Reinforcing Habits: Practical Tips for Busy Moms with Licensed Therapist- Tiffani Domokos

How many times have you found yourself frustrated when you set out new goals or new habits you want to maintain in your life, and then chasing after them just feels impossible? Long-lasting change is hard enough to reach as one person, but when you’re also juggling the busyness of #momlife, work, meals, diaper changes, school drop-off/pick-up, etc – any kind of change can feel absolutely draining! 

Maybe you’ve been here before or you’re currently in the struggle now – wanting to build new habits and yet something keeps holding you back or tripping you up... 

In today’s episode, we’re going to tackle this challenge head-on and empower you with tangible ways to reinforce the change you want to make in your life! 

Hi, I’m Katie – a mama, coach & podcaster focused on supporting eco-minded mamas to live sustainably: saving thousands of dollars and living a life that is in alignment with their core values so they can care for their families and their environment! I’m here today with Tiffani Domokos, licensed therapist and parent coach, and we’re so happy to have her back on the show to support you in reaching your goals! Let’s get into it…

Resources Mentioned in the Episode:

• Tiffani's website, monthly newsletter, and more: https://linktr.ee/tiffani.domokos
• Join our online community over in The Eco-Minded Mama Collective where we support each other with monthly challenges, giveaways, member makeovers, and cultivate lasting friendships while we raise our eco-minded families together! 

Transcript

Katie Kurpanek: 0:00

How many times have you found yourself frustrated when you set out new goals or new habits that you want to maintain in your life and then chasing after them just feels impossible, long lasting change is hard enough to reach one person. But when you're also a mom, and you're juggling the busyness of mom life, working meals, diaper changes, school drop off and pickup so many things, it can be absolutely draining to keep up with any kind of change. So maybe you've been here before, or you're currently in the struggle now. And you're wanting to build new habits, but something keeps holding you back or tripping you up. In today's episode, we're going to tackle this challenge head on, and empower you with tangible ways to reinforce the changes that you want to see in your life. I'm Katie, I am a coach a podcaster. And a mama focused on supporting eco minded mamas to live sustainably, saving 1000s of dollars and living a life that is in alignment with their core values, so they can care for their families and their environment. Today, I'm here with Tiffani Domokos, licensed therapist and parent coach. And we're so happy to have her back on the show to support you in reaching your goals. So let's get into it. Tiffani, for those who have not heard your previous episodes with us, or they just need a reminder about who you are, could you share a little bit of your story and just about yourself with us? Yeah,

Tiffani Domokos: 1:14

thanks so much for having me, Katie, I'm so happy to be here. Again. My name is Tiffani and I am a licensed therapist and a parent coach. I started my business in October 2022. After spending almost a couple of years, really struggling and motherhood, realizing that I need some more support. And that even as a therapist, I needed help, kind of getting into a rhythm of motherhood, changing some patterns in my behavior and in my parents meaning and unlikely that if I needed some support, that there were some other folks out there who needed support to so I created wholly living coaching and consulting with the idea of bringing our whole selves into parenthood is really the goal. Not trying to kind of fake it until we make it but really bringing our whole selves bringing all of that that we have that we're struggling with, into our parenting journey to heal more for ourselves, but then also for our kiddos.

Katie Kurpanek: 2:20

I love that the whole concept of faking it till you make it is like so prevalent in our society. And yet, it's not actually that helpful. Like, when my husband and I were dating, he used to say something that like we need to put our real foot forward and put our best foot forward, because we just like you have to show up as authentically as you can in order to make true progress in life.

Tiffani Domokos: 2:41

Yeah. Agree, Agreed, Agreed.

Katie Kurpanek: 2:45

Well, I am so happy that you are creating this incredible supportive community. I know I've personally benefited from it with some of your parenting coaching. And I'm excited to have you back on the show. So could you share with us right now? What have you found to be true for mamas specifically who keep trying to reach their goals? Whether it's like financial goals, they want to save money or change certain spending habits? Or maybe it's self care, because self care can get easily lost in motherhood? You know, maybe, it's living sustainably as an eco friendly whatever it is, if they keep falling short, is there something that you have found that commonly happens to trip us up?

