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124. Mental Fitness 2 · Your Enriched Self

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Stop always expecting your blessings to be financial or materialistic. God may have just
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added some time to your life instead. I recently saw that post and I
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had to reshare it on my story, but I'm resharing it with you because
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it resonated with me. I think so much of what we focus on and
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so much of where we go when we think of being blessed is to physically
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have things. And I want to challenge you to think of those things that
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are non tangible that you are blessed with. And I always talk about gratitude
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because it is a gift that will allow you to live life fully. When
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you look around and you see all the things that you have, you don't
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have to even ask about or ask for, you just have it, you
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recognize how much you have to be grateful for. And so my question to
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you today is what are you grateful for? And if I were to answer
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that question right now, I would say my memories. I think memories are
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such a core part of who we are. We use it to identify with
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ourselves, are past current and where we want to go based on the experiences.
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The things of the past they're already gone, but you use them to
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cultivate a next step or a new step. Memories are also an important part
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of seeing our loved ones, whether they're here with you or they're gone,
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you saw them in a certain time, in a certain place, in a
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certain season. And although you can't experience that right now, for those who
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are gone, and even those who are here but you're not with them because
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of distance or time, that memory of who that person is and have been
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to you, it serves you even now, even now with their absence,
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they're still present. So memories for me are the thing I am genuinely grateful
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for, and I want you to find that thing that you are grateful for.
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Again, It's not tangible, right, These are all of the experience
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and the thoughts and the conversations, the collective that allows me to hold on
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to something so precious. What are you grateful for? Friends from all across
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the globe and welcome to the You're in Yourself Podcast. I am your host,
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Milenamar. I am a mindset coach and your mindset advocate. And what
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that means is that I am here looking out for you. I want you
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to become more of your enriched self, and I know as much as you
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do too, that your best self would emerge from your best thoughts, because
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those thoughts it's where it all starts. So on this podcast, I've curated
3:30
this space so that we can meet each and every week to talk about mindset
3:35
fusion topics from self care to soul care and of course those everyday activities,
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but they all start with your thoughts. And so that's the conversations I enjoy
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having with you. And if you're new to this podcast, welcome to the
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conversation, and thank you for being here. I know that you were brought
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here on purpose, for a purpose, and if you are a return repeat
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listener, you've been here since day one or sometime in between that I want
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to thank you as well, because if not for you and these conversations you've
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helped me to curate your participation, we wouldn't be here. But we are
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here creating a culture of your in rich self and I'm here to help facilitate
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that. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. And before we
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get into this week's topic, if you know you know, but one of
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the things that I do each and every week is I make a deposit in
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the bank of you, and I do this by way of affirmations. Affirmations
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are a great way to start your day and to command your morning. And
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this week's affirmation is I have everything I need to make a great day.
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I have everything I need to make a great day. I have everything I
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need to make a great day. Now let's get ready for this week's episode
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of the Your Enriched Self podcast. Has this been a year so much for
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so many? Workloads have increased? Of course, now we're driving in the
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dark to get home from work. We're seeing the shorter days kind of experience.
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Not to mention, it's the holidays. You got your chores and your
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activities and your parties, and the weekends and just the busyness of it.
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Right, people are constantly moving and shaking, And if you sum it all
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up, it's a season filled with high expectation. In some cases, there
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are way too many expectations. So I wasn't surprised to read a study by
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a company called first Beat. They do some wellness data, and their database
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found that in December, stress levels increase and the restorative effects of sleep decreases.
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And that makes sense because we're probably not sleeping as much because of all
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the things we're doing. We're spending more time on the road. Traffic is
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heavy, There's just a lot that's going on. So it does make sense
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why December, you know, it's a culmination of everything, you know.
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So I just want us to take a moment because there's so many different ways
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we can go with this, but I want us to go to a place
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where we can get some mental fitness. And this week I had a great
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opportunity to speak to a group in my company about mental fitness, a mentoring
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circle, and it's a topic that is near and dear to my heart,
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and I was excited to be to present this topic because of the significance of
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it. When you think about seasonal depression and just everything that I just talked
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about that tends to happen in December, and the study that tells us that
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we're not getting enough sleep so our stress levels are higher, and that our
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stress levels have increased by the time we get to this month, it's important
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for us to do a mental fitness checkup, and mental fitness matters. I'm
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not a mental health expert, and I'm always going to be an advocate for
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therapy. I'm always going to be a person that focuses and spends time in
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prayer, So these are always going to be pillars or places that I go
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to get help. I want to also reinforce what you can do outside of
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those things, so that you can put yourself into a fit. Chat.
