Hello everyone.
Welcome back to Unlimited Parenting.
Today I'm very excited to have a special incredible guest with us.
Her name is Lori Rogers.
She is foremost a caregiver of her adult son diagnosed with autism.
Lori is the co-founder of Parents Assisting Special Educators, a vehicle that provides
vital equipment, supplies to support special needs classrooms and teachers, and the co-founder
of WIPOC, which creates safe and productive learning spaces for special needs adults.
And if that wasn't enough, in 2011 Lori began implementing the practices of positive
activity, which we'll talk about today, and experienced a shift in her approach to caregiving.
And she likes to help audiences do the same, implementing simple daily activities and mindset
shifts that attract, hopefully, a life-changing experience.
She's also a Spelling to Communicate advocate, which I hope we have time to talk about as
well.
So whether you're listening in as a parent, a caregiver, or you're just curious about
how to empower a caregiver in your life, you're in the right spot.
So we're going to dive in.
After that lengthy intro, let's welcome Lori.
Thank you for being here.
Oh my gosh.
I'm so excited to talk to caregivers and parents, or those that know them and care about them,
because it's such an untapped market of, I guess I would call them, appreciating that
segment and helping them cope every day.
Because, yes, yeah.
So I'm psyched to be here.
Thank you.
Would you mind to start by sharing a little bit about what brought you into the role or
what inspired you to create positive activity?
Sure.
Neil and I own a marketing company where we do corporate swag for people.
And we've owned it for 27 years.
And, you know, it's all great, fun stuff.
So back in 2008, 2009, there was the recession in the country.
And many of our clients lost their jobs, lost their budgets.
They would stop buying things from us.
And like swag and gifty things were last on the totem pole as far as spending was going.
So I was in this, you know, like, uh, you know, worried state of anxiety and fear and
oh my gosh, what's going to happen?
And at the same time, Craig, our son diagnosed with autism was transitioning from high school
into the adult world, which is a whole new follow backs as I'm sure parents and caregivers
know.
It's wrought with, I guess I would say, undetermined paths in some cases.
And so, you know, there was that worry and that fear of all of that going on.
My daughter was home.
She was a senior in college.
She had suffered a head injury in college.
She played college sports.
So she was home dealing with all of that.
And given that I was already sort of a worrywart to begin with and all of those things sort
of compounded and I didn't have the appropriate skills and the resilience to sort of deal
with it all.
And I just was like, oh my gosh, my daughter who couldn't drive at the time because of
her injury asked me to take her to a wellness fair.
So I took her to the fair, picked up a few books, listened to a few presentations on
shifting your mindset, shifting your daily activities to help you feel better, more positive,
calmer, increase your resilience, like all of these things.
I'm like, wait, what?
I have control over how I can feel each day.
I have control over my joy level, what I'm thinking, what I'm attracting into my life.
I can change my subconscious.
I had no idea these things even existed.
It didn't mean I didn't know.
So I grabbed some books and I read a bunch of articles.
I listened to a bunch of researchers.
I went on YouTube and listened to a bunch of Ted talks.
I was like, oh my gosh, all of this stuff is being researched to help you be more resilient,
lower your stress level, be open to more positive ideas to problem solve.
And I didn't know this.
I said, well, this is ridiculous.
I'm going to start doing these things.
And what do I have to lose?
I take 20 minutes in the morning and I started these activities and then once I realized
that they were science-backed and there's studies behind them, I'm like, okay, Neil,
this is ridiculous.
My husband, Neil, this is ridiculous.
I need to teach people these things, especially parents of special needs children and their
caregivers.
I want to teach people these activities and why it's helpful to do them.
So that's how it started back in 2012.
So it's been 12 years and I've learned more and more each year as we go along and I just
add them into my daily routine and I talk about them on podcasts or in workshops or
in keynote speaking or that kind of thing because they're free.
They're easy.
It's time.
It's your time.
And so that's how it started back then.
Yes.
So it's not only things that you have found that are researched, but you've done your
own research on them and shown over a decade how they've benefited you and other people
that you've helped.
