Episode 15 Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to The Be About Being Better podcast, where we help people make evidence based sustainable. Small changes for their health that compounded the huge shifts towards a better, more vibrant life. I'm your host Abbie Stasior, a health and life coach, future registered dietician, a master's graduate from Columbia University, and a certified intuitive eating counselor.
And I believe that we can't make lasting or meaningful change single handedly. So I'm so happy that you're here so that together you can see that a diet free, sustainable lifestyle is possible, and you can leverage that to live a better life. And remember my disclaimer, This podcast is meant to give you general information.
And it's not meant to substitute or replace medical advice, a diagnosis or serve as treatment.[00:01:00] Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the Be About Being Better podcast. Today we are gonna be talking about how to approach a busy season better. Y'all, we are in a busy season right now. We are in the holidays. It is a December, and we really have been in this season of how do we have a healthier, happier holiday.
And this is just another episode in that series to give you as much support as possible. Through through this season, and I've said it before and I'll say it again. I don't think we should be waiting until January to start to be happy to start to work on goals, so to start to be better because your health is happening now.
Your happiness is happening now. Your life is happening now. You can't just wait until January for things to be better to put effort in because this is where you really [00:02:00] need it. And during the holiday season is when you can collect a lot of data. To figure out, okay, what's working, what's not, so that you can set more intentional goals for the new year.
If that's something that you wanna do. It can give you a lot of, okay, what's working and what's not. It doesn't have to be a total wash. You can actually start to figure out, when I really need to rely on my healthy habits and my mindset the most to get me through a difficult season, what am I already doing that's working in which ways, or at what times do I need the most support?
How could I better myself in the next year? So you can already start kind of testing different things now. You don't have to wait. So that's why I love optimizing December, and I'm not a huge fan of New Year's resolutions because I think people put too much emphasis on the new year and not enough on now when they need the support.
How so? I hope that this podcast and all these different episodes and the series that we're in for giving you a healthier, happier holiday. [00:03:00] Is actually helpful for you in opening your mind up to the many ways that you can start to do something for your health, to do something to better your life. Now, you don't have to delay, so let's get into it.
How do you approach a busy season better? The first thing is that you don't wanna over commit yourself, because when you do that, you're, you just stress yourself out to the gills and you stretch yourself too thin. You likely burn yourself out, and it's hard to pull yourself out of that. It's hard to recover when you don't have a lot of time because you have your next commitment, you have something else on the calendar, and it's just too jam packed.
You don't have any time for yourself. You don't have any time to just breathe, catch up, so you don't wanna overcommit yourself. And you might be thinking to yourself, well,
I already have. You might be thinking to yourself like, this is just what it is. Like I can't, I've already committed to something, so I can't [00:04:00] say no. And if that's the case that you've already overcommitted yourself and this is the season and we just gotta get through it, there are ways for you to get through it in a healthier and happier way.
And I also want you to learn from this experience and try to not put yourself in this experience again. So use this as data. It's not a failure. It's feedback for yourself that if you're feeling too overwhelmed, if you've stretched yourself too thin, if you've overcommitted yourself, it's kind of too late to back out now, and you just gotta follow through on your commitments.
take it as a lesson for next year that you don't have to say yes to everything it is. Honestly, probably necessary for you to set no set boundaries. Draw, draw a line somewhere, prioritize what's really important to you and what's really necessary for you to devote your time, energy, and attention to, because you have be stretching yourself too thin, trying to do everything.
And I know there are so many of you listening right now that are people pleasers and feel maybe obligated to do certain [00:05:00] things or recommit because you did it last year or family and friends are doing it. Or you think people think you know that you should do this. Gotta let those expectations go because at the end of the day, you are the one that suffers.
If you're stretching yourself way too thin, you are the one that is really, is really hurting, and you're the one that's experiencing the burnout and that's likely going to bleed into other areas of your life and hurt relationships. Romantically, friendships, relationships with your family impact your health negatively.
Really it can impact, you know, negatively on, on your career. It can really have negative adverse effects. So we wanna learn from this experience and not overcommit ourselves in future seasons and in future scenarios like this, and really work to let go of those people pleasing, tend. so that you can set a boundary and [00:06:00] prioritize your commitments so that you can fully go in on a few things versus just trying to do the bare minimum, stretching yourself to things, just to kind of check a box and do all of the things.
Cause we just can't do all the things all the time, and that's okay. So if you've already committed yourself, definitely learned from this. And in this season I want you to find. and schedule like an appointment, pockets of time for yourself. Cause I can guarantee you, you have stuff on your calendar that is all for other people right now, and you don't have anything on there for yourself.
