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Have you ever journaled in a way that produced personal discoveries and shaped your path in life? Did you know that you have the power to do just that? Listen in to learn about freeing your mind and discover the eleven techniques that will help you set powerful intentions.

MM – 541 – Journal with Abandon, Journal with Intention

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me!

It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat.

Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me.

Today’s focus is: Journal with Abandon, Journal with Intention

I went on a quest to come back from feeling flat, and if you’ve been following along here to see the steps I took to do that, you’ve realized that in doing this I reclaimed my passion.

I had been stretching and meditating and eating healthier, then I started journaling. But the type of journaling I did here was very different from the kind I had ever done in the past. In these journal entries I didn’t, typically, record life experiences unless I was trying to resolve or discover something. I was more searching for answers in these entries.

I just started journaling all of my thoughts on a specific topic and I kept it simple and old school. I dug out a one-subject, bright yellow notebook that I’d had in the cabinet for years and I labeled it “Free-Writing.” And I started journaling with the intention to make personal discoveries.

All you have to do to do this is relax. Just start rambling on about a topic that you want to know more about.

In light of this episode, I just revisited my very first journal, and I have to tell you, I’m feeling a little moved.

I didn’t know what to write about in this entry, so I started with gratitude. I wrote about how thankful I am for my husband and his support, specifically because I’ve grown and changed a lot through our 35 years together. In the first paragraph of my entry, I write: “I’ve learned and grown and changed so much through the years, and he has held on. Nothing is sexier, nothing shows me how much he loves me more than this.”

The entry goes on to discuss our struggles and challenges, and the idea that marriage teaches forgiveness, whether the marriage lasts a lifetime or it doesn’t. I talk about how people take too many things too seriously, and that if we could get an aerial view of life, we would see how we’re maneuvered in and out of people’s lives for different purposes. That our time here is just all a learning experience and that everything we experience is meant to be.

As I was writing this entry, as usually happens, one idea led to the next, led to the next.  And here’s how my first journal entry ended: “I am growing to understand what it feels like when I am where I am supposed to be – just like when Kz was little – I am learning my Peace back!”

The phrase “Learning my Peace back” just flowed out of me. And in my journal the “P” is capitalized. This is not an idea I’d ever had before.

Something you should know, there has been an idea gnawing at my subconscious over this past year. I had the realization that the only time in my life where I felt like I was exactly where I needed to be was when I was raising my daughter. I never saw this as “Peace,” per se, but I never felt when we were drawing on the family room floor, or baking cookies in the kitchen, or strolling up and down the Seaside Heights Boardwalk that I should be doing something else. I just knew that what I was doing was enough. I was doing the most important job of my life: providing our daughter with new experiences, bolstering her creativity, just giving her a happy life.

Important to know: I had no idea about this sense of peace when it was occurring.

Similarly, all I knew the day she got her driver’s license was that the dots in my head that connected when I needed to pick her up and then deliver her someplace else, and how I would fit my errands in in between, disappeared. I didn’t know I had these dots either, until the day they left!

But over this past year, I began to understand that I have been restless. That for me, “learning my Peace back” means helping others engage in and be happy in their lives. And there it was on the very last line of the second page of my very first journal entry.

So remember, I had added into my life, a little at a time: stretching and meditating, eating healthier and journaling. From doing that, I felt a shift inside me – a shift that was visible to everyone, a shift that brought with it these personal discoveries. You can see the shift I’m talking about here in the first line of my 7th journal entry where I wrote, “I freaking love my life so hard right now.”

I remember where I was and how I felt when I wrote this first line. I felt euphoric. I was writing from our upstairs balcony, there was a bright sun, cool chill, hot cup of coffee, nightshirt and sweatshirt involved in this scene. I was beaming at John while this poor guy was trying to muster up energy to get back to his work day. Yes, I felt a little guilty about that, but I wasn’t allowing speedbumps in my progress. I was full steam ahead! I had made myself a priority, like I say in episode 534, and I felt insanely happy!

