Finding Success by Letting Go: New Year’s Resolutions for Parents

Welcome back to the Pulling Curls podcast. On today’s episode, Hilary shares her experience with New Year’s resolutions and how she’s learning to let go of things that are out of her control. She discusses the importance of setting boundaries and rationing our attention to focus on what really matters. Stay tuned for some valuable insights on navigating the challenges of 2024.

Find it here on Apple or Spotify Podcasts

Big thanks to our sponsor Family Routines — if you’re looking to make your home life easier check it out!

Links for you:

Timestamps:

00:00 Detach from outcome, focus on what matters.
04:04 Setting boundaries for attention and work goals.
07:11 Struggling, learning, and letting go in 2020.

Keypoints:

1. Hilary Erickson discusses her struggles and realizations about New Year’s resolutions for 2023 and how it impacted her personal and professional life.
2. She talks about detaching from the outcome and the impact of reading “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” by Mark Manson.
3. Hilary highlights the importance of identifying who should invest attention and effort into a problem, setting boundaries, and entrusting certain aspects to faith or the universe.
4. She shares her struggle with constantly trying to solve problems for others, emphasizing the need to recognize whose problem it truly is.
5. The concept of not pushing all the time and learning to let go is discussed in relation to exerting effort and then allowing things to unfold.
6. Hilary uses the analogy of flipping the baby in pregnancy to illustrate the idea of pushing for a little bit and then letting go to see where things go.
7. She delves into the realization that there is a limit to the amount of “f*cks” one can give, advocating the importance of rationing emotional investment and not expecting to give beyond one’s capacity.
8. Hilary empathizes with the challenge of learning to let go and admits to her struggle in this area, while encouraging listeners to join her in working on it.
9. She invites listeners to engage with her on Instagram or via email to share advice and insights on the topic.
10. The episode closes with a preview of upcoming episodes on prenatal classes and sleep, and Hilary’s request for reviews, shares, and subscriptions to support the podcast’s growth.

Producer: Drew Erickson

Transcript

[00:00:00.110] – Hilary Erickson

Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Pulling Curls Podcast. Today on episode 216, we are talking about New Year’s resolutions. So let’s untangle it.

[00:00:08.620] – Hilary Erickson

Hi, I’m Hilary, a serial overcomplicator. I’m also a nurse, mom to three, and the curly head behind Pulling Curls and the pregnancy nurse. This podcast aims to help us stop over complicating things and remember how much easier it is to keep things simple. Let’s smooth out those snars with pregnancy and parenting untangled, the Pulling Curls Podcast.

[00:00:29.550] – Hilary Erickson

Before we get started, this episode is sponsored by Family Routines. Honestly, while I’m excited to get organized at my house, I really want to get into good new routines that help support everyone in the family at the beginning of the year. So find family routines either in the show notes or at pullingcurls.com.

[00:00:53.240] – Hilary Erickson

I usually have giant resolutions. I’m super excited for all the whatever that I’m going to do in the upcoming year. But I have to say that in 2023, I really struggled. My business was struggling. I was having a hard time connecting and really finding traction in a lot that I was doing. And I got to a point, I think I was crying in the car and I just thought, do I just have to not care? Like, should I just not care? Because I’d watched some manifesting videos about how you have to let go of the outcome in order to really succeed. And I was like, well, how do I exactly do that when my family needs to eat from my business to pay our mortgage and buy our groceries and things like that. So am I just not not to care?

[00:01:35.090] – Hilary Erickson

And honestly, the answer was yes. Mid year, I just made the point that I was like, I’m going to stop caring so much about the outcome. Hopefully courses sell. Hopefully people love me. Hopefully I make some videos that help them out. But I can’t keep trying to work a 60 hour work week, hoping that these things are going to happen because I’m going to drive myself insane if they don’t.

[00:01:58.780] – Hilary Erickson

So I really had to detach from the outcome in order to actually find some success. And during this time frame, I read The Subtle Art of Not Giving Up an F by Mark Hanson. I’m just going to use the word F. I hope that doesn’t bother you guys, but I think it reminds us. You can substitute the word attention or anxiety or whatever you want to use the word. We would normally use the word F for. But I really enjoyed this book and I want to tell you three things that I learned and I’m trying to apply in 2024 and these are my biggest resolutions to stop giving all my F’s. Okay, for me, it was so important to realize what I had control over and put my F’s attention in those areas and let the rest of it fall to whoever was in charge of it.

[00:02:47.450] – Hilary Erickson

So that takes place a lot in adult children. They would have a problem and I would get so wound up in it. I would think about it all the time. I would try and work on it for them. But in reality, they needed to give more F’s about the problem, and it was their problem, not mine.

[00:03:04.400] – Hilary Erickson

And I see this a lot in people with adult kids. They’ll put a lot of effort into a problem that the kid maybe even hasn’t talked to them about or even doesn’t even know that it’s a problem. But the parent is super invested that this is a problem. So I would just encourage you to think about whose problem it is. And sometimes, honestly, my problem is God’s problem. I want to get a book deal. And so I’ll put that as God’s problem because I don’t really have the skills to create a book deal or to find the people that need to do a book deal. So I’m hoping that God will take care of that.

