Special: De-Stressing Your Life

0:00Through 25 seasons, 4 ,561 episodes, I believe The Oprah Winfrey Show is one of the greatest classrooms in the world. I really never thought of it that way. The aha moments, the breakthroughs, the connections, the occasional ugly cry. I miss him so terribly. I miss him every single minute. The LOLs. The moments that mattered. Daddy! The eye-opening life lessons. Never allow them to take you somewhere else. I'm bringing them back. It's time to open the vault. I've personally chosen these classic episodes to share with you again. Every single person you ever will meet shares that common desire. They want to know, do you see me?

0:47Do you hear me? Does what I say mean anything to you? You are listening to The Oprah Winfrey Show, the podcast. Women across America, it's time to de-stress your life. We all need to get a grip and stop all this craziness. So sit down, take a deep breath. Come on. Yes. We feel your pain. You're overwhelmed. You're over-scheduled. You're overworked. You're overtired. You're tired. And over it. One of the smartest women I know is here to help you. She is a working mother of three who has mastered the secret to stress-free living. And that is really huge. Later, we're going to find out how she did that.

1:30But first, this is Desiree Sacks, who says she feels like a character from Alfred Hitchcock's movie, The Birds, being pecked away by everyone's demands. Desiree Sacks, I really feel that no one has a life as crazy as mine. I'm a mother of three children, and I'm a pediatrician, so this combination makes life extremely hairy. I'm an extremely stressed-out person. Well, that's what happens when you have the flu. Because I work all crazy hours... You positive? Positive. Okay, let's go. I also have the kids' schedules that are also crazy, so I kind of feel like I'm in the Alfred Hitchcock movie, The Birds, where you're getting picked at by all the birds attacking you with these little pickings all the time.

2:13Mom, that's birds! That's not birds. Jessica, my oldest daughter, she's a softball player. She may be on two other teams in addition. She goes to a hitting coach once a week. She goes to a pitching coach twice a week. She goes to a personal trainer anywhere from two to three times a week. She takes also voice lessons because she sings and she does theater. Jess, I hate the radio on the corner. I'm 12 and when I get home from school, I'm always going somewhere. My second daughter, Krista, she has a hitting coach, a pitching coach. She has voice lessons on Mondays, religion class on Tuesdays. She's on the basketball team and she just finished a play herself.

2:51I'm six years old and I play baseball, soccer, basketball, and karate. My son Connor is just getting to the age where we're getting into all the same sort of things and I don't want to cheat him and not give him the same opportunities. And that is now beginning to make things ten times worse. Connor, bring in the rocket ship. Connor, I said bring in the rock... Connor? My husband, he's always signing them up for this and signing them up for that, which is wonderful, but he can't always be the person participating. When I was younger, I was one of eight children, so my mom wasn't able to take me to a lot of different things.

3:33I think my life is so over-scheduled that it makes me snap pretty easily. Krista, get your coat. Sorry. Come on, Connor, hurry up. I mean, just screaming and yelling, sort of snapping. I could lose it and scream and yell for 15 minutes over one little item. I'm really annoyed with you now, Jess. I'm out here for five minutes waiting for you. I said 6.30. You should be standing here waiting for me at 6.30. She goes under more stress than I think anyone I know. She's always, like, freaking out to make sure everyone gets to the same spot on time. It's just that I'm feeling over-exhausted, over-scheduled, and chronically anxious.

4:14I just would like it to be less crazy. Well, this is Dr. Martha Beck, the woman with the blueprint to stress-free living. She got her Ph.D. from Harvard while at the same time raising three children and works as a life coach, rescuing a lot of stressed-out women from their chaotic lives. She's also a regular contributor, I'm proud to say, to, oh, The Oprah Magazine, probably just one of the best magazines on earth. It really is.

4:48And we worked very hard at the magazine trying to find people like Martha who have found a way to master their lives to help all of our readers live a better life. Martha made an urgent house call to Desiree. The de-stressing intervention started with one key question. First of all, I want to know, when you were a teenager, what were the dreams and goals that you might have had if nothing had stood in your way? I would, like, walk the earth, walking to different villages and meeting people. I would climb mountains, like climb Mount Everest. I would probably do something athletic, become a bodybuilder.

