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Small Habits, Big Wins: Organization Tips That Actually Work · All About The Joy

• 0:01
  Carmen Lezeth: Hi everyone, welcome to All About the Joy.
• 0:03
  Carmen Lezeth: This is Carmen Talk.
• 0:05
  Carmen Lezeth: A few weeks ago we went through kind of a mailbag and I was telling Rick and Cynthia kind of a mailbag and I was telling Rick and Cynthia some of the things that people were asking questions about or commenting.
• 0:29
  Carmen Lezeth: And I do get quite a bit of mail.
• 0:32
  Carmen Lezeth: Some of it is not good when I say mail I mean emails but some of it is actually asking questions and although I try to answer them, what I realize is maybe some of this information is something that might help other people.
• 0:47
  Carmen Lezeth: So one of the questions and I'm just going to do this in little bits because I think it might be helpful, and if it's not, that's okay too but in this episode what I want to talk about is how do you become more organized?
• 1:00
  Carmen Lezeth: Look it, I'm going to say this and I'm going to say it from like the bottom of my heart I am overly organized.
• 1:08
  Carmen Lezeth: I have a calendar which is color-coded and is pretty much detailed throughout the day, and if somebody were to look at that they'd be like oh my God, carmen is crazy, which is kind of true, but it is who I am.
• 1:26
  Carmen Lezeth: I have always been very organized.
• 1:28
  Carmen Lezeth: I am one of those people that, since I was a little kid, I make my bed every single day.
• 1:33
  Carmen Lezeth: Even to this day, even if no one is going to be coming into my home, my apartment is always in perfect condition.
• 1:41
  Carmen Lezeth: It's always perfectly organized.
• 1:43
  Carmen Lezeth: The reason why I'm stressing this so much is because there are bad parts to that too.
• 1:49
  Carmen Lezeth: Although I do like spontaneity, I'm not really someone who, like I, don't really love it is what my point is.
• 2:00
  Carmen Lezeth: I mean, I can be spontaneous, but I really do have things really organized.
• 2:05
  Carmen Lezeth: So the reason why I'm sharing this with all of you is just because you're not organized like somebody else, or just because you're not like someone else doesn't mean the way in which you do things is bad.
• 2:19
  Carmen Lezeth: Does that make sense?
• 2:20
  Carmen Lezeth: So if you don't make your bed every day and you don't have a color-coded calendar that has every single minute of your day outlined, that's okay.
• 2:32
  Carmen Lezeth: There is nothing wrong for you being your absolute best, being your authentic self.
• 2:38
  Carmen Lezeth: So don't get it twisted right.
• 2:40
  Carmen Lezeth: Don't get it confused that somehow, because you don't do something the way someone else does it, you're doing it wrong.
• 2:47
  Carmen Lezeth: Actually, I would say that's not the problem at all.
• 2:51
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm going to give you some tips on how to maybe incorporate things into your life that you're not doing right now.
• 2:57
  Carmen Lezeth: That will be easy for you, but what I really want to stress and what's really important, is authenticity and that who you are is perfect, exactly the way you are.
• 3:08
  Carmen Lezeth: What we all want to do is just get better, right?
• 3:10
  Carmen Lezeth: I want to be better about being more spontaneous.
• 3:14
  Carmen Lezeth: I want to be better about maybe not having to make my bed every morning because, you know, I don't know.
• 3:22
  Carmen Lezeth: See, I still don't think there's a reason not to do that, because you know I don't know, see, I still don't think there's a reason not to do that.
• 3:28
  Carmen Lezeth: But I'm just saying we all can improve, but within our own way in which we do things, not to change who we are, but to make ourselves better human beings, which I think, kind of, is the point right.
• 3:38
  Carmen Lezeth: So here's the thing, the way you can incorporate.
• 3:43
  Carmen Lezeth: So this specific email that somebody sent me was they want to start working out and they know that in the past I've done marathons and 10Ks and mud runs, and after I couldn't dance for a long time once I realized that my dancing quote unquote career was over.
• 3:59
  Carmen Lezeth: I had to make some changes and one of those changes was I ended up going to college, even though I never had any intention of going to college or even thought about it.
• 4:10
  Carmen Lezeth: But you know that was the trajectory and I had hurt my hip and it got really bad.
• 4:17
  Carmen Lezeth: And so when I went to college, I met someone on campus and she used to run all the time and she was like, carmen, you could do it.
