From spending Christmas eve in the freezing cold at the clinic, to spending Christmas Day with my lovely Mommy, to binge watching Death in Paradise, to setting up my Bullet Journal for the New Year, for this Season Finale of Season 2, I give you a small glimpse into what my holiday season has been like for me and my family, and what I am doing as I prepare myself for what 2021 has in store for me, and not forgetting to give you a few nuggets to help you be better prepared for 2021.
Transcript
[27 Minutes Read]
Hello, and welcome to Mother of Abundance.
The place where ambitious, caring mothers find information on how to live your best life. So whether you’re a motorist who’s growing a business, climbing the corporate ladder, studying for a qualification or an at home mother, while striving to be the best you can be, you’re in the right place. I’m your host, Xina Gooding Broderick.
Hello Everybody! Welcome back, if this is not your first time, and if it is your first time, welcome. I have to say a huge thank you to everyone who listens. And for the messages, the positive messages that I’ve been receiving, about you enjoying the show, and also the positive messages that you guys have sent about the show notes and how handy they are. I thought I’d do that for people who are hearing impaired. I like my stuff to be as accessible as possible. And also, I have a varied learning style. So I like reading things. I also like listening to things. So I’m a huge, I think I’ve mentioned tons of times before, I’m a huge podcast consumer. I love listening to my radio plays. So I like listening, and I love reading. And whenever I buy a Kindle book, I always, if possible upgrade to the audible version of the Kindle books. So I can switch between reading and switch between listening. That’s got a lot to do with why I decided it would be quite nice to people who are hearing impaired or even if you’re not hearing impaired, you’ve got the option then, of either listening to it, or reading it. So yes, you are very welcome.
And also I’m very excited because I’ve had over 1,500 downloads of the show. So continue listening, continue subscribing, and please, sharing is caring. So be sure to share this with any other ambitious loving mothers, that you know, who would be able to benefit from listening to this kind of show, where it’s okay to be ambitious. And it’s okay to be huge loving fans of your children and your loved ones. I welcome the combination here. I welcome the combination.
This is a space where you don’t have to suppress being ambitious, and you don’t have to suppress your mothering. That’s not what we do here, we celebrate being an ambitious loving mother. Okay, so today, I wanted to talk a little bit about how this past season has gone for me, the festive season, which included Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa, and New Year’s.
Okay, so on the run up to the season, I knew that I wanted to get as much work done for both Mother of Abundance and my family business, Gooding Funeral Services. And also the two charities that I chair, which are Mill Hill chapel, and Leeds Bereavement Forum, I wanted to make sure that if there was any work done for those, it was done, it was dusted, it was clean cut, it was sorted. Some of that work was done, the vast majority was done. But I have got a way, a particular way of working. And my copyright, a friend, Lisa Slater, she’s like, “Xina, you plan all of these things, what’s actually going to get done?” I piled, I pile loads on my plate, and I get as much done as possible. I pile loads of work on my plate, but I don’t, I don’t give myself a hard time if I don’t complete some of those tasks. Because I know that unless I go into it thinking, right, I want to get this, this, this, this, this, done, half of those things will just fall to the wayside. And we’ll have no focus on them whatsoever. If at least they are on my To-Do list or a list somewhere, it might not be on the to do list for that day. But I might have, I tend to have overarching projects, and work, and chip away slowly at the things that need to be done.
But if some of the things don’t get done, because I get loads done anyway, I’m not hard on myself. And you know what, I say this all the time, I do not skimp on my sleep. I try not to skip meals. Sometimes I do, but that might be because I’m doing five to intermittent fasting. So I fast two days a week, a standard anyway. So on those days I work slightly differently around food. But generally speaking, I’m not going to go hungry for work. Nope. And I am not going to lose sleep for work. No, because that’s counterproductive. Because I want to remain productive, I make sure that I look after my mental health and I look after my physical health, probably could do a bit better on the physical health in terms of exercise, but where it comes to eating and sleeping, I am an expert at the two. [Laughs] And I recommend that as well.