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When it comes to your mental health, as I mentioned, it's near and
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dare to me because I have a family member who is suffering with mental illness
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and has been for a number of years, had a mental crisis years ago
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because of a personal situation, and it just continued on and they're still dealing
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with this and in the heart and soul of it. So for any one
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of you that is dealing with mental health issues in your family, I understand
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your pain, your plight, because it doesn't go away. There are moments
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where it's quiet, and then there's moments when it's loud, and you know,
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those are tough seasons to be in. And that's just the family that's
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not the person dealing with this crisis. So I want to spend some time
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talking about it. I think it's fitting that we do this because of the
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state of our mental health. Quite frankly, when we think of mental fitness,
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I think we have to talk talk about physical fitness. And physical fitness
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is exactly what it sounds like, right. Those activities that we do daily
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or whatever, we do them to increase our strength, our endurance, our
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performance while we're managing stress. It helps us to manage stress, helps us
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to manage disease, helps us to reduce our idle activity or inactivity for that
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matter. So we have to talk about the physical side of it just so
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we can paint a picture and get a landscape of it. Right. When
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we think about physical fitness over time, which sustained activity in those places of
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like weight training or walking, running, whatever it is that you do,
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and maybe there's some management on how you eat and when you eat, just
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regulating your vitals. You start to see people and maybe you have seen this
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this year, have physical transformation where you can see a body shape in one
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state, you know, maybe at the top of the year or at the
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beginning of the summer, and then as you look to this month, you
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see some significant changes where somebody may have dropped twenty thirty maybe fifty one hundred
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pounds. I think we've all seen those physical transformations. And some people do
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a really good job of documenting their journey so that they can again use that
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to help them stay fit and stay connected to their why right, and those
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things are really important. What we also see in the physical fitness journey is
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how we can address our physical health, and I look at it into two
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categories, like your proactive visits and your reactive visits. Let's just start with
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reactive visits, because your reactive visits are you had an injury and now you've
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got to go to the doctor. Maybe you have a symptom of swelling or
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pain, some type of sickness or something that's happening in your body that's telling
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you that something needs attention. So that's kind of the reactive. The proactive
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things are the annual checkups, right, the lab visits, the vitals,
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the medication refills, the dental cleanings, all the things that you do.
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And then the screenings where they want to detect things before it becomes a thing,
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a bigger thing, a more challenging health matter. So screening is like
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an eye exam to again detect your eyehealth. There are other recommended screenings such
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as colonoscopy at the age of fifty, prostate exams for men, and mammograms
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for women at forty. There are medical agencies and expectations, recommendations for those
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types of screening. And again, it's good right because it's a way to
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help us detect and ultimately protect our physical health. Unfortunately, when it comes
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to mental health, how we start talking about it is in crisis mode.
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Meaning I remember this time last year, sometime in the fall of twenty two,
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we heard about Miss USA twenty nineteen, beautiful woman, absolutely gorgeous,
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who had committed suicide by jumping off of a sixty story high rise in New
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York City. And I know that sounds so dramatic, but when you look
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at this woman's life, her family, her job, her career. She
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was a commentator for entertainment Tonight. Again did I mention beautiful, smart,
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educated, had the amazing platform of Miss Usa. All of these things culminated
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to this woman plunging herself sixty stories from a high rise in New York City.
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And so for weeks after that, that breaking news continued to break a
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little bit more, and we started having more conversation, and it broke a
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little bit more. Eventually, the news flash of it all died. We
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didn't see that light, that attention that we were getting when the news first
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broke that's how how we deal with mental health in our country. We get
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into a breaking new scenario and then we begin to react or act. And
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when you think back to the physical transformation that I talked about earlier, where
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you can see someone's progression over a period of time based on diet, exercise,
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etc. We don't have mental transformation journeys to look at. So we
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don't know if somebody is mentally regressing by looking at how glamorous and beautiful and
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how put together they are, or we don't know if that person is progressing
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on their mental health journey. Again, based on what we physically see,
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we spend a lot of time focused on the physical, and today I really
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want you to think about the mental journey that you are on so that you
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can get your mental fitness right. We cannot afford to wait until you're in
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crisis. So when we think of mental fitness, I want you to think
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of having a state of well being, having a positive sense of how you
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think and how you feel and act, keeping your emotional health at bay,
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keeping that in good shape. And so how do we do that right?