• 4:25
  Carmen Lezeth: And you know I couldn't run at all, but I, oh, it always stayed in the back of my head so I would do these long walks and little by little, I started running.
• 4:33
  Carmen Lezeth: So my working out situation, the reason why I got so into working out on a regular basis was because I had always worked out as a kid.
• 4:44
  Carmen Lezeth: Whether I was dancing, you know, whether I was performing in Color Garden Drum Corps, whether I was, you know, part of Batutera or whatever it is like, whatever we want to talk about, I was always doing something that was about movement and body and whatever.
• 4:59
  Carmen Lezeth: So the idea that I would ever stop, that is really, really hard.
• 5:02
  Carmen Lezeth: The idea that I would ever stop, that is really, really hard.
• 5:04
  Carmen Lezeth: And I gravitated towards running, not because I love it, but because it was a way in which I could keep working out.
• 5:13
  Carmen Lezeth: Okay, so I, how do you get into exercising if you haven't been doing it, if you weren't brought up as a dancer or an athletic person?
• 5:23
  Carmen Lezeth: How do you do that?
• 5:24
  Carmen Lezeth: Because we all want to be healthy.
• 5:26
  Carmen Lezeth: Right, it's a tough one.
• 5:27
  Carmen Lezeth: Here's what I would suggest.
• 5:30
  Carmen Lezeth: Number one not everyone needs to be a runner and, like I just mentioned, I hated running.
• 5:35
  Carmen Lezeth: I still hate running.
• 5:39
  Carmen Lezeth: So think about what it is you want to do.
• 5:41
  Carmen Lezeth: There are so many different ways in which you can work out if that's your goal, but this is really about incorporating anything you want to start doing in your life.
• 5:52
  Carmen Lezeth: So this is the way you do it.
• 5:54
  Carmen Lezeth: You don't turn around and start color coding your calendar and doing every single day of how you're going to spend your minute, because you will fail.
• 6:02
  Carmen Lezeth: I promise you.
• 6:04
  Carmen Lezeth: You will fail because we can't change the trajectory of who we are quickly.
• 6:10
  Carmen Lezeth: It takes time, and I think there's some statistic, and I'm not sure how actual this is, but there's something about it taking 21 days for you to develop a habit.
• 6:21
  Carmen Lezeth: So, if it takes 21 days for you to develop a habit, what I would say is because I don't know if that's really true, I don't know if it takes me 21 days.
• 6:32
  Carmen Lezeth: It might actually take me longer.
• 6:33
  Carmen Lezeth: On some things it might take like, for example, I used to smoke, which I know people find that to be weird but it did not take me 21 days to stop smoking.
• 6:43
  Carmen Lezeth: It took me not being around people who smoked and it, you know, it was me moving.
• 6:49
  Carmen Lezeth: I didn't move to California because I wanted to stop smoking, but the fact that I moved here and didn't know anybody was really helpful because all the people I hung around with so that wasn't 21 days right To break a habit, to develop a new habit, because I like to see the positives, not the negatives right.
• 7:05
  Carmen Lezeth: So what I would say is, regardless of whatever that statistic is because you are a unique individual it might take you three days, it might just take you three days, it might take you two months, it doesn't matter.
• 7:16
  Carmen Lezeth: It's all about the intention and the try, and every time you fail, you've got to get right back up.
• 7:22
  Carmen Lezeth: So that's the trick Doesn't matter how many times you fail, as long as you keep getting up and starting over again and I'm saying that more for me than any of you right now, but that is really true.
• 7:32
  Carmen Lezeth: Okay, so here's what you do If you want to start working out and you don't have time.
• 7:37
  Carmen Lezeth: Because here's the thing People think about exercising it's like I have to drive to the gym, so I have to get my bag together, I have to drive to the gym, I have to be at the gym for at least an hour, get on the treadmill, do weights blah, blah, blah, whatever.
• 7:52
  Carmen Lezeth: Take the yoga class blah, blah, blah, whatever.
• 7:54
  Carmen Lezeth: And then I have to get back in my car, go back home, get dressed and go to work.
• 7:57
  Carmen Lezeth: That's a lot of time.
• 7:59
  Carmen Lezeth: That's a lot of time, and I have to tell you it's not necessary.
• 8:03
  Carmen Lezeth: It's not necessary, not at the beginning of this process at all.
• 8:06
  Carmen Lezeth: You want to get to the place where you're so excited to go to the gym and spend all that time that you do it not because you have to, but because it's become part of your ethos, right, it becomes part of who you is and who you are.
