Latest / Many Things with Steph Libby / The Mind-Body Connection

Transcript

The Mind-Body Connection · Many Things with Steph Libby

0:01
Hello.
0:02
Hello.
0:02
Hi everyone.
0:03
Thanks for joining me.
0:05
It's Steph and welcome to another episode of Solitary Creature.
0:09
This week I'm finally getting to my episode about body that I've been promising to do for a few weeks.
0:15
Now, before I dive into this episode, I wanna just call something out.
0:22
Body is such a loaded topic for me.
0:24
I think it's a loaded topic for a lot of people.
0:27
It's extremely personal, and when I say body, I am not just talking about weight.
0:33
I think that's where a lot of people's minds naturally go for a long time.
0:38
That's definitely where mine went.
0:40
I had very myopic view, when it came to body, and I'm gonna talk about weight and body image, but I'm also going to talk about things like confidence and a lot about the mind body connection because that's what I have been thinking about, especially the last few weeks, a little bit less about like my physical body in terms of weight and more just about how my mood and my feeling and my body all kind of work together.
1:06
And I also wanna talk about the importance of movement, like what movement has meant for me, or my mental and my physical health.
1:14
I've been trying to work a lot on moving more and.
1:18
Being more aware of getting in different types of movement instead of just doing the same thing all the time.
1:24
So I know body is a loaded topic for a lot of people, so I just wanna make a big disclaimer at the starts episode.
1:32
This podcast is about me.
1:34
And what I'm learning on my mindfulness and self-improvement journey, I hope that you listen and find things that resonate with you.
1:42
But this podcast really centers around my story, my life, my learnings, and how those learnings fit in my own personal life, my own viewpoints, the things I do every day.
1:58
So I'm not saying everyone has to think.
2:00
About their body the same way I do.
2:03
I think everyone has to have their own relationship with their body.
2:07
You have to trust and learn what feels right for you and your journey.
2:12
And also a journey is an evolution.
2:15
I'm learning different things every day that shift my perspective about a lot of things in tiny ways.
2:21
So keep that in mind as you're listening, and when you're out in the greater world listening to other people's stories.
2:29
Ev everyone's experience is different and I think that's what makes us all unique and I think that's what makes learning from other people so great.
2:38
And just because someone has one experience doesn't mean you have to have the same experience.
2:43
It doesn't mean you have to have the same takeaways.
2:46
It doesn't mean you have to have the same priorities.
2:48
I think when anybody talks about anything to do with the body, it's really putting yourself out there in a really vulnerable way.
2:55
And for a lot of people, any topic around body comes with a lot of shame and fear, and sometimes disappointment and insecurity.
3:05
And so I think we all just need to be a little bit more respectful about where people are at with their bodies, and especially when they're willing to talk candidly about something that can be very vulnerable.
3:15
I think it's so easy to judge people and to jump on them and say, you should do this.
3:20
You shouldn't do that.
3:21
That's wrong.
3:21
This is right.
3:22
But it's an evolution and we just need to spend more time listening and less time judging other people.
3:30
I've decided to split this topic actually into two episodes.
3:34
The first episode, I'm gonna really focus on that mind body connection, like I said it earlier.
3:40
And then the next episode, I'm gonna dive more into weight loss.
3:43
I have a long history with like binge eating and emotional eating and eating disorder.
3:48
So I'm gonna talk about some of that.
3:50
So I figured if you don't wanna listen to either one of these episodes, if for whatever reason one is triggering, or maybe both, just that way you don't have to try to fast forward through the episode.
4:03
You can just skip whatever episode doesn't feel right for you altogether, and just make it easy.
4:10
Alright? So with that preamble done, let's get into it.
4:15
So at the top, I just wanna say that I've struggled with body image my entire life.
4:20
There has only been a few fleeting moments where I felt really at home in my body.
4:27
And to be honest, in those moments, it was really more of a, like a fake it till you make it kind of confidence.
4:35
As soon as I felt like I couldn't fake it anymore, as soon as I started to have that.
4:39
Dip that ebb and flow kind of feeling in my confidence and it was just like slightly shaken or I just wasn't on top of my game.
