#44 Simple Daily Routines to Support Nervous System Healing from Trauma | Recovery Secrets Series

Welcome to the Overcoming PTSD Podcast. My name is Brad Schipke, and this is the limited series called Recovery Secrets Daily Coaching. Now, these were private sessions that I originally ran as a paid coaching program, but now for the first time ever, I'm making all 100+ sessions available for free for all of you podcast listeners. And this series is over 100 days of practical strategies that have helped thousands of trauma survivors fully heal. So make sure to subscribe because I'm dropping a new episode every single weekday until the archive is complete, and you definitely do not want to miss it. So without further ado, let's dive on in.

All right, we are live here, everyone. Welcome to our Recovery Secrets Daily Coaching Call. We are so excited to be here with you today. We have an awesome episode planned for today. We are talking about routines. You know, we try to cover the, what we call the 3 pillars of recovery, right? So recovery is going to happen in 3 main steps. And number 1 is mastering your mindset. Number 2 is mastering your routines, building unbreakable routines. And number 3 is processing your past. So today we're talking all about routines. So what we're going to be talking about today is something we're calling refreshing your schedule. Now, we already talked about routines in a couple of different sessions, but we're going to kind of refresh on what we already talked about for routines now that we have that processing boot camp under our belt. So I'm looking forward to that. I'll let Brad do a little intro here while we make sure we're rocking and rolling.

So good morning, everybody. Great to see you here live bright and early. Today is going to be a great coaching session today about refreshing routines, keeping them fresh. So that's what we're talking about today, optimizing routines, refreshing routines, all that jazz.

All right. Now we've obviously had to make a handful of changes in our routine because now we can't be the places that we normally are, right? So I can't go to my normal workout group or I can't go to the gym and we can go to the office, but we can't See people at the office. So when we're talking about like refreshing your schedule, when we're talking about routines, when we're talking about making these changes, the most important thing is that you're kind of on top of it and you're working to make changes to reach your goal. Now, each routine that we set out, we're going to talk about the 3 routines today, has a goal, right? It has a goal that you have set and it's helping you achieve some sort of goal. So you want to make sure that you're always optimizing to get to that goal. You're always making changes to ensure that you get to that goal. So there are a bunch of things that can get in the way of that. One of them could be, especially in the world we live in right now, something like this. Right now we're going to be at home for the next probably week, and there's a handful of things that we can't do now. So we have had to refresh our routines, change our routines, tweak our routines. Even just for this short period of time. So this week those routines will change. So I'll do my workouts indoors. So we'll do more walks instead of going out. We'll order our groceries instead of going to get them. Little things like that. But it could be little things or it can be big things, and it can be for a short period of time that you're changing your routine or for a long period of time that you're changing your routine. The whole goal is, or the whole idea is, to ensure that you're still reaching your goals. So you're making these tweaks, you're making these changes, These changes might be things that happen in maybe your spouse's life or your kid's life, or it could be something seasonal. It could be something with your job or, you know, moving. There's all sorts of things that could happen here. It could be gathering new information. So I wanted to talk about this right after we came off of that processing boot camp. And the reason that I wanted to talk about it then is because we just gathered a lot of new information. And with that new information, I want you to start to take make changes in your life. That's really important. I don't want that information to go to waste, right? And so what we talked about was protector work and doing your processing with that protector process that we taught you. Now, once you know that process, you understand how it works, you're going to get a handle on how long about it should take or when in the day is a good time for you to do that. And so now that you have that information, what I want you to do is I want you to make adjustments to— I want you to refresh Specifically your healing routine. But what that might look like is you put your healing routine, maybe you had your healing routine at night, but after doing the protector work, you feel like that's, it's best for you to do the protector work in the morning. So I want you to make these adjustments because now you have new data. So this is all about, I'm so impatient when it comes to technology, specifically like if a page doesn't load in under 2 seconds, I'm going to hit the refresh button right away. Right when I feel like it should have already done it, I'm going to hit refresh. So I want you all to kind of just think about that. I want you to think about refreshing these routines because consistency in healing is the only magic pill. So you want to make sure you make these tweaks, you make these changes to them, even if it's as simple as you go away for the weekend. How are you going to continue to do your healing? It might be something short. How are you going to take care of yourself? It might be something shorter. How are you going to do your workout, your exercise? It might be— it's going to be something different, probably. But you still want to make sure that you take care of yourself or Even coming down to what are you going to eat? What are you going to make? Right? So all these things I want you to think about when it comes to your routine.