There is something else I wasn’t expecting from journaling that occurred: I went to find a new self and I re found my old self. If you’ve listened to any of the other seasons of Motivate Me!, you know that for three seasons I interviewed people about passion. I traveled the 50 states in 90 days interviewing people about passion, and I did all of this because I know that in order for people to enact change in their lives, it has to be their idea. That only you know what you need. That I can’t just tell you what to do… I have to expose you to other people who are doing it, so you can pull from their experience and create your own. I am all about show, don’t tell. I’m all about trying to find the right questions to ask that will inspire new insights and, in return, new action.

Helping people in this way has always been my passion, but I thought after everything I had been through: the 50-state trip, the editing of over 200 interviews, moving to a new state, the chaotic state of our country, quarantine, fear, sickness… that maybe I had lost that. So, I was very surprised when my love for all of this came rushing back to me, because I gave myself the freedom and opportunity to redesign myself, to start new again, to be anything. These are different times, I thought I might discover a new passion.

I understand now why this is not what happened. It’s because when you still the chatter in your mind and you create space to hear what your subconscious or true self has to say, you realize that this is your core. That this is what you are and that that it is unchanging.

I know that through the course of every role I have played in life: mom, Girl Scout Troop leader, teacher, karaoke host, writer, podcast host my passion has always been to empower others in a way that encourages them to take risks and be excited about life. What lights me up is to help others feel good about themselves. That feeling brings me so much joy. That is why I felt so much peace when I was raising my daughter.

You can find these answers, too, when you start journaling with intention and here are the guidelines I set for myself:

• Find a quiet place to write
• Like what you’re writing with and on
• Title and date the entry
• Select a topic (but don’t hold yourself to it)
• Do not write down any negative thoughts
• Write your feelings about specific topics
• Relax and allow thoughts to come from another place – no overthinking, no judgement
• Ask for guidance (from a higher power, the universe, the deceased)
• Record all thoughts, have no rules, be open-minded
• Seek personal discoveries and know that you will find the answer
• Journal as often as you can

The big take-away from this whole episode is that I went looking to reclaim my passion with intention and so can you! And, if we make the decision to, we can shift our energy, change our perspective, and change the course of our lives.

We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else.

I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: Abandoning the idea of keeping our thoughts restrained isn’t easy. It can be uncomfortable. Seeing these honest thoughts on paper is powerful and can also be uncomfortable. But getting out of our comfort zones to create change is why you are here listening to this show right now. So go for it… there is nothing to lose and so much to gain.

You Motivate Me!

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You are 100 percent capable of meditating. Let us show you why and how. Let us teach you how beneficial meditation is and why it is so important for you.

MM – 540 – Trying to Meditate is Winning

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me!

It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat.

Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me.

Today’s focus is: Trying to Meditate is Winning

Please don’t bail on me right out of the gate because you believe you are incapable of meditating. So many of us think we can’t do it. So many of us think we aren’t supposed to have any thoughts and that if we do, we failed.

Please hear this: Just like how you cannot stop the heart from beating, you cannot stop you brain from thinking. We all have thoughts when meditating. Our goal when meditating is not to not think at all, it is to let those thoughts pass, watch them like a movie, and then gently still the mind again.

Prayer is a form of meditation.

Listening to music is a form of meditation.

Observing the ocean or a sunset or snowfall is a form of meditation.

And meditation is a form of self-care. It’s rest. It’s stillness. It’s relaxation. It’s enlightening. This is why even by just trying to meditate you are winning, because even if you think you could have done better, you still greatly benefitted.

It took me time to understand all of this, which is why I want to share with you how it has benefited me. I didn’t know anyone who meditated and the only image I had of anyone meditating was of people who didn’t look like me, so I assumed it wasn’t for me. I tried it only once or twice over the years and I never lasted long with it.

But as I got more curious about spiritually, I started to pay more attention to the idea of meditation, and I paid even more attention a few years later when I started my coaching program.

Sometime during that time, I came across Deepak Chopra and Oprah’s guided meditation series. What I really loved about them, even though you have to purchase their 21-day programs and there are many free experiences on YouTube, was a couple of things.

