92: Part 2: Things a therapist wants to tell you
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Hello my beautiful people and welcome back to the moments podcast. I am very excited to be bringing you part two of moments with my therapist and things that she has taught me along this journey of life that I have always wanted to share with you and what better way to do it than have her share the tips herself. I hope you enjoy and I'll talk to you next week.

Good stuff. I love this stuff. I love this so much.

Which is crazy. Oh my gosh. It didn't feel that way at all. At all. So we'll do a couple more though. Might as well just keep it going. Yeah. And then we'll definitely do this again soon. I really also, you guys know I've said this a bunch of times in the past few, I want to do an episode on alcohol. Oh yes. And just, so I kind of want to do it once I've experienced a few months of not drinking. Sure. Just so I can, I don't know, have that.

Yeah, revelation of an experience of what it's like having a complete clear mind and a pause from something and what kind of meaning you're making of your life not having that in it. And then you clearly have plenty of times that it was in it already. Yeah, and I have a lot of experience with that. So in a couple, I'm still going to do one on just sharing all the things I've learned about it, but then it'll be cool to see the way it applied to my life. Anyways, we're not there yet. We'll save that for when we get there.

I like this one. Do you have any advice or any tips on how to move on from something when you haven't gotten closure and you're never going to get the closure? Yeah, so...

Just to let you know when you were speaking about it made me think of the timeline sometimes would even help in this regard too because as we see that we may not always get the closure that we need and I think just remembering some statements in life like not everybody's going to be kind to us. Not everybody's going to give us the closure we may need. So

To feel like we need, which we often think we need the closure in order for us to feel okay, you're putting the control in outcomes with somebody else. Outcomes we have zero control over. Only your efforts.

So that's another one. She told me in one of our first few sessions, it just sticks in my brain. It's like sucks. Cause you want to, you want to have control of the outcomes. But the reality is, is that the sooner you digest that and you accept it, the easier it does make in circumstances like this. I think also having a mentality, um,

where things happen for us, not to us, means that we can make meaning of what was necessary for this and we're not going to know it all at once. But if we focus on how we will now have gains now that this is not here or this person is no longer in our life, what we're learning more about ourself,

What we now are better off not having that, all of those pieces are what you have control over. Those are your efforts. You are giving yourself closure. So it's focusing on you giving yourself the closure you need. We often think we need the words or to hear it from somebody else. Same way with the validation and everything. Yes, it's very similar. You can't.

Expect everything from others. You can kind of do it for yourself It's a hard thing to do especially in that sense. I can imagine but yeah There's it's definitely like some of these things are a little easier than others This is certainly one that gets a lot easier said than done - right? I think that when we're looking at How to handle something that doesn't have closure to me what comes to mind is we must be dealing with loss some sort of loss and

excuse me, it's important to remember that whenever we go through loss, whether it's somebody in our life, it doesn't have to mean death, that's no longer there, a job or a something that no longer is existing. Even a friendship or relationship, whatever it is. Yeah,

we will have grief and grief is a very very underestimated and real thing that has a variety of stages that we have to go through so just because you go through a stage for example it's right it's not over and you can go right back to it so I think informing ourselves even just of the grief stages so that we're like oh this is what I'm in right now you know again trying to make some humor with it but it

It will make, it's a little bit more science based on needing to understand this process. Which sometimes is very helpful. And for me, especially when I have this, I mean, learning about my cycle, we, again, we just did a podcast on that and I was explaining the same thing. Like I have so much more, when I'm in that luteal phase now where everything feels like it's upside down, I just can make humor. I'm like, okay, I'm in that phase, you know, and it sucks really bad, but I can't do anything about it. It's going to happen. And I know it will end saying much bigger. Yeah.

Emotion or situation, but yes, it's the same idea Essentially there's it's such a big thing that people that people in my field special there's specialties in that you can have certifications and have so much more knowledge there's college courses on brief because it really is something that's very involved with multiple emotions and stages and

And so the only reason that I bring that up as to being such an important thing when you're not having closure is to recognize that some of those emotions you feel may be tricking you to feel like you need closure. And it's not, it's just because you're really, you're going through grief and it's just such a, like a crappy feeling.

But what I said originally as we were going into this focusing on the positives that are now happening for you or that can happen how much you're going to gain from this. Yes. So you may start off with only one or two bullet points in that and that's fine. But this is an ongoing list. So each day as your mind is going through healing you will come up with

more you may even need to seek out family or friends and say what do I not see that I'm better off now or what why they give me some reasons on things that you think I've grown from so sometimes we may need to ask others for help because we may be so stuck but it is so important to recognize that we are responsible actually for our own closure some people actually die

and don't get to give you the closure that you need to. That's what the first thing, I don't think this was the situation that the question is coming from, but that's the first thing that went to my head, and it really just kind of, I haven't had to experience that. And thinking about having to is a scary thought, but I would probably struggle a lot with the grief and the closure, but the thing is there's nothing, there's no way for that person to give me the closure, and I have to create it. Yeah, I mean...