4:45
And sometimes mentally I just couldn't, I just couldn't fake it.
4:50
It was like too much to fake it on certain days.
4:53
So as soon as I felt like I couldn't fake it anymore, I didn't feel confident and that sent me into shame, spirals and guilt.
4:59
And it's really crushing.
5:02
As quickly as I rose into what felt was confidence, I quickly came crashing down out of it.
5:09
And some of you may be thinking, wait, why are you talking about confidence? I thought you weren't talking about weight this episode.
5:15
And to that, I say exactly, I don't think your confidence should be associated with your weight at all.
5:22
Because your weight is going to fluctuate throughout your life, whether you have struggled with weight, whether you're happy with your weight, whether you wanna lose weight, whether you wanna gain weight, whatever the case may be.
5:33
I don't think your confidence should be tied to like your actual physical body.
5:37
It shouldn't be tied to your weight.
5:38
You have to I have been trying really hard to find confidence in other ways outside of just what is my weight? And some of those are still connected to like my physicality.
5:48
But they're more like little boosters versus telling myself, like I can only feel confident when I'm at this kind of weight, or I can only feel confident when I'm dressed a certain way, or I can only feel confident if I'm wearing makeup.
6:02
I'm trying to like move outside of those really black and white circumstances and just be like, I'm confident because I am.
Self-assured is more what I'm working for.
Confidence that comes from a sense of self-assuredness and loving myself and that it doesn't matter what I look like, what I weigh, what I'm wearing, that I am, I love myself enough and my confidence comes out of a lot of self-love.
And that's been a really tough journey.
That's really easy to say that's the goal.
Am I doing a great job at it? No, not really, but I'm trying Every day I am trying to find new ways to appreciate myself.
That's why during this breakup that I'm going through and.
Everything that you read tells you to focus more on yourself and self-care and self-love, and make time for yourself and get back to your hobbies.
And I think all of that is true for healing a broken heart and moving on from things that aren't working and all of that stuff.
But I think it is also just good for, it's good for your soul and it's also, I think, good for your confidence.
I'm, I feel better when my days feel full.
Not that I have to be like, it's not necessarily like a productivity thing, it's more just like my life feels full.
I feel most multifaceted.
Like I have hobbies, I have interests, I I do more than just sit around and watch TV and worry about all the things that I'm not doing.
I feel like I'm actually living life and that makes me feel confident and it really does.
And I think the more.
I learn about myself and the more I feel capable in different things, especially when you try new things, nothing makes me feel more confident than really crushing something or overcoming a fear or just uncovering something new about myself.
It's like the more I learn about myself.
The more I feel like a fully formed person and the more I'm giving myself like more material to feel confident about and feel secure about because instead of just my life feeling very small and how I define myself feeling very small, when you only have a handful of activities it feels like you have to be killing it at all of those things in order to feel good about yourself.
But when I feel like I have a full plate and I'm trying different things, it's okay to not always be great at something, but when you are great at something, it feels really awesome and it also feels Multidimensional.
I just feel like I have more going on.
I'm a more fully fleshed person.
And I don't know, there's just something about that just feels like really good.
It's like it gives me the freedom to fail and that's also like really tied to my confidence.
It doesn't matter if I'm not good enough at everything because.
Tomorrow will bring like another thing that I'm gonna try and I might be good at that thing or I might not, but like eventually I'm gonna find things that I'm good at.
And I think there's just something about feeling kind of badass about trying something and seeing if it works and if it doesn't, like no big whoop and being able to move on from that.
I think that is also the sign of a confident person.
I'm saying all this as someone whose confidence was, has almost entirely been tied to how her body looks and how she feels in her body her entire life.
So all of this is like very new to me.
This is not something I've mastered at all.
It's just something that I've observed and especially like maybe the last 3, 4, 5 months.
And and that's not to say that all the things that I'm trying to do and all the things I'm learning have only come exclusively during the end of a relationship.
While I was in my relationship, I also was like with someone who made me feel really good about trying new things and someone who made me, feel really.
Safe to try new things and to feel like I wasn't being judged.
And that helped me take leaps doing things.
Especially as a bigger person.
I'm a fat girl.
