Hello and welcome, everyone, to SuperPower Mommas. I am your host, Laura Greco. This is a place where you are going to know for sure that you are not alone in your parenting. Today, I have a wonderful guest and we are talking on the topic of eliminate mental clutter and achieve inner balance. Gail Kreitzer is just a delicious person. I met her and she came into a networking meeting and how she described herself is an inventor and I thought that was an amazing way to describe what she does because her whole thing is about decluttering overwhelmed minds through something that she did invent which is Dashboarding. So Gail, thank you so much for being here and welcome to our show.
I am thrilled to be here and I do remember the first time we met at a meeting. It was like love at first sight and I enjoy being part of your meeting and really, it was at the very beginning of my whole business journey and I just will always remember it and cherish it.
Yes, thank you, Gail. Thank you. So we’re going to start with our traditional question and then we’re going to elaborate on what it is really that dashboarding is and what you do. So what is your superpower?
I’m obsessed with helping people create space in their minds so they can focus on what matters most in their lives.
My superpower is really all about helping people distill modern-day overload. What do I mean by that? Well, I’m obsessed with helping people through the power of dashboarding which is a visual and intuitive approach to organization. I’m obsessed with helping people create space in their minds so they can focus on what matters most in their lives. I think that we all tend to carry a lot in our brains because we don’t know where to put it. We know where to put some of it but a lot of it we just hold onto so we don’t lose it and I think that makes it really difficult for people to live proactively. I think people live very, very reactively, including children. So my superpower is all about helping people distill mental clutter and get to less.
Isn’t that beautiful when we all like to be able to live in a more streamlined and peaceful or harmonious way, right? And it is true that there is so much stimulation, so much research, so much going on, so many things as a mom, more influenced by as far as what we should or need or the “should” be doing with our children and I love that you have developed this program that allows people to really calm it down to what’s important and also to categorize things. So to go a little further, I’d like to ask you, Gail, how did you start to get into this? You didn’t always do this so what drove you here?
Very good question. I never expected to be assessed with a mental organization. I’m a former HR director. I worked in the marketing and advertising industry in Boston and New Jersey. I have two daughters and several years ago, what happened was that I was feeling incredibly overwhelmed. I was doing all for my family or trying to do it all and, for the most part, I was getting it all done. Like many of us, we’re high achievers, we know how to get things done, right? But we tend to take on so much, too much that we work harder and harder, faster and faster, and longer and longer to keep up. So ultimately, I reached the point in my own life that I was trying to solve my own problem and my problem was I wanted to feel better.
I wanted to feel more in control of my busy life.
I wanted to feel more in control of my busy life and the real breaking point for me came several years ago when I was outside screaming at my children to get into the car because we were late for something or we were going to be late. I was screaming, and yelling, and pleading with them to get in the car right as the UPS man dropped off a package right by the garage. He had overheard everything. He looked at me and he’s like, “Hi, Gail. Here’s your package. Have a great day,” and he walked away and I remember I was mortified, of course. I’m sure he’d seen it all, but at the same time, it was the first time I really heard myself and I remember thinking to myself, “When did I become this person?” I made homemade baby food for my kids when they were babies and now I was screaming at them, really not feeling in control.
So it was at that moment that I said, “There’s got to be a better way,” and that’s what set me on a journey. I remember looking at all the different tools available to organize calendars, and planners, and different apps and I really started to look around me and I’m like, “You know what, everybody’s overwhelmed. It’s not just me.” It’s men, students, senior citizens.” I thought it was somewhat ironic that given that there was an endless amount of tools out there, everybody was feeling stretched.
So I started thinking about really what was going on. What was causing the stress and I think we all agree that everything starts in our mind. So that’s where I went in my head and I was like, “You know, I have so many things in my brain, short-term, long-term, no-term tasks. I have thoughts, ideas, worries and it’s constantly getting stirred up each day and you are just processing relentless information. So, true story, as I started thinking about that and thinking to myself, “You know, my current organizational practice does not have a place for everything. That keeps it very accessible.”
So I grabbed some simple home office supplies and ultimately, my dashboarding mind’s approach to distilling modern-day overload began to unfold and very quickly, I started to feel so much more in control of my busy life that I started sharing it with friends. That’s how it all began and today, I call it the Dashboarding Minds, that’s my practice, and I’ve also invented a tool to help people implement, which is called My Dashboard Planner. So that’s how my journey began and that is why I’m really passionate because I want people to feel more in control and I want them to feel better.
Beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you for describing that because what you just shared here, it probably speaks to nearly every mom out there in the world and how we share love and life really matters to us and yet, we find ourselves in reaction and overload and this is a beautiful thing that we’re going to continue to talk about as we explore the inner balance that we really need and how to eliminate that clutter. But before we go for a break, Gail, can you share how people can reach you?
Yes. The best place to reach me is through my website which is dashboardingminds.com and that gives a very good overview of what I do and where I do it. Lots of great information. That’s a great place to start.
Beautiful. Well, thank you. You’ve been listening to How to Eliminate Mental Clutter and Achieve Inner Balance on SuperPower Mommas. We’ll be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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