Without going too deep, I mean, just one of the most important people in my whole world was my grandmother. And, I mean, I always said, like, I don't even know how I'll go on with my grandmother. But we know that grandmothers, like, you know, it was going to happen. I just never, I never ever knew what it was going to, like, that I would imagine my life living in my life without her. I mean, it's a very scary consuming thought. I mean, I feel the same way when I think about my parents or my grandparents, too. I just...

I've had to force myself to stop thinking about it because I will drive myself crazy. But yeah. And so, you know, yeah. Closure there. And because it happened during COVID and because she was like, there's so many elements that were horrible that I feel like she didn't even get proper closure and I didn't have closure. We never got to say goodbye really to her because of, again, COVID and you weren't even a lot of call hospitals at that time. There was only one nurse on the floor.

But what I do for me to feel like, and I definitely still get very emotional about her. So it's not like it just goes away, but I can function. But I really, I use like, how do I gain from that relationship? So I know that she was, she was a Holocaust survivor. So I use that.

how inspiring that she was able to get through things and even challenging things and things that aren't fair and you still can do them and doing things positively so that I would be able to tell her. And I do have a belief that even though, you know, she's not here somehow, some way she sees or I have my own, you know, like dialogues, but I use the positive aspects of positive

what I've gained from her and what I do in this world for her. Like, like I do it to honor her, of course for myself, but yes. Um, so that is how there, there has to be, that's my closure for that because there will never really be the way that I would have wanted it. Like that's that perfectionistic. If I stay stuck in thinking it should look a certain way, then I'm just going to stay stuck. You're going to stay because it's not, it's never going to happen. She's gone and outcomes are not in my control. And I think,

that was very similar to what my mom went through with my grandpa, because when he passed in 2021, it wasn't, it wasn't COVID time or anything, but he was just admitted to the hospital with a normal, um,

infection of some sort and while he was in the hospital his dementia just Increased like crazy and he ended up he went from going to the hospital for a simple infection to being in hospice within a week and During that time that he was in the hospital. He wasn't himself at all He was angry and I mean when you have to mention you you aren't you right and that

That's my mom's last time she got to spend with him and she obviously wasn't expecting that and she wasn't ready for that and neither was my aunt or any of us for that matter and that was the first time I've ever had to like lose someone who was a family member and go through that all and I think it was harder for me because of how hard it was for her because she's my best friend and I don't like to see her hurting but

it was the same idea. Now she just, everything we do, we do for him. We're keeping his furniture. Like that, the furniture I've wanted her to throw away for so long because it's so heavy and it's not that nice. He built it. And now I have this, this love for it. And we're, we're repainting it and we're going to keep it in the family because it came from him. And he used to love motorcycles and puzzles. So he's got all these built, um,

puzzles of motorcycles and of Harley Davidson was his favorite we're gonna have a whole session of his Love and passion in the new house and it's it's for him and he always shows up in some form to give my mom and I some sign that he's there and I think that even when it comes to not so serious things like losing someone you can get enclosure I think that you can still do that like people are still going to be in your life, but differently than they were in the past which is a cool thing and

Yeah. I mean, it's certainly a topic where there's all different circumstances that could lead somebody to feel like they didn't get the closure they needed. It can be something as simple as, well, I don't have an example, but it can be something very simple. Yes. I tried to think of one real quick. But it could be, listen, a job, a job that you loved and eventually they wound up having to lay you off and you thought you were going to be there forever or you thought you were going to get more out of that. So, but what hopefully...

what everyone is gaining from this is hearing that first of all it's not impossible

It definitely is possible, but it's a mindset shift and you have to be able to focus almost like on upcycling or recycling the person's or that experience and how it can help you moving forward. So now that you got all that from that, how will this help you moving forward? What did you learn about you or about this person? So it's kind of focusing on that and letting go of outcomes. And just giving it time. I really am a huge believer that time just does heal everything and

I don't know. I'm sure you agree. Yeah. Okay. So I do have a little stipulation. Because I think we've discussed this before and I know that like. There's a piece to it. So time is essential for sure. It means that we can't expect for things to happen right away. However, it's what we do in that time. If you stayed in your bed for a month straight and you did nothing but think of the worst things and think about horrible things, time is not going to help you in that at all.

So I do say that time is essential, but what you do in that time. If you're putting the work in.

Yes. I like to say watering your own grass. Yes. Because I mean, my thing is the grass does get greener if you're watering it. If you're not watering it, of course it's not going to come back to life unless there's like a really big storm. Right. And do we really want to wait for that? No. Because then there's other sacrifices. Even if you just water a little bit at a time, you're still watering it, add some fertilizer. Little steps. I don't know. It just, it all helps. It's the baby steps. Yes. Yes.

And so that just goes to speak that when we are constantly looking at doing things in baby steps, when something tragic and really hard comes about, I believe because as I said, like this was, I mean, I talked to her multiple times a day. I would see her at least twice a week. I mean, we were very, very close from since I was born. So what it meant was that it didn't affect my ability to

come back to work after, you know, grieving a little bit. And it didn't affect my ability to function and to eat and to sleep. I mean, I certainly wasn't doing it the best, but it's the resiliency that we have is based on us doing little steps in our life.

to be able to handle the big deals of things. So that's why it's so important to learn the practice of doing little steps and little things, not just for task completion, but also for our healing. That's what that looks like. - This is why it should be a life course in school. A whole year of school should be all of this, but I mean if you're listening to this, then we're all getting all the lessons that we never got in school, so that's pretty cool. Okay, I think let's do one more.