So it's not always the easiest to go climb through the woods or like crawl through a Rocky River or, go hike up the side of a mountain or whatever.
So when I was with someone who really made me feel like it was okay, like I wasn't gonna be judged for doing that, he was gonna help me, he was gonna let me go at my own pace.
For a long time I was with someone in previous relationship who like, I did not feel safe to try things.
That's why I stayed in my bubble and I think ultimately why I lacked confidence.
I was just doing the same old thing and I didn't feel safe.
I didn't feel supported physically, emotionally, during trying new things.
And I felt like if I wasn't moving fast enough, if I wasn't doing something perfectly right then I was like ruining someone else's good time.
But with my most recent boyfriend, I didn't feel that way.
I felt he just wanted to spend time with me.
So it didn't matter if we didn't actually get across the river or if it took a little longer or if he had to, hold my hand while I tried to climb down the side of a, an embankment to get to a river.
So he really pushed me outside of my comfort zone a lot.
And if there's anything that I take away from that relationship, that is one of the big ones.
And that did help boost my confidence I would often start off doing like an activity and feeling so aware of my body, but the more at ease I felt and the safer I felt and the more confidence I felt like just getting that rush of oh yeah, go meet.
I would forget about my body.
I would forget about how my body probably looks as I'm like.
Rolling down this embankment, I would forget about how big my ass must look or how my fat roll looks or whatever.
The more I could get immersed in the thing that I was doing, the less I was conscious of my body, and it's a really good feeling to just feel like you're in the moment doing something, especially when you're someone where maybe you are thinking about your body a lot of the day.
And I am thinking about my body a lot.
It's hard not to but so much of my body and my mind really go hand in hand.
And I, I think that's probably true for most people.
When I feel good in my body, my mind feels clear.
My world feels a lot lighter, everything feels a little bit more manageable, and it feels less like I'm trudging through mud.
Everything just feels a little bit more doable.
I feel present in my body.
I feel strong.
I feel at peace.
I just spent so much of my life being so consumed by my body, by my weight, what I look like, I wasn't focusing on how I feel.
I wasn't present.
I was just so in my head and I was worried and I was fretting and.
Spiraling.
And I think I'm finally getting to the point where I don't know, I don't know if it, maybe a part of it is just age too.
They say once you get into like your thirties and especially as you move closer to your forties, you just kinda don't give a shit anymore.
You realize that it doesn't matter what people think you've probably wasted a lot of your life.
Worried about what people think of you.
So just some days it just feels a lot easier just to move through life and be like, I could care less.
Like I have bigger fish to fry than worry about if someone thinks my back fat is ugly.
In addition to just like trying new things and finding confidence in that.
I'm also finding that the more I move, the more confident I feel which I didn't expect.
I live a very sedentary life.
I always have.
I'm very much a home buddy.
I work from home now.
I've been working from home for a few years I sit at my desk a lot and so like it's, you don't get as much movement baked into your day.
And if I was already out after work, it was so much easier to go to the gym or go for a walk around the reservoir or something.
It was like a lot easier to do those things than it is when you work from home.
I feel like I have to make more of an effort to move so I have been trying to be more conscious of that and when I say workout, I'm not like workout, I just mean like workout in terms of let me go for a walk.
Let me do aerobics while I'm watching tv.
Let me do a workout video.
Let me use my rowing machine.
Let me just do a bunch of.
Going up and down the stairs, like it could be anything, but I'm just like trying to be more mindful of movement.
I'm even doing a lot of those, like I feel like are what women in the nineties probably did a lot of I'm gonna park my car at the very end of the at the very end of the parking lot.
So it just forces me to.
Walk a little bit more, just like little things like that, which feels so much like what my mom did in Weight Watchers.
But the point is that I'm trying to move more, partially to stay off boredom, partially to clear my mind.
But when I move more, when I exercise more, I do just feel better.
Like regardless of.
Even not even for weight loss.
That's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about just like it does clear my mind.
It does help me refocus.
It does energize me.
If I work out in the morning on the weekend, I just feel like I have a lot of energy for the rest of the day and it really gets me going.
I think there's also a part of me that feels like it's crossing something off my to-do list.