5:30I have another question for you, and I want you to consider this as a hypothetical solution to your problem. Driving age in New York is 17, right? And your oldest child is now 15. Right. Now, here's my suggestion. When Jessie's 17 and she can drive, she just has to draw up all the activities she's been pursuing up to this point in her life so that she can drive the other children to their activities. Okay, I don't think so. You don't think so? Why not? What's wrong with that? That's not fair. She's giving up all her dreams and her aspirations. Would you say that that's really not fair to anyone to say all of a sudden you, of all the people in your family, you are the one who has to give up all your hopes and dreams to take care of the other people's hopes and dreams.

6:12No. Okay, the reason I asked you that question is that that's what you've done to yourself. You didn't get to do the things you wanted to do as a teenager, okay? And you've gone on in life to give so much to your children that you still don't have a chance to make those hopes and dreams come true. And it's not fair, okay? And your children know it's not fair. Moreover, what you're teaching them to do is either become doormats who give up their lives for their own children, or narcissists who expect everyone to drop their dreams and go take care of them. Do you want that? No, I don't want them to do that.

6:54Only by loving your life can you teach your children to be people who love their lives. The first thing that needs to change in your family structure is that you aren't included as an equal member of the family. You're a servant, okay? You're giving, giving, giving, and you never take in enough nurturance to supply all that. So what we're going to do is trying to bring down the level of tasks. We're going to bring up the level of nurturance for you. And I think you deserve a personal trainer. Okay? Now, Jessie has a personal trainer two to three times a week. Is that correct? Yes. Is there any reason she couldn't work out on her own twice a week?

7:29I think that's possible. And then you're going to start, um... Doing some rock climbing. Okay? I want you to start planning six to eight months in advance to have an adventure once a year. Okay. So would you call yourself a high achiever? People call me that. What would you feel if you did get to the top of Mount Everest? What's next? What's next? Yeah. Would anything ever be enough? No. I would always have something else. Uh-huh. Can you see that with this kind of mindset, you're setting your children up to pack every minute of their lives and never have enough, never be enough? Okay, here's a rule for living, and I want you to really listen to it.

8:18Never do to yourself what you would never do to your child. You deserve as much love and respect as your children do, and they're going to learn to love and respect not only you, but themselves, if you value yourself. Martha, that Martha. Next, Martha calls a mandatory family meeting at Desiree's house. Mandatory. OK, now I've got you guys together. I want to ask you some questions about the things that your mom wrote to Oprah. She writes, I feel like I'm always being picked at, like in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, like she's being picked apart. Do you want to grow up to feel that way yourselves?

8:58No. No. I'm assuming you don't want Desiree to feel that way either. No, not at all. Excellent. Okay. We're all on the same team. Now we just have to set to work here. Okay? Now on this calendar, we've listed the afternoon activities for each of the people in the family. Each person has a different color. For example, you have karate on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Now your mom told me that sometimes on Thursdays, you like to play with your friend and you're not that excited about karate. Is that true? I don't want to get anybody's hackles up. But what if instead of on Thursdays going to karate, you just had a play date with your friend and you could go to karate on Tuesdays?

9:38What would that be like for you? Better. Better, okay. Thank you very much for that. Now, is there any way Desiree Rich to get Krista to her Tuesday, Thursday appointments in a different way than we're doing right now? Krista, there's got to be someone in your religion class that you know. Yeah, well, like five or six of my friends already carpooled, but... So why can't we join in that carpool? We could. Okay. So we can save half an hour here. The interesting thing, Desiree, if you cancel the Thursday, which Connor said would improve his life, you not only save half an hour in total, but you have given yourself a block of extended time during which you can do something for yourself.

10:16And it's also 10 minutes there and 10 minutes back, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it turns half an hour into 50 minutes, which is almost an hour. Absolutely. Absolutely. So you've saved an hour absolute time, and you've also reduced your stress really remarkably. And that the same thing is true here. If you can get a carpool going to religion. Right. And those are just on two days. So if we went through every day, I think we could reduce your absolute time commitment by 10 to 12 hours a week. Okay. Well, Desiree says meeting Martha was life-altering. It was a wake-up call for her whole family.