And then we'll do this again because I don't think I've ever had an episode this long. This is impressive. An hour and 15 minutes. It's pretty cool. It is cool because, I mean, we literally could just keep going on and on from topic to topic. I mean, especially considering we're on the second question and we've spent an hour and 15 minutes. It's very cool to know there's always more things to talk about and learn. But I want to try to find a good one that we haven't talked about too much. So let's see what we got here.

There's one that stood out to me only. Oh, yeah. You may have talked about it before, but I've never... I mean, well, I didn't in any of the other ones. It said something about mistakes, like how to get through mistakes. Oh, yes. Because you know what word I'm going to... Yes, and I think I've touched on this with them before, but not in the way that you can explain it. So how do I accept my own mistakes? And I think that it was a longer segment. I wrote that down, but it was more she was saying, like, I don't even...

not punish myself, but I'm not knowing how to move on from my mistakes and learn from them or like, yeah, I keep making them because I'm not learning from them kind of thing. It's such an important topic for me and

You may be my resource that I use, but I've been begging for this word to be made into a real word. Someone put this in the dictionary. It's a good one. Yeah. Or like if one day I have merch or someone has merch, put it on there. It's good to say that. So the words that I'm referring to.

is a word that at first it seems like it's really bad. It seems like there's going to be a fail. It seems like you're experiencing the worst of the worst.

But really what happens from this is that we become more, we get stronger. We become more wise. We become more enlightened. We make improvements. And so this word is, for any of you that haven't heard it, it's MISTAKI.

Spelled M-I-S-T-A-K with an I with a little like accent to it. I love it so much. And for any of you that are visualizing it, it literally is like some sort of subcategory of the word mistake. Because I do believe there are two different kinds of mistakes that we can make in this world. And unfortunately, there's only one word that attributes to this.

And I think that most people try to avoid this in life and that they've associated that when this happens that we kind of take it on in our personality like it's part of us and there's something wrong. And something's bad. So Mastaki really is a mistake that you've made that you've gained some knowledge or learning or now you know how to do it differently.

And we do know, we've learned from research that we do learn the most when things don't go right, when we have made mistakes. People just don't typically say... I mean it's the same way, they say when you're a little kid you don't know not to touch the hot stove until you touch the hot stove. Right. And then you'll never do it again. Right, and that would be a mistake. Unless you hit the stove, you touch the stove again, now it is a mistake. Yes. So doing the same thing over and over and not learning, that's a mistake.

Doing something, taking information from it, and having that information now look differently at the next attempt that you're going to do, that is the biggest gain in life. And if we look at a lot of these successful people in life, entrepreneurs, anyone who mentally calls themselves happy and successful entrepreneurs,

They will have tons and tons and tons of mistakes that really are what I would call misogies that they've made because we don't, unfortunately, we don't grow and we don't learn from our happy moments. We can embrace them and we can marinate on them and they're there for us to be able to give us hope and to help us identify what brings us joy. I definitely don't think they evolve us.

They don't, unfortunately. And because of that research that shows that we do need to make more mistakes, people, though, unfortunately, are so scared. And you don't go out there and say, like, hey, I'm going to go out and make a bunch of mistakes today. But if you said, I'm going to go out and make a bunch of mistakis, it sounds fun. It feels better. And plus, when you're in it, so this is what happens. So now that you do know that there really are two different kinds.

When you're in it, use that word neuro-linguistically as like, oh, no, this is a Moustaki or I'm going to turn this into a Moustaki. A lot of people find that word. And I think also it can help you evaluate if it's a mistake. It just kind of makes you think before you do certain things and you can't, no, wait, last time I learned this. Let's not repeat that and do it again.

And I remember the first time we talked, well, I think you had told me about the word. The first time I really felt it applied, and it was one of the times I came in, I was super emotional, and it was when everything happened with the van. Very long story short, I spent almost all of my savings on a van that broke down three hours after we got it. Couldn't get my money back. My parents had told me in the first place, maybe this isn't a good idea. And I was just like this emotional wreck, but at the same time I was trying to figure out

Like how to feel about it and you explained in stocking to me and how now I've learned my lesson in the sense that maybe next time I will evaluate things a little bit more before I spend that much money on something, which I have now done a year too late, two years later. And yeah.

Just ever since you told it to me in that setting I remember it so much more vividly because I was like, yeah That was definitely on the stocky. Yeah, I mean smaller things too It's and that's just it though is that there should not really be a situation that when a mistake is made that you're not searching for the mistaki there have like that that actual skill itself is

Is like a life skill that we need to give us like to level up to get us to our that's when someone says how do I move on? That is how you move on you move on because you have to find meaning in how you now if you ever had to do that again What kind of things would you would do different if it's making a mistake by sharing something with somebody you learn that lesson Yeah to self, you know

got to learn about someone first before I share something like this, or this is not the type of person that I would want to go to this type of event with. So if you start looking at it in two ways, as opposed to just that way, um, then you can remove the, the, the need or feeling to have it be something so daunting and so bad. Um,

I would say it would be bad if you did have a mistake and you did nothing about it. And you just kept doing it again. Over and over, which I think there's like a joke they say that that's just called insanity. Yeah, I like that. That's funny. Which I would say now even more so that if somebody, once you hear that,

does do something over and over, it is insane because now you know that you can totally come out of that with so much more wealth of knowledge. And so even when there is, like I said, the smallest little thing, go into it and be like, oh,

Well, let me stop and pause. Like, there has to be a Moustaki in this or I'm going to make a Moustaki out of this. Yeah. And I think that that also kind of relates to the same way. To reach a point of success, you have to fail. Like, you have to do things and you have to try them and you have to fail to eventually get to the point of success. I mean, in whatever it looks like for you. Right. It all...