First, Deepak and Oprah teach powerful concepts in the time preceding the meditation that were aligned with what I had been learning in my coaching program. This was helpful to me because it reaffirmed what I’d been learning and it revisited the concepts in a new way. Also, Deepak and Oprah give you a daily mantra that you use to refocus your mind when it begins to wander. This mantra is the daily intention, and the 21 mantras strung together are designed to help you achieve a specific goal. Something else I really liked about their programs was the quality of the recordings, Chopra’s speaking style, and the twenty-minute timeframe.

These are all important aspects to consider when looking at the different meditations available. You can choose from a ten-minute experience or one that plays all-night long while you sleep. There are guided meditations where a host guides listeners through the process, and then there are those that are music only. There are male hosts and female hosts, and then, there are endless focus topics to pick from. If you want to gain confidence or self-worth, lose weight, overcome self-sabotage, grow your intuition, connect with source, or you have a different focus area, there are offerings for pretty much everything.

One of my favorite guided meditations is by Mindvalley and it’s on YouTube titled, “A Relaxing Guided Meditation to Boost Creativity.” It’s eighteen and a half minutes long and I think it’s a great starting point for new meditators. My husband, John, even enjoyed it. Someone else I follow on YouTube is Jess Shepherd, she has many, many meditations and I feel I have benefited from all of them.

So, those are three good recommendations for you to look into: Deepak Chopra and Oprah, Mindvalley, and Jess Shepherd.

There is so much power in meditation. I am a very down to earth person and I always viewed meditation as a little “woo woo,” but when I saw some of the most successful people in the world, like monks and basketball players and world leaders and billionaires touting meditation, I thought it was cause to listen and experiment.

And now, I credit meditation with giving me the idea to travel the 50 states in 90 days to interview people about passion. I believe it gave me the awareness to pick up signs from the universe to receive the idea and act on it. I credit meditation with giving me the idea to reach out to The Max gym to sponsor my workouts before my ninety-day trip. I credit meditation with getting me back from flat right now.

Why? Because I took the time to still my mind five days a week. Because I believe that my purpose and my path is known somewhere inside me, and that stilling the chatter of the mind is the way to discover that. 

My wish is for you to make these same exciting discoveries to enhance your own life. I wish for you to power down your body and get into this insanely relaxed state where when you’re done, you feel like you had the best nap, and you go throughout your days in a markedly calmer state. This really happens.

Here’s the one thing you do need to remember: When you meditate, the answers and revelations you seek don’t usually pop up for you during the process. Other ideas will often come to you, but it may not be what you’re seeking. When the answers you are looking for do pop up for you, they will probably not be obvious. Think of them as being subtle, gentle nods. This takes patience and awareness.

So this sounds painful, right? First, I have to force my body and mind to be still, which is often a battle. And then, I have to be patient enough to wait God knows how long for some kind of understanding to come my way, and hopefully, I am aware enough to recognize this understanding for what it is.

Yes. For you to gain this kind of clarity in your life, that is exactly what you need to do. No one said it’s simple, but I will say it’s worth it.

Some people say they can’t fit meditation into their lives. If this is something you want to do, you will find a way. I suggest starting with just ten minutes a day, and ten minutes when first waking or on a lunch break or before bed is doable. I mean, how much time do we spend on social media sites? We can meditate in our car before or after the gym or when waiting in the school parking lot to pick up our children. It’s all about the want to do it and the planning of the time for it.

We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else.

I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: Meditation is something you need to give a concerted effort. In my opinion, it is the single most simple and difficult help you can give yourself. It has been my experience that if you take the time to create silence and then just listen in the days to come, over time, insights will surface that can change your life.

Remember, you Motivate Me!

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Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! 

It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat.

Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me.

Today’s focus is: Improving Your Diet

It’s almost impossible not to discuss diet when looking to make self-improvements.

Before we get started today, I want to call your attention to the idea that diet is not just what we eat. It’s anything we fill ourselves up with: what we watch, what we listen to, what we read, and who we surround ourselves with. These things, as well as food, impact how we progress in the world.