So I need you to start to prioritize and finding those pockets of time. Can I take 15 to 20 minutes for a lunch break? And the last episode we talked about really how do we start to prioritize a lunch break for ourselves. So if you miss that, definitely go back to the last. Can I take a little bit of a lunch break?
Can I go for a walk? Maybe I don't have time for a full on workout class, but could I walk during my lunch break or [00:07:00] could I go for a walk in the morning? Could I do five minutes of yoga? Could I stretch before bed? Could I do a 60 second plank? We all have time for 60 seconds. Could I, instead of taking my coffee to go, could I just.
Sit in the morning for a couple minutes and drink my coffee out of a regular mug before I leave for work. I've been taking my coffee to go in the morning, and then on the weekends I have a cup of coffee or a cup of tea out of a real mug. And last weekend I was just sitting on my couch relaxing, just really being present with my cup of coffee and I'm like, wow, it is such a different experience drinking my coffee in this way.
Just taking it in a to go thermo and running off to work and, you know, rushing to the hospital. It's just a totally different energy and I really enjoy my coffee so much more when I'm sipping out of a mug versus just in a to go thermos. So can you take that time to just, oh, relax, could you wind down in the evening?
[00:08:00] Like, could you just take five minutes for yourself or could you schedule a nail appointment? Could you get a haircut? Could you schedule a massage? If you're able to do that, if you have the financial means to do so, you know, there's so many things that you could do for self care. You could even go get one of those like $5 face masks and have like a little spa night for yourself or do your own nails.
It's important for you to put time on the calendar for you. Doesn't have to be long stretches of time. It might just be five minutes. You need to prioritize that or you will burn yourself out. You need time to step away from serving others and serve yourself first. We talk about this so much on the podcast, but the misses has to come first.
Mrss me first, responsibilities second serving others. Third, if you wanna show up for your roles and responsibilities, the people you're serving, the things. You need to follow through on, if you wanna serve those to the fullest [00:09:00] capacity, you need to focus on yourself first. So if you've overcommitted yourself this season, you got a lot going on.
You have to be, get creative with finding those pockets of time to prioritize yourself. Just start with five minutes and work up from there. But just give yourself five minutes, schedule it in your calendar, making an appointment. Set an alarm so you don't forget. The next is that we need to breathe more.
I brought this up in the last episode, but I wanna expand on it. It's such a simple tip, but we go through so much of our day not focused on our breathing and rushing around in a frenzied and hurried state. We underestimate the power of a deep belly breath. We underestimate the. Of slowing down, focusing on our breath, and that can give us some time to not focus on all the other things that are clogging our brain and all of our to-dos and all of our stressors if we focus on our breath.
So it's so, so important [00:10:00] for managing our stress levels and calming our body down. When we're stressed and we're running around in a frenzied and hurried state, we're in fight or flight mode all the time. We need to get ourselves down into what we call a parasympathetic state, rest and digest versus
our sympathetic nervous system when that's, and that's our fight or flight. So when we're in parasympathetic, we're resting, we're digesting, we're actually able to digest for food better at this time, and we just feel more relaxed. So I wanna urge you to breathe more in it through this season. If you could incorporate a little bit of a meditation.
and that could be just taking three deep breaths doesn't have to be a big thing. There's also so many free apps out there. If you wanted to do a five minute guided meditation, that could be super, super helpful for me cause I have a whole host of gut health issues. We are gonna do several episodes, um, probably starting in the new year on all of my gut health issues and all of the tips for that.
Cause I know so many of you listening to this are [00:11:00] struggling with gut health issues as well. I use the Neva app, N E R V A. Neva, and it's an evidence based app that's specific for ibs, but I have IBS and sibo, small intestinal bacteria overgrowth, so it, I have found that it really works for that as well.
And it's like 15 to 20 minute visualization meditations. I have found these meditations to be more effective than the low FODMAP diet or anything nutrition related to heal my gut over all, the antibiotics I took, I was on the elemental diet for a bit. I've taken probiotics, prebiotics, digestive enzymes, herbs, I've done so many herbal supplements, like literally taking oregano pills for a bit because that can help with good health theoretically. And then the low FODMAP diet too. You know, cutting out gluten, cutting out dairy.
All of these, I've done all of these things and I've done them for years at a time. What was the [00:12:00] most effecti. Was calming my nervous system down and doing 15 minute meditations. This app totally changed my life. I could, I could talk about it for days. If you wanna check it out, go to my, the show notes, and in there you can, there's a seven day free trial so you can test it out, see if you like it for a couple days.
