it and now this is the perfect thing for couples, for those who were the husbands and the wife or the boyfriends and the girlfriends or whoever living together, the girlfriend, the girlfriend, the boyfriend, and the boyfriend’s been out to live somewhere else. So whatever works best for you, but whatever way that you need to ask for help, ask for help and be specific. Be clear. Don’t expect them to read your mind. Like Dr. Louis is saying, we don’t want them to keep saying, “well you should know what I think, or you should know what I like.” No, the heck they don’t know. I don’t know what you want or like, why don’t you just tell me so that we could make this a lot easier and save us sometimes frustration and get back to the good stuff again? I learned with my mom, who has been helping me with co-parenting and co raising Zachary. Yes, Zachary’s dad is in his life. Yes, we do have a co-parenting relationship. However, with my mom who sometimes comes in and helps out, I had to learn to ask specifically for help because she knows me. I am that person that loves to throw a cape on. My cape may be very, very big or it might be quite invisible, but there is a cape on. That’s what we do as moms. We want to handle it all. Especially as autism moms, we think no one else can understand. We think we don’t want to give anyone that’s extra burden of taking care of our kid or having to deal with the breakdowns. They don’t know how to handle it. So I used to try and do everything by myself until my mom was like, “hey, why don’t you ask me, why don’t you let me do this?” And I’m like, hmm, I forgot people actually want to help. So that was one of the you just turn around or my parenting, even in my business when I learned to just say, “hey ma, can you just hop by just making some dinner on these days? Can you make sure that you know, if you’re here that you can help Zachary with homework on some of these days so I can see some clients at this time without feeling guilty?” So that’s that.
Dr. Laura:
That is so good. I’m so glad that you spoke on that without feeling guilty because we will throw some guilt on myself in a minute. Like I’m like, I should be, I need to be doing this, that and the third when sometimes we just need to sit down and let the people around us, the poor us. I know I’m so guilty of this, of like micromanaging all of the things when I just need to let, let the people around me, like my mom, like my husband, let them just support because sometimes I do need that support and when I don’t take it, that’s when the stress and the worry starts to come up. My cousin ended his life, and he was kind of close in age to me. And so I kind of felt like responsible. I felt like I should’ve known. Like I felt like, why didn’t I check in on him more? I went through kind of a depression of like just kinda beat myself up about like I should have asked, thought I have more time and Oh, I’m gonna call him. Oh, I’m gonna. And then before I know it, I hadn’t. And so I really had to just get in therapy. Like I had to enroll myself in therapy and that really made a big difference. But I had to just kind of first acknowledge that I wasn’t okay. You know, I really had to do that.
Dr. Ali:
That’s, that’s huge. And my condolences and I salute you. This is definitely one of those shows that I am so glad we have a psychologist here that can share with us the importance of when we are going through those moments and knowing that when we’re not okay that it’s okay to seek help. It’s okay to have that person that you can talk to, that person who just may not judge. That’s just right there to listen to kid. It can be your parents, it can be a licensed therapist, it could be a coach. It could be someone who just can make it easier and help to get through. So remembering that you are not alone and that when you ask for help, it actually gets rid of that guilty feeling. So many of us who walk around with this guilt of, you know, what will others think of me? Or they can’t see the other side of me that’s weak. Let’s just admit the fact that we’re all week. We have weak moments. We are allowed to cry. We’re allowed to not look like if we got all our ish together. It’s okay. And like Dr. Louis mentioned earlier, it’s okay when things are not done perfectly. Give yourself permission to not be perfect anymore so that you can throw that cave of guilt out of the closet and just be yourself.
Dr. Laura:
And you know what else Dr. Ali? I had to really give myself grace and you know, for this season I’m not going to be able to do it all. I’m going to have to say no to something. I’m a speaker, I love to speak, but I had to turn down some speaking engagements and it felt like a scarcity mindset came up. Like, “oh my gosh, if I don’t do this then…”, but I had to just be okay with just saying I’m ready for this season. I’m just going to take care of me, refuel my tank so I don’t be on side if the road, gas empty from just trying to do everything and that, that made a big difference.