That also gets me going for the day.
I'm a very stressed out person.
I'm like a high, strong, very type a, very anal, I'm constantly stressed out.
I have a million things on the to-do list in my mind.
I never feel like I'm getting enough done.
I also am dealing with a lot of anger stemming from my last relationship.
So like that also feeds into my stress and my anxiety levels.
So just being able to move more it's like a kinetic release of all of that.
It's it sounds like such a crop when you're not moving a lot and people are telling you like, it'll make you feel better, go for a walk.
It's just fuck yourself.
But then when you actually do it, you're like, okay, maybe don't go fuck yourself.
That was actually good advice.
So I've been trying to like.
Be more mindful.
Mindful of that.
And it was funny the other day, this is probably actually like more like a week or so ago now, but the other day I was like, okay, like I'm getting bored of just walking on my treadmill watching housewives, like I wanna do something else.
I feel like my hips just need a little bit more stretch or move my body in a slightly different way.
I feel like I'm just moving the same muscles in the same way.
I need something a little bit different.
So when I was a kid, I I loved tennis.
I was huge tennis person, like a crazy amount of tennis.
It's crazy to think now that I used to go to tennis, practice after school, come home, do homework, go for a run, and then go play more tennis and play till the, some went down or whatever, and then come home and do more homework.
It's wild and that like when I didn't have to work, I could play tennis.
Sun up to sundown, like I just loved it.
It's crazy how much.
Something doesn't feel like exercise and doesn't feel like movement when it's something that you really love.
I also used to have a giant trampoline and again, I used to be out there for hours.
I just listened to, this is gonna age me, but I used to listen to my Walkman on the trampoline and I would just jump for hours and hours, just like listening to music out in the sun.
That was like how I would spend most of my summer.
I just loved it.
But another thing I really loved was dancing.
Not any formally trained dancing.
That's not what I'm talking about.
I didn't do ballet or tap or anything like that.
I just mean listening to music, dancing in my room, maybe doing like a workout video when I was a kid.
I, if you're younger, you're probably not even gonna know who this person is, which is crazy to me.
But carbon Electra.
Was, I guess like a Playboy playmate slash actress slash model.
I, she doesn't really have a much of a career now, but she used to have these like stripper move videos, strip tease videos or whatever.
I used to love them.
They were so fun.
But anyway, so I used to do those a lot too.
I don't.
I don't, I think my parents were just so excited that I was exercising.
I don't think they cared what I was doing, but I would be shocked now if I like walked in.
My 15-year-old was doing like a strip dancer video.
It was wild.
But anyway, so I was like, I was thinking about okay, let me try to do something a little bit different than just like walk on my treadmill.
So I found this YouTube video this YouTube channel Caleb Marshall he does like choreographed dances to like pop songs, and it's him and usually like a couple dancers and some of them are filmed in studio, and then some of them are filmed, There's some canyon in, I'm assuming California, and they're on like some pull off and they reduce just doing it outside is my point.
But anyway, so I watched like a bunch of his videos and I love his energy.
And some of the videos like seemed okay, I could probably, they seem easy enough, and so I decided to do one of them.
It was like a Saturday morning, so I was like, you know what? Like I don't have anything to lose.
Let me find like a playlist of five or six videos and let me just see how it goes.
Like I'll just do, that'll be like my workout for the morning.
So I did that and it, I don't know what it was you guys, but it took me so long to work up the nerve.
The video was playing.
I'm fully in my workout gear.
I'm ready to go.
The curtains are drawn, and I was so self-conscious.
It was such a strange feeling like I live in my own house.
There's no one that lives with me.
It's just me and the cats.
So no, it's not like I have a roommate that's gonna walk in.
It's not like I'm living with someone and they're gonna see me.
The currents are close.
It's not like anyone outside can see me.
I don't know.
It was strange.
It's like you always think that the reason why I'm someone who like get a gym membership and I would go sometimes, but I feel really self-conscious and wouldn't go as much as I knew I should and wanted to because I just felt so in my own head about it because I just felt everyone's watching me and it's just like now I'm in my own home.
There's literally no one around and I'm still feeling that same.
Self-conscious energy, like I'm still like, someone's gonna see me.