Eating the wrong foods makes us feel lethargic, strips us of our self-confidence, and creates disease, that’s the bottom line. And whether we make small changes or big changes to our diet, any improvement is an improvement. Starting small may be as simple as increasing our water intake by two glasses a day.

One thing I do know is that if I start feeling better, I start doing better. I’m not here to preach to you or to make you feel down about your current physical state. My role is to just share my story and to be as honest as possible with you about what I did to get my head and heart back in the game, and addressing diet when doing this was important for me.

So many health issues can be cured by diet, like diabetes and fatty liver, for starters. But diet can impact your mental health, such as anxiety, depression, and even something like seizures.

I had no idea how much we can control our health and quality of life through diet! It seems obvious, but I just never made the connection.

Let me share a story with you. My husband was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes about fifteen years ago. Diabetes runs in his family, so in our uneducated minds, it was just a matter of time before my husband would get it. He was great about managing his medications so I was not very involved in his process, and we didn’t make too many changes in our lifestyle after his diagnosis because the medicine was doing that for us.

About ten years later, in preparation for our daughter’s wedding, we went on a strict clean-eating, healthy grain diet. I mean, I was measuring everything we ate and we could not have been eating better. We were eating chicken, pork, seafood, vegetables, fruit, quinoa, brown rice, and brown rice pasta. That is pretty much it in a nut shell. I even cut cheese out of my diet. It was during this time, though, that my husband was put on a second diabetes medication. And we thought, wow, this disease is really progressing! We just assumed that this is how diabetes worked, that it worsened over time.

Our daughter got married that May, and over the summer we all pigged out. It wasn’t until that following January that I decided I had to get back on the healthy bus. Our daughter and her husband had returned to California the Friday after the New Year, and my husband was going on a four-night business trip that following Monday.

I had post-holiday blues, especially knowing it would be months before seeing my kids again. I was sad that my husband would be away for most of the next week, and I felt physically disgusting. So that Sunday before he left, I meal-prepped three meals and was determined to punish myself with them.

One of the meals was a vegetable soup and one was ground turkey meatballs, and I can’t remember what the other one was. They were delicious, don’t get me wrong, but I was just aggravated with myself and with life in general.

I was well-versed in different dieting styles, so I made meals that I knew were low in fat and low in carbohydrates. I had been hearing about the “Keto Diet” but didn’t know exactly what it was.

For the next four days I lied on the couch battling migraines and body aches. I ate what I had prepared, I put ice packs on my head and neck, and I researched for a million hours about low-carb diets. I was getting informed and getting my head in the game. I was miserable.

Then, about halfway through the day on Thursday, day four, something miraculous happened: I felt amazing. I felt a clarity in my head that I had not felt, possibly, ever in my life.

When John came home that night from his trip, I was wearing JEANS, my hair and makeup were done, I had this insane energy, and I was smiling. He was blown away. In only four days, I felt like a new person.

John was so impressed that he immediately wanted in and he jumped on board. This is where something crazy happened! Like me, John got sick on the second day. But on day three, he was so groggy that he couldn’t keep his eyes open. We were monitoring his sugar because of his diabetes and his sugar was 77. Now, 77 is a great number, except his body was used to running more in the 120s. On day three of eating this low-carb, heathy-fat diet, his doctor took him off the second diabetes medication – and in three months, he was off all of his diabetes medications. He is still off them today – three years later.

I tell you this story not to sell you on a specific diet, because what works for us may not be right for you. And I am not a doctor, so if you are looking to get on that healthy bus, I suggest you consult a physician.

I tell you this story because I want to share with you that MANY sicknesses are connected to diet, and that we can often control the trajectory of our health and life through our dietary choices.

This seems obvious to me now, but it wasn’t then – and it might not be obvious to you right now, so I feel it’s important to share our experience with you.

For us, no sugar, low-carb, and healthy-fats works best. This is what I always try to get back to, because I’m never hungry when I eat this way. And I have a clarity that I just can’t get when eating any other way, especially if grains are involved.