So excuse me, how many of you guys here have your 3 core routines set up and you're doing them consistently? And how many of you know what those 3 core routines are? I know we've talked to— this is just what happens in life. Things are constantly changing things, you know, whether you're moving, something happens with your job or You have COVID and they can throw a wrench in into your routines. And it's important to just keep on top of it and constantly think about how you can refresh it, how you can optimize it, things like that. So here we go. Perfect. Mimi says, Mimi and Jen say the 3 routines, the morning, evening, and the healing routine. So I just wanted to refresh that for any of you who may not have heard that before. So those are the 3 routines that you want to kind of reset or Refresh the ones you want to look at. Okay, perfect. That's awesome. Yeah.

So what I want you to do is I want you to think about those routines, right? So the 3 core routines are morning routine, evening routine, actually in this order, evening routine first. And then we typically teach you how to build a morning routine and healing routine, right? But I, in, in priority order, evening routine, healing routine, morning routine, because evening routine is going to set you up for everything that following day. Absolutely everything. Everything starts there in that routine. Right? So eating routine, morning routine, healing routine. Those are your 3 core routines. Now each routine has a goal. Each routine has a goal. Now what I want you to do is if you know it, I want you to, I want you to share it. What are the, what's the goal of each of those routines? What's the goal of each of those routines? Mimi, that's awesome. I mean, that sums up especially morning and evening routine, right? So your evening routine, the goal of your evening routine is to set you up for success. In the best way possible the following day. The goal of your morning routine is to set you up for success throughout that day. So to do everything that you need to do to be okay, to feel good, to feel whatever you are basically looking to feel, and you can tweak that to be very personal for that day. Your healing routine, the goal of your healing routine is to get you to full recovery, very basically, right? Is so that, so you can have something consistent in place So you chip away at full recovery. That's the goal of your healing routine. So all these are pretty important goals because you don't have a great year. A great year happens because you have great months. A great month happens because you have great weeks, and a great week happens because you have great days. Now, if you're someone that's like, wow, like, I feel like I have not done the things that I wanted to do this year, not what I've done, what I've set out to do, I want you to think about these routines. Because life happens in the little moments. It's about being consistent. Consistency is what's going to get you to the goals that you want. It's if you win the day, you win enough days, you win the week, you win enough weeks, you win the month, you win enough months, you win the year. Now, it's not too late to win the year, but I want you to think about the fact that days drag, years fly. And so having those routines in place, having that consistency in place. Is extremely important for all of these different areas. Now, it doesn't have to be right this big to do. That's what a huge mistake that we made when we were starting this journey. We made it a big giant like to do, and then we didn't do anything because we had so many things on our morning routine, so many things on our evening routine that it made it insurmountable to do. It made it overwhelming to even approach. These can be really super simple. You might have two things that you do in your evening routine, and it's fill out your unbreakable planner and do a recovery toolbox. That's it. That's all that it has to be. All right. So I want you to think about those goals for the routines. I want you to think about, do I have new information that I can now make better routines or make changes or tweaks to my routines? Maybe it's based on the season. I know for me this season, I stay up a little bit later. I do a little bit more traveling in regard to just like around town because I have family now that comes back to this area. Right? I do a little bit more seeing friends and going out to eat and sometimes staying out late. And so because of all that, it changes my routines. It just ever so slightly, it changes the way that I want to enjoy this season is different than the way that I enjoy the winter. I add things, right? Like I'm part of a golf league. So all these things have to be kind of taken into account because all this is new data that we need basically going into this new season. to tweak and change our routines. So I want you to think about that. What in your life, or what data do you have now that you can use to tweak your routines to make them a little bit better? Now, if you're not hitting your routines, this is another great reason to refresh your routines. If you're not hitting your routines, something is off. It could be it's overwhelming. It could be you're not setting yourself up before the routine even begins. You know, we talk about the morning routine. If you're not hitting your morning routine, it's probably coming down to what you're doing at night. 95% of the time, that's what it's coming down to. If you're feeling sluggish and tired and like you need to sleep in in the morning, you're probably not getting to bed on time. And you want to start to think about these things. I want you to critically think about these things so that you can make these adjustments.