And then if you decide to invest in the app, there's, you know that that same code will give you 10% off. A three month membership. That's, so they do it in three months, so you can actually get into the program and be consistent with it. I did the meditations, their, like six weeks of, you know, their initial like quote unquote program for the meditations totally changed my life.
I did not change anything else about my diet. I was having gluten, dairy, alcohol, like all the things. I was under a lot of stress in grad school. I did their meditations for six. Finally I had no bloating. Finally, I had normal bowel movements. Finally, I didn't have stomach aches [00:13:00] after I ate. It was incredible.
So go to the show notes if you wanna test this app out. This is out of all the meditation apps. I mean there's, you know, head space and insight timer, calm, there's so many different meditation apps. Especially if you have gut health issues or you really need help getting into a parasympathetic state and kind of need more structure, like these are visualization meditations.
It tells you it's not just music and you kind of need to figure out what to think about. It gives you what to think about if you need structure, if you need guidance and you don't know where to start with meditation and maybe you have some gut health issues, I recommend Nerva. In the show notes, we have the seven day free trial.
And you get 10% off. So I hope that that's helpful. And if you're like, I really just don't wanna meditate and the apps aren't for me, I encourage you just to try. But you could also also just try like three deep breaths. We really underestimate the power of three deep breaths. So this season, you need to [00:14:00] slow down and breathe more and not just breathe from your chest.
Like take a really deep belly breath.
I already feel more relaxed. Okay, the next tip is that you need to sleep, not scroll. So when you actually have the opportunity to sleep, don't sabotage it. Prioritize it. We need to get off of our phones. We need to stop keeping ourselves up with the blue light. We really need to put our phones at do not disturb.
We need to leave our phones away from our bed. I know that that's annoying, but it works. It's effective. Really give ourselves a bedtime and stick to it and unplug at a certain time and not scroll and really prioritize sleep. This is going to allow you to rejuvenate yourself in this season. You can't afford now to get bad sleep, and if you're up late night scrolling, it's within your control to not do that.
And when we're scrolling, not only is it [00:15:00] keeping us up with the blue light, all that. Taking yourself out of your life and putting yourself in other people's lives, whether consciously or subconsciously. You're playing that comparison game. You're looking at people's highlight reels, and then you're sitting in your reality.
It's really bad for our mindset, and especially during this time of year, we already have a lot of. Negative self-talk, a lot of self-deprecating thoughts. We're out of our routine. We're around family members that we might not see all the time. We might be around family members that stress us out. We might not be eating the same.
The holidays bring up a lot of emotion and a lot of stress. So why are we adding to that? By comparing ourselves. People online, mute people, mute people, unfollow people, block people. Get off your phone and prioritize. We gotta stop the scroll. We really need to unplug and, and disconnect. Obviously, don't disconnect from podcasts because I want you to keep listening to the episode.
No, but seriously, if you need a break, like take, take the break. [00:16:00] Listen. Tune in when your mindset is right, when it's a good time for you, not when you're, you need to be sleeping and prioritizing sleep. You're too busy right now to not be prioritizing sleep. And if you're not prioritizing when you're listening to this, like, you know that I'm.
You know that I'm right, that you need to prioritize sleep more. And I know it's annoying to leave your phone away from your bed. I know that it's annoying to put your phone on do not disturb, but you gotta do it. You gotta set the app limits on your phone. You need to give yourself boundaries that you're not clicking.
Like, oh, remind me in 15 minutes. You need to, set things up differently for yourself so that you're not clicking through that and you don't have to exercise that discipline. If you go back to our main character Morning routines episode, episode seven, I talk about the two part evening routine.
So go back and listen to that because that will help you disconnect from your phone more the two part evening routine. Is where the first part of your eating routine is. You're getting yourself ready for the next [00:17:00] day, laying things out, prepping your meals, cleaning the house, doing any last minute todos, and then you transition into your real evening routine, which is your self care, your hygiene, things like that part you're starting to wind down for bed.
That part's totally unplugged. So when you transition from getting things ready for the day, finishing up work to then relaxing and winding, That transition, that's your cutoff. That's when you should unplug off of your phone. That's where you should leave it away from your bed. Just put it in the charger and then that's it.
So that can go back and listen to that episode cuz that can give you some tips and other ideas for what to do in each of those parts of your evening routine, part one and part two, and what could work for you to start to unplug. And I think that that will make this busy season. Better for you cuz you'll be prioritizing sleep, prioritizing your evening routine and winding down and taking that time for yourself and not giving it away to other people on the internet.
That may [00:18:00] or may not matter, that you may not, may or may not even know. If you're so busy right now, why are you giving your precious time away to people on the internet? Like we gotta unplug and you need to turn inward and focus on yourself. The next is you gotta find the fun.