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How do we improve our mental health? I'll say that we need to start
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with how we see mental health because when we think about how we show up,
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we think about our physical self first, and so we put a lot
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of focus on our physical health. That's why you see people who are successful
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and all the things that we see physically, right, they're getting the accolades,
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they're getting the awards, but mentally they're struggling and you can't see that.
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And it's because as a country, as a culture, we've emphasis on
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the physical side of the person that we're not really interested in how they're doing.
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You know, the other day, I was at work and someone said,
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hey, how are you doing? And as I was starting to answer,
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because I'm that girl, I'm going to tell you all mother, well,
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you know, they were already gone. So do we really care how
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people are doing? We're just in the motion of asking the question and we
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don't even care if we get a real response, and we would never know
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where people are because we're so focused on the physical. So that's the first
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step in this journey. Focus on the fact that the mental health journey is
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just as important as the physical. And I'll say this, Your overall wellness
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is based on how well you take care of yourself. I'll repeat that,
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your overall wellness is based on how well you take care of yourself. So
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if you neglect yourself, your overall wellness is going to suffer. Essentially,
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you are not able to pour into anybody else's cup. But if I know
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you, you are doing that, and if you're gonna do it, make
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sure you have enough to sustain your cup and help others as well. I
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always say, pour from excess so that you have plenty for yourself as well.
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The other part of improving the mental health conversation and the journey is to
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expand the meaning of it that it's when you think of fitness. I want
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you to start coupling physical fitness and mental fitness. I don't want you to
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think of fitness as just exercise, going to the gym, going for a
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run, going for a walk. I want you to put them together.
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They go together, and I want you to start prioritizing your mental fitness because
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in essence, that will help you to decrease the stress and increase the overall
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well being, and that's what you want. I want you to be more
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enriched, and I know that you want to be more enriched, and the
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only way to get there is to start expanding how we see it, what
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it means to us. When we think of fitness, it has to encompass
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mind and body. So when we think about mental fitness, I want you
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to think about three pillars. The first pillar is to regulate a regulation,
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and it's asking yourself the question of what do you do when you are faced
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with a challenge? What is your normal response when you are faced with a
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challenge, And this offers you a chance to recalibrate that and regulate what do
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you do versus what you should do? To help you in this category,
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I also want you to think of resilience and resilience I want you to think
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of what are you using to build your mental fitness muscles, meaning what are
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you listening to, where are you going, what are you spending your time
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doing, what are you reading, what are you watching, who's in your
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ear? These are very important things to consider when you think of building your
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mental fitness muscles because depending on what's being said, what's being taught, what's
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being learned, what you're accepting as truth, it could significantly impact how resilient
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you are when those challenges in fact come your way. So the last piece
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of that pillar to grow your mental fitness muscles is support, and the question
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there is who are the people in your neighborhood. Who are the people pouring
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into you or taking away from you? Who are the people that are part
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of your support system. Maybe it's your board of directors, And I'm not
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talking about being in a corporate space. I'm talking about your personal board of
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directors. I know I have some. It could be your prayer group,
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I know I have that. Where are you pulling from? It could be
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a family member that's a confidant. Where are you pulling from? Who who's
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got your ear? Who are you listening to? And is that helping you
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or hurting you? Because in the support space, I want you to think
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about and focus on those who can help when you are faced with these crises.
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Unfortunately, we don't think about the support until it's too late. We
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don't think about who we need to call on when we get to that point
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until it's too late, and then we're making a decision by ourselves, and
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we think we're by ourselves. But there's so many dealing with this, So
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I want you to think about that. So let's talk about your journey to
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mental fitness. First of all, you got to get started. And getting
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started means what are the things that you need to do today, And let's
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not go from zero to sixty. Maybe today you spend twenty minutes in quiet.
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Maybe today you do what we've done on this podcast intentionally and you breathe,
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right, We breathe just by our natural way of being. But I
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want you to be intentional about taking the breadth that you will take. Maybe
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it's go for a walk, maybe it's turned the TV off, maybe it's
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put your phone down for twenty minutes. Whatever you need to do to get
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started, let it be meaningful for you. I can't tell you what that
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needs to be. You know where your stressors come from. It may be
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your phone, it may be that you never have a moment of silence.
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I don't know what it is for you. But getting started is starting there.
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You can just create your ritual. The other part of the mental fitness
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journey, and I want to make sure people get this because this is a
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big one, is to strengthen your resilience. We talked about resilience earlier as
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a pillar, but how do you strengthen that? How you strengthen that?
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Here me out is you create a blueprint for happiness, your happiness and your
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success. Your happiness and your success. I've said it on this podcast before.