You've almost conducted your own research too.
Right.
I feel like I'm a double-blind placebo study in and of myself because I did them and the
research has shown if you do an activity for 21 days it becomes a habit.
So would you ever leave the house or wake up in the morning and not brush your teeth?
It's just like, you know how that's automatic and you just do it or wash your face.
It's do you just do it?
Well, these activities have become habits for me and I can't move on with my day until
I do them.
And then over the years I saw how our business grew, how I became more resilient, how Craig
became calmer and happier because I was.
I'm curious about where the name positive activity comes from.
It seems really intuitive that you do these positive activities to make yourself be better,
to feel better, to be more present and to hopefully that trickles down into your parenting.
Is that where you came up with the name?
Well, I didn't really know at the time that it was going to also help me with my parenting
and caregiving.
At the time I was just thinking, oh, this is going to help us rebound from our business.
This is going to help me feel more positive and light and airy and have more joy every
day so that these little downturns in life don't take me to the ditch anymore, which
they don't.
At the time I was just thinking business.
I wasn't really thinking about how it was affecting my caregiving or how it was affecting
Craig and our relationship and ideas and problem solving in his life.
It was, oh, wait, wait a minute.
This is also helping him as well.
So when your mind is more positive and joyful and lighter and airy, it is, when I say airy,
I mean your heart is lighter and airier as well.
You are, your mind is more open to creative possibilities and creative ideas to help you
problem solve.
For instance, when Craig was transitioning out of high school into the adult world, we
started the program LifeOp.
Life opportunities is what it is.
We went to our Health and Human Services Agency here in Nashua and said, why can't we connect
Craig and you all with Nashua Community College and see if we can get a room there, see if
they can help us create some kind of a community where there's a structured environment every
day because Craig loved going to school.
Well, come to find out.
We went and met with the president of Nashua Community College.
She has a grandson with autism at the time.
This is in 2012.
And she's like, oh, I have a room you can use.
Yes, I will donate this room to Nashua Center, which is Health and Human Services.
And yes, you can start this program here.
You can have adults and kids come through here, of course, and tap into the services
we have here.
And that's how that happened.
It was just putting dots together, putting people together.
But we never, maybe we would never have thought of that or I wouldn't have thought of that
if I wasn't in a better space.
What if I kept saying, oh, poor Craig.
Oh my God, he's going to be home every day.
Oh, this is so hard.
Oh, we're never going to find a place for him.
Oh, what is he?
Like, if you say that and that's your mantra, and that's what's going into your subconscious
mind.
Well, your subconscious mind is a very good friend and wants to bring you everything you're
thinking of and believing, right?
So, if that's what you're saying, and that's what you're thinking, that's kind of what
you're getting.
So, to shift that and say, many opportunities are out there for our son, something wonderful
is going to fall into place.
And that's what happened and it did.
So, it doesn't mean that every day you don't see new issues or challenges or things come
up.
No, but you try to change your perspective on them.
So, instead of having the perspective of, oh, there's no adult services for our kids.
Oh, this is terrible.
What are we going to do?
It's so hard to find a program.
If we can shift that a little bit and say, no, the right thing is coming.
The right program for Craig is coming.
Better things are coming.
And no, we're going to, you know, it's just shifting those thoughts, those words so that
your subconscious mind says, oh, oh, that's what she really wants.
So, is this in the same vein of that positive self-talk when you're feeling really down
and you start saying to yourself, well, you know, this isn't my moment.
Nothing ever, exactly like you're saying, nothing ever going well.
Nobody likes me.
You just switch that to essentially telling the universe what you want from it.
Is that manifesting?
We're talking about manifesting.
And the best way to manifest something, and quantum physics has shown us this now, is
to instill these better thoughts, instill these beliefs, instill your thoughts and your
words into your subconscious mind.
So, we have the conscious mind that says, oh, I've got to zoom at 12.
Oh, I'm going to go to see Craig at 145.
