A Step-by-Step Introduction to the “PCS-Proof Method”
In episode 2, I share with you a little bit more about me & one of my biggest passions in life, along with what it means to me to be, "PCS-Proof" and how that term has played out in my own life. And I share with you the three essential steps that you can start to take TODAY in order to be prepared for whatever Military Life throws at you.
Show Notes
4 April 2024
The PCS-Proof Podcast
(Episode 2) A Step-by-Step Introduction to the “PCS-Proof Method”
In this episode, I share with you...
A little bit more about me & one of my biggest passions in life ⚾️
What it means to me to be, "PCS-Proof" and how that term has played out in my own life
How you can start to think about what parts of your life you need to PCS-Proof so that you can start to take some intentional steps in that direction
And I share with you the three essential steps that you can start to take TODAY in order to be prepared for whatever Military Life throws at you.
...All so that you never have to give up on the things that are most important to you or waste time & energy having to start from scratch every time that Military Life throws you a curveball.
And while I discuss this in the realm of Health & Fitness, I encourage you to think about these three essential steps in any area of your life that is most important to you: your career, relationships, finances, etc.
Please help me reach more amazing women just like you by Following/Subscribing to this podcast. And, I would be so appreciative if you could leave a 5-star review.
I also wanted to invite you to interact with me in the show notes. Leave a question for me, or a request for a specific topic that you’d like me to cover in a future episode! (If you’re listening on a platform other than Spotify, just CLICK HERE to go to the episode website, and you’ll see the option to leave your question or request.)
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Episode Transcript
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the PCS-Proof Podcast where we're covering the vital things you need to know to thrive in every season of military life. I'm your host and MilSpouse fitness expert, Grace Barnick-Damazo, and I encourage you to join me each week as we dive deep into topics like fitness, wellness, and entrepreneurship as a military spouse so that you can maintain your own sense of identity and purpose. Conquering every transition with strength and resilience. As we journey together, you can expect uplifting conversations and insights. We'll share some laughs and you can count on me to keep it real. So it's together we can become truly PCS proof. Now let's get into it!
Welcome back to the PCS Proof podcast. I'm super happy to be chatting with you today.
It's really gloomy and stormy outside right now, and that's my absolute favorite weather to be inside, working on passion projects, Some people thrive in the sun. I tend to thrive in a little bit more dramatic weather. It could be coming from growing up in California, where the weather didn't change very much. But it's just nice to have something a little bit different. But with that being said, before we hopped on this recording, I went and made myself a cup of nice hot throat coat tea.
Just felt like it was the weather deemed that. And then I went ahead and burnt a crap out of my throat trying to drink it too soon. So while you might appreciate that as a funny story, you might not appreciate the little bit of rasp in my throat coming from it, but So it is. Last week in the inaugural episode, I shared a little bit about myself and my journey from being a passenger on the ride in my own life. Toward taking back control and ownership, learning to embrace my flexibility as a strength, and that when I started to invest in my myself through my health and my fitness.
It empowered me and gave me the confidence to take big challenges in all areas of my life, career, relationships, running my first marathon and how that confidence eventually led me to starting my own business so that I could help other women just like me to take that control of their own lives through health and fitness. Well, this week, I wanted to share with you what it means to me to be, "PCS-Proof". I'm gonna share with you what that term or how that term has played out in my life and how you can start to think about what parts of your life you would like to PCS proof so that you can start to take some intentional steps in that direction. Hey, fellow male spouse that are for the frustration of being forced to restart your fitness routine every time military light throws your curve ball. Whether it's a PCS, a deployment, or a short term assignment, disruptions can make progress feel nearly impossible.
But now there's a solution designed just for you. The PCS proof fitness program from Fit Pack coaching. Design by a woman in military life, four women in military life. It's flexible, adaptable, and affordable. No more setbacks are starting over just steady progress on your terms.
Visit fitpath coaching dot com slash p c s dash proof dash fitness to start your journey today. And as a special offer for our podcast listeners, get your first month free with promo pod four free. That's pod four f r e e. Say goodbye to stress and for extrusion and hello to a stronger, healthier, happier you with PCS proof fitness. Join us today and get ready to conquer any challenge military life since your PCS per fitness, joined today.
Now, you heard a little bit about my story in episode one, but one thing I didn't share with you is that I'm a huge baseball fan. I've been playing softball since I was maybe like a pre team, and I've been watching and a huge fan of baseball since that time. And if you're at all familiar with baseball, maybe you've watched a game in person, or you coached your kids, little league, games. But you probably noticed that most players have a a routine that they do when they come up to the plate. They step out of the box.