We have to stop saying to ourselves, oh, like I gotta do this. Instead say, I get to do this. We have to flip it around and be grateful for the opportunities that we have, the things that we get to do, the talents that we have, and we have to find a way to make these mundane tasks more fun. I give ideas about this in the last episode, how to make mundane tasks more fun and we were talking about it in the context of how to increase your energy so that's super, super important. Um, but it will also help you to not focus on the stress. When you're in a really difficult, busy season, if you can gamify things, if you can make things more fun, if you can play more, if you can connect with your [00:19:00] inner child, it will just overall make things so much better, and you'll have a positive association with the things that you're doing.
You'll get through it faster, you'll be more productive, and you'll get stuff done if you. Not looking forward to something and a task is looming over you all day and you're kind of delaying doing it. Instead, it's better just to get it done, eat that frog. I don't know if y'all have ever heard that expression, but Brian Tracy is a personal development guru. I'm obsessed with him, and he has a book called Eat That Frog. Basically the premise, it's a very short. So you can, you know, definitely recommend picking it up.
But the short premise of it is if you had to eat a frog every single day, when is the best time to do that? And he says in the morning, get it done, move on with your day. Because if you wait to do it and you're dreading it all day, it's pulling your energy and it's pulling your focus [00:20:00] and you're not.
You're just kinda having a bad day, knowing in the back of your mind you have to do this awful thing. So if you just do what you don't wanna do first thing in the morning, just get it done, get it off your to-do list so you can move on with your day. So you wanna start to do those things with the, with things in your life, like just get it done.
But I also think you could do things to make the more mundane task. More fun and you could have more play in your day. The holidays in this season doesn't have to be. So stressful and so cat, we don't have to go around. So fren eat. What if you just chose to have a different energy when you approach things, like if you're rushing around the mall and it's so crazy there, like, and you're overwhelmed by how many people and how long the lines are and the traffic, and you haven't had anything to eat yet and you're dehydrated and you're worried about your finances.
Like if you have all these [00:21:00] thoughts going can. Take a deep breath and reset and reframe how you're approaching the situation. Like, I get to get gifts for my family and friends. I get to walk with my two legs through the small, I get, I get to drive myself here safely, and I got here safely and I get to see the, the gifts that I'm getting.
I get to afford these things and I get to make someone smile and I get to contribute to someone's happy holiday season. There's just so many different ways to look at it and that can make the experience of shopping through a really hectic mall this season so much more enjoyable. So instead of saying, I have to do these things, start saying I get to and finding, finding the good in, in what's there.
And just trying to make it more fun. I did an inner [00:22:00] child meditation last year, around this time last year. It was probably one of the most impactful meditations I've ever done. And in the meditation it said, you know, before you start this meditation, make sure to have a picture of you when you were younger.
To look at during the meditation, like maybe when you're five or so. And then you also wanna have a mirror. And if you don't have a mirror, just use your phone camera or something. But somewhere where you can like, look at yourself. And you also wanna have this picture handy of a, a younger version of yourself and it walked you through this meditation of you as your current self, having a conversation with your younger self from, you know, when you.
That old in the photo, having a conversation, and then the meditation walks you out of that and you're kind of back to the present day and the meditation talks about, okay, open your eyes now look at this photo of yourself. See yourself as a kid and remember how you were, put yourself in that moment. [00:23:00] What was your spirit like?
What were you going through? What were you curious about? What? What were you doing every day? And like, what was your character? What was your vibe? What was your energy? And then look in the mirror and know that this younger version of yourself is you. You have that same essence. That person is still you.
Even though you've gotten older, even though you have all this life experience now, that is you. You still have that essence within. And thinking about now, I'm like, I get emotional. It was, it was really, really impactful. And I've always remembered that, that I have that inner child within me and I have that same essence.
And you have that same essence too. So can you bring that energy of your [00:24:00] younger self to what you're doing this busy season and could that maybe change how you approach things and your energy this season. Do things have to be so hurried and frenzied and crazy or could they be a little bit more calm?
Could you be more focused? Could you have more fun? And then lastly, my last step for how to approach a busy season better is we gotta start trusting. We have to stop trying and forcing things and like white knuckling things and just releasing and trusting that everything is gonna get done, that everything is gonna be okay, and we don't have to worry so much.
And personally, I think it's easier to trust and stop trying, but actually just trust and release and let go. When we have faith, when we believe in what we can't see, when we have faith [00:25:00] and trust in a higher power. For me, that's God. But for you it might be, it might be God, it might be the universe, it might be source, it might not be anything yet.