So now let's go into like the how-to. That was a great point right there where if you're not hitting your routines, you want to look back on it, analyze it, and ask yourself why. Why am I not doing these routines? Like Amy said, is it too Is it too complicated? Are you trying to force too many things in, or is the schedule just not sustainable over the long term? You know, all of those things are very common problems. So when you go about actually doing the refresh, a really helpful exercise or just steps to go through is to first define the goal. It's good for you to define how you want to feel at the end of your evening routine, right? How you want to feel at the end of your morning routine or the things that you want to get done personally. You know, if you remove everybody else's opinions, how do you want to feel after those routines? And then you want to write them down. So you want to write down your evening routine, you want to write down your morning routine, you want to write down your healing routine. You know what you're doing, when you're doing it, when you're starting to do it. So you know exactly what you're going to do, when you're going to do it. So then you have an outline, right? You basically have a map of your routines. You know exactly what you're going to do. Because if you don't, know, you know, what you're gonna do if you don't sit down and actually be like, okay, I'm doing this and then I'm doing this and then I'm doing this. You won't have a routine, right? A routine is a set sequence of actions that you take that eventually turn into a habit. That's kind of the goal of the routine is to figure out the best combination of actions to make you feel the best at the end of it. And then build those set of actions into a routine, into a habit so that they happen automatically and you're doing things you need to do. Every night to, so you have the best morning and every morning, so you have the best day. And then so that you're doing the necessary healing work, right? So you have your evening, morning, and healing routine. So you define the goal, how you want to feel, you write the steps down. And then the last step, and my favorite, is to visualize it. So when you visualize it, like yourself going through those steps, doing all, every step of your evening routine, every step of your morning routine, every step of your healing routine. It drives it in further and makes it that much more likely that you're actually going to follow through with those actions. And if you have trouble sticking with your routine, something that really helped me was the night before you visualize it the night before, and it makes it that much more likely that you're going to wake up and do all, take all the actions you want to take.

So when it comes to these routines, so these routines are created based off of basically what I call hinge moments. Okay. And so these routines specifically are designed to give you the best chance of success, right? So your healing hinges on you doing this healing routine. You reaching full recovery hinges on you hitting this healing routine as consistently as possible. You having a great day tomorrow hinges on you doing that evening routine. You being set up for how you want to feel that next day hinges on that morning routine. Okay? And so what I want you to think about Because it can be just a helpful kind of mental exercise to think about. What are your hinge moments? The weeks that you've had or the days that you've had that are super successful, that feel the best. What did you do those days? What does that good day hinge on? I know for me, a great week hinges on planning the week. That's always what it is. And that's always what it's come down to. And, you know, in the past I've skirted on that when I'm like, oh, I'll just, I know what I'm doing this week and not plan. The week has been a coin toss at best. Okay, so there's certain moments, and there's certain moments in my day still that are hinge moments for me. All right, one of them is planning the week, then it's each night planning the next day, and then it's that morning making sure I take care of myself by— for me, it's getting outside, getting some time with Shiloh, and doing my exercise. Now, my exercise and Shiloh time, that's all outside, right? And having my coffee. Those are my hinge moments. If I get those moments in, that door is going to burst wide open, and I'm gonna have an amazing Amazing day. If I get those hinge moments in over the weekend where I get that planning in, it's going to burst open. I'm going to have an amazing week. That's what it's all about, setting yourself up for success. So think about what I want you to ask yourself. What are my hinge moments? I mean, it could be stretching, it could be exercise, it could be hydration, it could be the way that you eat, it could be doing that planner. If you don't do your healing routine maybe in the morning, maybe that's a hinge moment for you, and that either makes or breaks the day. So start to think about some of these things and ask yourself, what needs to change? What do I need to do in my life to ensure that I'm set up for success in these areas? And, you know, I think it's a quote from Jim Rohn, I think originally, maybe not, but, you know, he says, what's easy to do is easy not to do. And I just love that because that really has hit me on some powerful moments in my recovery. What's easy to do is easy not to do. It's just as easy to plan as it is to not plan. Especially in the long term. You know, it's easy to not plan in the short term, but you're going to suffer all week for not planning, and you're going to suffer in the long term because you're not going to reach those goals. So what's easy to do is easy not to do. And typically these hinge things are very easy in the scheme of things. You know, your healing routine, especially if you're doing that protector work, what it is, is it's not invasive. It's conversational. It's based on self-love and acceptance, and it's a beautiful process. Right? So ask yourself, there's a couple of things I want you to ask yourself. What are my hinge moments? I want you to ask yourself what your goals are for the week for recovery. And then I want you to ask yourself, you know, is what I'm doing daily, weekly, even monthly, depending on how you schedule, is what I'm doing helping me achieve my goals? I want a yes or no answer in this case. Is what I'm doing helping me achieve my goals? If it is, that's great. We can do more of it. Then we can really start to optimize and like tweak the little dials. If it's not, we need to make some significant changes before we get to the point where we can do little tweaks. So start with a yes or no, and then from there you can make little tweaks. So ask yourself that. Is what I'm doing daily or weekly helping me achieve my goals? From there, and only there, are you going to have enough information, enough data to start to make those changes in your life.