They re faucet their batting gloves. Every pitch or they tap one or both their feet with the bat. And same with the pitcher. A pitcher will go through the same little routine between each pitch. Maybe they adjust their hat.
Or they're waving their palm or they're shaking out their arm before they go into their wind up. And you probably also heard about some of the, like, superstitions that some players have. Things like only wearing a very specific pair of gloves or cleats or not changing their socks during a winning streak. Or not talking to a pitcher when they're having a great game. Maybe they're on track to throw a no hitter or perfect game.
So you don't wanna talk to them because you don't wanna be the one that maybe causes them to break their luck. But what happens if something were to occur that throws off that routine. Or something that disrupts a superstition. If a player is too rigid and reliant on the routine, and especially if throwing off that routine resulted in something negative happening right after that. Right?
You can imagine that it would also negatively impact their confidence and it would take a lot of mental strength and fortitude to have to rebuild that confidence again. Maybe they lose complete confidence in the routine altogether, and then they have to take time and energy trying out new routines until one starts to click and stick. They have to start over every single time. And this is kinda like what it feels like every time we p c s, right, or when our spouse leaves on deployment, or attachment, or TTY, TAD, We have these routines in our life that are working. We rely on them.
We do them so habitually that we probably don't even think about them. And then all of a sudden, military led comes in and it throws everything up in the air that we've been used to and we feel like we're having to start over from scratch again. But what if we were able to have a little bit more awareness of these routines? And then we could be intentional about creating flexibility in the routine. So that when everything is thrown up in the air and it finally starts to come back down, you don't have to start over.
You just pick right back up where you left off. And that to me is what it means to be PCS proof. Being PCS proof is about being able to be flexible and adapt. So that you never have to give up on the things that are really important to you or start over from scratch every single time that military life shakes things up. And that's really an inevitability for us.
Right? It's going to change. Things are going to get messed up, but I don't want you to have to quit on those things that are so important to you. So I wanna give you three things, three steps that you can take to start your PCS proof journey in any area. I'm gonna kind of lean toward the health side because that is my background and my rhetes, but you could really apply this to anything.
And, you know, someday I'll talk to you about how IPCS proved PCS proved my business by itself, and we can go through that if you're an entrepreneur, thinking about starting an entrepreneurial journey. But for today, we're just gonna kind of focus on the health side. So just keep in mind that this is for any part of your life that you want to PCS proof. You could apply the same three principles, the same three steps to it. So the first step that I want you to take is to be very clear on your priorities.
And I really like the adage that if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. And this something that I talk to with my clients all the time, especially when we first start working together. Most women come to me and they have these big goals but they also are very busy. They only have a certain amount of time and they only have a certain amount of energy that they can spend. But these goals are really important to them.
So we really have to talk about making sure that we're really clear on the hierarchy of priorities. And so this kind of goes into like a sub step of this, which is to be very realistic and honest with yourself. Not everything has to be a priority right now. So it can still be a priority, but it doesn't have to happen right now. Maybe there's a priority that needs to bump up the hierarchy list because it's going to make a bigger impact on your life now and it doesn't mean that the other stuff isn't important to you, it just might need to wait.
And I'll tell you a quick little story that one of my business coaches shared with me and it really helps me to think about my hierarchy of priorities. So business coach shared with me a story he was having rotation with a client who had just been diagnosed with cancer. And she was coming to him seeking help to lose weight. And he had to be very honest with her and upfront and, you know, explain to her like, hey, it's not that I'm saying that you're not wanting to lose weight or that we can't do that But right now, you're in the front of your life right now. You are trying to beat cancer.
We will deal with the fat loss later. But right now, every priority needs to be focused on how can you stay strong enough to be able to fight this cancer off so that you're alive long enough, that we can then address the fat loss. So hopefully, I know that's an extreme example, but we're making decisions every single day about the hierarchy of priority. So I want you to make sure that you're you're actively choosing it and not letting life choose it for you. So that's my step one.
It's just to make sure that you're very clear on what your priorities are. And that if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. So you need to be very clear on what you're saying yes to as a priority and what you're saying yes but not right now. We'll deal with it later. Okay?
The second thing that I want you to be thinking about is how can you create flexibility around your goals and your priorities. Set yourself up for success and not for failure. And a really easy way to do this is to focus on the principle underlying the goal that you're trying to achieve. Instead of thinking about the tools, the first thing that we always wanna think about when we have a new goal is what do I get to buy? So around New Year's, the sales for planners spikes dramatically.
