Hi guys! Welcome to episode 202 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! Well In the last episode I kind of took the air out of New Year’s resolutions but I also talked about the importance of clarity. Clarity in where you are and clarity in where you’re going.
One of the areas that tends to get left out but has come on the radar hard and strong these last two years is our mental health.
Being the best version of ourselves mentally these last two years has been a real challenge. And it’s one that we don’t talk about a lot but I think we should.
SO if you’re here and you’re smiling and you’re still listening and working on being the best version of you then I give you a big standing ovation because it’s been challenging. Life in general can be hard but Covid has made it super hard probably in different ways for each of us. And because it has been so hard, there’s this tendency to just want to buffer. By buffering I mean trying to just avoid it all…by drinking too much, eating too much, netflixing too much, spending hours on your iPhone…whatever it is that you like to do when you’re stressed, but it usually involves mindlessly filling your brain or body with something.
There’s a lot going on. Of course we are going to feel stressed sometimes but filling our head or body with things that aren’t good for us isn’t helping…
For me, part of my mental health inventory involved assessing how much time I still spend consuming.
I was listening to Brendon Burchard’s podcast this last week and he was talking about how when you go on vacation, after a couple days of relaxation and just chilling you all of a sudden have these awakenings and you realize “I want to do this with my life, and I want to make this happen or start doing this when I get home…It’s like you have this new lease on life and what you want to make happen…You know why this is? It’s because on vacation you’re giving yourself a break usually from Netflix or your laptop or the family drama and all of a sudden your brain finds some clarity and you just have this burst of creative genius. Do you realize you can actually have that daily? You can have that every day if you just take time to quiet your mind and give it a little freedom from the constant noise of buffering. Big things are created in your mind, big things that are meant for you to create in your life but they can’t happen if you don’t ever let yourself be still.
SO let’s take inventory of your mental health. Think about your day. What do you wake up thinking about? What do you go to bed thinking about? What do you spend your day thinking about?
Maybe when you do a mental health check…maybe you recognize. Hey, I’m not thinking about anything I’m consuming. I’m constantly filling my head with what other people are thinking about on Instagram on Twitter and Fox News on CNN. Maybe you’re not thinking and this isn’t an attack or a criticism. For me I think it should be a collective ah ha because we all do it, we just aren’t aware of how much we are sacrificing to do it.
Take inventory of how much time you really spend on your phone or in front of your tv. And then think about the amount of time you spend justifying where you are because you just don’t have time to write that book, you don’t have time to create that podcast, you don’t have time to start that new side business…but in reality. You do..you just have to be honest with yourself. When I was being honest with myself I realized I really just traded instagram and twitter for healthy podcasts and good books, which is a step in the right direction but it’s still me consuming not creating. The best version of me she creates. She’s healthy, she’s present in her relationships and she creates big things in her career. But when I looked at it honestly I was spending too much time consuming even though it was positive information it still didn’t allow me time to market my course, to finish my book, to promote my podcast.
So, I like to run at least two to three times per week and I usually listen to music to keep my energy up but on days when I’m feeling really good I don’t listen to anything at all. I just run and I give my brain time to just think. I give my brain time to allow for creation. I realized that I’m still consuming too much even though it’s usually Eckart Tolle, Peter Attia, or Brooke Castillo which are all wonderful…it’s still consuming which cuts into the amount of time I have to create. I’m aware of it and I’m taking steps to make it even better.
How about you?
What’s one thing you can do for your mental health this week?
Maybe there’s something you’ve been putting off because you’re telling yourself you don’t have time to do it.
My challenge to you today is to be honest with yourself in your assessment of where you’re spending your time…
Consuming obsessively like we do feels so bad because you were put here to create not consume…that’s why it feels so good when you’re creating, because it’s what you were meant to do. I read a quote by Tom Bilyue that said “The most unhappy people on earth are the ones that dream but do not execute”. Don’t let that be you.
I love you guys and I’ll talk to you in a few days.