So you know, I do say I keep it real. And that is me being authentic. I could really do with doing a lot more exercise than I do. But when I do exercise, I really love it. And I like yoga. And I like, I love really long walks. So, yeah, when I make time for that, it happens, just like everything else that I want to do. But certainly my sleep and my eating, I eat healthy food, healthy meals, I do have starch thrown in there, from time to time. I have quite a balanced diet. But I’m happy with the way I eat. I eat plenty of fruits, plenty of vegetables. And I love my soup. So, and I like having my fluids in the morning and all the rest of it.
So the point I’m making here is that I ramped up my work, and I made sure that even though I was tired, sometimes I go to bed late, I would wake up later. That actually didn’t work for me very well. I should have stuck to going to bed early and getting up earlier. Just because actually whether I like it or not, I am more productive early on a morning. I get tons done early in the morning. I can finish lots of stuff early. But yeah, that’s, that’s the way it panned out this season. By the time school broke up for the Christmas holidays, I had done so much work. But there was still a few things that were outstanding. So I haven’t really done as much on my Masters as I wanted to. I’m not crying over that. I am focusing on my Masters tomorrow.
I’m recording this on Tuesday the 29th of December. So, although I am going to be talking about my plans for New Year’s, it’s not actually happened for me yet, but I’ve, but I can tell you what I’m expecting for this new year anyway.
So yeah, in terms of how I ramped up, worked to clear my plate, make sure that I took things easy, I can tell you that my huge goal was to relax. And this is how I like to do my holidays, my school holidays. And it’s a huge tip that I have for you. If you are self employed, try and work around the academic year. Ramp up before holidays if you can, so that if you’ve got anything to do, it’s really minimal. And if you fall asleep whilst watching TV with the children and you forget to do a work task, it’s not going to be a big deal. That’s the way I like to do. I like to do my holidays, full, full, full, full on.
So I know that the Christmas holiday that’s just gone. I wanted to ensure that I did some hardcore relaxation. So I had been watching tons of what I call Murder Island, which is “Death in Paradise“. One of the reasons I love it is because I love murder mysteries. I’m a huge Agatha Christie fan. I love Poirot. I love Miss Marple. Anything Agatha Christie, let me have it. I also love Sherlock Holmes. I really like that format. And I like it because it’s not too grizzly. I don’t really like, I don’t like horrors. I don’t like grizzly, grizzly murders and stuff like that. Yeah, that’s not really my cup of tea. I like the comedy aspect of Murder Island or Death in Paradise.
And I really love the Caribbean backdrop. I absolutely love it. It’s just so far removed from Christmas in England. It’s not, you know, the weather is great, even though they’ve got like a couple hurricanes and storms and stuff that’s very tropical, but I liked being removed. So I love doing that. I also loved listening to my son reading, sort of ease into is not really my cup of tea, but he did get Diary of a Wimpy Kid. So normally it’s Captain Underpants. I’m not a huge fan of Captain Underpants. But he’s been reading the latest book in The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. And he’s been reading that to me. And that I really quite like.
As I said, this particular episode is being recorded on Tuesday, the 29th of December. So it’s not quite new year’s yet. So I’m going to tell you now what I have planned for the rest of my week as we approach New Year’s Day. So today I have chilled out. Today I have spoken at length to my beloved sister, Gay. I have been speaking to some of the ladies that I’m in a mastermind group with, we tend to check in on each other every single day. And it’s just so easy, honest to God. It’s not like work at all. And even when I speak to my sister, whether it’s, how Christmas went for her, or it’s what’s going on at the funeral parlor, it again, it’s not like work. And that has a lot to do with the fact that I love the people I’m speaking to. Yes, it makes a huge difference. And they’ve got the same work ethic as I do. So they’re focused on their career goals. They are focused on their business goals. They are really family oriented people. So it makes things really easy.