• 8:22
  Carmen Lezeth: So what?
• 8:22
  Carmen Lezeth: I would say?
• 8:23
  Carmen Lezeth: The way to start this really simple incorporate it into your everyday life already, where you're only adjusting a few minutes of things a day.
• 8:31
  Carmen Lezeth: So this is how I would tell you to start.
• 8:34
  Carmen Lezeth: Okay, when you go to the grocery store to buy food, do not park as close as you can to the doors of the grocery store.
• 8:44
  Carmen Lezeth: I know this is going to sound so obvious, but I'm telling you this will help you.
• 8:49
  Carmen Lezeth: Okay, park as far away as possible.
• 8:52
  Carmen Lezeth: No more drive-thrus.
• 8:54
  Carmen Lezeth: If you're going to go to a drive-thru to pick up your coffee no more drive-thrus.
• 8:58
  Carmen Lezeth: You need to park and walk to your Starbucks.
• 9:03
  Carmen Lezeth: Or.
• 9:03
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm not promoting Starbucks.
• 9:04
  Carmen Lezeth: I don't go to Starbucks.
• 9:05
  Carmen Lezeth: I know nothing about Starbucks.
• 9:07
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm just I know people do this.
• 9:08
  Carmen Lezeth: They go through the drive-thru.
• 9:09
  Carmen Lezeth: So, whatever coffee shop you go to, no more of that.
• 9:14
  Carmen Lezeth: You know you park your car and you walk into the area.
• 9:20
  Carmen Lezeth: Do little things like that.
• 9:21
  Carmen Lezeth: If you have company parking and it's really close to where you start, parking in the public visitor parking park, somewhere far away before you go into work.
• 9:31
  Carmen Lezeth: If you're going to the doctor's office, all of the places where you can walk more often do that.
• 9:38
  Carmen Lezeth: Here's a big one that I do all the time.
• 9:40
  Carmen Lezeth: I've been doing it forever.
• 9:43
  Carmen Lezeth: Do not take escalators anymore.
• 9:46
  Carmen Lezeth: Do not take elevators.
• 9:47
  Carmen Lezeth: Now, don't be ridiculous, I don't want to get the emails.
• 9:50
  Carmen Lezeth: Well, I can't go up 18 flights of stairs or whatever.
• 9:54
  Carmen Lezeth: Okay, no one's saying that.
• 9:55
  Carmen Lezeth: Okay, no one is saying you need to do that, but what you can do is go up four flights of stairs, or three flights of stairs, and then take the elevator from there.
• 10:04
  Carmen Lezeth: Right, what you want to start doing is incorporating exercise into your everyday life in minutes, in little minutes, instead of trying to do three hours of a chunk of a day before you go to work or after you go to work.
• 10:18
  Carmen Lezeth: I would say that would be the better way to do it.
• 10:21
  Carmen Lezeth: Let me tell you something I never take an elevator.
• 10:23
  Carmen Lezeth: I mean, again, I live in Los Angeles, so we don't have a lot.
• 10:26
  Carmen Lezeth: I mean we do in downtown LA, but there's not a lot of buildings that are over five or six floors where I live or where I am in.
• 10:34
  Carmen Lezeth: So me walking upstairs is a really good thing and I'll take the elevator down because, you know, going downstairs kind of scares me a bit, especially, you know, if you have knee issues or hip issues, like I do, you want to be careful.
• 10:46
  Carmen Lezeth: But even now when I go to do exercising, I don't run anymore, right, I actually go for a nice walk and then I go up the stairs here in Santa Monica and I go down the stairs or down a ramp and then up the stairs again, and I do them slowly and with intention.
• 11:04
  Carmen Lezeth: These are simple ways in which you can start incorporating moments and getting more organized and getting involved with working out a little bit.
• 11:14
  Carmen Lezeth: If you want to try to put time aside for yourself to either work out or have what I call me time, you can do that too.
• 11:23
  Carmen Lezeth: You can do that too.
• 11:24
  Carmen Lezeth: It can be something.
• 11:26
  Carmen Lezeth: Just do one thing and say I'm going to commit to this for the next three days.
• 11:30
  Carmen Lezeth: Don't make it a week, don't make it 15 days, and do it like a Friday, saturday and Sunday, when you know you'll be able to accomplish that change in your schedule.