That keeps us organized, right?
But your subconscious mind, I don't even like to call it sub because it's not sub at all.
I call it the unconscious mind because most of us don't know it's there.
But that's the part of our mind that is bringing us what we want, is matching our outside world
to our inside world.
But it's a faithful friend and it wants to match what we are thinking, saying, visualizing.
So if you're thinking, saying, visualizing not great things, you're probably seeing not
great things in your life.
If you can say and think and imagine better things, that's then your subconscious mind
is like, oh, okay, that's what she really, really wants.
It's the same thing, whether it's about you, your friendships, your relationships, your
work, or your caregiving, your special needs child, it's the same thing.
It's the same.
So now, with Craig, for instance, now with Craig learning to communicate, he's a non-speaker.
So he's learned to communicate through spelling to communicate, which is a method because
he can't do this, right, with his mouth.
Okay.
So his motor cortex isn't working, which is in the center of your brain.
So it sends signals to his mouth, but it's not working.
The signals get scrambled.
So instead of this, using his voice, we've taught him to point to letters on a letter
board that has 26 letters on it, to spell out what he wants, to spell out his thoughts,
his desires, his goals, how we're teaching him algebra and history and math, all these
things, biology that he knows we didn't know.
We didn't know he knew.
So this whole new world is opening up to us, and that's probably a little another podcast.
Now on my vision board, I have a picture of a classroom with two big tables in it and
his picture next to it with a Spellers t-shirt on, and he wants to be with other Spellers
so that they can communicate back and forth because there's thousands of them across the
country now.
So I'm envisioning that and I visualize that and I see him there.
I don't know how it's going to come together.
I don't know yet who it will be.
I don't know yet where it will be, but I just have faith, right, faith and belief that it's
coming.
That the right things will fall into place and it will come.
Are there one or is there a habit that someone could start right now to increase their well-being,
to get them towards what you've mastered in terms of positive activity?
If there was one thing where someone was going to say, oh my gosh, I love Lori.
I love everything she's saying.
That's one thing I could start today or tomorrow doing that could lead me down this path.
Okay.
The first thing I do every morning, I get up, go in the bathroom.
I look in the mirror and I look in my own eyes.
I give myself a high five in the mirror and I say something kind and amazing to myself
like, you've got this day.
It's going to go great.
Things are working out for you.
I look in my eyes and I say to myself that I love and approve of myself.
This habit, very hard for me at first.
A lot.
It was very difficult for me to look at myself and say that.
It took practice.
Mel Robbins wrote a great book and it's also on Audible.
It's an amazing book.
It's called The High Five Habit and she talks about the science behind doing this.
It takes about, I don't know, 12 seconds, 15 seconds in the morning and it can shift
your life and your kids can do it.
They do research on children that do it and adults that do it.
It's an excellent book, a great read.
That's the one thing I do first thing in the morning.
Some days I forget and I'm like, oh shoot, I got to go back to the bathroom and do that.
That's the first thing I do.
The second thing I do, which doesn't take much more time either, so if somebody wants
to do two things to start, is grab a journal or a piece of paper, whatever.
Have a nice journal around and you write down three things that you appreciate and why from
the last 24 hours.
Okay.
This practice helps you and your brain.
In our brain, we were born and created with a software program that's looking for danger,
right?
Danger, danger.
The tiger coming to eat us or the bear coming to get us.
Back in the day, we needed that, right?
We needed that protection.
Well now we don't need that protection anymore.
If there's a bus coming out to you, okay fine, but how often does that happen?
What we're doing is shifting that software program to not always look for anxiety and
fear and worry and danger, danger, danger.
We're shifting the software program to look for more things to appreciate.
So think about it this way.
What you appreciate, appreciates.
Oh, that's powerful.
Isn't that good?
So the research behind that is showing that we were shifting that software program.
So you wake up and you write three new things each day that you appreciate and why, and
they need to be new because you're always looking for new things.
So today I was just with the kitchen.
I'm like, oh, I appreciate my Christmas cactus so much.