But I truly believe that everything is happening for us and it's happening in perfect timing and we are being guided. We are being led by a higher being and we're part of something that's larger than ourselves and that has given me so much. I don't think that I would be able to balance as much as I do in a day.
If I didn't have this faith that everything was gonna be okay and that everything is happening for me and I'm being guided and I can release the worry . Because somebody has my back.
And for me that's God. So if you're someone that has had faith in the past or is curious about it, I urge you to lean in. There's so many different ways to lean in. [00:26:00] If you're curious about, you know, where to get started, you can always send me a dm, but you might already have people in your life that you could reach out to.
You might already be part of, you know, a church or an organization or some sort of community that, that you know that you could reconnect. So I, I urge you to lean in this season. You don't have to go through this busy season alone. And from my point of view, you're not alone. You're always being guided. And then I think you could work to surrender and just be open to hearing different messages on what you should do. If you're really struggling and you're not sure how to make a decision
a meditation can really help to get you relaxed. , really relax yourself and just surrender and be open to listening and getting a sign of what you should. And I truly believe that God, universe, source will give you the downloads, give you the signs for, for what you need to do. And you just have to listen to that, ask for a [00:27:00] sign, and then look out for it.
And that has really helped me to not feel so frenzy, not feel so hurried, not feel so stressed, but to choose with intention, to like trust that everything's gonna be okay and focus on the task. I've also found it helpful, and I know a lot of my clients have too. When I find myself worrying about so many different things and getting a lot of feelings of anxiousness to write out on a piece of paper, just get a blank piece of paper, draw two lines down the center, break the paper up into third.
Write down in the center column, all of the things, just brain dump all of the things that are bothering you, everything that's on your mind. Just let yourself free write and list out every little thing that's bothering you, and then you're on the left side. You'll have things I can control, and on the right side you'll have things that I can't.
And then you'll start drawing arrows, going down the list one by one. Is this something I can control or is this something I. To [00:28:00] separate it out, have everything that you can control and have everything that you can't. Separate it out, and then you'll get a visual, okay, here are all the things that I'm worried about that I can't control.
I need to just like do a meditation or something. I need to let those things go. I need to surrender those things. You freed up your energy. Now you need to focus your energy on the things that you can control. Normally that's a shorter list for people. For the clients that have done it normally, that's a shorter list.
You write down all the things that you're worried about. You kind of release the things you can't control. It's a much shorter list of the things that you actually can control. Focus your energy on that, and that will help to really decrease your stress and anxiety in this season and not worry about so much.
You don't have to worry about everything, and it can help you actually be present in the. Because a lot of our worry and anxiety comes from worrying about the past or worrying about the future, so we can bring ourselves back to the present. That [00:29:00] could be really helpful and it will be really helpful for you to just focus on things that you can control.
So I think a lot of this boils down to we just need to meditate more. . I feel like that could solve a lot of our problems, and even if it's just two minutes or 60 seconds or three deep breaths, it can be so, so effective and really helpful. And I know meditating can be really intimidating, but just start with three deep breaths and see what wonders that does for you.
See how that changes how you approach your days and how much more relaxed you are. You can go through the season in December and not be hurried and frantic and stressed out and anxious even if you have a crazy. You can do it. I know, cuz I have crazy divorce parents. I know that it's possible and I do think prioritizing yourself, not number one, not overcommitting yourself, but if you already have the season, all right, well learn from it and then work to not do it next year. Um, breathing more and just starting to meditate, even if it's just a couple minutes, sleep more. And [00:30:00] not being on your phone, we wanna disconnect.
Stop the scroll, find the fun, reconnect with our inner child, reconnect with that essence, and bring that energy into what we're doing every day. And then we gotta stop trying. We have to start trusting that everything is gonna get done and everything's gonna be okay. If you focus on those things you will have a much better holiday season or these tips work for any busy season that you're in. We're just in the holiday season now, so keep coming back to this every busy season that you have, but especially during the holidays, this will really, really help you and I can't wait to see you in the next episode.
Hey y'all. Thanks again for listening to the Be About Being Better podcast. I so appreciate you. If this episode made you laugh, smile, think about yourself or your life differently, in [00:31:00] any way, making your life better, I empower you to share the show with three people who just like you, need to hear this message and have this type of transformation in their lives.
I personally read all the reviews the show and see the Instagram story shares. It honestly gives me so much joy to see that our mission is making people's lives better, and the reviews really do help in increasing our impact. So thank you so much for taking the time to do that. If you need personalized support with anything discussed in today's episode or need help creating a sustainable diet free lifestyle, take my quiz.
It's linked below in the show notes, and that quiz will help you see which one of our coaching programs is right for you. Thank you so much again for listening and hears to being about being better.