Dr. Ali:
Yeah. So she’s leaving us with that amazing tips that au-mazing little tip that being able to say no, being able to – and my mom is so funny because she was over this morning and she was telling me how they asked her to do another job and how it’s so great to have a license. She’s a social worker and she just retired but always somehow getting back into a job. And she finally said no. She said it was so tempting and she finally identified the fact that because she’s worked all of her life, she has a “busy, be busy” worker mindset and she was like, I didn’t realize that this thing is actually a mindset. So she seeing me using no as a complete statement saying, thinking that I don’t have to tell them a reason why it’s okay. Just to say no was empowering for a woman who is close to 70, to be able to say no and feel quite okay with that. And I love the tools and tips that Dr. Louis shared with us today. She’s gonna tell us now how we can continue learning more about her and how if you need her, how she can provide support for you.
Dr. Laura:
So I am a couples therapist. If any of you are like, “I need some of this in my life, like I need somebody to help walk me through how I can say no? How am I to start our practice and self care? How am I to get some of this stuff off of my list and onto somebody else’s to do list?” If you need support with that, then you can connect with me. I have a membership program and it’s called, it’s at bit.ly/afterido and basically what you get is you get a Q&A session with me every month and then you also get an expert training every month. So inside the portal is already about 10 hours worth of training on communication on intimacy cause without getting good intimacy sometimes it can make us a little bit snappy and so we talk about that. We talk about that and especially communication because communication is one of the number one reasons why relationships don’t work out. It’s not finances, though finances is high up there. It’s communication. So that’s how you guys can connect with me.
Dr. Ali:
I love it. She landed it. You know we are so in alignment because we actually have not met each other. We met through other means and I love bringing you special guests because I always feel like you’re divinely assigned and divinely sent for whoever my audience is to listen to at that right moment. I don’t get concerned with, you know, the topic or the person and if they’re this or that, I just always feel he sends the right one.
Dr. Laura:
Mmhmm. That’s so good. I just want to say to you, thank you for creating a space for us to have dialogues like this because these type of conversations there’s not a lot of spaces that they’re being had, and so you have created a lane, a space for support to exist in a way that doesn’t exist in a lot of other spaces.
Dr. Ali:
Yeah. I started realizing that nobody was talking much about the combination of mindset and motivation, and they never tapped into the whole meditation aspect of realigning back to self and how to do certain things. And that any and everyone can meditate, that it doesn’t have to be all fun about it. It can be pretty simple and done anytime within the day. So I just created what I looked for that helped me to get through my crazy and my hectic after I created, people just started to listen and it became something that was for them. So the fact that your messages are so in alignment with what we speak about with what they need to hear right now just continues to prove that we need to just keep walking and doing how we were uniquely created to serve. And then when we do that alignment occurs. So guys, thank you for watching us, listening to us. Make sure you’re following us on all means of the podcast The Dr. Ali Griffith Show. If you are reading this on on my blog you know what to do, make sure you share it with other who just may need it. Make sure you catch us for more mindset, meditation, and motivation. Remember in all that you do be au-amazing in your thoughts, words and in your actions. Peace.
This interview is a transcription of my podcast, The Dr. Ali Griffith Show. To listen to this interview and other episodes visit www.thedraligriffithshow.com.
Check out some of my other recent blog posts:
How to Get Up from a Downwards Spiral
The Power of Self Love
3 Au-mazing Tips on How to Mind Your Business
by Adriana Santiago | Nov 3, 2019 | Uncategorized
Today I wanted to get really real with you guys and talk all about that downward spiral, that place in which sometimes we feel like if there’s no return. We all fall into that place at some point or another. While those downward spirals may not always be unavoidable, you CAN always find a way back out. So I’m sharing some of my personal stories and strategies on how I manage to get out of those dark spots in life so that you can too.
I specifically remember feeling this way when I first got the diagnosis with my son Zachary. He was diagnosed with being on the autism spectrum, and it happened around the age of 18 months to three years. I mean, within that time I, all I thought was “woe is me.” I felt the pain. I kind of reclused to myself. I wasn’t dealing much with the outside world because it felt like if my world just was going out of complete recognition. Well, it happened a few months before when his dad and I, we separated. We were like post-college sweethearts and we were together from a very, very long time. So after being married and having this child, you would think, you know, the white picket fence and the beautiful house and all the things that we imagined that then necessarily come into place.