Of all the things I struggle with most, it’s diet. This is how I really know it’s impact on the body and mind. But I keep striving because I don’t want my weight to hold me back in life. There have been times I opted out of life because of my weight.  On the days I couldn’t find something to wear that made me feel comfortable or confident and staid home. On the days I was more reserved than I normally would be, or the times I’ve worried about what people’s first impression of me has been.

If you know anything about me, you know that I love to experience life! I am all about a beautiful meal and nice bottle of wine. I can make a menu out of any occasion and it will be a blast! Rain or shine, our backyards are always designed to enjoy every beautiful day, whether that means the sun is sharing its rays or the clouds are sharing their tears. We will be in our backyard eating breakfast sandwiches and drinking coffees around the fire, or cooking meat and drinking beer around the smoker. I love it all. And I love pairings… of everything: sushi and white wine, nachos and beer, omelets and Bloody Marys, a charcuterie board and red wine. This is who I am!

And then there’s days where I am nose to the grindstone with work, or I am distraught over a relationship, or I feel helpless. These are the days I seek food filled with comfort, familiarity, and ease. Like fast food… I am not above it. There are days you just want a filet-o-fish and fries or a beef chalupa supreme or two.

 I think you are seeing why I struggle with my weight. I’m like many of you: I love hard and I feel hard, I celebrate hard and I comfort myself hard.

Part of what I was going through during quarantine was missing the nose-to-the-grindstone-work-hard-on-something-you-love part, and I lost my balance. So to get engaged in life again, to have the energy to move forward, to reclaim my passion and confidence, I knew I needed independence from all things – especially and including food. I knew I needed to be in charge and take charge, and just like everything else, I knew it was only a decision away.

We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else.

I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: We know our habits today will determine the quality of our tomorrow. We know we can make changes, that change is only a decision away. Our job is to find the balance between work and play, between moderation and excess, between diet and exercise. Life is our journey, and finding the balance between all these things is not a destination, it is part of this amazing ride. So, don’t beat yourself up about it, just get better at it, and enjoy the ride.

We got this!

This is just one more way that you Motivate Me!

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In this day and age, our body, mind, and soul needs the kind of rest that is free from the mindset of over performing, free from keeping up with the façades presented online, free from overall feelings of inadequacy inspired by our inability to commit to the ideals of others. We need the kind of rest that is born in the present and breeds satisfaction; the kind that multiplies our joy and takes us out of the competition.

Today we are talking about the importance of rest for the body, the mind, and the soul, because rest in all three of these areas is vital to the process of coming back from flat.

So often in this day and age people are on a mission to do more and be more. Like the busier we are, the more important we feel; like the more productive we are, the more valuable we seem. We run more errands, do more exercises, accumulate more things. Do and get, do and get.

On top of all of this, many of us are striving to compete with the façades people present online. How many times have we been left with our mouths, literally, open when a couple who appears online to have the perfect life and relationship split up? Meanwhile, we’re over here exhausting ourselves trying to create some semblance of a life that matches up to their magical online image? How defeating is this? To feel like other people can attain this level of so-called happiness but it is unachievable for us?

There is all of this, and then there’s the Pinterest worthy birthday parties for our kids, and the travel magazine worthy vacations and photographs we must take. There is the rescuing of a dog versus the buying of one, and the growing of our own food, as well as the composting of it.

I don’t know about you, but I have never felt so guilty to use a paper towel in my life!

What would happen if we just stopped the hamster wheel?

What would happen if we took a second to acknowledge that we can be some of these things, but that we are not expected to be ALL of these things? We can’t put our energy into EVERYTHING, we need to establish OUR personal thing.

What would happen if we unsubscribed to the overperforming mindset and focused on protecting our body, mind, and soul?

I think I know what happens when we try to stop. We feel guilty, like we’re a bad person, like we’re even letting our generation down.

And, guilt is so huge. Guilt causes us to feel restless and it steals us of our peace. It steals us of our ability to be able to just exist in the present moment, and where are we if we’re not in the present moment?