Thank you Christmas cactus for reminding me of that.
And then I write two more things and I think about them and I think about the emotion of
those.
And then I meditate for five minutes just on that feeling in my heart of that appreciation.
Okay, so I gave you three things.
So all in all those three things, I guess five minutes of the meditation, maybe it takes
you three, four minutes to write down the appreciations and then maybe, you know, 17,
30 seconds to do your high five habit.
It's not that much time in the morning to sort of get your mind straight.
And let's say you're up, your kids are up or you're a young mom.
It's a lot to do in the morning.
I get that.
Wow.
It's like I don't know how these moms do it anymore, but you can think about them then.
If you don't have a moment to write it down, maybe just record it in your phone.
Oh, I really appreciate Tim, my son's communication partner.
He's learning spelling to communicate with Craig.
It's so amazing.
And Craig is so happy.
Like you can just put it in your phone, right?
And you're saying it and you're thinking about it.
And you know, you've done the same thing without writing it down.
So there's a bond of a few other things that I do in the morning, but those are my top
three.
Yeah, someone like me is listening to this and thinking, oh, if I don't do it just this
exact way that she lined out, it's not going to work out for me.
If I don't follow the rules exactly, I'm not going to get the same result.
But what I'm hearing you say is, is it's less about the method you use, the vehicle you
use to get it done and more about the intention behind it.
So even if you keep, it's not about the physical act of writing.
It's about the almost willing it into existence.
Yes.
And it's more about the emotion behind it.
Oh, okay.
Right?
So the emotion behind that appreciation and the visualization behind that appreciation,
because you're thinking about it, how beautiful that plant is or how lovely this cup of coffee
is this morning.
You're visualizing it too and you're feeling the emotion of it.
Yeah.
And that's the key.
Yeah, that's the key.
I think you've already kind of answered this question, but I was going to ask, is there
a way to involve our children into this process?
Is this something sacred that you do by yourself or can you do this with your child?
Well, when I do it for myself, I do it by myself.
Okay.
But with my other children, I have two typical kids and they know what I do, but I can't
make them do anything, right?
Everyone has free will to do what they will.
But my children know very well what I do and what I preach.
I don't preach at them, but I just...
It's a topic you enjoy speaking about and you're passionate.
Absolutely.
So my kids are on board, my typical kids.
For Craig, who is totally very spiritual and very connected with the energy of this universe.
When I sit with him and we do spelling to communicate now, I say, well, Craig, today
I was appreciating my beautiful cup of coffee, I got my new coffee maker, I was appreciating
my great cup of coffee this morning.
I said, what do you appreciate today?
And then on the board, he'll tell me, I appreciate Roland.
And I'll say, well, why do you appreciate Roland?
Because he is very calm and Roland is the young man that he lives with, because he is
calm.
So I say, Craig, and then I explained to Craig, this is why we do this every day and why I'd
ask you every day, because you're just bringing in more things to appreciate.
And then I'll ask him, well, what's your power statement today?
Mike, I said to him, my power statement today is I...
I forget even what I said.
I am...
Oh gosh, I can't even remember what it was this morning.
See, that's not very powerful.
I can't remember what it was, but I am very...
I think I said I'm very abundant.
Everything's working out today.
My clients are paying me on time or something like that.
I said, what's your I am power statement?
And he'll say, I am strong, or he'll say, I am resilient, or I am intelligent.
Because people think because he doesn't speak that he's not intelligent.
And he's...
I mean, Savant like intelligent now.
I mean, he was silent for 30 years and he never knew his intelligence.
Wow.
But now that he can use the spelling board to spell out stuff, now we see how intelligent
he is.
Yeah.
Wow.
I know that's cool.
When you're looking at the impact and the success of what you've done, what are the
outcomes that you were most proud of?
Is it the change you see in yourself or your son?
I would think...I think it's more...I'm most proud of the way I can bounce back from disappointment
and challenges.
Okay.
And I'm most proud...
No, trust me.
Every day I'm not positive and wonderful.