What if I look foolish? I'm like.
To who? It's just me.
And I realized that maybe it really hasn't been about how, I'm worried about how other people are gonna view me.
Maybe this whole time, my self-esteem has really just been about how I know it's called self-esteem.
So like maybe some people, this is the, but for me it was like my self-esteem doesn't actually have to do with like how I.
Worry other people are gonna perceive me.
It really just has to do with like how much I love myself and how much I value myself and whether I'm embarrassed for myself because no one's around right now and I'm still feeling very embarrassed.
And I don't know if that's just the way I feel in public has been so internalized that it just like runs so deep that now that's just like my automatic response but it was odd and.
It just hit me how uncomfortable I am in my own body and how much confidence I lack and how much I struggle with it.
And it was like probably 25, 30 minute video, like the playlist.
And once I got started It probably took me like half the video to just get comfortable moving at all.
I was so stiff I couldn't keep up, because I was being so stiff.
Like I knew what the moves were.
I can do the moves, but it was like I couldn't allow myself just to be loose and limber and flow into the moves.
I was like botting it the whole time.
And.
I know that part of it is because I'm someone who clings so tightly to control that.
It's so hard for me to let loose in like any given situation.
I'm like constantly embarrassed.
But it was wild to be so embarrassed and so tightly wound in my own space with no one around just because I was trying to do like a silly little like workout video.
It was just a very, odd, almost out of body experience.
And I just felt so bad for myself.
Here I am, just, I'm, I literally was just like, I wanna do something fun.
I wanna do something that feels fun this morning.
I don't just wanna be on the treadmill watching TV or watching the news.
I would just really wanna let loose and I could not, I just could not.
And.
I don't quite know how to solve that problem, but I think, I think the more I do it, the easier it'll get.
But it was just like so strange.
But it did just show how much, your mind can affect your body.
My body could not overcome my mind in that moment.
Like I just, it was, my body wasn't gonna win.
And if my mind wasn't gonna let go, my body couldn't let go.
Another reason why I'm trying to find different ways to move is because I do really believe that our bodies store a lot of stress.
And people talk a lot about like somatic releases and things like that, and I fully believe it.
There was so much pain in different parts of my body, but very specific, pointed pain in my body.
And for instance, like my right hip is in constant.
Pain, I've been to the doctor and they've looked at it, and I'm gonna start physical therapy for it as a way to try to like, get it, stretched out and work it a little bit more a little bit more focused.
But I started having hip pain about a year ago and I've been having knee pain for maybe.
Maybe like a year and a half or so.
At first I really felt like the hip pain was related to the knee pain, and probably to some degree it still is.
But they took x-rays of my knees and all this stuff, and they were really looking at 'em and there's like just like really nothing wrong with it.
Like nothing obviously wrong.
So again, that's gonna be a physical therapy issue.
But, but my point is that like I am so stressed, there's so much on my mind, and I noticed maybe about maybe three weeks after I ended things with my boyfriend and kicked him outta my house I noticed that the pain in my right hip had started to fade a little bit.
Like it's still there, because there's some part of it that is just, I think just like a medical part of it.
But I realized I haven't really felt that hip pain quite as bad the last few weeks.
And it used to be that every time I would get up, my hip would hurt.
When I would rock walk, it felt like my hip was gonna give out.
It just, I also just felt like the muscles in my hip were like just so tight.
And it was just odd because it was like something that I conscious I, it's like a dull pain.
So it's like you feel it all the time.
It wasn't until a couple weeks ago that I realized oh yeah, I haven't really felt that as strongly as I had felt in the past.
And so I thought that was like really interesting that I like, I think it was like, yeah, I guess that like part of it is just like a lot of stress being stored and I've felt it for the last year and I had really been at my limit for the last year, so I'm not surprised that I was feeling so much stress and tension in my hip.
And there was a time within the last year that I had really been trying to like, exercise a lot and all of that.
And it didn't make any, it didn't make a dent in the hip.
Like it didn't matter how much I stretched, it didn't matter what I was doing.
There was still just so much pain and it just really wasn't until.
I left that situation that it felt like my hip was able to release a little bit of that.
It was just so strange.