That was the beginning of that downward spiral, that feeling of, “oh my goodness, who am I anymore?” I once thought myself as, “okay, I’m going to be this wife. I’m going to be this professional.” Like I had all these dreams in my head and being basically you ripped it out, and that began the downward spiral. Fast forward to later to our separation, that spiral continued because now I’m really questioning my value. I’m really questioning who I am as a person, and then here comes more. There’s the diagnosis. There is me seeing these signs of this beautiful baby boy that I just thought was going to be this one thing. You know the thing we have in our head of what they’re going to become? Then I was told that this was no longer.
So that began more of the spiral and what I really recall is just feeling lost, like I was a shell. I was walking around moving around in action. As a speech therapist and audiologist, I made sure he was getting what he needed. However, I was just an empty shell. I was walking around, I was smiling on the outside, but inside there was complete turmoil. Complete not knowing what my next steps were going to be, and almost complete at a space where I didn’t even like my life anymore to be honest.
The reason why I’m sharing this is because I know speaking to one of my clients this week who is in the process of going through that feeling of a downward spiral, and she turned to me and she asked me, “you know, Dr Ali, how do I get out of this?” And I just began to share with her my journey. A lot of people see what they see now, not knowing that we all have a story. We all have a journey. We all have something that we went through that we felt completely lost – like if the floor underneath us was just removed and we’re just like floating there like, “oh my God, where’s the floor?” And I said it’s is basically looking for the floor. And I helped her by helping her to understand my journey. So as I share my journey with you today, definitely let me know which ones resonated the most with you. I want to make sure this is interactive. I want to make sure you’re leaving your comments, sharing this blog with others, especially those who may walk around as a shell. We know that there’s more than meets the eye and sometimes just sharing it out with people so that they may not tell you what’s going on, but they’ll be able to say, “oh my goodness, someone out there is going through what I am going through! I feel like my life is just in a downward spiral and I’m gasping for air. I’m gasping for help.”
Tip Number 1: Recognize what your downward spiral looks like.
So the first thing I had to begin to learn was recognizing what does that downward spiral look like to me? And I began to see what signs, how it showed up. Now let me just warn you, hindsight is the best sight. So I’m coming at you from looking back into that journey to those of you who are in this journey. Now use this as an opportunity to just recognize, am I in that downward spiral? Am I in that space where I’m not sharing anything with anyone? I’m pretty much always by myself. I’m choosing to be by myself. I eat my pain. I eat or not eat because it could be the complete opposite. I just see myself emotionally eating, not even hungry or just trying to fill this void. Some people may feel the void with with extracurricular activities, whether it’s too much sex, too much smoking, too much of anything. Gambling, just looking for spaces, relationships being either being with too many people where you just don’t want to be by yourself, or the other end of the spectrum – being by yourself so much where you don’t want to be with people. For me it looked like I just withdrew to myself. I got to myself. I didn’t really want to see outside much. I would go out to work and then I would come back home and to even get to go work out or to do anything that was physically stimulating, just was not interesting to me. And I would sometimes just go in and go out, go to work, come back in and watch TV. Like that was it.
And my Zachary would engage. He would try to do things with me and I just was not even interested. I would engage a little bit with him, but since he was autistic, he’s already in his own world. So we were like two ships in the sea, like just two people, two things, two beings being with each other but not with each other. Like the connection and the communication was very, very minimal. If that’s you right now, then just identify that to me. Let me know. Let’s see how we can help you and give you some tools besides what we’re doing today. Some additional tools of how to move past this downward spiral. So the first thing like I mentioned, is identifying how does it show up in me? What does it look like? You know, what’s the physical manifestation of this downward spiral so that I can identify when I see it coming, because it’s just gonna come out of nowhere and guys, I can promise you a downward spiral comes back again. It’s not just the, it happens once and it’s done. We just have different periods of different triggers that that will reignite that downward spiral. That’s why I know everyone that’s reading here has had that moment.
Tip Number 2: Ask for help.
The second thing I began to learn was to ask for help. Once I began to recognize it, I began to tell my friends. I began to get coaching. I began to tell my mom like, “don’t leave me in here too long”. You know, it was a way of,” hey, if you see me do this, then you know, call me or come visit me or let me get myself back into my regular routine.” Making sure that I let others know not to leave me alone out here on this island basically. So hence the reason the importance of me doing this today was so that you know that you are not out there on that island. And if you do need to reach out to someone, definitely schedule a 15 minute chat with me at www.draligriffith.com/contact/ You’ll find access to my calendar and we can just talk through some of these things and help you to see what are those physical manifestations of what your downward spiral looks like. Number two, figuring out your help source, create your support squad. Some may need mental counseling, some may need spiritual counseling. Let’s just help get you clear on those next steps.