They all kind of align. And, you know, fail, there should probably be another word for that too. Because my definition of fail is just when you stop trying. Like, period. That's what a real fail is. Oh, yes. We talked about that one time and I really, really liked that. I don't know if it was recording or if it was just in a session, but I did really like that. Because, yeah, I don't think you fail. I think that every time I've quote-unquote failed, it has actually excelled me into a different passion project or down a different path that has led me to success.

where I am right now and all of it is exactly where I feel I'm supposed to be because I've come to terms with that and I'm at peace with that and I love right where I am but I wouldn't be here had I not quote unquote failed. Yeah. Think of a new word for that one too. Yeah, that someone hopefully can come up with something creative. DM us the word that you should change or add to. That would be cool.

But I think something also that might be helpful on a deeper level is that when you are in a space that you're really growing, you need to be aware that you're going to have more fails and mistakis, really. That they're going to exist because we're growing. Especially going into this phase of my life or this chapter, I think anyone who's going from the ages of like 18 to 25, give or take a few either way, is a very, I don't know

I don't know, important time in our lives where I'm shifting into adulthood and everything weighs on me a little bit more because I view every decision I make as the rest of my life, which I know I don't really need to do. It's kind of an all or nothing thing, but well, I would tell you also why you really, really, really should not do that. It's just because your brain's not even fully developed. Like of course people who are older, they shouldn't do that either. Yeah. For you, it's,

It makes zero sense. That part of your brain, your prefrontal cortex that's not fully developed doesn't have the ability to really make sense and logic of your future. Yeah. And I think a lot of us just put that pressure on ourselves at this age and it's a very common thing. So I guess shifting really quickly. Last thing I think I want to ask because I know that I feel this heavily and everyone I talk to my age feels this heavily too is,

What are some tips to not apply so much pressure to ourselves at this point in our lives? I'm talking fresh out of college or even going to college, moving into adulthood, moving out of your parents' home, starting a job. How do we make those things feel a little bit lighter? You know, it's a little bit of a tricky thing because it's going to sound so funny when I say it's the opposite of a timeline.

It's removing a timeline as if you have to be doing things in a particular time and in a particular, in timing. It's just that societal pressure that has always been. That's exactly, it's the noise. And America and capitalism and all these things, but. It's removing that. It's saying like, you know, if I removed the noise, if I removed other people's opinions, would it really matter to me if I did this in one, in three more months from now?

If I didn't do this, what really is the reason? Or if I did do this, what really is the reason? It's being mindful to really tap into the root. What is it that's making you feel so pressured? And what we will see is it's either in our own head, it is a societal pressure, or sometimes I will say people do have parents that just get caught up in that timeline as well. Definitely. And when they break it down and we're like, okay, I understand that, but why?

So what does it mean if you did that a year later? Like, what would that really mean? And maybe it's because then the parents, when they're sharing about their children and they're speaking to some of their friends and they're now having to feel like, well, I can't say this about my child. And they feel that societal pressure because other parents. So it's just a generational bad pattern. But I think that also being...

informed like who you follow like social media is a thing so who you follow if you're following people that may just appear like there's all this you know like they have this wonderful life and things are so great and they're not sharing transparency people do it's a highlight reel and I think now it's starting to get a little bit more open but for the most part people are posting the highlights of their life graduated college started this job met this new friend I have a boyfriend on this vacation

So be careful of social media. Like I'm not someone, you'll hear me say be gray, don't just completely eliminate it, but be careful how you use it. And what you're consuming on it. Make sure you're not taking your expectations based on what you're seeing everybody else do. And try to follow, yeah, people that are more transparent, people that are telling you that there are definitely stuck times, that there were struggles, that not everything in their life was just so achievable.

Sometimes I'll have people say to me, but like, I want to do what you're doing. Like, I want to, how do you do it? And they're young and I'm 47 and I'm like, oh my gosh, like I had four jobs at one time. I was working insane hours. I had times where I even had to ask for help, like from the government. I mean, there were, it was not just a straight line of, you know, going to school and then boom, all of a sudden having success. It was a...

whole entire like whirlwind of different experiences. It's never linear. So you need to see people though that are sharing that and talking about it as opposed to just talking about all of the things that are so great. So it's being really careful of where this noise is coming from that's making you feel that kind of pressure. And I often catch myself and I've gotten really good at turning off the social media when it's getting in my head even just

looking at other people in my field doing things very similar to me. If I'm scrolling for too long on Instagram, I'm seeing all their posts of, you know, the premieres that they're at or the different events or trips that they've been invited on. And like at first, my first reaction is why am I not doing that? Like why am I not there or why didn't I get invited or this and that? And then I really have to, one, turn it off, stop looking at it. Two, evaluate is that really where I want to be?