Come down a rabbit hole with me for a minute. If we are not living right now in this present moment, then we are either living in the past or we are living in the future. Let’s dive deeper on this. A Brazilian motivational speaker by the name Junia Bretas suggests that if our mind is focused on the past, we are living with regret and depression, and if our mind is focused on the future, we are living with worry and anxiety.

In the spirit of helping us to truly rest our body, mind, and spirit, let’s walk through this together. What are we thinking about from the past? Maybe a relationship that ended? Maybe words we’ve spoken that we can’t take back? Maybe a parenting decision? Maybe a job we left? A home we sold or never purchased?

How does it make us feel to focus on these regrets? Does it bring us down? Make us sad? Prevent us from moving forward because we don’t want to feel like this again? But, if this is something that makes us feel so horrible, why are we living in it? Why are we staying there? Why are we wearing our mind out daily with these regrets?

On the other hand, what is it we worry about for the future? Do we fear never finding love? Do we fear losing our job? Do we fear getting a disease? Do we fear death? No wonder why our body is not resting, we are too filled with anxiety.

Here are some ideas I would like you to put into your toolbox.

First, 99% of what we worry about never occurs. (Test that. Think about the last ten, or more, things you worried about. Did they happen?)

Second, our only reality is the present, and all we can control is this very moment.

And third, we can train our brains to live in the present, this is in our control.

A simple way to get started living in the present right this second is to be grateful. (Example: I am grateful for this gorgeous day, this warm cup of coffee, and the puppy snuggled on my lap.) Nothing else matters in this moment of appreciation.

Try this and pay attention as the energy inside your body changes. You will feel your body fill with positive energy and THAT is what we want more of. So often we discount the importance of this feeling. But it’s important because it is joy and positivity, and if you’ve ever heard of the law of attraction, then you know that what we put out into the world comes back to us multiplied. Put joy and positivity out into the world, let THAT be what comes back, instead of regret or anxiety.

One final thought before we end our time together today: Do you remember back in your childhood how hard it was to function the day after a sleepover or when you spent half the night on the phone with a friend? I don’t know about you, by I was miserable and I couldn’t function. What if we have gotten so used to feeling this way, so used to functioning at half-capacity?

What if we are functioning at half-capacity while trying to create a life that’s based on someone else’s half-truth?

Instead, what if we slowed life down, took time to discover who we are and what’s important to us and our family, and just lived that way? What if we were confident in those decisions? What if we were satisfied with our life choices?

I can only share with you my specific experience in what I did to get my head and heart back in the game after losing site of my passion. I can only say that I made a decision to make serious change in my life. I barred excuses, I took responsibility, and I held myself accountable.

What we at Motivate Me! have always tried to do for our audience is share the experiences of others in order to give you tools to make change in your own life. Each of us has a choice. We can sit back and negate why something would work for someone else and not ourselves, or we can look at what worked for someone else and massage it into a form that will work for us.

The choice is ours.

I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: If we don’t just stop, just rest, just be introspective, just figure out our unique perspective on life and create our family and our world around it, we will just continue to mimic others and we will never find the kind of peace that lives in the present. The kind of peace that brings with it true satisfaction and happiness. We each deserve this, we all do, and what easier way to start than with rest?

I give you permission to rest.

Remember, you Motivate Me!

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We are in control of our mental and physical space, but so often we surrender these spaces to others. In this episode learn how to prepare mental and physical space where you can value time with self, establish freedom of thought, identify negative self-talk, and receive creative ideas.

If you are serious about wanting to get more out of your life, like, you know you are just FLAT, and you have made the DECISION to feel more, accomplish more, be more… then you’ve been paying attention to the steps I’ve been lying out here for you:

1. Making Yourself a Priority (take your time learning how to do this)

2. Taking on a 30-Day Challenge

3. Adding Daily Stretches

So what’s next? Next comes, Preparing Your Mental and Physical Space.

Here is what I mean when I say, “mental space”: Mental space is the space we hold in our mind for determining our perceptions of the world, for establishing our personal values and beliefs. It’s the precious key to our well-being, and it’s where our creativity stems.