Tip Number 3: Use shifting exercises.
The last thing I like to say for me is I began to really use shifting exercises. I will always call them, you know, my shifters and a lot of the shifting exercises came from gratitude. And I’m super excited to invite you to my Mompreneurs on Fire 2.0 live event from March 28th and 29th in Brooklyn, New York. If you’re interested in learning some of these practices in person, if you’re interested in putting together your own personal development kit, it’s like what I want to call it your toolkit, then make sure you join us a go to www.mompreneursonfire.com to get your ticket and you’ll learn more about how to navigate that downward spiral when you’re a parent, when you’re still focusing on trying to maximize your own life. And for those of you out there who want to start moving towards creating profit and moving more towards using your purpose and passion towards prosperity, so all of that in a ball, we’re going to do that in person! So I look forward to you joining us.
So my first gratitude exercise is soon as I wake up, I make sure I write down or speak out loud, 10 things that I’m grateful for. That’s an immediate shift. Those are ways to help me to shift back into reality, even through the downward spiral. It helps me to realize that wait a minute, being present right now to what I am grateful for can help the process. Does it get rid of the process? Absolutely not. But if you begin to create a morning routine and you get to choose your morning with routine, some people would use prayer, some people use meditation, some may use all of the above. So think about what are you grateful for right now? I’m grateful for having this platform where I can just use my value and use my gifts of connecting and communicating and empowering to help you that are reading out there. So that’s what I’m grateful for. I’m grateful for air. I’m grateful for the ability to have the technology to do this. I’m grateful for the lessons I’ve been through, my life experiences, the good and the bad. I’m grateful to be able to be on the other side and sometimes through the actual process of what’s happening and being able to just come and share it with you so that you are not out there in that space feeling alone. So we got our shifters, we have our 10 things we’re grateful for. Some of us can use some of my on meditation tracks and go into that.
Another thing I love to use and I said it before, is visualization. There’s nothing like me imagining myself on that beach with that piña colada in my hand and just watching that water. It’s my happy place. It’s my safe space and it’s where I go to when need to shift out of things. The last, but certainly not least, is that one person in my life that always makes me smile and that’s my son, right? That’d be your main, it might be your mom, your dad, that person that as soon as they smile, it just brightens up your heart on the inside. Sometimes I’ll just visualize that we’re smiling or laughing. There’s something about the sound of laughter, you know, the full experience. Visualize a full experience where you’re smelling it, tasting it, you’re feeling it. Everything about this visualization just feels so real that it begins to shift you into gratitude and it begins to shift that spiral. Instead of going down, you start to come back up a little bit more towards the surface.
So I hope you enjoy some of what I shared today. Make sure you check out some of my other blog posts while you’re here. There’s so many different topics whether you need more mindset shifts, autism parenting advice, business strategies, and more. Leave me a comment and let me know which tip I shared resonated with you the most.
Check out some of my most recent blog posts:
Trick or Treating Tips for Autism Parents
The Power of Self Love
3 Au-mazing Tips on How to Mind Your Business
by Adriana Santiago | Oct 27, 2019 | Uncategorized
It’s almost time for Halloween! Zachary (my son on the autism spectrum) and I are so so excited. If you’re an autism parent like me you know that Halloween might be a little different for us than it is for neurotypical families. Our kids may not have the socialization skills to do traditional trick-or-treating, they might have sensory aversions that prevent them from wearing costumes, they might be considered “too old” if they’re still wanting to trick or treat in their teens.
Now this is one of my favorite holidays, and I want to make sure you can enjoy it with your child just as much as I do with mine. So today I’m sharing some Trick or Treating Tips for Autism Parents!
Tip Number 1: Practice beforehand.
