How to deal with stress for infertility

How to deal with stress for infertility

How to deal with stress for infertility

Transcription :

Many of you have been reaching out to me, wanting more information, more resources, wanting to know what you can do to help yourself with meditation, mindfulness, all the stress associated with the fertility journey. Well, today I have a treat for you. I’m going to be sharing two resources and one app that’s going to change your life. I know that if you’ve been on this fertility journey for any length of time, you realize how much of an emotional rollercoaster it is. And most of us who have friends and family who are trying to support us, they just don’t understand. They don’t get it. They haven’t been through it. So they can’t relate to what you’re experiencing and going through. Is there a way to make the low points of this roller coaster a little bit easier, and these high points, more joyful and happy and ecstatic? I believe that there is. And that’s exactly what I want to share with you today in this video.

Hi, for those of you who don’t know, I am Dr. Marc Sklar, also known as The Fertility Expert, and I’ve been working with couples from all over the world for the better part of 19 years through my online coaching programs and right here at my clinics in San Diego. And dealing with the stress of fertility is a constant conversation, and even more so in recent years, has actually risen to the top of the list of important things that we need to deal with when we are trying to support all of you. I created this channel to give you all more information, to support you all, wherever you are on your journey because I believe information and knowledge is the power to get you the results that you’re looking for. I also believe that many of you have been misguided or misled, given false hope and misinformation and I want to help you correct that. I want to provide the right information, restore that hope that’s been pulled away from you and help you on your journey to get pregnant and start a family.

So I have a lot that I want to cover today. So I want to just dive right in and get it into the meat, the information that I want to share with all of you. So earlier I talked about two tips and one app. I’m going to start with my two tips. So the first one is breathing. Breath work. To kind of recenter ourselves, to bring us back to our present moment into our body and to ground ourselves. Now, this might sound different, it might not sound maybe even unique for all of you, and it might not even sound difficult. Like why is Marc even starting with breath work today when we’re talking about fertility? What is that going to have to do with anything? Well, often, most of us are just on this go, go, go hamster wheel. Whether we’ve got to answer the phones, get ready for the day, cook meals, answer all those emails, check our social media. We can’t forget to do that. No, I’m just joking, but we do prioritize it actually.

What’s going on in the world today? All the craziness and stress about the news and the world that we live in, there’s a lot being thrown at us. So it’s easy just to keep going, going, going, and not have moments for ourselves. So I want to come back to, I want to bring you back to breath work and breathing. Actually breathing is one of the most important things that we do on a daily basis, but we do it subconsciously. We don’t give it much thought or attention for most of us actually. And I want you to actually bring more consciousness back into your breathing. I want to make it more real, and more alive and more impactful for all of us.

So some of the most important things that we have to do on a daily basis, eat, we have to consciously make that decision. Sleep. We can either make that conscious decision to go to sleep earlier or stay up later or snooze. But breathing just happens. It happens naturally. If we’re just sitting here and we’re not thinking about it, my body’s going to naturally, as I’m talking, want to take a breath because it needs more air, it needs oxygen. So naturally, as you just heard, I just went … To fill my lungs. We don’t do that consciously. I want to change that right now. And I want to give you a tip to make it a bit easier for all of us. So we are all always so quick to jump at those notifications, those requests by everyone around, whether it’s the ding of the email, the chime that you’ve got a text message, the phone ringing, because you’ve got to answer it, someone’s calling you for work, whatever it might be, we have constant indicators and reminders throughout the day.

Well, the first thing I want to ask you all to do is to go through your phone and turn off any unnecessary notifications. You don’t need a notification for everything that’s going on in the world. To pull you back to Facebook, to pull you back to Instagram, TikTok, whatever it is, you can make that conscious decision on your own that I have a little bit of time right now that I’ve carved out and I’m going to spend 10 minutes going through my social media to catch up or see what’s going on. That should be a conscious decision on your part. And more importantly, controlled by you, not dictated by the notifications on your phone. So I want you to go through, take a little bit of time and turn off any unnecessary notifications.

Now that doesn’t have to do with breath work. But it’s about to go in that direction right now. Now one of my favorite tips to give everybody, and this was much easier when we were all at the office, sitting at our desks and we had a phone next to us that rang somewhat regularly, but you can do this with any sort of notification or tool that you have going on. I’m going to give the example as if you were at your desk at work and you get somewhat regular phone calls. So typically that phone rings and we reach for it real quickly. We’re like, “Hello? Yeah. This is Marc. How can I help you?” What I want you to do the next time the phone rings, and every time afterwards is that when that phone rings, as you reach for it, I want you to stop for a second. I want you to stop and I want you to take a breath in and out. And then reach for it.

You see, look, I was talking really fast and I just did that breath in and breath out. And already you hear my voice a little bit calmer, more relaxed and more grounded. And that’s exactly what you are going to do when you reach for the phone. You’re going to be also more present for that phone conversation. Whatever you were doing, answering emails, text messages, whatever it was, that phone rings and it’s just another thing that you’re doing. So you’re not really present for it. Now, I want you before you reach for it, to do that breathing, and out, and then reach for the phone and say, “Hello, this is Marc.” That’s right. Now you’re more grounded, more present and ready to be there.