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When you start acclimating to the world and you finally catch up to what
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they define as success in the next year, in the next month, in
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the next moment, whatever's hot on the block now changes that expectation. So
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everything you worked to call now your happiness formula, the world has changed to
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something new, and so you're constantly chasing what culture tells you you should be
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chasing, as opposed to identifying what's important to you. There's always something hot
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in culture that's telling you this is what your success formula needs to have.
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Go ahead and add a little bit of this and a little bit of that,
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and you start losing yourself that you can't strengthen resilience when your focus on
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success is on what other people see as successful. I'll say that again.
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You can't strengthen resilience when your measurement of success is based on what others see
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as successful. So you've got to build your blueprint. The other thing I
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will say about this milestone journey is always include movement. You got to build
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momentum. And the key here is movement. Always find a way to move.
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I remember being a salesperson and one of the things we learned in training
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is always be closing. You should always be closing the sale. It doesn't
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matter what conversation you're in. Always have a close at the end. I
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say, always be moving, Always be moving right, because that is the
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key to building your stress management plan. Yes, this is a stress management
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plan. This is your battle plan, because everybody needs to want in the
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world with one. And then finally, the last milestone is to get to
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a point where you are just in pursuit of balance, that you're just working
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on building inner peace. You are more self aware. And that doesn't mean
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that the world is crazy all around you and you don't care about anything.
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You just focus on yourself. It couldn't mean that too, but it mainly
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means that you are finding your way through the world of chaos, the world
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of whatever that's happening right You are finding your accountability and you're sticking with your
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values and you're not veering off to the left or to the right. And
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so your self awareness and your mindfulness is that balance is making sure you find
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yourself no matter what you're dealing with. No matter what the world is saying,
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because we get caught up in the news cycles and we forget that we
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have our own cycle to be managing. So that's what I want you to
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do, is get to a point on your mental fitness journey where you can
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get a great balance in your pursuit to inner peace. That's a big part
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of it. Let me share a couple of statistics that I think is very
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important for you to know why this is beneficial and why this is such an
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important topic to me for many, many reasons. So I'm gonna share this.
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One in five people will experience a mental health crisis at some point,
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pretty significant. Fifty percent of people feel like they are stuck in a rut,
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meaning they feel like they're not growing, they don't feel like they're arriving
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anywhere close to a potential, and they don't see a future fifty percent of
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people. That's really significant. And finally, on top of all of that,
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eighty percent of people don't get help. And that's why the support pillar
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is so important. Who do you talk to when you get to that point.
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You have to know where to go and who to go to so that
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you can be well supported on your mental fitness journey. Your mental fitness is
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not a destination. You're not trying to get somewhere. You are on a
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journey. Every day. You're going to be faced with new challenges. You're
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going to be faced with different scenarios. You're going to have opportunities to walk
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through something new that could present some levels of stress. Pat yourself on the
25:37
back, give yourself grace, and continue to make mental fitness an important part
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of your life today. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of the Urine
25:52
Ritsup podcast. And the only way I'm going to know this is if you
25:55
leave me some feedback. Feedback is a gift and it is free to give,
25:59
and I would like to hear from you. I would like to know
26:02
what resonated with you regarding this week's episode. Now here's how you leave feedback
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on the platform in which you listen to this podcast. Follow the stars.
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When you get there, leave a five star rating. But in all seriousness,
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when you get there, you can share your feedback on this podcast and
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that helps us. And when you share your feedback on this podcast, it
26:25
helps others find us in these podcast streets. So we would definitely appreciate that
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You can also share this episode with your friends and family right from the podcast,
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So right from the podcast platform and which you're listening to this episode,
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hit the share button and send it to the last three to five people that
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you spoke with today. Also, you can share this on your socials.
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You can find me primarily on Instagram because that's my jam, that's where I
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am. You can find me at my Enriched Self that's m y E n
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riic ch E d s e LF and you can hashtag this episode. You
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can tag me. I would love to hear from you, so you can
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showcase your friends and families and those in the social streets what you're listening to
27:11
and what's feeding you mind, body and spirit. I also want you to
27:15
check out the show notes. In the show notes, we have the affirmation
27:18
of the Week, the quote of the week, and there you can also
27:22
find my Amazon shop. The Your Rich Self shop has two items right now,
27:27
a journal which is the Show Up Everyday Journal, as well as the
27:33
Show Up Everyday Notebook. So check those out in my Amazon shops. And
27:37
finally, take what you can from this episode and do what you must in
27:42
the next one hundred and sixty eight hours. So that you can become more
27:48
of your enriched self until we get the