So yeah, so I totally buy that, like our body holds stress and for me it definitely is in my hip for sure.
We all know that we store stress, like my shoulders are ch and stuff like that.
But I'm talking about I'm talking about like real deep pain, persistent pain that is just constantly there.
There's no reason for my hip to be hurting that bad.
Especially when I'm moving more.
Like I could buy oh, it's just 'cause you're, you're sedentary, you're sitting a lot.
Valid, but Okay.
Then it's still hurting a lot though, even when I am exercising and then all of a sudden probably when I'm doing the least amount of exercise that I've done in the last year, suddenly my hip is like on the mend.
Yeah, it's, it definitely has to do with stress.
Not to say that I'm like completely unstressed, but there's definitely less.
Aggravation that I'm dealing with right.
Another thing that I've done to get a little bit of more movement is I signed up for a step bet, which is basically like you wear a fitness tracker and it tracks your steps and your average steps, and then you join a game with a bunch of other people and you pay like $40 to enter and they give you a daily goal and you get one rest day a week and you get four days that they call active days, and then two days that are power days and you get you have a higher step goal.
And I just think it's a great way to keep movement at the top of my mind.
That's why I joined the first time.
It wasn't, again, it wasn't really, it's not a weight loss thing for me.
It's really just about, okay, like I am someone who doesn't.
Walk a lot and not someone who's getting, I know I'm not getting enough movement, so what's something I can do to like really track myself and nothing motivates me more than money.
I am not gonna miss my step counts because I'm not losing that $40 and I've done three or four step back games now.
So basically if you get to the end and you have hit all of your goals, anyone who does that, they're considered winners.
And then there's a, that $40 pot that you pay into to play, whoever wins, they all split the pot.
So most people hit their goal, so you're only ever making like maybe a couple extra bucks a game, but that's not really the point.
My, my thing isn't really to make money.
It's just to not lose the money that I have and I can keep rolling that initial $40 into game after game.
for me, it just helps me stay aware of how much movement I should be getting in my day.
This is like a normal amount of movement.
This is like a little bit more of an active day.
They're aggressive goals, but not completely out of reach.
It just forces me to like.
Think about it more, be more present, be more mindful of it.
So that's why I really like them.
And it just and it's also easy 'cause it's like steps.
So it doesn't have to be, what did I do for a workout or whatever.
Like any kinda movement you get throughout the day counts.
And so it's, it is also just really nice if I have a busy cleaning day and I don't have time to work out, I'm still getting my steps in.
I still have a chance of not losing my $40 and I still feel good about what I'm doing.
I think it also just makes me more.
It makes me mindful of like days where I'm not moving a lot, but also makes me mindful about how much we take for granted, how little actions can like add up over time and how active certain things we do every day or every week.
I really do contribute to your overall wellbeing, even if it feels small in the grand scheme of things, so that's another thing that I've been doing, that I've been really enjoying.
Like for instance, maybe a week or so ago, I like needed, I need to tackle my garage.
It's fall and I'm getting ready into winter and I need to move a lot of the stuff like the summertime stuff.
I need to move that to the back of the garage, move my winter stuff to the front.
My shovels, my snowblower, the ice melt and all of that stuff.
And, the garage is just a nightmare.
And that was really like my ex's area.
And for a while it was really organized because my dad cleaned it all out for me because he was bored.
One day we were having like a family yard sale and he was bored, hanging out, and he always needs a project.
So his project for that day to stay busy was two.
Completely clean out, sweep, reorganize, and I think if I hadn't told him to take a break, I think he honestly would have re concreted my floors.
So I think he would've laid out new concrete in my floors, but I stopped him because I just felt please.
But my dad cleaned up my whole garage for me, which was quite a feat because we were having like a yard sale.
And so it was very messy and we had just moved and all this stuff.
So he did a, an amazing job and he had a great time doing it.
But now it's been a couple years since he did that.
And there's just like a lot of junk that needs to get donated and that I never took care of after like our last yard at sale.
And like a lot of things that, as we settled into this house, there was just like this house came as is with a bunch of furniture in it.
There's a lot of furniture that like got swapped at.
