Ep 72 How to Start This School Year Without Carrying It All and Staying in Your Lane

Mona kicks off the new school year with reflections from a recent family cruise celebrating her parents’ 50th anniversary, then shifts into a conversation about how we can show up differently—especially as parents, nurses, and teachers—by learning the difference between caring and carrying. She explains how caring comes from a regulated, values-driven place, while carrying often comes from anxiety and survival responses that try to control outcomes. Mona shares examples from parenting and nursing, then walks through seven signals you may be carrying someone else’s load, along with practical ways to return to “overflow” support—pausing to check capacity, naming what’s yours versus theirs, resourcing instead of rescuing, allowing natural consequences, regulating yourself first, and releasing outcome-based scorekeeping.

00:00 Welcome and Life Update

01:11 New School Year Reset

04:05 Caring vs Carrying

06:06 Real World Examples

09:25 Seven Carrying Signals

14:47 Overflow vs Pressure

18:32 Six Practices to Stay in Lane

23:35 Closing and Next Steps

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