Because, no, it's, it's, I want to be there because other people are there and I just need to, and same thing goes with my friends who graduated college and are now, they have their degree and they have their job and I'm like, oh my gosh, I never did that. Like, are my parents going to be proud of me? Am I doing enough? Whatever it is.

I again turn off the social media and ask myself, is that where I want to be? And the answer's not usually yes. - Right. - Because I come to appreciation of exactly where I am, what I'm doing. It always comes back to that, just like, I don't know, being happy with where I'm at and realizing I don't want those things for the right reasons. I am intrigued by them.

For the wrong reasons. And even maybe, like right now, maybe later on and maybe in a few years from now, you may. But right now, you don't. So it's a funny little saying, but it's really working on reducing FOMO, the fear of missing out, and trying to incorporate JOMO, the joy of missing out.

Oh, yes. I know. I was going to say, I may even have been in a podcast. And I really like it because, honestly, I was good with film art for a while, but again, it's like a cycle. Sometimes we come back to the same things that we used to struggle with. You may just want to put, like, on a mirror somewhere, Jomo. Yeah. And just, like, little tiny, you know...

messages for yourself that are just little small symbols or little acronyms of things to just always remind yourself that exists. I honestly really do want to update because I was good at doing that for a while and I would change them out because eventually you see the same thing so many times it stops resonating. Right, it's like a post-it. You stop noticing it. That's how all the post-its on my fridge are and on my wall. I've seen them all for

six, seven months now. Oh, you should rotate them. You should keep them, but rotate them into different places in your house. I think that that's what I want to do and just add a few more. Yeah. I got this huge cork board in my room and I love to just put little things like that on there. So I'm definitely going to do that one. Cool. Because Fumble is a big one. I think,

For a lot of people my age. It's just... Totally agree. It's the point in our lives... And social media made it worse. Yeah. Where everyone goes their different ways. And a lot of those friendships stay or they drift. But either way, you're usually still following these people's lives. Which we wouldn't be doing had it not been for social media and...

yeah, it's a hard pill to swallow sometimes seeing certain people do things that I maybe think I want to do. And I don't know. I just don't. Personally. I mean, there's someone on, on, on Tik TOK that I, she's in our, our field, my field. Um,

She's a little younger than me, so I'm like, God, and she has so much success and she has, you know, all of these things going on. And, and I, I say like, Oh God, I would like love that. But would I? Because then if I did do that and everything she's doing, I know it would pull from my family. I love the time that I have with my family. I absolutely love my one, like my face to face sessions, all of my clinical work and

really what even brings me joy like I feel like I'm in my purpose right so when I look at that I just get caught up in like oh it's probably like more of like God only knows how much money she's making or what kind of opportunity she has but when I look at like I'm

love my life. It kind of goes to that four-pronged pros and cons thing. Yes, yes. And so if I were to do that, I would absolutely see... So much of the things in your life would change. Yeah, I'm not willing to give up and compromise some of the things that I have, though, just to have that. And that's a really cool way to think about it because I do the same exact thing with people in my field. I see the people traveling to do all these things. And one, I know what an overload of traveling does to me. I know what an overload of social settings do to me.

And like, yeah, the idea of it sounds great. Okay, meet all these people, do all these things, get all these brand deals, whatever it is, like all that surface level stuff. But the deep core things that I love is what I would be giving up to be that person and do those things. Absolutely. And I mean, I've done it. I've gone to some of these things and I've been able to go on all these trips and like they're beautiful, great experiences and I'm so grateful for, but what I love the most is

my best friend, my dog, my family, my parents. And I don't want to give that up. Same way. You wouldn't want to give that up either. And it's just shifting my mindset to think about that instead of like, Oh my gosh, but this person's doing this and I wonder what they're going to do next. And keeping up with that so much and chasing that so much is silly because it's

In reality, if I had that, I'd probably be craving this. Right. And I'm sure the person who has the perfect life and does all the things that I quote-unquote want to do, they would probably look at me and be like, wow, she gets to hang out with her dog and cuddle with her dog at night. I don't know, something like that. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I think that that just really reinforces it doesn't matter who you are and it doesn't matter where you're at.

we all still have to make sure that we kind of shut the noise off and how you shut that noise off is you just kind of really go deeper into self-love, self-care and self-growth, which I call the word spirituality. You just, you've got to be a little bit more spiritual and do things that really feed your soul. And it does get tough because social media, one last question and then I promise we're going to stop. But when it comes to social media, it's very addicting. What would you suggest to

for someone to slowly become less addicted to social media. Not in the sense of like, okay, just turn it off because when you're addicted to something, you can't just turn it off. Actually, this really, I mean, I'll, I'm going to answer you, but I think this really would be its own podcast because I just did a presentation. Oh my gosh. For a behavioral health conference on social media and our youth.