Like I brought furniture in and we took old furniture out, put it in the garage.
It just had like too much stuff.
The camping stuff was a nightmare.
And we have often gotten to this habit where one area of my garage isn't habitable and so we just start piling, making little piles everywhere.
We were just dumping everything everywhere and it did not help that my ex for a while.
That was just kinda where he would hide out and frankly probably drink behind my back and, I dunno, I just kinda felt like that's his space.
It's not really like his mancave or anything, but just felt okay, like he, he doesn't have like much space in this house because like my office is in the middle of the living room and the bedroom kind of feels like my room.
'cause it takes most, my stuff takes up most of the bedroom and all that stuff.
So it's okay, that's like his little space, it's like the little space he has.
And anyway, I went out there and it was so overwhelming and I didn't know where to start and it was so obvious why this had been on my mind.
It was definitely contributing to a lot of my stress.
It was constantly on my mind.
I was just constantly thinking there's this giant elephant I have to take care of, but I spent maybe like an hour and a half out there.
Chipping away and I was like, that's like the best I can do is just get started and chip away at it and see what I can do.
Like I'll listen to an album while I do this, and then I'll call it quits for the day and I can at least feel like I started it.
And I was out there for 40 minutes.
I was breaking such a sweat, moving all this heavy junk moving boxes back and forth cleaning it up, bending down, going up the stairs.
I have ladders in my garage.
I have a loft inside my garage and going up and down the ladder and all this stuff, it seems like I'm just going to clean the garage.
That's just a chore.
But that was a really good workout.
I'm lifting really heavy stuff.
These heavy boxes.
I'm moving.
It's just it was a full body workout doing this for 45 minutes and it was nonstop.
I was sweating so bad and you just forget that even little things that you're just like checking off your list can have.
A big impact to other goals.
It really just made me feel okay, like I got my workout in today, like this was a workout.
I I nothing, I love more than killing two birds with one stone.
So that really got me going.
But it also felt really good afterwards 'cause I felt I tackled the whole confidence thing because I was doing something I really hadn't done before.
I've never had to clean out the garage and I've never had to move heavy washers and dryers around.
And it also made me feel confident 'cause it's like there are spiders out there.
And it's gross and it's dirty and I don't know, it just made me feel very, like it was very rosy, the riveter of me, which probably sounds very pathetic, but it was like, yeah, I killed that.
So it was adding to my confidence, just okay, I have been putting it off because I just thought I'm not gonna be able to do some of this stuff and it's gonna be too overwhelming.
I'm not gonna know what to do and I'm gonna do some of it.
And at the end I'm just gonna be like, this accounted for nothing.
It also felt really good to like cross start to at least start to cross something off my to-do list that had been weighing on me a lot.
It also just really cleared out the clutter in my mind to get some of this clutter out of the garage.
But it was also exciting because there were things that I was uncovering in the garage that I had forgotten about.
I forgot I have a rowing machine.
I have a rowing machine out in.
My garage.
I also have a full workout bench in my garage, which I've completely forgotten about.
And so those are just some cool things that I'm gonna try to bring inside for the winter because it's I do love rowing and I love, and I have loved my workout bench.
I just haven't used them in a really long time because I didn't really have the space for them inside.
But now I think I have a spot for them.
That just felt good and then it just got me excited about all the, once I cleaned the garage out more, all the different, like things I can use that space for.
Like I wanna strip all the paint off the doors and cabinets in my house next year.
And, but I need a space to do that.
And then I was, feeling so amped up from doing that, that it just kinda snowballed into the rest of my day.
So then I came inside, I made some lunch, and then I went upstairs and cleaned and reorganized my guest bedroom, which has now become the cat bedroom.
There's some old carpet up there that I wanna pull up, but it's been a disaster.
And it had been freakishly warm the last couple of weeks, so it was like that room gets pretty hot.
With the windows that beat right into it.
On the next cool day that I have, I'm planning on pulling up that carpet because there's some old hardwood floors under there.
So I'm excited about that.
So anyway, just trying to take care of and tackle some of those little things that are on my mind instead of carrying them around constantly.
I'm hoping that, helps my body not feel like it's helped relieve my body.