I also spoke to a cool lady, who is, she’s one of the organizers of the Caramel Film Club. She’s a writer and a performance poet and her name is Be Manzini. A shout out to Be Manzini, because I had a fantastic conversation with her, which even included stuff, you know, going back over 20 years when I used to be a co-host of a show called “Black Pepper” in London. And again, a shout out to my old University alumni, Southbank University and the fantastic things that went on there from the African Society, Black Pepper performances, creative arts, and this is where I can say quite confidently that I’ve had a professional speaking career that is over 20 years, and I’m dating myself here, I’m aging myself here. But yeah, I used to that’s where it kind of started, was with me speaking at the Black Pepper show, all those years ago, which I loved, and that was a fantastic conversation that I had on the telephone. Can you believe that? Telephone calls. I’m more into WhatsApp and messaging and stuff like that. And Be just called me. And it was a wonderful, wonderful conversation.
I’ve also put some oil on my scalp and on my locks, put a plastic bag on my head wrapped my hair up and I’m doing a hot oil treatment. The oil is in my hair as I record this. And I am not washing it out until tomorrow, where I’m going to be making some liquid African Black Soap. So I’ve got the block of Black Soap here, already. I just want to make it into a liquid version so I can wash my hair with it. And I’m really, really looking forward to that. So tomorrow is kind of, sort of, a pamper day, but it’s also a Masters day. So I want to just really throw out my masters. And I’m here recording my podcast as well. So that on Thursday, and Friday, I am just going to be relaxing. Relaxing.
Looking forward to my mother coming up for New Year’s Day. She’s such a cutie pie. Oh my gosh. My mom is so cute. My mom is so cute, that even my nine year old, who’s also really cute, even he knows that mommy is cute. And he calls her “Cute Grandi”, because she’s just so cute. And it’s going to be great seeing her and hugging her and kissing her, because we’ve made sure she stays in our bubble, because she lives on her own. But we’ve been really quite sensible around the whole COVID thing and making sure that we’re washing our hands, that we’re wearing masks and we’re keeping contact with everybody else to an absolute bare minimum. Because I am protecting my mother, everybody. I need my mommy as big and grown as I am. I still need my mother and I want to know that, God forbid, if she got ill, it wouldn’t be because of me being careless.
So spending Christmas Day with my mom was absolutely fantastic. I’ll tell you something else that happened. On Christmas Eve, unfortunately, my mother took a fall. And we were able to go over and you know what, it’s funny how things happen, because I had bought the Facebook Portal in the hope that I’d be able to watch a Netflix show with my mom. I was hoping to be able to watch Murder Island with her actually, we’re both huge fans of it. It didn’t work out that way because you can’t watch Netflix on portal. If any of you guys know how to watch Netflix with somebody on portal, please tell me. Just write to me at hello@motherofabundance.com and tell me how to watch Netflix. Murder Island, which is also known as Death in Paradise with my mother cause I would love to be able to do that.
Anyway, I finished watching an episode of Murder Island and decided, oh, I’ll WhatsApp Mommy, see if she’s free, we can watch Murder Island together. And she didn’t respond straight away. So then, at the end of my episode, I thought, let me just phone her and find out if she can watch this next episode with me, because like I said, I’ve been binge watching, binge watching that show like nobody’s business. This is part of my downtime. Yep. So when I phoned her, she said, “Oh, I’m on the floor. I’ve just taken a fall.” And I said, “I am coming.” So we, me and my husband, Peter, we got ready and went straight down to my mom’s. Checked her over. We didn’t fancy going into A&E, because luckily the fall wasn’t too serious. She had not broken anything. I think she twisted her knee as she was falling. But she’d not torn any ligament. She was still able to rotate her foot and all the rest of it.
Phoned 111. And they said we could go to an out of hours, surgery. It’s like a clinic. It’s like a walk-in clinic. So we just, you know what, we packed up some tea, made some nice hot tea, but made sure that the temperature was correct. Let me tell you this, ladies, if you’re tea people, like I’m a tea person, all you need to do, you put a third to a half of that water, to cold water and you’re sorted. I’ve got a 750 milliliter flask. I put 300 milliliters cold water in. And my tea is perfect, every time. Okay, so we packed that up, we made sure our iPads were charged, because we were going to watch, you guessed it, Murder Island on Netflix, while we were down at the walk-in center, just latch onto my phone Wi-Fi, and do that.