10:47The very next day she signed up for a mountaineering trip. You did. Yes, I did. my first lesson, mountaineering, which is something I've always thought about. That was just one tip of the iceberg. So what is the big thing you learned, that if you don't keep your dreams alive... That's it. If I don't, I will teach my children. The legacy I'll be teaching them is martyrdom is good. Sacrifice is okay. You don't have to be a martyr. Well, one of the big things, Martha says, is that mothers are teachers. Your primary job as a mother is as a teacher. And too many of you mothers think that your primary job is a servant, but that your primary job is really as a teacher.

11:27Yeah, I learned that watching the Discovery Channel, the mother bear, the mother otter, whatever, she teaches them to hunt, and then she doesn't hunt for them anymore, you know? Right. Because that would actually disable them in their wild environment. So you're doing the same thing with your kids when you do for them what they already know how to do for themselves. And so your belief is that you shouldn't do for your kids what they can do for themselves. Well, I have a son with Down syndrome, And as such, I've been trained from very early that I have to teach him and then stop doing for him. That's the way to be a good mother.

11:55So I've had a privilege of learning something about mothering that most mothers don't, and it works equally well for my daughters. Because I think a lot of mothers are still, you know, my friend Gail, her children are now 14 and 15, but one weekend they were at my house when they were 10 and 11. And Gail was still, she goes, I got to, you know, I got to run their bathwater. And I said, don't they know the difference between hot and cold? And she just stopped in her tracks and she goes, yeah, but I've always run their bathwater, you know? And, yeah, and they know how to do all kinds of stuff. And it's actually good for them to have the opportunity to do it.

12:30And you believe children should even cook for themselves. Yeah. That's mainly because I hate to cook. But, you know, I also got that from the Down Syndrome trainers who would say, you know, at the age of seven, Adam should cook for himself. Really? I read that and I thought that's so odd. We cook together. Uh-huh. But everybody cooks his or her own favorite dish. Okay. All you list makers out there, and I know there are millions of you, listen up. This is Heather Pendergast. Her to-do list is so overwhelming, it would make even Martha Stewart cringe. I saw that list. Unbelievable.

13:06I'm a 32-year-old stay-at-home mom of two little boys, ages 5 and 2. Hey, hey, hey, hey. I have learned to wear many hats as a mom, wife, and as a woman. All three keep me on the move at times and make me collapse at other times. I am a member of the Junior League. I take an acting class. I sell Mary Kay. I am an active member of my church and I'm trying to lose weight and get in shape. I'm also trying to do some minor home improvements while keeping my house clean and my children happy. This is my to-do list as it reads today. I work on letter for Junior League. I needed to mail these at the end of last week.

13:40Organized photos. Whoop! There are some that didn't make it in the box. Do touch-up painting in living room and stairwell. Read your address book. I want to sit down and do A to Z. I want to do the whole thing. Do Mary Kay phone calls and book at least 10 appointments. Clean out and organize the basement. When I come into this room, the clutter and the mess are so much that sometimes I feel like I can't even breathe. I really don't know where to start. Return costume to Andrea. Wrap and send wedding gifts. Clean out the toy box. Send recipes to Laura, Natalie, and Angel. work on resume, list items on eBay to sell, take stuff to the shelter, clean out my car, finish repairing the doors for the china cabinet, get front door glass repaired.

14:23I do so many to-do lists in a week. I am really overwhelmed by the number of lists that I have and the fact that I cannot seem to get any one list accomplished, and it just seems to snowball. The typical day would probably be anywhere from 10 to 30 things. I am a pack rat. I have a very hard time throwing things away. I get attached for whatever reason. I get overwhelmed all the time by the things I'm trying to achieve because I can't seem to get a handle on any one of them. I cannot remember the last time my husband and I went out alone. I think I probably put pressure on myself to be perfect.

15:02The way I feel stressed can affect every single aspect of my life. I want to clean out my clutter, organize my to-do list, and get some stuff done so I'm not as stressed out. Well, Dr. Marr at the back has a simple formula for a to-do list addict like Heather. Here it goes. What we're going to concentrate on today is focusing your activities so that you get the things done that really need doing, and a lot of the others can go. And the way we're going to do that is get kind of a feeling for what you want your whole life to be about. I want a list of things that if you went your whole life and did not do these things, you would regret it.