And you don’t only have to do that with your phone ring. You can do it with text messages, whatever it might be. We’re always so quick to be there for everybody else. I want you to use this as a tool to be more present with yourself. So that is my first tip for all of you. Getting back to breathing, back to who we are, back to reminding ourselves to be grounded and calm before we do the tasks that others want us to do. You can also take this tip one step further and add a mantra to it. As you breathe in, you can say to yourself, “I am fertile. I am strong. I am ready to be a mom.” And then you breathe out and then you answer the phone. You can use this in so many ways, but really the most valuable part of it is that it’s allowing you to take deeper breaths and remember to breathe and be grounded.

You can also take this another step further on the breathing side of things and start your day off with just 5 deep breaths or 10 deep breaths. And periodically throughout the day, do the same thing to reduce the stress, to ground us, to bring us back into our body and be more aware of what’s going on, both with ourselves physically and with ourselves emotionally. The stress of the world is so prevalent and so pervasive, and really it takes over us, even if we don’t recognize that it is, or if we don’t even feel stressed. So that’s where this exercise is really going to be powerful for you. And I also want you to take it a step further into tip number two, which I’m going to keep brief.

Tip number two is about gratefulness. I want you to find the things in your life that you are grateful for, and I want you to remind yourselves about them, and I want you to do it daily. I want you to do a gratitude journal, every day, one thing that you are grateful for. It’s easy to get bogged down by the junk and all the terrible things going on in the world. But I want you to focus on the positive. I want you to focus on the one thing today that you are grateful for. It might be the same thing from day to day. It might change every day. Whatever it is, I just want you to find the one thing that you’re grateful for and jot it down. And before you do it the next day, remind yourself what you were grateful yesterday, and then find what you’re grateful for today.

So I’ve been on the hunt. I’ve been on the lookout for an app that you all can use as a resource to help you feel more in control, less stressed, more grounded, the things that we’ve been talked about earlier in this video. Well, I do believe that I found it and I believe you all are going to love it and find tons of value in it just like I have. This app is not a relaxation app or a fertility tracking app. This app is going to help you learn new skills and strategies to help change the way you experience your day to day life and your experience with your fertility journey. It’s not just an app to help you get pregnant, but it’s an app that’s going to help you do something now, in the moment, in that immediate moment to help you feel better and change the way you are experiencing things.

And one of the best things about this app is that it’s made for you and your partner, both men and women. Often, many of the things that I have found are really just dictated towards the female in the relationship and this is not like that. It hits both men and women to support them am on their fertility journey. In addition to learning and practicing the modules that it has for you to help you create a more mindfulness approach to your day to day life and fertility, it also has specific curated modules and trainings for specific conditions like IVF, IUI, PCOS. These things are already built in and created into the app and they’re adding more like this on a weekly basis.

So here are some of the reasons why I love the FertileMind app. First and foremost, it’s based on science. A lot of things out there are just going to say, we’re the cure for this, or for that to try to help you get through it. But this is really founded in science to help you get the results that you deserve. And more specifically, to give you a mindfulness approach to allow you to be less stressed and more grateful. And what I want for all of you who are going to use the app is that you feel more balanced and more in control of your emotions and the emotional swings that happen on a daily basis.

Two of my favorite modules that they have is the breathing module and the sleep collection module. No surprise eyes with the breathing module, because we were just talking about all the breathing. But nobody talks or very little people talk about how impactful breathing is for our physiology and for controlling our stress levels. And they talk about it there and teach you how to do proper breath work. And you’ve often heard me talk about the importance of sleep and good quality sleep. So their sleep collection modules are wonderful for helping you get a deeper and more restful sleep. And I always appreciate that first for myself and for all of you.

So I want all of you to gain more control over your stress, more control of the emotional fluctuations on your fertility journey. And I believe that the FertileMind app is one of the most powerful ways for you to do that. So I want you to use the link in the description below to download the app and then use the code, The Fertility Expert, to get a free 30 day access trial so that you can test it out for yourself and see how wonderful it is. If you’ve all already downloaded the app, then just use the code, the same code, The Fertility Expert, so that you can also get a free 30 day trial.

Like I mentioned before, I do believe they’ve thought about everything and they’re always adding more like the modules dictated specifically towards supporting you on your IVF or IUI journey, or if you’re struggling with PCOS. These are things that are going to be powerful, both for you physically and emotionally. I’m really excited about the FertileMind app because I truly believe that this is a game changer, is going to impact your life for the positive in so many ways. And I’ve already started to incorporate this with my patients here in my clinic and in my Hope fertility coaching program. We’re giving them access to this wonderful tool as well. And I wanted to make sure that I shared it with all of you, because I believe all of you, wherever you are in the world can benefit from this as well. If you’ve been trying to get pregnant for longer than you’ve liked, and you believe that you need a little bit more support beyond the FertileMind app, then I want to invite you to apply, to qualify for my Hope fertility coaching program.

This coaching program is where you work with me and my team, hand in hand, to get you the results that you deserve. If you want to see if you qualify, just use the link in the description below to apply. All right, so what did you learn today? What was new for all of you? What did you like about this video? I want to hear from all of you. Comment below and let me know, give me your feedback. And more importantly, if you’ve started to use the FertileMind app, I want to know what you think about it. Check out the app and then come back to this video and comment below and let me know your thoughts on the app and what you think it can do for your fertility journey. All right,, if you haven’t already liked this video, please make sure to give me a thumbs up. If you’re not a subscriber to my YouTube video, then hit that bell to subscribe and get notified when I put out a new video for all of you. And until the next video, stay fertile.