• 11:40
  Carmen Lezeth: Right, turn around and say to yourself okay, I am going to get up, I'm going to have my coffee and then, from 8 to 8.30 or 8 to 8.20, I'm going to take a walk around the block, or from 8 to 8.30, I'm going to walk on my treadmill or whatever it is you have, you know.
• 12:01
  Carmen Lezeth: Or maybe you're going to decide that when you get up from 8 to 8.30, you know, after you have your coffee or whatever, and it's a Saturday morning or whatever you're going to just sit and be, take that time to be all about you and think about what it is you want to do for the rest of the week, intentionally, without your cell phone, without the TV on, without anybody interrupting you.
• 12:26
  Carmen Lezeth: These are the ways in which you can become more quote unquote organized when you start doing things with intention and doing them in little bits and pieces and not trying to change your entire existence because you think somebody else is doing it better than you, because you are so unique.
• 12:48
  Carmen Lezeth: We are all such unique individuals and what we don't realize, what we don't seem to grasp on a regular basis, is everybody is struggling through something.
• 13:00
  Carmen Lezeth: We're all trying to walk through life as best we can, and even if you think I'm doing something better than somebody else's, I'm over here thinking you're doing something better than I'm doing.
• 13:16
  Carmen Lezeth: You know what I mean.
• 13:16
  Carmen Lezeth: We're all trying to be our best selves and you have to be able to sit with that for a minute and understand how uniquely beautiful and amazing and brilliant you are, just to be here.
• 13:31
  Carmen Lezeth: You see what I'm saying.
• 13:33
  Carmen Lezeth: So don't okay.
• 13:35
  Carmen Lezeth: So let's summarize.
• 13:35
  Carmen Lezeth: Let's summarize a little bit.
• 13:36
  Carmen Lezeth: Stop knocking yourself down as if you're not doing something great and brilliant, just by existing because you are, whatever your situation is in your life, that is your journey.
• 13:50
  Carmen Lezeth: That is the journey that you are on.
• 13:52
  Carmen Lezeth: You have choices, whether you believe it or not, you have choices to make in order for your life to be the way in which you want it to be.
• 14:02
  Carmen Lezeth: And the way your life is right now is because you have chosen to be in it.
• 14:08
  Carmen Lezeth: It might be too scary to move on, it might be a responsibility you have that you can't move on, or you can't move through it, but again, it's still a choice.
• 14:20
  Carmen Lezeth: Okay, there are choices and with those choices, within those choices, you can still make the changes you want to make in order to be your best self.
• 14:29
  Carmen Lezeth: Do them incrementally.
• 14:31
  Carmen Lezeth: Do them in tiny, small ways.
• 14:34
  Carmen Lezeth: Don't try to change everything overnight, because I have to tell you ways.
• 14:38
  Carmen Lezeth: Don't try to change everything overnight, because I have to tell you that's how you fail when we try to be somebody we're not.
• 14:44
  Carmen Lezeth: And changing something like me quitting smoking, that took time and it took a big change and it took a lot of effort and it took a lot of different things, little bits and pieces.
• 14:58
  Carmen Lezeth: You know it's so funny because I came out here and I remember being like all right, I'm going to quit smoking, I'm just going to do it, and I was like, okay, after this pack of cigarettes I would do that.
• 15:09
  Carmen Lezeth: But I have to say one of the things that was interesting was they didn't have anybody to smoke with, so it wasn't a social thing anymore.
• 15:15
  Carmen Lezeth: Now I also understand that there's also a psychological thing.
• 15:21
  Carmen Lezeth: I started not liking the smell of it because I was near the beach all the time and I loved the smell of the beach and that's a huge change.
• 15:29
  Carmen Lezeth: But it took me quite a while to do it.
• 15:31
  Carmen Lezeth: I went through a whole bunch of iterations of how to quit.
• 15:36
  Carmen Lezeth: Everything takes time.
• 15:38
  Carmen Lezeth: But here's the thing Once you do it incrementally, little by little, like one change I made was I'm not buying any more cigarettes, so I'd have to ask someone, which helped.
• 15:49
  Carmen Lezeth: You know what I mean.
• 15:50
  Carmen Lezeth: Like I didn't really want to ask somebody for a cigarette at all, especially because I didn't know many people here, you know.
• 15:56
  Carmen Lezeth: But it also was a social thing, because if you ask somebody for a cigarette then you would talk to them and I honestly didn't want to talk to most people.
• 16:02
  Carmen Lezeth: I mean I did when I came out here, you know, just meeting people and stuff.