Everyone's a brand new planner and they feel like that's gonna be the thing that helps them achieve their goals this year. It's a tool. But if we're not using the tool, then the goal isn't gonna happen anyway. So that's kind of how I like to think about it is, like, principles are never gonna change. The principles of eating healthy aren't really gonna change much.
The principles of exercise aren't really gonna change much. The principles of any goal, like, you know, graduated from college. The principles are the same. The stuff around it might change. All of the things around it.
So Some examples might be that you don't need a gym and you don't need the perfect set of equipment to get a great workout in. You could still get a great workout in at home with just your body weight. The gym and equipment are the stuff around the principle of just work out. Another example is that you don't need a perfect meal plan in order to focus on eating a little bit healthier. You could just as easily just focus on getting a little bit more vegetables or focusing on ensuring that you have a protein source at every meal.
And that can be done while you're eating out. It can be done in a hotel room. It can be done at home with your kids. So the principle stays the same. The the stuff around it can change.
So, yeah, you could have a perfect meal plan here and then you move you know, for instance, you move overseas and then that meal plan is no longer available. If you're so reliant on the meal plan, instead of focusing on the principles underlying why a meal plan might work for you or anything else, then you're not going to be able to stick to your healthy eating plan. So I want you to think about being really intentional about what what's the underlying principle behind the goal that I'm trying to achieve and my priority? And then what are the tools around it? Doesn't mean you have to change anything.
I'm not saying that any of these things are bad. I'm actually gonna be aware of the difference between the two because the tool can change we can use this you know, if we just needed to accomplish this one job, we could use any number of tools to accomplish the same job. And so the tools can change, and that's where we can really play around and be flexible. So it doesn't mean you need to change anything right now, but just be aware of the difference and then maybe have a plan in place, the plan b and plan c in case the plan a is no longer available. That company disappears, gyms closed down, you you get what I'm saying, right, is we can't rely on the stuff.
We need to be focused on the principle and be flexible with the stuff. And then the third thing that I would like you to focus on are just think about, is that there are seasons in the year for a reason. There are times that we need renewal. And growth. And then there are times in the for seasons of slowing down and for hibernation and recharging.
Military life has seasons too. And if we try and ignore them and try and be in like top gear, like high functioning status year round no matter what the season of military life is, we're gonna burn ourselves out. And we might be missing some great opportunities for a reset. Success doesn't always have to mean that we're making constant progress and we're pushing, pushing, pushing forward. Sometimes just maintaining your progress or maintaining consistent see is just as important.
And we'll always be more effective if we're consistent than if we're not doing anything at all. So let me repeat that so I'm really clear. Consistency is such an underrated success. We we put so much emphasis on constantly getting better and better and better. I'm losing more weight.
I'm running faster and lifting more weight. Guess those are all important, but sometimes just being consistent and going to the gym is gonna yield way more success in the long run. Then pushing ourselves so hard that we burn out and then we're not going to the gym at all. It's gonna take way more energy for us to have to reestablish a routine two or three months down the line because we burned ourselves out, then if we just take a moment to say, like, hey, I'm not gonna keep push, push, push, pushing, just gonna work on being consistent. And then when the season is right, then I can push a little bit.
But I don't have to put all the energy into restarting my routine. I've just been consistent this whole time. And then when it's time to go, I can push a little bit more. Think about like Olympic athletes. They have on seasons and off seasons.
And during the on season, they're push push push pushing, but then they have these off seasons where they work on other things and they rest and they recuperate so that they can be peak performers when it comes to the race or the Olympics or the the game. You know? So think of it like that way you're an athlete and sometimes you're gonna need these periods of reset and rejuvenation so that you can peak when you need to peak. And the other thing is that sometimes we get really set in our regular routine, which is a bad thing. But sometimes it doesn't allow us the opportunity to, like, think about the forest for the trees and maybe we're we're out of alignment with the desired lifestyle that we really want, but we stick to it just because it's normal.
Like, it's our normal routine. We just stick to it without even being aware. And what can happen is that months and years can go by And then you look back and you realize, like, I've been pretty dang miserable these past couple years. And now it's, like, not too late, but it's kinda too late to change it. So in a way, we're really lucky in military life that we have these PCS periods and these seasons that we can actually reset.
We move to a different place. We have a new environment. It just gives us an opportunity to, like, stop for a second and have, like, a clean slate. It gives it gives us time and the opportunity to reflect and start to see the forest for the trees, see the bigger picture of our life and our journey. And I mean, this podcast that you're listening to right now is a result of that that moment to reflect.