The first tip is that you need to practice. The first thing you need to do is show them how to get ready. You want to do some dress rehearsals. Don’t wait until the actual day of Halloween to put your child in their costume. If they don’t like it, if they don’t like the feel of it – and you know our children are more sensory sensitive – then they are going to have meltdowns during Halloween because they aren’t comfortable. So what I do with Zachary is I always try to get his costume early, and I always try to keep him included in the costume decisions. So I have him pick out what costume he’s going to be. We try it on the day before Halloween, or days before Halloween, to get him used to the whole concept on what Halloween is. While you’re trying on costumes, you want to make sure you talk to them about what the rules of Halloween are. You want to make sure you give them a nice social story. Make sure you describe to them what’s going to happen for Halloween: you’re going to get dressed (if you have pictures use that to help them with the story), you’re going to go from house to house, you’ll get get candy and you can choose them. Just show them what it will be. During that time some of you may like to practice. Practicing always helps, so as they’re getting dressed act like it’s a costume rehearsal. During that rehearsal, you want to make sure that we try it on early, and we speak about it – what are the do’s and don’ts, it’s okay to go to houses with mom, it’s okay for us to do this house. You can tell them the names of the homes or show them the path.
Tip Number 2: Keep trick-or-treating short.
Then you want make sure it’s not too long, keep it short! Halloween doesn’t have to be long and dragged out. Guess what happens when we drag it out? Us parents are the ones that are having way more fun than our kids when we drag it out. I like to go early in the game. As soon as I pick Zachary up we head straight there. As soon as I pick him up from school that day, I take his costume, sometimes we get dressed in the car, and in the bright and day time we go trick or treating. Don’t wait for the night time y’all, go early!
Tip Number 3: Create a candy plan.
Then we also want to make sure we talk about what happens with the candy when we come back. Yes, we have to have a candy plan! And we need to discuss that early in the game, because we don’t want to wait until they come back home and they’re having this meltdown because you didn’t explain to them which ones they can have or how many they can have. Tell them beforehand they can have five, they can have three, they can have none. You can decide!
Tip Number 4: Have fun with it!
This is a time where a lot of us are nervous and we’re not sure how our kids are going to respond, so when we plan ahead of time and we practice we can take some of that anxiety out and have fun with it. For our kids that can not want to go out, don’t want to, or aren’t ready for it or are just not ready for dress up – how about you have them hand out the candy when the kids come? So now you can dress your home up and they can be the ones to hand out the candy when the bell rings and you can give them a few words to say to your visitors like “trick-or-treat” or “welcome to our home,” something to make it fun! Everyone can still take part in this holiday, even if they don’t want to dress up or go outside.
I also know in some places when Zachary was younger we would go into malls instead of going door to door on the street. So we were in a smaller but confined area, and especially around 3 o’clock it’s quiet, it’s not during the time when everyone is in there shopping. So going to malls or somewhere indoors might be helpful to you and your child as well.
So those are my four Trick or Treating Tips for Autism Parents! Definitely let me know if you have anymore tips that you’d like to share with me and other autism parents below.
Right now I’m hosting a Halloween Giveaway on my Instagram! One lucky person will win one FREE month of my Ignite Your Business Membership program. My handle is @draligriffith. Make sure to go enter for your chance to win!
Check out some of my other recent blogs with autism parenting tips:
Autism and Bullying: 3 Au-mazing Tips to Protect Your Child
3 Au-mazing Tips for School Wins
3 Au-mazing Communication Tips for a Successful School Year
by Adriana Santiago | Oct 20, 2019 | Uncategorized
Have you ever wondered what was it about our life that makes us so uniquely ourselves? The coolest thing I love about meeting people is that each person has different experiences in life. I love to go places where I can people watch and kind of make up in my head what’s going on in their lives. I definitely add different things as similar to what’s going on in my life so that they can kind of make it make sense to me, but sometimes I can get real fun with it. You know, I sit down and I think about what do people see when they look at me and sometimes you may see someone that looks very confident or you know, I’ve noticed something different about me is that I have learned to walk with my head held high after spending many years of walking with my head hanging low, like literally just looking down, avoiding eye contact. I made a conscious decision to be more present and be more aware of myself in space.