15:46I want to really know my children. I would love to do some traveling with my husband. Some of my favorite time is when we're just doing something as a family. How would you like the world to be different because you have lived? I would love to be remembered for helping or working with children who are less fortunate. Okay, let's talk about your professional goals. I want to tap into the creative side of me. I want to be on a stage, being part of a Broadway show. Based on what you said about what you want your life to be, we have three major goals here, okay? One is raising happy children, having a good family life.

16:26One is performing on stage or camera. And one is using your talents to help children who feel lost or alienated. So if something on your list contributes directly to these three goals, it stays. Okay. Other than that, every time you put something on a list, if it is not directing you toward these goals, you have to remember you are losing pieces of this in order to do whatever's on the list. Paint doors and trim in bathroom. How long would that take you? Oh, an afternoon. Okay. That's an afternoon that you are not going to go toward performing, raising a happy child. Or two. or using your talents to help kids who feel lost.

17:06Is it worth it? Is it worth giving up a piece of those goals? Well, I guess it's not. I put these on sticky notes because I want them in front of you everywhere. All right, we're going to go through today's list, which has more than 35 items on it. But instead of just thinking, yes, I have to do all of that right now, right now, I want you to think in terms of your life goals. Number one, is this leading directly to my life goals? Number two, is this so important that it's worth taking away from my life goals? Number three, if it doesn't match those first two criteria, it's out of there. Okay.

17:42Call to find out about Gymboree for Owen. No. Do touch-up painting in the living room and stairwell. No. Doesn't have to happen today. It's gone. Organize photos. Not today. Call the plumber. It's important. Let's do that one. We have 13 of the 35 that you really feel like you need to do today. And of those that we saved, four of them are modified to take less time. Okay. Okay? That should save you about three, four, five hours today. Yeah. I would say. Good going. Well done. Martha says you can even use your life goals to clean up your house in a hurry. Look at this. Your living space is basically a reflection of your inner space.

18:22And what your living space shows is that you're allowing irrelevant things to clutter up your life so you can get to the real goals. Think of it this way. Everything in your house is taking energy away from your life goals, and it's preventing good things from moving into your life. So every object you keep is something else that you can't bring into your life that would be good. Just looking around, do you see a lot that really is helping you toward those three goals? No, I don't. Could you tell me about this stuff, please, the stuff that's in this bag? Yeah, this is, these are items that I want to list on eBay.

18:52It's China that was passed down in my husband's family. How many hours do you think that'll take you to do this whole procedure? I have no idea. I've never done it before. I would guess 10 hours to get these things sold on eBay instead of selling them to a local antique store or giving them to the Salvation Army. What do you think? Is it worth it? I don't know. Okay, let's talk about your magazines, and here's what I want to know. Dying to read it? I think I probably should read it, which is this. I think I probably should read it. Bye! Every time you sit down to read this, you're wasting half an hour that you could be spending with your boys, okay?

19:33Okay. This is a growth chart. Uh-huh. How many times do you use it? Well, I was gonna hang it up. Have you used it in the last year? No. Yes. Lovely. Say goodbye. Say goodbye. Okay, we've made a pretty good start, I think. It took us a couple of hours to cut through some of the clutter. And you'll notice that most of the anguish here was mental, not physical. Right? Yes. We took a big step here today, but you don't need to do that. You can take what I call a turtle step, which is the smallest amount of labor you can do on a given day that gets you toward your goal. You know, when you look around at this, it may not be perfect.

20:08Your whole life may not be perfect. You know, we want to be super mom. We want to be career woman. We want to be Martha Stewart. Not anybody can do all of that. Heather says when Martha explained that you have to clean up what's inside you before you clean up what's around you, made a huge impact, right? Absolutely. It...we went into talking about, you know, issues that you carry or the baggage that you carry. And once you start dealing with some of those issues, suddenly everything else that's important becomes very clear. And it's just like what she said. You know, if it doesn't relate directly to the goals that you have, get rid of it, because otherwise it just makes you feel so overwhelmed.