And really it was, it's full of a variety of different tips on how to do it. An episode on this as well. Yeah. Cause there's so many, there's really so many things, but I mean, I guess the, the most simplistic ones that I would really try to say right now is there really should be purposefulness, like not just random scrolling that will, that's basically just feeding your dopamine and you're just really, you know, it's uncontrolled and undisciplined. So it's creating a discipline and,

So who you're following and what you're using your social media for. So be so mindful. I always tell people try to really use it as a search engine, you know, and looking for something helpful.

I think that who we follow, that will always be something what and who we follow because that will also be what is dependent in your For You page. Yeah. And I also think that the people that we follow and the videos that we watch, we don't realize that they're impacting who we're becoming. Yes. Until we've watched them so much. We pick up on traits from other people. We pick up on things that people say. And we...

We'll do things that the people that we follow do and I have so many times had to come in and check myself like I'll follow people and I'll love to watch their videos and yes, they might make me laugh and be entertaining but then I really sit back and evaluate what is this person adding to my life? Are they giving me anything that is making me love myself more, feel more inspired, be more creative or are they taking all of that away and like I don't know.

taking away my visuality in some sense. We have mirror neurons. That means that we're more likely and prone to sometimes whether it could be certain facial responses that we do that are mimicked. I know that there's certain hand movements that I do that I never did before until social media and I don't need to. It's just a people's habit. Yes, exactly. It's like, okay. And then I really sit with that and I'm like, do I want to be doing that? Like it's not in the sense...

Oh, I love this person's necklace. I'm going to get the same one. It's like, oh, my mindset is now kind of turning into this person's mindset. Not that there's anything wrong with that person's mindset, but you get me. It's like taking away everything I've kind of worked for to create in my brain.

Yeah, so, you know, that, I'm glad you mentioned that because that is, you do, you start taking on a mentality of what it is that you're watching a lot of the time. But I think the other piece too is just, it's really having set times. Don't ever use your social media randomly. Like, oh, I have nothing to, like, I'm just going to randomly go on. You should have set times. And those set times, you want it to be very, very purposeful.

I mean, I think phone time is valuable. Like we need to be able to do mindless things where our brains are kind of relaxed. Absolutely. If you have a purpose of being mindless, then you go for it. You still should have a timer. There needs to be a timeframe of a certain amount of time. Because that's where it gets difficult because you get sucked in for so long. And I think my biggest tip that I have now realized the impact it makes on my life is not scrolling on my phone in the morning versus scrolling on my phone in the morning.

When I wake up and go to the sunrise, I'm on my phone because I'm like vlogging. I'm filming the whole thing. But I'm not scrolling. I'm not looking at what anyone else is doing. I'm so used to videoing everything I do now that I don't even recognize I'm on my phone. But I'm not catching up with what other people did last night. I'm not watching people's Snapchat or YouTube or Instagram or TikTok. I'm not doing any of that. And my day just starts off with me. Like it's my brain...

It's chemical. It's chemical. You, okay. So first of all, first thing in the morning and last at night, most horrible times to do that because of our brain waves. You have your alpha, beta, delta, gamma waves. I learned that in a TikTok actually. It's crazy how that works.

but it's something about that. - Right, so that's why, yeah, so it could be used in a good way, but there are, yeah, particular times you definitely don't want to, and chemically, so we, these devices in general, let alone social media, is meant to be addictive. It is all purposeful and planned. It's being done in short increments, which is for our brain to not be bored, so that we're constantly stimulated. - I mean, I just think of the social dilemma.

Oh, yeah. Like, I've watched that, and if you guys haven't watched that, this is your homework. You have to watch it because it's... It just really opened my eyes to a lot. But...

And so what we have to understand is that you are flooding your brain with the chemical that is responsible for addictions. Dopamine. Dopamine gets skewed when it's not being dosed properly. And so what we want to do, the only way that I can tell people on how not to do something is you replace it. So you're replacing that scrolling time with going to a Sunrise or vlogging. Nice.

I was telling you that I have like that, um, um, headway app that you can like read books within like 10, 15 minutes to get just the main points instead of having to read the whole book. So in the mornings I will be doing that as, as part of my thing. I do my affirmations and I have like a whole routine that I do for myself, but I've now incorporated that just to like give my brain waves the extra little boost.

I like the idea of, like you can't get rid of something without replacing it. You know, I think the Jay Shetty and Tom Holland podcast, they talked about that for a little while.

Because they were talking about alcohol and how now they have mocktails, whatever it was. But it's just cool to hear it again because it's very real. Well, it's important that it's almost in anything. Our brain doesn't stop. You'll hear many other people that give you the example. If I say don't think of the color purple, all your brain is going to do is think of purple. But if you think of red, blue, orange, yellow, green, black, white, silver...

It won't think of purple. So what that is, is the art of replacement. So as long as you have replacement strategies. Now I'm thinking of the color purple. I'm going to be thinking about it for a while. I should have said pink. But it's, you know, basically it's, it's really putting a lot of thought and effort into the things that we do desire and that we want because those don't just come easy. Things that are long lasting takes time and work. Yes. But it's, it's fun. It's like a,

You get to challenge yourself a little bit. At the end of the day, even if it wasn't fun, it's worth it. Yeah, absolutely. Putting more time in now gives you long-term benefit. Most people make decisions just for the here and now, like a short-term fixation or short-term... I don't know the word I'm looking for. I'm so bad at writing my words. Gratification. Yes, that's the one. But...