So a lot of this conversation today is going to go back to self because we are a society that have completely lost ourselves in terms of who we are, how we’re showing up. Sometimes we get caught up into what others are thinking or what others may perceive that we tend to lose ourselves. I mean myself included. I spent a majority of my life really giving a lot of cares about what anyone else perceived about me too. They think I was too dark, too skinny, too fat, too tall, too short, too ugly, too pretty. You know, you would go through these different places too – not too smart, not smart enough. Right? I don’t know if you felt this way where when you show up you get so nervous, or I’ve got so nervous that because of what I thought people would perceive of me, it would cause me to dim my own life and not be able to let who I truly am shine out. Part of my development, my personal development, especially going through my greatest challenges and reflecting back on myself, I realize that most of those times I lost myself in that relationship, in that situation, in that really trying time that I didn’t think I could actually come out of at that time. When I reflect back on it, most of what I would come back to is I would wonder what would others think of me. I mean, when I went through the whole diagnosis with Zachary being on the spectrum, I’ll be so honest, I was concerned, “well, what would others think of me? What if they think that I am a bad mom? What if they think that I caused the autism? What if they think that I didn’t know how to handle it? Would they even be able to embrace me with the changes or the differences that my child clearly exhibited when you were around us?”
Right? I began to realize that when I cared more about what others think, I completely breakdown. That’s where the breakdown began. Lived sat in space or countless time. You know I wish I can say it was a limited time, but for most of us it’s years. I mean we’ve spent our childhood with people telling us what we should do, how we should look, how we should act. That was creating a sense of what our self should be, when we actually had the ability to be still and connect with who we truly are. Those weren’t things that anyone was telling us when we were younger. I don’t know about you, but nobody was telling me. I sit down and I remember hearing that “you’re supposed to do that, girls are supposed to do that, black girls are supposed to do this, doctors are supposed to do that, moms are supposed to do that, wives are supposed to do that.” All these social norms of what things people thought that’s how we should be.
So my message today really, and I know I’m going around this in a lot of circles because today, I really wanted to come in and just really reflect on how perceptions can really mess us up. That’s the reality of it. It can really mess us up. It can have us where we completely disconnect from who we truly are, where we are. We can completely disconnect from others around us and most of it is based on what we think others would think. Instead of us realizing that forget what anyone else thinks and get back into the source of who I truly am. Now, I remember, if you go back to my first episode of The Dr. Ali Griffith Show I spoke about who I am and I spoke about me being an audiologist, speech pathologist an autism mom, a book about my journey towards becoming a coach and serving others out there, but it never really truly got to the who, the core of who I truly am. You know what I started to realize when I tapped back into who I truly am, and you can do this as you’re reading, is really think back to who your core self is without any change, without thinking of what others are going to do, without the reflections or the thoughts and opinions of others. But who you are when you’re at stillness, your soul, your core, the thing that you connect with within yourself – who is that? What does that feel like? Does it feel like piece? Does it feel like disarray, does it feel like chaos? And how do you get back to that stillness of self where you reconnect back to just being right? Just being present in all that is around you?
One of the things I really love about me is the fact that I tend to connect really well with people. I’d say that’s one of my gifts. How is it that I show up in the world with the ability to connect with others, but I had to realize that in order to connect with others, first I had to learn how to connect with myself. What does connecting with myself look like? It looks like being still. What does connecting with myself look like? It looks like allowing myself permission to mess up. It looks like embracing all of me, my outside, my inside, my ups, my downs, and most importantly, how I choose to show up in the world. How I choose to want to respond to certain things. I don’t have to do anything anymore because once I connect that to my core self, all I have to do is just be.
So if you’re feeling lost out there and you’re trying to figure out how do I create this whole self love? Self love really just has to do with being in existence with yourself and connecting with who you truly are without any impact that others’ thoughts or new or others’ reflections on you, but you just being and accepting and loving away. You just feel this warm sense of, “yeah, that’s me.” Now you’re not always gonna love you. You’re not always gonna have those moments when you think you’re doing amazingly great because you have to find ways of how to improve yourself. That’s what we’re here for. Each day we strive to be a better self, but as you’re striving to get better and you’re opening up that path back to deepening your self love just get back to your core of self – your core of what it feels like to just be being an existence. Embrace your connection with nature. Embrace your connection with with people. Embrace your connection with strangers. Embrace your connection with those you love and accept that the love for others is just going to look different, just like the love for yourself at times just looks different. Sometimes it looks super duper exciting, and bright, and full of color, and sometimes we’re going through moments where your love of yourself is not so colorful, where you’re just still questioning, “where am I? What do I want to do?” But that’s okay. That’s part of this development called life. That’s part of us growing to be our best selves each day, but yet loving the heck out of ourselves.