And my mom was saying, “Oh, I bet I’ve ruined Christmas Eve. And I was like, “Do you know what, Mommy? You’ve not, you know, cause we’re together. And I’m able, I am able to escort my beloved mother and be with you.” And she said, “You know what? You’re right. You’re absolutely right.” And I said, “This is not nice. It’s not a pleasant experience. I’m not putting words into your mouth or anything. I can’t imagine it’d be wonderful, you know, taking a fall and hurting your knee. However, you have your daughter with you, who really wants to come with you to the walk-in clinic, not pretending, not, you know, trying to hide my disappointment. No, I actually genuinely want to be with you, when you go to that walk-in clinic. I want to watch Murder Island with you, Love. And I want to be nosy and hear what the doctors say about my mother and see how I can make sure you have a fantastic Christmas Day with me. And some people might take a fall over this period or any other point in the year and they’ll have no one to go with them, Mommy. So let’s just enjoy each other’s company.”
And you know, when I got down to the clinic, they said that I can’t go in with her. But I was able again, lucky, lucky, lucky, able to call my husband back and ask him to come and wait with me, because it was freezing cold. Oh my goodness, it was so cold outside. It was so cold. But again, something else to be grateful for. I say in life, if you get lemons make sweet, delicious lemonade. I will try and see the good in everything. Thank God, we were able to have a fantastic Christmas together. No regrets, just jokes. Even our Secret Santa was a huge joke, because half of us worked out, who had done the Secret Santa gift.
So in our family, I mentioned that we mainly just get presents for the children, we don’t really do presents for the adults. If the adults are going to do gifts, what we’ll do is a secret Santa. So we’ve got, we’ll spend 15 to 20 quid, and that 15 to 20 quid is plus postage, as well, plus wrapping as well, if you’re going to wrap it. This year, we just got our stuff from Amazon and wrote Secret Santa, Care Of, and then my mom’s home address, so that nothing needed to be wrapped. A little, little money saving tip there, because you know what, I do actually get my stuff wrapped at Amazon. But if it’s going to be loads of presents, then all of it will just have to come here and I’ll wrap it and then give it out to the children or the family. But sometimes I will partake in the Amazon wrapping. It can add up but for the Secret Santa, we all cut down on the cost of the wrapping. We just had a Secret Santa, Care Of, at the person who it was for. And then my mom’s address. So we were able to have our packages, see who it was for, unwrap it, but we still managed to work out who had got what for each person and that was just extra fun.
So it was a great Christmas. We had a fantastic time and I’ve like I’ve said, I’ve managed to make sure that I have programmed in my downtime. It’s a must. It’s not something that happens. If I remember, no, it’s mandatory, because I’m into longevity. And it’s healthy longevity, not frail, longevity. So I want to make sure that I look after my mental health, my physical health, my spiritual well-being. Oh and there was church on Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day, but because I was, because of what was happening with Mommy, I didn’t manage to make it online, for church, but I managed to make the Wednesday meditation service, which was fantastic. It’s always good.
I am a bit biased, but it’s always good. I belong to a Unitarian Church, where everybody is welcome. Irrespective of religious belief, it can be from any religious persuasion, you can be an atheist, basically, if you’re nice, come. If you’re not nice, stay away. And yeah, I’m frank like that. I like mixing with really nice people. Nice, kind people, those are my circles. And luckily, I tend to attract nice, kind people. So I’m very fortunate, but I don’t, I think that happens, because I’m living my life purposefully. And I make it clear that I like to be around nice people. And that doesn’t mean people who always agree with me all the time. Anyway, I digress.
What is next for me for the new year? So you know, that I’ve got my pamper sessions all lined up. Mommy’s coming to us this time for New Year’s Day, so I’ll go and collect Mommy, New Year’s morning, probably. And she can chill out with us and I can watch, yeah, you guessed it, Murder Island. Probably will watch a couple of films with my mom. So by the time we have, I’ve finished this recording, and it goes out, I’ll be able to tell you what we watched. If you want to know.