• 16:07
  Carmen Lezeth: But my point is, I did it incrementally, little by little, and there were a lot of things that happened along the way that made it easier for me to quit.
• 16:16
  Carmen Lezeth: And then I was done.
• 16:17
  Carmen Lezeth: I was done, it was finished.
• 16:19
  Carmen Lezeth: I didn't even notice because I did it in such small steps and in little, tiny ways, because my goal was to not smoke anymore and I was going to do it in such a way that I would never pick up a cigarette again.
• 16:31
  Carmen Lezeth: And I haven't, and I'm one of those people.
• 16:35
  Carmen Lezeth: I hate the smell of cigarettes.
• 16:37
  Carmen Lezeth: So so, be kind to yourself, love who you are.
• 16:41
  Carmen Lezeth: Be a person who understands that you are uniquely, brilliant and authentically who you're supposed to be, even in this moment, no matter what is going on in your life right now, no matter how tragic, how horrible, how sad, no matter what your health issue is, no matter what you think is going on in your life.
• 16:59
  Carmen Lezeth: This is exactly where you're supposed to start from right, here, in this moment and this time.
• 17:06
  Carmen Lezeth: And you got this.
• 17:08
  Carmen Lezeth: You got this.
• 17:09
  Carmen Lezeth: Whatever that next step is for you, you got this Right.
• 17:13
  Carmen Lezeth: And remember you are lovely, you are beautiful, you're supposed to be here.
• 17:17
  Carmen Lezeth: We're excited that you're here, we love that you're here and we're so excited to see who you are in the world, because we're all social beings.
• 17:27
  Carmen Lezeth: We want to know who you are, because you have grace and talent and you have skills and things to teach all of us skills and things to teach all of us.
• 17:37
  Carmen Lezeth: No matter if you think you don't, you're not here by mistake.
• 17:41
  Carmen Lezeth: You're here on purpose, and so we all do these little things to tweak who we are, to kind of do the things that we're supposed to be doing.
• 17:56
  Carmen Lezeth: So if your idea of wanting to work out or getting more organized is something that you think is going to make you a better person, then you do that, and you do it incrementally, you do it little by little, you do it in pieces and then it becomes sustainable.
• 18:10
  Carmen Lezeth: So make a commitment for three days, just three days, and see how that works for you.
• 18:17
  Carmen Lezeth: Three days, 15 minutes, making changes while you're walking or going to work or driving or going to certain places, parking farther away, walking along and seeing if that helps.
• 18:31
  Carmen Lezeth: If you have like something that measures your steps, you can also use your phone.
• 18:35
  Carmen Lezeth: That might help too, because that might inspire you and this whole idea of having to do 10,000 steps.
• 18:41
  Carmen Lezeth: Get that out of your head.
• 18:43
  Carmen Lezeth: Somebody made that up as a marketing tool.
• 18:46
  Carmen Lezeth: That is not true.
• 18:48
  Carmen Lezeth: If you did more steps today than you did yesterday, that's the goal.
• 18:53
  Carmen Lezeth: You know what I mean?
• 18:54
  Carmen Lezeth: Even if it's two steps more, okay, the goal is to get yourself active and to get yourself to a place.
• 19:00
  Carmen Lezeth: So stop listening to all the noise.
• 19:02
  Carmen Lezeth: Let's get all the noise out of there and let's just be our best selves every single day, doing the best we can in the way in which we can do it.
• 19:11
  Carmen Lezeth: I hope that helps.
• 19:14
  Carmen Lezeth: Thanks everyone.
• 19:15
  Carmen Lezeth: I really appreciate you being here.
• 19:17
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm going to have more Carmen Talks and remember, we're always live on Friday Night Lives at 6 pm Pacific, 9 pm Eastern.
• 19:27
  Carmen Lezeth: We're always here on Sundays, usually with a great interview or a topic that we're discussing.
• 19:34
  Carmen Lezeth: We're also going to have Carmen Talks and we're going to be adding another show in the fall.
• 19:37
  Carmen Lezeth: So I'll talk about that later when there's more time.
• 19:40
  Carmen Lezeth: But remember, at the end of the day, it really is all about the joy.
• 19:45
  Carmen Lezeth: Bye everyone, thanks for stopping by.
• 19:49
  Carmen Lezeth: All About the Joy.
• 19:50
  Carmen Lezeth: Be better and stay beautiful folks, have a sweet day.