I know this is one of those blogs where I’m not going so straight into the points and all these things, but this was just a conversation literally that I’m having with myself that I’m inviting you in to. Let me know what your thoughts are. Let me know what connects most with you. Let me know how does this make you feel, and how do you feel about your self love? What’s your development going like? What is your journey of self love looking like? Let me know all of the above in the comments section! Until next time, be au-mazing in your thoughts, in your words, and in your actions.
This is a transcription of The Dr. Ali Griffith Show. If you’d like to listen to this episode and others you can do so at www.thedraligriffithshow.com. You can also watch episodes if you prefer visuals at www.youtube.com/draligriffith.
Check out some of my other recent blog posts:
3 Au-mazing Tips on How to Mind Your Business
Autism and Bullying: 3 Au-mazing Tips to Protect Your Child
3 Au-mazing Tips for School Wins
by Adriana Santiago | Oct 14, 2019 | Uncategorized
So today I wanted to talk a little about minding your business. Mind your business actually was a topic that was brought up before for the Power House of Four with three other au-mazing ladies that we have found each other in the personal development space. We had this show where “mind your business” just came up and it was a hot topic. So I’m like, you know what, let’s revisit that and now let’s add that Dr. Ali spin on it.
The concept came from being into everyone else’s business more than you are on your own. You know, some of you who love to help, help, help others, and then when it comes to doing your own stuff you’re like, “I have no more energy. I have no more power. There’s nothing left inside of me. I’m just going to take a nap.” I’m one of those because as a servant leader, it’s so, so important for me and I actually enjoy helping others. It’s what I live, breathe and just get excited about. It’s like hearing that you need help and “how can I support you?” is always my response. I’m thinking initially that that was what I needed to do to feel better about myself. I guess I helped myself through whatever downward spiral or whatever of rabbit hole I was in. There’s nothing like helping others to make you feel better. I was actually telling a client one of that that the other night when she was asking, um, how do I feel better? I was like, “help others!”
You know, there’s something about helping those that have less, the less fortunate ones. That’s the reason I have my nonprofit Smart Fit Fam. When I’m working with families with kids with special needs or I’m working with autism, it just makes me feel more grateful. But while I’m doing that, I’m, I’m minding my business and I need you to think about that right now as you’re helping others.
Are you putting in the same amount of energy, time and money into yours as you do for others? I mean, you’ve seen me jump in a plane to go to Lisa Nichols events or Steve Harvey’s event, or my different coaches in different ways supporting them. But am I also investing that time and money into myself, into my business, into my podcast The Dr. Ali Griffith Show (subscribe!), into this Mompreneurs on Fire 2.0 live event (get tickets!). The answer is initially no, but somehow I found the way. So let me let you know a little bit about how I found the way.
Tip #1: Be clear on what you want.
First I had to learn that if I wanted something I had to be clear on exactly what it is that I want, and if I wasn’t clear to surround myself with others that were moving in the same direction. So even though it may not have looked like I was minding my business, it was actually the behind the scenes building up the infrastructure, then seeing how it’s run for when I do my own. So it actually was minding my business still. It was just a strategic manner of supporting others while learning in preparation for where I was going. Now many of us don’t see us doing that and we don’t actually see the next five years or 10 years when we’re in the actual process. One of my gifts is the ability to see beyond the immediate, and as I’m supporting others, I support myself. As I’m helping my different coaches with either a live event, now I’m doing my live event and now I have some of the basic infrastructures of the back end of doing a live event and the front end of doing a live event from helping others. So it’s a way of still moving towards your dreams, minding your business from the back end side. So look at how you can now find a way that you can support someone else. That support can be helping in the same room, get coaching and being in alignment of someone else that is five to 10 steps ahead of you so that you are still always learning the process of where you want to go. That’s why you have to get clear on where you want to go. If you’re not clear on that, set up a time for us to talk one quick coaching session with me and we’ll get you clarity at bit.ly/chatcreate.
Tip #2: Focus less on what others are doing.