Our mental space needs to be nurtured, and finding the time to do that is often low on the priority list. That’s why we call this time here together on Motivate Me!, “Me! Time.” And that is much of what you are doing when you spend time here with us: you are nurturing your mental space.

It’s important for us to see this time as valuable. Valuable enough for us to schedule this time. As in, put it on a calendar as we would anything else we find important, like taking a loved one to an appointment.

The first thing I had to do when digging deep to recover myself during quarantine was kick everyone else out of my mental space. Other people don’t belong here. In the third episode of this season I give you techniques on how to make yourself a priority. Our headspace is where that begins – it is where everything begins. Episode 534, Making Yourself a Priority, is an important episode, if you haven’t already listened.

This is why preparing your mental space is so important because we need to have this one most important thing: FREEDOM OF THOUGHT.

So many of us let others or the course of life just bump us along. We follow the leader of our tribe and do and believe the way others expect of us. Many of us don’t stop this flow to go against the current and form our own opinions. Many of us don’t realize we’re even doing that.

When I was 18-years-old, I moved from New Jersey to California to hold myself accountable for this. To figure out where I stood on politics, on sexuality, of race and gender, if I wanted to go to college or not. I need to figure out all the things. And I needed freedom from everyone who mattered to me to figure out what mattered to me. I needed this to establish myself and my person.

Taking a big leap like moving across the country is not necessary to accomplish this same goal. And being young isn’t either; we can do this at any age. Many people get into a place later in life where they decide they have a point of view they want to live.

We are always entitled to change our minds, our views, and our opinions. And our feelings and ideas matter. Our feelings and ideas make a difference in the world. The only thing we do need to abandon is the idea that anyone else has the power to control our thoughts and beliefs.  

The best part about our mental is space is that it’s private. Not one single soul has access to our thoughts unless we give it to them. So play with this space. Try on all sorts of ideas. See which fit for you. Start slowly. Do this privately. But do this with the intention to create. To create what you ask? I don’t know and you may not know yet, either. However, if we give ourselves the freedom of thought to be anything and do anything, we will discover something we want to create.

Something that gets our head and heart back in the game of life.

So, scheduling time for ourselves can be difficult and establishing our own ideas and opinions can be intimidating, but nothing is harder than battling self-doubt. We can call this “self-doubt,” “limiting beliefs,” or “energy blocks.” We can call it whatever we want, but in the end, these are merely stories we make up in our head. Stories that are not true.

I am going to give you just a few examples of what I mean here, because this is a complex topic and our focus right now is to just draw your attention to the idea that you cannot allow yourself freedom of thought if you are concerned with the negative talk in your head.

Let’s say you get the idea to start a podcast. That’s EXCITING! Wow, you would really be putting yourself out there. How does the idea of this make you feel? The actual conception of the idea immediately lights you up! Because, you REALLY love, let’s say, being a birth doula, and you really want to share this with the world!! But uh oh, you snap that idea right back where it came from because the negative talk begins: I am not smart enough to figure out how to launch a podcast, there are people much more knowledgeable than me about being a birth doula, my voice is ugly, people won’t be interested in hearing about my life as a birth doula, people will laugh at me for wanting to do this, my friends and family will say this sounds like a stupid thing to do, I will look silly.

How many times have we thought we wanted to do something and a chain reaction of negative thoughts bombarded us?

Go ahead and acknowledge these negative ideas for a second, feel the weight of them, add some others that you know you have allowed to hold you back in the past. Maybe for you it is: I’m too old or young, I’m too fat or thin, I’m not attractive… I mean, these lists are always endless when our minds grasp at everything to keep us in our comfort zone!

I’m not asking you to let these doubts go, and that is simply because I’m not asking you to take action, yet. All I am asking you to do is acknowledge that they’re there, acknowledge that we all have them, and don’t let them prevent you from just dreaming and scheming. That’s all I am asking you to do: allow yourself to just consider the fun stuff without allowing the negativity to crowd it out.

Again, we do not need to share any of our thoughts with anyone right now if we choose not to, this is all just living inside us, but if we don’t give ourselves the mental space and freedom to be curious, to explore ideas that interest us, I fear we will never connect with ourselves in a way that brings true joy. We will continue to live the life others wish for us.