I realized I had a little eye-opening moment the other day. Why I'm so passionate about talking about all this and sharing these lessons that I'm learning and just mental health in general is because naturally, my brain, I don't know that it's constantly happy. I have to really put in the work to do to feel this good. It's so important to share because I think I've just learned it's not easy.

And it's never really going to be easy, but it can be enjoyable if you make it that way and you look at the wins. It's a mindset. I think out of everything we ever talk about, our mindset is the biggest key. Everything we're doing and talking about is how we're creating a more positive and healthy mindset. So there are strategies and tools and strategies.

things to eliminate and things to do but at the end of the day your goal is to build a mindset that is so powerful because like right now I mean you're in it but life is a little easier and as you're young like as we get older we really have to use these strategies and tools 100% so building like what you're doing is you're giving yourself such wonderful building blocks and although you can't see it you have to trust and have faith that

all of this is going to be so beneficial and helpful as you continue your process and journey. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's why I think it's so cool to talk about it with like such a younger audience and just that's now my favorite thing is just really working with, you know, young people. And that's why, I mean, when I became a yoga teacher, it was, I didn't know at 13, I didn't know crap about crap until I found yoga changed everything in my brain. I learned the first time that you can change your mindset and

and I learned what it was like to be mindful and everything went from being right on the surface and everything got so much deeper in such a beautiful way that made me just appreciate life differently. And when you learn that at 13, it really just, I think it set, I don't want to say it set me up for success because I still have so many different hardships that I go through mentally, but had I not learned all those things and found all those strategies and practices when I did,

I don't know. I don't think I'd be in such a... I agree with you because it is a very, very important ingredient. And we all have those ingredients at different times in our life. Some people have it right when they're born and they don't have parents and their life starts off very challenging with adversity. But...

Our situation is not determining our destination. It's that journey. I like that. So, yeah. There really is no destination. Really think about it. You could be 80. And again, you can't always plan on what your destination is because, again, that's outcome. Yes. All you have is your effort. So you just stay true and focus on your efforts. It's such a hard pill to swallow. It is. Because so often I think, like, okay, once I do this, I'll be here. I can't bake on that. I can't know for sure that that's what's going to happen. And it's hard.

It just is what it is, you know? Yeah. And learning to accept it is what it is. Yeah. Acceptance. I think that that was, I think we covered so many cool things. Yeah. Because I think even if you didn't ask all the questions, I don't remember what all the questions were. But I feel like, again, some of these answers are also very relevant and can parlay into what some of these other questions are. So many situations. Because it's so helpful with this mindset and understanding the stockies and everything.

things with guilt and things with people pleasing and all of that. And I think a lot of the strategies just work in a lot of different situations and that's why I always say they all come together somehow and it's all just a big old learning lesson. Yeah. It's a big old moustache. Yes, a big old moustache. I want to ask you one thing and you can't think about it for long you just have to tell me the first thing that comes to your mind. Okay. What's the best advice you've ever received? Whoa, um, okay. I guess

Oof. That was, that is a very big question. It's a layered question too, especially doing what you do. I'm sure there's so many valuable things. That's the thing is right. How do I identify which is when we say like the most valuable or the best? Here's how I'm going to answer that. Or at this point in your life, what is the most? Okay.

I'm going to go with something that, you know, what always blows my mind is when I get to hear something that I haven't heard because I just expose myself so much to all of this growth and learning that when I hear something like, oh, I heard that or, oh, I've gotten that. So what I'll say is this.

It was one of those kind of narratives that you read when someone is asked, like, I don't want to say that they were on their deathbed, but they were certainly in their late 80s, 90s, and they had advice. What advice would you give people with where you are today being at this age? And this, because of someone who struggles with anxiety, or I shouldn't say struggles, struggled, but can experience anxiety, it was...

That we have so many more crises that we go through that never happened. And what that means is it's in your head. That you make life... I got this answer. Yeah. That...

Because he said he had more crises than he ever actually had. And it's when we get stuck in our head. About like worst case scenario. Anything. Worst case scenario. What if? Or this is what's going to happen. Or I'm not going to do this because of that. And they never happen. That's so true. I mean, even just looking at where we're at, the amount of things I put in my head that I thought were going to happen, like that were negative, that just didn't happen. Yeah. And I spent so much time thinking about.

I like that. Yeah. So that was the most recent thing that I read about about a month or so ago, and it stuck with me because it's just, I love the way that it was explained. We talk all the time, don't stay in your head, and being in your head is not always true. But it's hearing the same things in different ways, and one of them will stick. I think my best advice I've ever received are just...