Believe me, there are days when I get a little snarky and I'll send someone a nice email
or a not nice text or whatever.
And I'm like, it feels horrible.
It just feels horrible because that's not in like the energy I sit in anymore.
And I'll call them immediately.
Oh my gosh.
I can't believe I just said that that way.
I am so sorry.
I just did that.
But you know, we're all human.
We all have egos.
We all have sometimes knee-jerk reactions to things.
So I'm most proud of the fact that I can bounce back better when there's challenges and downturns
in life.
And I can use my tools to get back and bounce back because I've built up my resilience.
And I'm most proud of the fact that I'm teaching it to Craig.
And I now understand that my energy is distinctly tied to his energy.
So knowing that if I can keep myself with less anxiety and less worry and less stress,
his energy can be that way too because we're so tied in.
And most parents don't realize how tied in they are to their kids, their children.
Yeah.
Or how much your children.
I think that I have found in my own personal parenting journey is that I don't give enough
credit to my child on how much they really pick up and recognize what I'm feeling and
what emotions I'm sending in and how their day changes based off of that.
Yes.
So there really is that trickle-down effect that if mom does something brave and kind
for herself or dad, if parent is doing something good for themselves, it really does make its
way down to the children.
Yes, and if I don't have young children at home anymore, but if I did and I wish I knew
this then, I mean, we prayed at night and that was cool, but I wish I would have known,
all right, you guys getting into bed, what's three things you're really happy that happened
today?
What did you appreciate today?
I would have done more of an appreciation practice with them at night.
It's hard to remember, my kids are in their 30s now, but we probably did it around the
dinner table without thinking why.
I didn't know why at the time.
They were young and I didn't really study this stuff at the time.
So incorporating the children into it, I think it's a beautiful thing.
What do you say to families who are interested in learning more about positive activity?
What advice or steps do you tell them to get more involved to learn more?
Sure, they can go to our website, positiveactivity.net.
You can connect with me there, my email is on there, my contact information is there.
There's lots of blogs that I've written that are there and other podcast interviews that
I've been on and you can listen to me speak.
I do a lot of mentoring for caregivers and a lot of that is give back because it's just
a passion of mine.
The work I do is for sales teams and corporations and business people, entrepreneurs that want
to build up their resilience and build up their business and build up their abundance.
So the caregiving piece, sort of my give back piece, but I think it's critical to help support
caregivers.
I look at Krebs, the center where his day program is housed and I think, what does the
center do to appreciate people every week, every day?
Having an appreciation day every year is nice, but honestly I think people should be appreciated
monthly or weekly or whatever the case may be because it's hard work.
It's hard work when you're tube feeding someone, when you're changing them and these are adults
that they're working with.
Who's supporting the caregiver?
They need the help and the support as well.
So that's sort of like a give back piece that I like to do.
So I think my biggest takeaway from our conversation so far is that there are easy steps that I
can do to make myself feel better and that in this world sometimes we're not going to
get the appreciation we need as often as we need it, but we can always give that to ourselves.
Bingo.
Yes.
Another convert right here.
See me talking to myself tomorrow in the mirror.
And we can shift our perspective.
We can shift it from doom and gloom to bright and light and beautiful and wonderful.
I'm not saying every moment of every day is wonderful, but when you do hit those little
challenges your resilience is higher so you can shift it easier.
It's easier to get back there.
It's a tool in your toolbox, right?
Yes.
Well, I really want to thank you so much for your time today.
And I want you to know that when you do appreciations later just know that this conversation has
meant so much to me personally and that I am so looking forward to sharing it with our
families.
So thank you so much.
Sure.
Thank you, Allison.
It was great chatting with you.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, everyone out there for listening in and know that if you are in Idaho
or planning on moving to Idaho and have questions on systems or services for children with disabilities,
please consider reaching out to us on our website at iPull Idaho.
Or by calling us at 208-342-5884.
Be sure to tune in next time.
Until then, this has been Unlimited Parenting.
Thanks for listening.