So, limiting beliefs are NOT allowed here in our mental space – we can do ANYTHING and think ANY WAY we want in our mental space.

The last thing I will say about mental space is that we need to prepare our mind to receive information. For now, all you need to do to do this is begin envisioning yourself BEING creative. SEE ideas flowing. KNOW that ideas will come. We will talk more about this later in the season. But, start here… simply envision this happening for you.

Now, what do I mean by “physical space”?

It’s just what is sounds like: a physical space that allows us room to think. A space where you feel physically comfortable. A place that is aesthetically pleasing to you. A space where you can sprawl out and experience unrestrained creativity.

You need to own this space. For me, it was the kitchen table to start. For you, it could be your car during lunch breaks! For someone else, maybe a sunroom or guestroom or their bedroom?

This space doesn’t have to be permanent, it just needs to be yours for your scheduled time.

What do you need to bring into this space that will get your juices flowing and help you discover your direction? That is specific to you. Something tells me that you know exactly what you need to bring into this space with you.

Listen, I am here to give you the steps I took to get passionate about life again, to reconnect with my purpose. I really wanted to feel excited again, to do something that felt important to me. I was driven to find this and it lead me back to you!

I want you to know that I continue to do all of the steps that I’m teaching you here, and that life has continued to unravel for me in a way I could never have fathomed. So, I hope you invest in yourself in this way to see what discoveries you can make.

I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: You have all the answers. But if you are here with me now, you know something is missing and you know you need to simply uncover it. Take the deep dive into yourself. Don’t be lazy. You’re worth it and worthy, and you have barely scratched the surface of what this life has to offer you.

Remember, you Motivate Me!

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Description: We are teaching our bodies how to be. We train them when we’re active and we are training them when we’re not. So DECIDE what you want the rest of your days to look like and train your body accordingly.

MM536- Get Stretching into Your Life

Once I made the decision to go on a mission to aggressively seek myself and my passion again, I knew I had to do things that made me feel physically good. Things that would prevent later excuses, like aches and pains. Things that would engage my body. Things that would prepare my body for further physical engagement.

“Tech neck” is a real issue, and many of us have it from looking down at our phones and computers. And as a teacher, writer, and social media presence, this was a problem for me.

I had recently spent three days a week, two hours a day, for twelve weeks at a holistic therapy center where they helped me regain strength and flexibility in my neck, shoulders, and hips. I didn’t want to lose what I had started there, so in line with making myself a priority, I began doing the stretches I knew helped me most.

There is a quick video posted on my Motivate Me! with Lynette Renda Instagram and Facebook page of me doing some of the neck stretches I do each day. I highly recommend looking into stretches that target your problem areas. It’s insane how much better your body can feel when stretching for only ten minutes a day. My body no longer aches, even when spending all day and night reading and writing.

I call that a win!

For additional awesomeness for the body and the posture, I highly recommend previous show guest Blake Bowman from. He teaches stretches that are always in synch with what I’m experiencing. You can find him on Instagram or YouTube under @guerrillazen. I’ve never seen anyone so focused on posture. And he gives real techniques that you can implement immediately and use to work on your own problem areas.

Something fun that I do with my stretches is turn on music I don’t typically listen to. For me, it’s, “Alexa, shuffle 90’s R&B music.”

When doing your stretches, take your time. Focus on you, focus on the muscles you’re stretching, focus on your physical and mental wellness, as well as mindfulness.

Breathe in positivity. Breath out negativity. Feel the music. Feel the healing.

Come chat with me on social media! You can find me on Instagram and Facebook at Motivate Me! with Lynette Renda, and you can join our private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System to speak with me there.

If you are enjoying this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review… and share it with your friends if you know that they are working to get their mojo back, too!

I am going to leave you with some truth talk: The reality is that we are teaching our bodies how to be. We train them when we’re active and we are training them when we’re not. So DECIDE what you want the rest of your days to look like and train your body accordingly.

Remember, you Motivate Me!