I’d love to know what you guys watched on New Year’s Day. If you got together with your family members, I’d love to know what you ate for New Year’s Day, how you celebrated, how you celebrated for Christmas. You can contact me on any of my platforms, whether it’s on Facebook, Mother of Abundance, at Facebook, or my Instagram, which is @motherofabundance on Instagram. My Twitter is @motherabundance. But you can find me, anywhere you want to send me a message, let me know, what did you eat on Christmas Day? What did you, what did you eat on New Year’s Day? How did you celebrate? And how did your celebrations set you up for the new year?
So I’m looking forward to the new year. I know some people think that, you know, one minute past midnight, the pumpkin mix is gonna be over. I keep it real. You know, that’s part of my way of doing things. I’m just doing resilience. I’m staying focused on the things that I can control and which make me happy. That doesn’t mean suppressing anxiety. I don’t do suppressing negative thoughts. I acknowledge my negative thoughts, I ask what I can do to help myself. If I’m too miserable to help myself, I might take myself off and have an early night, I might read a book, I might meditate. So I’m not recommending that you guys suppress any anxiety. Acknowledge it, process it and move on, as soon as you can. And focus on the things that you do have control over. Be positive as much as is possible. And do the things that you can do which make you happy, which make you happy. Happiness is key.
I know going forward for 2021 to help me prepare, I’m going to be setting up my Bullet Journal for 2021. On my bullet journal, I use Evernote, I use Google Calendar for my planning, and I use Noteshelf. And I synchronize it all. Google Calendar doesn’t really synchronize with anything other than everything else, Google. In terms of my bullet journal, I love writing things longhand. So I get to write my journal entries, and my daily tasks lists, using my Apple Pencil, my iPad and Noteshelf, an app on iPad. And I think you might be able to have Noteshelf for Android. So if that’s the kind of thing that you’re into, if you love Bullet Journals, you also like writing longhand, this might be a really good way for you to digitize that. And if you want me to show you how I do that, let me know, I’d be happy to show you if it’s something that you’d like. And my Noteshelf backs up to Evernote. So, I can check things in Evernote on my laptop, I love to do that. And there’s also the Noteshelf app on the laptop too. So I can scroll through the things if I want search through them. And you can do handwriting recognition search functionality, in Evernote. And that’s one of the reasons that I use Evernote with Noteshelf.
So I’m going to be doing that. I’m also going to be updating my five year plan. So I’ll be looking at things that I’ve managed to succeed in over the past 12 months, and then adding on, reviewing the next four years and adding to the fifth year. So I’ve got a rolling five year plan that I do. Now, when I come onto this rolling five year plan, this is really timely for you, I’m expecting that you are a planner, to a greater or lesser degree. Because you’ve got ambitions and you’ve got children, you need to have some kind of plan, in order to make the home life run smoothly and your business or professional life run smoothly as well. It really just helps to have a plan. If you need a plan, I am your girl, I have got your back. If you do not have it already, this is the time to download, your “Planning Your Best Life and Living it Everyday, workbook. That helps you work out the things that you love in your life, and formulate how to implement those things that you love, into a five year plan. So this is the time to go and download it.
And I know that what is big on my plan, is early in 2021, I will be furthering this idea that I’ve got for this course. Now you’ve heard me mention it before, over probably the past couple of podcast episodes, I’ve mentioned, that I have been thinking for quite some time about a course. Now, you may or may not know that I’m a master coach. I have clocked up the hours. I am doing a masters level coaching course. It’s the highest level qualification. But I’ve actually been coaching for many years. I’ve been mentoring for many more years than the length of time that I’ve been coaching. But you know, I’m a nerd, I love to have not only the practice, and not only the theory, I like to have both together. And the way that I want to leverage is to share my guidance for as many, as many ambitious loving mothers as is humanly possible. So for me, that means creating a course.
I’ve taught courses. I’ve come from a teaching background, as well. I sound like I’ve done absolutely everything, don’t I? But I have got a training background. I used to train many moons ago, when I worked for the National Rail Infrastructure Company here in the UK, called Network Rail. I used to train people in the Microsoft Bundle, many moons ago. So I used to do that as, in my training capacity too. And there’s another way that I did professional speaking, because it comes on to that umbrella. But yeah, I want to go online and help you guys to live your best possible life. That is, I think, my mission in life.