20:46Thank you. Okay. Carrie Salover doesn't have a moment to herself, she says. She can't even use the bathroom without her little ones trying to break through the door. I know some of you were late. Oprah, I'm an overworked, overstressed, stay-at-home mom, and I really need your help. Mommy, Mommy. I have Riley, my daughter, who's five, and Tyler, my son, who's two and a half. I feel stressed, and somehow you feel embarrassed to feel stressed because this is what I do. It's just my two kids. It's not like there's that much to it, but I do. I feel overwhelmed. You're coming with me? We made the decision for me to be at home with the kids for a number of reasons, but mainly I didn't want to miss the first step and the first word and all of that.

21:30And my mom worked from the time I can remember, and I wanted to be able to do the things that I think she wished that she could have done for us. I'm usually in and out of the shower by 7, and then I wake up the kids. Good morning. We march right into the bathtub. We rush through breakfast and we're running out the door by, you know, a few minutes after 8. Go to the van. You know, then I get home from school. I run around to clean anything that's laying around the house bin. We do that pretty much all the way until we go pick up Riley. I spend a lot of time doing laundry. Okay, go ahead. Very often, if Riley's chosen something that she wants to wear and it's got a wrinkle in it, I'm running around any time to the morning, ironing clothes and even jeans if they're wrinkled because I don't want them to be out of the house with wrinkled clothes.

22:14I put little time into what I'm wearing and what I look like, and I spend probably a lot more time than I should being concerned about what they look like. It is a big issue to me. I just feel like because this is all I do, if I send my kids out in the world with wrinkled clothes, people are going to think, what does the girl do all day? She must lay around on the couch and watch soap operas. So that's kind of the only way to show I actually have a job, is that my kids go out the door looking halfway decent every day. I'm sure that, you know, I've created the monster. Riley cares a lot about clothes.

22:45One of Riley's first words, and it's almost embarrassing, but she could say gap. I mean, my husband thinks it's me, but she really likes shoes. I think we actually counted that she had like six or seven pairs of black shoes. I have 17 pairs of black shoes. Sometimes I'll put off going to the bathroom all day because the minute I shut the bathroom door, somebody is kicking it or knocking on it. Because I'm home with them all day and I don't get a break, Sometimes I feel like my patience level might not be what I'd like it to be. Most nights I feel guilty, like I yelled too much today or I didn't sit down and spend enough time just playing with them.

23:25That bothers me. I wonder if they think, gosh, Mom didn't even play with me today. I worry about that. I spend so much time worrying about all these other things like cleaning the house and running here and running there. And my big struggle is to try and find ways to sit down and enjoy the kids more, because that's why I'm doing this. You know, I want my kids to look back on their childhood and say, my mom was so fun. She let us do fun things. And I want to learn how to just, you know, enjoy them, because they're going to be grown and gone. And I don't want to look back and regret anything. Martha says that Carrie's stress is not coming from household chores and a lack of time, but from something deeper.

24:00Very interesting. Look at this. I want you to imagine that where you wake up one morning, and your life is exactly the way it is now. You live in this house, you're married to Brent, everything's great, but the children were never born. I wouldn't even know what to do. I wouldn't even know what to do. I would feel all alone and empty. Now, what if I told you that I think the major source of your stress in your whole life is that emptiness? us? I don't know. Well, I think what happened, you get them dressed so beautifully. You know, they look so darling. And, you know, Riley has how many pairs of shoes?

24:39Well, I don't know. Too many. And how many times a day does she change clothes and everything? And yet you say you spend very little time on yourself, on your own clothes. Do you have more shoes or does Riley? Oh, Riley has more shoes. Really? Yeah. Did you buy things for yourself before you had the kids? Yeah. A lot more than I do now, yeah. Well, it's really interesting to me that instead of adding care of the children to care of yourself, you stop the care of yourself and put it all into caring for the children. Unless you have children, there's no reason for you. Now, would you like Riley to grow up believing that unless she has children, she doesn't matter?

25:21Absolutely not. I have no idea what I would do if they weren't in my life. And I worry about that because they're going to be in school full time over the next few years. And it scares me to death. I have no idea what I'm going to do when they don't need me here every day anymore. You believe that if you're not doing for children, there is nothing. Okay? And it's that empty space that's causing you to be quite anxious about your kids' clothing. And that's what's leading you to feel, they have to look right, I have to iron. It's not about what they look like. It's about your feeling that there is nothing underneath your mothering.