Having this I mean, we just went through a really gnarly PCS, which I'll tell you about maybe in another time. It was brutal. But if I had had not had that experience, it wouldn't have given me the opportunity to just stop. I was working so hard at their past duty station. So I was just go go go didn't have time to to stop and reflect and because I have this opportunity to just stick stop and reevaluate.
How do I want my day's look? How do I want my life to look? That I was able to come up with, you know, the time to set out the script that I could share with you these things are really important to me that I wanna make sure that are getting out into the world that I think are gonna really impact your life and be able to record it for you and have the time to edit it and put it out there for you. So that is a direct result of following these three steps that I just laid out for you. So You can see it in action as we speak.
And I'll tell you one more story. When we were PCS in two Japan, back in the summer of twenty twenty. It was right in the middle of all the COVID restrictions. There were no jams open, and we were traveling for about like three to four weeks And then after that, once we got to Japan, we spent two weeks in Rome where we were stuck in an isolation apartment for two weeks straight, couldn't talk or couldn't interact with anyone. And then after that, we spent about two weeks in a TLF before we finally got into our housing.
There was so much change. Our environment was constantly influx all day in a car, hotel room, hotel room to hotel room, planes, isolation, More hotel rooms, no gyms, and most fitness programs are just not designed to be able to adapt to different environments like that so quickly. So as a fitness professional, I decided I was gonna create one for myself, and I followed the exact same program. I just adjusted little things and built the flexibility in it to adapt to no equipment, minimal equipment, and then once we were able to get back into a gym, it it seamlessly transitioned into a gym. So I followed the three principles that we laid out today and applied it to creating a fitness program for myself.
And low and behold, that was really where the first seeds started to be planted and creating what eventually became my signature fitness program. Named PCS proof of fitness. And it's because it follows that the three principles that we talked about today were how I created that fitness program. So now that you know what being PCS proof means to me, I wanna check-in with you and ask yourself these few questions. So number one, what are the biggest priorities in your life right now?
What are the biggest things that you need to PCS proof so that you don't have to waste any time or energy or extra money having to start over every single time UPCS every single time. There's a deployment, a TAD, a TDI, etcetera, etcetera. And I want you to really think about what is the hierarchy of those priorities. So if you have your, you know, top five things that are high priority goals for you. I want you to kind of rank them.
What is gonna make the most impact in my life right now? What's the second thing and the third thing and so on? What things can I still keep on my priority list, but maybe it's later down the line or maybe it's just not the right season for that right now? And then question number two, what is the underlying principle that you need to focus on in order to achieve that goal or that priority. What is the thing that's not gonna change that you need to focus on?
And then the sub question to that is What's the stuff around the principles that I can play around with? Can you think about multiple tools? Multiple stuffs, so to speak, that will allow you to accomplish the same job, accomplish or follow the same principle. So think about those are like your plan b and your plan c. Doesn't you need to change plan a?
If that's working for you right now, by all means, but we need to have a plan b in place. This plan a might disappear tomorrow. And in future episodes, I'm gonna dive deeper into the seasons of military life. So I know we just kind of want touched on it really briefly here. But I'm gonna really dedicate what it deserves, which is at least at least one episode on how to apply the four seasons of Military Life to your goals and how you should be approaching your goals differently depending on the season.
But until then, I would just encourage you to try and solicit some time for yourself this week or maybe this weekend and just check-in with yourself about how your current lifestyle is or is not in alignment with your goals. Maybe it's not the right time to change anything. That's okay. You don't have to change anything just yet, but often we can let months and years go by without realizing that we're out of alignment until it's too late and we're miserable and there's nothing we could do to change it. And like I kind of talked about last week in my own personal story, sometimes just bringing some awareness to knowing what you want and that you want something to change, that you're not happy now and you want to make changes.
Sometimes the universe will just move you closer to without you even realizing. It's happened to me so many times in my personal life. I cannot even tell you. So that's really was on my heart to share with you this week. Episode two, guys, we made it.
Thank you so much for sticking with me. And thank you so much for making time for yourself, for investing this time in yourself, in your personal growth, and allowing me to be a part of your journey. I can't wait to talk to you again next week. And if you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to leave a five star review. This will really help make sure that this podcast gets pushed out to other women in military life who are looking for support and looking for community.
So I would really appreciate you helping me out with that. And make sure you follow or subscribe so that you'll be the first to get notified when the new episode drops next week. But that being said, I hope that you have a great week ahead and remember no matter where in the world military life sends you together we are. PCS proof. Adios!
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