The second thing we want to do is we want to focus less on what others are doing. I like to call this putting my blinders on. A lot of us are very focused on what our friends are doing, what our peers are doing, what other moms are doing. Being a parent of a child with special needs, I had to stop looking sideways because every time I look sideways, I would realize that I am not in the same line with them. I’d probably behind! Zachary’s language development was always behind, his cognitive development is behind. I shouldn’t even say behind, it’s on his own time, right? But if I compare it to other 13 year olds, he’s not functioning at the same level as another 13 year old. He may be functioning at a 9 or 10 year old level. And by stopping myself from comparing it to others, I had to start learning to mind my own business. My business at that time was helping Zachary to be the best of him. It still is. It required me to stop looking right and stop looking left. I know some of you guys do that with me. I’m being blatantly honest, I have friends that may see the book, they may see me speaking, that means seeing all these things on the outside and being like “Ooh, I want to do that!” or “I’m not at that level so I’m just not gonna do it.” And I’m always like, “don’t look at me! You don’t know where I started from. You don’t know what I did. You don’t know what I’m still doing. Just focus on you. And if you’re looking at me, look at me in other words of how can I learn and grow? What can I borrow, use, ask for, create and then modify?” Focus on how is it that you can take what your dream is, your vision, your passion, your parenting to your own pace and your own level with the influence of others. We don’t want to be looking sideways, because when I look sideways, it slows me down for the forward movement.
I want you to realize how that impacts your business, whether it’s your personal business, your parenting business, and or your entrepreneurship business. I can’t wait to speak more about this at Mompreneurs on Fire 2.0, which is my two day live event happening March 28-29 2020 with mompreneurs or other aspiring mompreneurs who are gathering together to ignite their passion and purpose. They ignite better parenting skills and they ignite their profit and prosperity. Like how do you use that thing that you do so well and go out there and make some money off of it? It’s a time for us to be with other people who are in the forward movement so we can learn from them, but not focus on what they’re doing more than what we are doing. It’s that time where I specifically created time for us to be in alignment with where it is that we want to be as an individual, create a strategic plan, and then go out there and get it with support and accountability. That’s what that’s all about. Head over to www.mompreneursonfire.com to reserve your spot!
Tip #3: Invest in yourself.
The last thing I had to learn on, and this kind of leads into the same thing, is learning more how to invest in myself. I’m getting on a plane, investing in coaching, investing in masterminds, investing in all of these programs that have elevated my life to such an exponential level, including the ability to just jump on podcasts with you guys, or to speak, or to be an author, or to help parents. All of that required me investing in more and that’s my whole gamut towards success. It’s how I choose to use my time, my money, and my energy and learning how to maximize that in whatever aspect I have – whether I don’t have enough time, or I don’t have enough money, or I don’t have enough energy. In my head sometimes I’m saying “enough!” and that’s what you may be thinking too – “I don’t have enough. I don’t have enough money. I don’t know where I’m gonna find the time. Girl, I’m so tired. There’s nothing else I can do. That’s time, money and energy.” By the way, we all have some. We all have the ability to find some. Like if you were to say that today’s your last day and you need to find $5,000 so that you can live for another 50 years, you would go out there and make it happen, right? If you needed to know that you had to maximize this two hours so that you can now put some time into finding out what is the cure to something your mom or your son or your family may have, you use that time to create what you need to have. You’ll make that time, right? And then if you’re tired and you’re in that gym class and you just want to give up on yourself and you’re almost on the floor, but then you realize that if I worked out 15 more minutes it would make me live 15 more years – I bet your tail would get up and give yourself 15 more minutes! It’s learning how to find the importance and the why behind the creating the time, creating the money, creating the energy so that you can maximize what it is that you can get. And as for those excuses… I’m sorry, they lack, I’m not taking it. I’m not even having you give it to me. If you come to Mompreneurs on Fire 2.0, I’m going to just let you know that ain’t gonna work. I have all the excuses, and I’ve heard all the excuses, and I’ve pretty much used all of them. So we’ll be in the same boat. Maximize it for 2020.
So these are some of the things that I had to learn along the way, and I hope throughout this process that you are writing this down, that you are leaving your messages in the comments below, that you by now you’ve sent a friend over here to read this, because sometimes we just have to learn how to mind our own damn business! For more business tips and tricks, autism parenting resources, free gifts, and more, take a look around at www.draligriffith.com.
Check out some of my other recent blog posts for more advice!
Autism and Bullying: 3 Au-mazing Tips to Protect Your Child
3 Au-mazing Tips for School Wins
3 Au-Mazing Communication Tips for a Successful School Year
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