Thing that I apply the most my life is that I'm always gonna be learning and or no, it's not necessarily that it's like learn from everyone Even people that have hurt me like learn from oh, yeah that was especially don't want to treat people or how I don't want to feel treated again like We can just learn something from everyone even someone you have completely opposite morals values beliefs of mm-hmm There's something to learn and it just makes me appreciate people differently and just personalize things either. Yeah, I

Yeah. Okay. Next one is worst advice you've ever heard. Um, that, Oh, there's a lot of those too. Um, you know, it's interesting. I think, I think it goes to a question you actually asked that where some people say like,

It's you know, don't talk about your feeling don't like just just it you know, it is what it is and exists where We do have to accept things and things are sometimes unchangeable but we if we ever just mute

Our emotions and not ever become aware of them and how to work through them I think that is one of the biggest detriments because that's that's where you see people like suppressing things That's where you can see people have resentments and anger And it's just it's so poison. Yeah, so I mean it's like putting a

half an avocado in the fridge and leaving it there for months. It's going to get moldy. And I don't know. I just, I like to think of things like that sometimes because it makes it, oh yeah, it would get moldy if I left it in the fridge for that long. So I don't like to leave emotions in me for that long unattended. Yeah. So I think that, um, that would probably have to be just one of the worst

pieces of advice is just, you know, stuff it down. Don't don't talk about it. You'll get through it.

um okay good luck with that like you'll probably call me in like a year or two or so but it will bleed out when you must expect it so eventually it builds up there's only so much you can hold inside of you yeah and then and again what we do see is that again in our body people experience all different kinds of inflammations and pains that have no known cause yeah that's from stored emotion that's that's why you get your hip openers yes oh gosh so painful but so amazing afterwards yeah it

Yeah, whenever we go, whenever I first started doing yoga, we would hold that pose for 10 breaths. And that's a long time in yoga for me. And just in general, it's a long time. I would be like, get me out of this, get me out of this. And then I'd get out of it and be like, oh, I feel lighter. A lot of people will cry. A lot of people have emotional releases. I only experienced that physically one time.

I was supposed to be teaching the second half of the class, so I was going to take over after we did Pigeon. And the other girl I was teaching with, she looks at me while we're in Pigeon, and I'm just, there's tears coming out of my eyes. And I'm not really a crier. I am more now. But at this time, years ago, I was not at all. And she's like, I'm like,

And I was like, what just happened? And I realized I must have been holding on to a lot of different things. If you told me that people do that, I would say I'm a little bit of a skeptic of things that if I've never experienced it, it's hard to believe. Which a lot of us are.

I will tell you I've had my own few experiences in yoga itself where I would just cry for no reason I'm like I don't even understand what's happening to me right now a lot of times you don't right or I actually did I went to on a retreat it was like a healing retreat and I did this separate

where they do like a lot of almost like Reiki work and energy work and all of a sudden like my body just started shaking and I'm like okay something's wrong I'm shaking they're like no that's that's really good wait what like it was talking about using and weird and uncomfortable but so now I can say like yeah it does happen yeah it's definitely it's not gonna happen every time you know a lot of people just expect because I've voiced so much how yoga has changed my life

Also, yoga has kind of shifted. It used to be a lot more mindful and now it's a lot more of a physical thing. I don't really know why. It lost a lot of its spark unless you're going to somewhere real. But I went to yoga. I didn't feel anything different. I'm like, well, one, you've got to go in with the right mindset. You've got to be open-minded to feeling things and shifting things in your mind and in your body. That's the first step. And the second step is...

It might not happen the first time. The first few classes I went to, they were great, but they didn't change my life. It was really the more I practiced it. And I think that just don't knock anything until you try it. And at least twice. Like I'm the same way with food now. My best friend's uncle says, but you haven't tried it in five years. You've got to try it again. Your taste buds might have changed. And at first I was like, ew, no, I'm not eating a pickle ever again.

And now, if it's been a while, I try it again. And it's my rule for life. Yeah, well, because we are constantly evolving. We are changing. And, yep, even our taste buds. Even things that, you know, certain styles we thought we wouldn't want to, you know, go into. And we're like, oh, actually, I like that. I'm interested in that now. I've gone through a crisis lately where I'm like, all of a sudden, I want to take all my bracelets off. I don't know if I'll actually do it. But it's just the same idea. We're always evolving, shifting, changing all the things. But, yeah. Okay. All right. That's it.

That was a pretty solid almost two hours of work.

Whatever it is we talk about, I'm curious to listen and know because I couldn't tell you where we started or what we started with. Well, when I actually, so I like listened to the other two that I did and I have to say it's the funniest thing. When I'm listening, I'm like, oh my God, I said that. That's a great answer. I didn't even know I said, I don't even remember. Like, so sometimes just like, I guess, well before it was a lot more nervous. I'm not as nervous, but I still get a little bit nervous if I'm, you know, I don't want to jumble my words. But, um,

I don't even like this whole process. It's just it's almost like a blip like I don't I do not it did not feel like two hours. It felt like 20-30 minutes. This one especially did not feel as long as it was. I don't like what time is it? Oh my gosh.

Wow. Okay. Gosh, I got to text my people. We're supposed to go to a concert tonight. So we will do this again and it will probably end up being just as long, but thank you guys for tuning in and you can look in the description if you want to find out more about Dr. Leon and everything that we've done and everything that she does, you can just check there and then sure. She'll be tagged to my Instagram stories soon too when I post this, but yeah, we love you guys.

Any last words? Just thank you for listening. I love this opportunity to try to help as many people as I can. And thank you for having me. Yeah, of course. You're always welcome. Anytime you want. Everyone loves having you and I love having you and I appreciate you more than you know. And yeah, I love you guys. I'll talk to you next Monday. Bye.