Tiffani Domokos: 3:26

Yes, the short answer is that we likely have a reinforcement problem. So the the longer answer, and it's always longer, it's always more complicated. And individualized, right. This is the I'm going to speak in some generalities. But it really depends on your personality, the habit that you're trying to keep the habits that you're trying to get out of, because you can't really have one without the other, you have to give some things up to to gain some things in the habit world. And so in our, in our previous episode together, you know, I kind of walked through that that whole process of change. And so the final step of change is reinforcement is the brains way of creating that habit, which is basically your brain's ability to repeat the same thing over and over. And our brain needs some sort of reinforcement, hopefully positive reinforcement, that is the most effective form of reinforcement, but, but hopefully, hopefully it's positive, sometimes it's negative. But looking at that reinforcement individually, I often recommend a couple of things. One, going back to the why. Why did you get started doing this in the first place? Why? Why is this important to you? Why is this a value? So a lot of times we'll come up against obstacles with good things like you go on vacation, and you get out of the habit of going to the gym at six o'clock in the morning because there's Anything in, you're eating fun food, you're doing fun things with your family, that's wonderful. But your brain is not trained to come back from vacation and start into that habit again. And so you kind of have to repeat that process again, like, Okay, I'm aware that when I come back from vacation, I need to get back into this habit. remind myself, why do I like that? Why do I want to do that? Why is that a good habit for me and for my family. And then usually, I know how to do those things, right? I know how to get I know how to set an alarm and get up, I know how to how to get to the gym, like I know the pathway there, it's, it's then actually practicing it, and then getting back into that reinforcement. So the other thing that I find is that a lot of times we get into our own heads, and we get in our own way. So there's a lot of negativity, fail, I'm a failure. Right? And I've come up against an obstacle, we get to see it, I'm not good at this. And we sort of like throw our hands up and say, This isn't for me, I knew that this was a stretch, I knew that this was, you know, whatever that might be. And so I kind of help people break that down. Okay, what is that negative talk? Is it about failure? Is this about who you think you are? Is this about not believing that you can be who you want to be? Or, you know, you know, where does that come from? And, and we kind of peel back the layers. And as a therapist, I can kind of, you know, do that, but, but helping people kind of get to the root of what's going on in your head? What's going on in your heart? What's happening around you? What are those obstacles? And and once we kind of take ourselves out of the the obstacle category, and get ourselves into the encouragement category for ourselves, like, it's okay to be proud of yourself for just going to the gym one time this week after vacation. It's okay to be proud of yourself, for, you know, just doing one new self care habit this week, because you're out of the habit, and you're building it again. And so a lot of times we think like, oh, I built this habit, and now I fallen out of it. So now I need to give up. It rather than I built this habit, I got out of the habit, because my brain isn't trained to do the thing after this obstacle. So so then we look at, you know, how often are obstacles coming up? Give yourself space to brainstorm. So coaching is really great for that because you kind of have this dedicated space. I imagine that you talk with your clients too, about like, what's your obstacle, right? Like, where? Where are you coming up against that wall, where you can't quite get past it. And sometimes it's a logistical thing. Sometimes it's like, literally forget to take out the recycling every other week, like, I cannot do that. Okay, great. So let's talk about putting putting timers on your, on your phone, or asking someone else in your household to do those things. Because maybe you have too much on your plate and you took off, you bit off more than you can chew. So, you know, how can we problem solve for that and making space for brainstorming rather than judgment looking for solutions?

Katie Kurpanek: 8:27

Yeah, so I think so I'm hearing two things. It sounds like there's the first and probably most important part is the intrinsic or the internal sense of motivation, like getting to the root of why this habit or goal in particular matters to you. And then once you have that, like so clearly in the forefront of your mind, and you can keep coming back to it over and over as a reminder of why you value this, then it makes doing the work that much easier, or, or maybe not easier, but just you're more motivated to do it. And then it sounds like the second thing is like having an external, something like scaffolding, maybe or just support in order to actually make it happen. Like you said, logistically. So if someone has their their why down, like they know why this goal is so important to them. Then, what's that next step? Like what you know, you you named a couple examples like setting timers or asking for support within your home. But what are some other strategies or tools that moms could take that are like externally supporting them to actually reach their goals?