Some of the stress and the tension that's being stored, but also clearing my head a little bit, which I think will also cycle back to my body, but also trying.
To move more and do move more, especially in ways that help me tackle my to-do list.
So it doesn't feel like work and it doesn't feel like a drain and it feels productive.
So I don't know, like I don't, there's so much more I could probably talk about with mind body connection and we'll definitely talk more about it at a different point.
But that was just what was on my mind the last few weeks and it had been really hard with everything that was going on the last few weeks, it had just been really hard to articulate some of that and wrap my head around my thoughts and be concise and, there's nothing less exciting than listening to someone talk about the MINDBODY connection while they are operating at like a 5% battery level.
It's like I'm fading and I'm talking about this stuff, and it's like I'm getting bored listening to it.
So I just felt like I needed to start fresh, rerecord the whole thing and move on.
Anyway, that is what I've been thinking about when it comes to body.
Next episode, I'm gonna try to talk more about what I think people more typically think about when we say body, which is weight loss.
Weight, body types, physicality, those kinds of things.
I hope you'll join me for that.
If it's not your cup of tea, you feel free to skip right over it.
And I will catch you on the next episode.
I guess I should do like a little recommendation corner.
I don't think I did one last week.
Okay one thing that I have been listening to a lot is Taylor Swift's new album.
The Life of a Show World came out on October 3rd.
I'm sure everyone in the universe is sick of hearing.
About this album.
I am a huge swifty.
I'm, I like to think I'm not one of the obnoxious swifties.
I'm just like, I loved her since her first album came out.
I think I was in high school when it came out.
I've loved it.
I was not a country music person, but I loved her songs and I've loved every album and I love how she's dipped her toes in different genres.
I really love.
Some of my favorite albums or some for more recent albums and I love that.
Life of a showgirl also feels like a bit of a departure.
Anyone who is familiar with Taylor Swift will appreciate this.
Anyone who's not, you're gonna see me like goodbye.
But I loved tortured poets department.
I, that album came out around a time that me and my most recent ex, it was during one of the times that I had kicked him out and the album was released and.
It was so cathartic.
It was like a really sad, poetic, deep ping album.
It just really hit deep and it's hard to go back and listen to that album now because I was in such like a sad, dark space when I was listening to it and it just sometimes you listen to an album and it like immediately takes you back to where you were when you were listening to that album, nonstop.
There are a few albums in my life that are like that and they're albums where it's I, this music meant so much to me when they, when the album came out.
They are songs that, like I sometimes I don't know if I'll ever be able to listen to them again because they just immediate, they hold so much power and they immediately bring me back.
It's such a strong sense memory that I hear the music and I am immediately back to whatever's happening at the time.
So like other albums that are like that.
Our Ariana Grande's her song, POV, I can't listen to that song without thinking about the guy that I dated who died of an overdose because I was listening to that song on repeat at the time when I was getting ready to meet him for the first time.
When he died, I could not stop listening to that song.
And so now I can't even listen to it.
Anytime it comes up, I just skip it.
And for the longest time, as soon as I'd hear like the first intro notes, I would just start crying.
Another really heavy album for me that I can't listen to at all is the last Adele album.
That also reminds me of him because that album I was listening to a lot around the time that he died so I have a hard time listening to that one.
Because I have such strong.
Auditory memories with tortured poets department.
It's been really hard to go back and listen to this album, so I was really excited when this new album came out.
'cause it's like a fresh start and this one is just so happy and upbeat.
Every song feels like a hit to me.
It just has really perked me up.
Whether or not you, like Taylor Swift's sort of moot do I think it's like her best album ever? No, but I don't think we need to like constantly compare someone's album to album.
I love the album.
I think if you love the album, you love the album.
I don't need like a dissertation on it, but it's nice to have some like really upbeat, light, happy music to, disassociate with.
If you haven't listened to it, I love it.
Regardless of whether or not you like her, I feel like if you have an open mind, you'll find at least one song on there that you really like.
And it's, they're all earworms, so that is my recommendation for the week.
Go listen to life of a showgirl.
All right, anyway, I'm running along here, I will see you all later.
Thanks for joining me, Tina next week.
Thanks.
Bye.