Hoda reveals the ‘platter trick’ that helped her realize her life was ‘totally out of whack’
Hoda Kotb announced in late September that she will be leaving her role as TODAY co-anchor — but her efforts to reassess her life and priorities began much earlier than that, she explains.
In a recent interview with TODAY.com at TODAY's Making Space Wellness Weekend with Hoda Kotb, sponsored by Miraval Resorts & Spas, the journalist and mom of two said a simple trick suggested by her friend Maria Shriver helped her realize she wasn't spending her time how she thought she was.
"One day, I was really in the muck, everything was sort of out of whack, and I said, 'I don't feel right.' (Maria) goes, 'You need to reassess your life. ... Go into your cabinets and get a platter,'" Hoda recalls.
"So I got a platter that I would serve cheese on or something. I got a piece of paper — we were on the phone — and she goes, 'Now start chopping it up into sections that identify parts of your life that require your time, your heart, your attention, your emotions, and start writing them out.'"
Hoda says she then started cutting up pieces of paper representing her kids, her work, her mom, who wasn't feeling well at the time, travel, exercise, friends — "every little thing got a piece," Hoda explains. Then Maria asked her to make sure the pieces of paper were to scale in terms of how much time and energy each was requiring of her.
"What I realized was, when I looked at my platter, it was totally out of whack," Hoda says. "My kids had not as big of a chunk as I thought they did. If you total up the hours, my work had tons of time. Any me-time was buried. Exercise was shrinking over time, just because I couldn't find time for it, et cetera."
"So as I was looking at all those things, (Maria) goes, 'That is your life. Do you like it? Because that's the way you're living. You could keep marching this way, or you could reassess.'"
"I reassessed, and I think that's the magic: When do you stop and look at your life? You don't have time because you're too busy going to the grocery store, getting something from your kids. Someone has a fever. Your boss is mad. You can't sleep, so you watch some terrible show, then you wake up feeling cranky. You don't have time," Hoda continues.
"That was very helpful. And I was like, 'Now I'm going to start making changes.'"
Hoda says that, after completing this exercise about two or so years ago, she decided to change how she was approaching work obligations.
"I decided that for work, there were things you have to do, things that you would be good if you did, and things that you choose to do," she explains. "So I just cut down on the 'choose to dos' because it wasn't serving anybody. I wasn't feeling good doing it. My kids were losing me while I was doing it. And then I kept thinking ... why am I doing it? ... Is there anything I'm gaining, or am I giving?"
"When your output is so much more than your input, then you're doing it wrong. If you're depleted at the end of every day and you're on empty, there's something you're not doing right, and it's on you. It's not like everybody's taking. It's not true. You're giving. ... So then you decide this is what I need now," Hoda adds.
Over the past few years, Hoda says she has also been focused more on feeling healthy mentally and physically, in large part so she can spend more time with her daughters, Haley, 7, and Hope, 5.
"When I feel good physically and solid emotionally, I'm like, oh, man you feel like you could live forever. And that's really at the crux of it. When I think of my little kids, I often think of longevity," she says. "I want to be there, so I'm not going to be worried about it. I'm just going to do all things in my power so that I get to see them walk down the aisle, have a graduation. I want to witness that. So I'm hopeful that all of this stuff will take me there."
"I want them to know that vibrancy matters, happiness matters," Hoda adds.
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This article was originally published on TODAY.com