Tiffani Domokos: 9:39

I like to tell my clients to post things around and I know that is sort of like cliche and maybe a little cheesy, but it is in the moments when we are our best selves. We are centered. We are speaking kindly to ourselves. We have our values really clearly in front of us. If that is the time to write those things down, and post them around your house, whatever habit you're trying to make or break, right, posting things that remind you of that, who you are, remind you of your values reminds you to do the things that you want to do, right and why. And it's sort of like, it's like self coaching. So when you're in that, like really great space to be able to write all those things out, and, and then put them in spaces where you'll see them. You're allowing yourself and giving yourself space to feel proud about those things to follow through to have your own back to know yourself, and then encourage yourself, so that I mean coaching is not supposed to be long term schema therapy, it's not supposed to be for a decade, sometimes it is depending on who you are, and when what you're working through. And that's okay. There's no shame in that whatsoever. But when we can make our own voice, what is the encouragement? What is the thing that is keeping us going, and it's a lot easier to fall back on that when we get out of the habit or when we're having a hard time. And I think that's that's much more sustainable over time than relying on like, well, Kane, you told me to do this, or Tiffany tells me to do this thing, right? But like, this is my voice. This is my value that I'm putting out here. And nobody told me to do it. I'm just, I'm just kind of having my own back. So So that's one way I think getting other people involved. Not just in your home, but maybe in your neighborhood. So if you're if you're trying to be more eco minded, are there other parents or neighbors who are trying to do the same thing that they're putting out the recycling? And I can remember because I see their driveway every other week. Are there other people that you can kind of get signed up to come along with you for that habit?

Katie Kurpanek: 12:11

Hmm. Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up doing things in community is just I feel like almost always so much easier and and usually more fun. And there's like so much more just accountability and sense of like not being alone in the whole struggle. So I love that. I know that this is just barely like the tip of the iceberg when it comes to everything involved with like creating long lasting, sustainable change. And we're gonna be back next week with part two of this conversation. But for right now, you have been such a support when I've struggled with like particular changes that I have wanted to see in my own parenting of various stages of the toddler years so far, and I've been so thankful for your support. I'm curious as we bring this in for a landing, what are you currently offering that listeners could possibly benefit from? If I link anything in the show notes? What would you point them towards?

Tiffani Domokos: 13:09

Yeah, so I do a monthly ish newsletter, about change tips and tricks, usually pick kind of one thing to focus on. Usually something that has been impacting me during the previous month. So that's, that's my monthly newsletter, they can sign up at tiffanidomokos.com forward slash subscribe. I also have a whole bunch of freebies, that you can find on my Tik Tok and my Instagram so tifwhollyliving on Instagram and TifwhollylivingCC, tiktok. There are also some videos with like really quick and easy kind of shot in the arm change, change things or parenting things that are really accessible and hopefully really applicable quickly.

Katie Kurpanek: 14:03

Mm hmm. They totally have been I love following you on social media. I feel like it's just, it's like these quick tangible clips that are so supportive. So I'll have all of that all your contact information and resources linked in the episode description for anyone listening. And we will be back next week with part two of our conversation focusing on managing mama overwhelm when it comes to you know a lot of things but especially putting these kinds of changes into practice. And then over in the Eco minded mama collective. Our theme for this month is goal setting and setting a strong foundation for building new habits when it comes to the five pillars of sustainable living. I've mentioned those in earlier episodes. So if you are listening and you are ready to start making real sustainable changes in your life, meaning sustainable long term and for the earth, then this is so much easier to deal with in community and I would invite you to go to Check out our collective of eco minded mamas all supporting each other online to reach these goals, you can visit eco minded mama.com Or just click that link in the show notes to learn more and join us while we brainstorm and support each other. We're also going to have the privilege of having Tiffani, join us in our community for an even deeper like personalized q&a session within that community in April, so at the time of this recording, that's in just a couple of weeks, but we will be back for part two in this conversation. Thank you, Tiffani.

Tiffani Domokos: 15:32

Thank you