And the reason I’m feeling so strongly about it is because I’ve got a background in personal development. I have been a mother since the age of 21. But you know, I have the feelings of motherhood from pregnancy, at the age of 20. And yet I’m giving my age away, but I don’t mind. It’s all for a good reason. And I’ve really had to juggle motherhood with my professional aspirations. And that meant working out how I’m going to navigate a career, in order to raise my eldest son. I was a student, whilst having a young child and being a single parent. I was then a graduate professional, trying to climb the corporate ladder and how that worked out for me. I’ve had several businesses over the years and trying to work, navigate through that, whilst raising my son and not wanting to leave him behind in my aspirations, but still having professional aspirations.
I’ve mentored over the years as I’ve said, and more recently, I’ve done my professional coaching qualifications, but have coached for many years as well. And I just think it’d be a good idea to create this course that I’ve got in mind, that will help you implement the balance. So it’s not only about knowing the balance, it’s about mindset, and habit forming. And using coaching as a means to leverage the teaching skills that I already have, and getting you the very, very best outcomes possible, not only for you, but also for your children and your loved ones. Because I really believe, if the mother is happy in the home, and I’m talking about loving mothers, right? If a loving mother is happy in the home, everybody wins. Everybody wins. Just think about that for a moment, when you’re happy, and you’re relaxed, isn’t your partner happy as well? Isn’t your… And this is, you know, assuming that your partner’s loving too, right? Aren’t your children happy? Even in your business, is your team happy? In your career or your profession, is your team happy? You know, when you are happy, and you’re well rested, and you’re relaxed, and you know what the life is that you want to have envisage. And you’re planning along it. And if anything comes along, you’ve got resilience built into that course. That’s what I want to do. I want to make sure resilience, mindset, all of those things are built into that course, so that not only do you have the best life, you could have imagined, but you know how to teach your children to do the same.
That I think is legacy, living legacy, by the way, living legacy, living legacy. I’m all about living legacy, it’s great, it’s great if when I pop my clogs, I leave something great behind, but actually, I’d rather see the people benefiting from my legacy whilst I’m still alive. And that’s what I want for my students too. If that sounds like something that you’d be interested in, all you need to do is write to me at hello@motherofabundance.com. And just say so. And I’ll send you further details.
If you become, if you get in, you know, at this point in time and become a founding member of the course, do you know what? You would have at the best ever price and you will have life-long access to the course. That’s what I want for you. So if that sounds like you, or it sounds like somebody that you know, someone who’s a real go getter, who’s ready now, who’s like, you know what, 2021 has got to be my year. It’s not about saying I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this and then if I get, you know, the rug pulled from underneath me because the old pandemic is still having to be dealt with and all my dreams, what I thought I was going to do, now I’ve got to pivot and all that kind of stuff, this is definitely the course for you. Because not only will you be able to know how to do that, but you will be able to show your children how to do that too. Living legacy girlfriend. That’s where it’s at. And if you’re interested, pop me a line to hello@motherofabundance.com.
So I’m wrapping this episode up. I hope that your festive season was fantastic. Remember to write me and let me know, wherever, anywhere you want. Let me know what did you eat on Christmas day? What did you eat for over the Hanukkah period? What did you do for Kwanzaa? We celebrate Kwanzaa in our family too. Any reason to celebrate and we’re here all celebrating. I’m telling you, we’re loving life. We living our best lives here. We’re not, we’re not playing. We’re not joking. We are into living our best lives here. Yeah, and I would love to hear how you’re celebrating your life.
This is the end of Season 2. This is the Season 2 Finale, but I am going to be back next week. I’m not taking a break at the end of this season. I just think 12 is a good number to round, is a good number to round off at. So I will be seeing you next week as well. And I really look forward to seeing you for Season 3 of the Mother of Abundance podcast. Until then, have an abundant day and an abundant week.
Thank you for listening to the Mother of Abundance podcast. Your host, Xina Gooding Broderick. Sign up at motherofabundance.com, for your free copy of the “Planning Your Best Life and Living It Every Day” Workbook. See you on the next episode.