[00:03:37.890] – Hilary Erickson

I, on the other hand, am writing lots during the day. I’m creating a platform that could sell books really well. And so that’s my part. Those are the Fs that I can give, whereas I’m hoping that God will just open up the things for me so that I can succeed in that if that’s what the plan is for me, because that’s not always the plan.

[00:03:56.810] – Hilary Erickson

But the key on this one is figuring out who is supposed to give the Fs about it and then setting the boundaries that like, okay, I’m giving this away to God or the universe however you want to describe it, or this is the effort that I’m going to put in and then I’m going to give it to God or the universe, or it’s not even my problem anymore, I should stop giving so many Fs about it.

[00:04:17.410] – Hilary Erickson

So setting boundaries about how you’re going to give your attention is one of my huge goals for 2024, something I’m working on. I am not great on it because I’m a problem solver and I think I can solve everyone’s problems better than they can, which is not my best characteristic, I got to say.

[00:04:33.050] – Hilary Erickson

Okay, one of the other things I thought of is that I don’t have to push all the time. I can put in my F’s, my four hours of F’s or whatever, and then it’s going to the universe. Whereas I would constantly be thinking about how I should reshape my sales page to make more sales. It would be constantly in the back of my mind. I would shift up the sales page daily, which honestly is a really bad idea, because then you have no idea if something worked or didn’t work, or it’s just like the day. I sold five one day, three the next. It doesn’t mean that I did anything to assist that.

[00:05:06.380] – Hilary Erickson

So putting in my effort and then just letting go. I was talking the other day about versions in a post that I was writing on the pregnancy nurse, and that’s where they flip the baby from bum down to head down. They’re trying to get the baby’s head down so that it can be a Vertex delivery. And I was saying about if it hurts a lot is that they will push and then they just let go and see where baby goes. Because they can’t really force baby into the right spot. Babies sometimes have to just fall into the right spot.

[00:05:37.140] – Hilary Erickson

So I think that’s true a lot in our lives, is that we push for a little bit and then we let go and just see where the chips fall. Not very good at that. I’m working on it. It’s one of my resolutions, but I’m not going to give all the F’s to letting go. I’m just like… Sometimes I feel like I would put so much attention into letting go, I wasn’t letting go. So this is obviously something that I have to work on. Tell me if you’re with me over on Instagram.

[00:06:02.020] – Hilary Erickson

Okay, the third thing that I learned from the subtle art of not giving an F is that I only have so many F’s to give because I think in my mind I thought I can pull F’s out of thin air. It’s like how the Duggers, say, somebody said, one of those TLC shows said that love multiplies, it doesn’t divide. And I thought I think I thought that about F’s. But in reality, really to stay healthy, you really only have so many F’s that you can give, and after those are done, then you’re out of F’s. And so I always like to keep a few F’s just like in the margins in case I need to give them out for something that happens.

[00:06:45.300] – Hilary Erickson

But I can’t care a hundred % about everything. I just can’t. And giving myself that allowance and just knowing that, that is an eternal truth for all of us that we only have so much that we can give. And so we have to ration it out to what really matters for us.

[00:06:59.040] – Hilary Erickson

That probably my ultimate goal for 2024 is to ration them out, not expect that I can give extra F’s when I really don’t have them. So a lot of it is just learning to let go. It’s not something that I’m good at, something that I’m working at. Some of that is faith that I’ve put in my effort, the effort that I have versus just like worrying, which I think in my head, I think that that’s effort, but it is not effort. So doing that and then just learning to let go.

[00:07:29.270] – Hilary Erickson

I don’t know if any of you guys are on the same page with me, but that’s something that I’m really working on in 2024. And I’m encouraging you guys to work on it too. If you guys have any advice for me, I’d love to see you over on Instagram where we can chitty chat about it or email me. You can do whatever you want. But learning to let go is something that I’m really working on in 2024. And I hope this episode gave you guys some ideas on how to work on it in your life too.

[00:07:52.060] – Hilary Erickson

Stay tuned. We have some great episodes coming up next week. We are talking about prenatal classes and what the studies show that they can do for you and your birth. It is Crazy Town, what a prenatal class can do for you when you look at the studies. And the week after that, we have a sleep doctor coming on. He’s like a neuroscientist about sleep. And he not only gave me some tips about babies and kids and getting them asleep, but also moms because sleeping is not something that I’m great at. And he gave me some tips that have actually helped. So I can’t wait to see you in there.

[00:08:21.920] – Hilary Erickson

Thanks for joining us on the Pulling Curls podcast today. If you like today’s episode, please consider reviewing, sharing, subscribing. It really helps our podcast grow. Thank you.

Keywords:

New Year’s resolutions, 2023 struggles, manifesting, outcomes, The Subtle Art of Not Giving an F, control, problem-solving, boundaries, effort, sales page, letting go, attention, rationing, faith, prenatal classes, studies, sleep doctor, neuroscientist, babies, kids, moms, sleep tips, reviewing, sharing, subscribing, parenting, pregnancy, nurse, family routines, organization.