So it's awesome. We got some great yeses here from Carla and Mimi. That's awesome.

Awesome. So Bonnie Farron, doing some adjusting because of longer days and busier evenings. So it could literally just be the seasons that you're making adjustments for. I know I make adjustments for the seasons. There's going to be adjustments when, you know, maybe you're traveling, you know, something changes with your kids or something changes with your dogs, right? Whatever it is, there's going to be adjustments. And, you know, so those adjustments that you're going to have to make them, right? They can either be a moment of frustration and sometimes anger. Or they could be a moment of growth and a moment of opportunity. And so refreshing your schedule, it's a great habit to get into. And sometimes all you're doing is you're looking at your schedule, you're looking at your routines, and you're saying, oh, okay, actually everything's going great, great. Let's keep this going. Let's keep rocking and rolling. So you're just sometimes just doing a check-in and saying, great, this is awesome. But when something changes, when you have new data, new information, when something shifts in your life, you might wanna make changes there. So You know, having this mindset of the routines can be a little bit dynamic, right? So when we talk about routines, typically we're talking about, you know, this needs to be set in stone and this is what you do every day and we want you to do this forevermore. And that's the goal of the routine itself. And at the same time, life is dynamic. Maybe now more than ever, things change quickly and we need to have the ability to adapt to that. And as you go through different stages of life, you'll need to make those adaptations. And so being able to have the ability to refresh and know that you should refresh and know that this is something you can do and it's part of the process can help you when you reach that moment where you need to do a refresh, not get frustrated, not get angry, not get upset with yourself, but really use it as a moment of growth. If you're doing a refresh, you're doing something great because you're still optimizing for The goals that you're working to achieve. So Joe sharing, so routines in general are a little bit of an issue for me. So you're finding nothing's working in them. I think we talked about this once. I think this is from Sam Ovens. We call this cowboy optimization, right?

Oh yeah.

If nothing is working in your routine, throw it all out and start from scratch, right? And you're right on track with that. So you're asking, so I feel like I'm starting from the beginning. Should I start from the night routine again? That's where I would recommend starting. If nothing is working, there's where you can say, okay, I'm going to change a bunch of variables. You know, typically when we're working on optimizing routine, We are working on changing one variable at a time to see how it changes the overall kind of output, the overall performance of yourself. When nothing is— when you feel like nothing in that routine is working, change a bunch of variables until you get something that is feeling okay, and then you can start to make those optimizations. Bonnie, I love this share. Bonnie sharing, as I've healed, I'm able to do more in my day-to-day life compared to what I did in the beginning when I barely functioned. I need to adjust my routine every few months as I'm able to do more, such as family time, bigger projects. It's a good thing, but to keep my routines in place, especially my healing routine, I need to continue to adjust the routine. So that sums up exactly perfectly what we are talking about today. Things are going to change. You're going to feel better. You're going to maybe do more of something, do less of other things. So adjusting those routines is really important. It's part of growth. It's part of life. It really is. And you might be someone that can adjust your routines like once or twice a year, or you might be someone that, especially maybe if you have young family members, whether they're kids or grandkids or whatever it is, need to adjust your routines a lot more. And maybe it's like once a month you're finding you're doing some small adjustments. All right, so it's going to look different for each and every person. So are you ready to move into our action?

Yeah.

So our action for today is to refresh on your routines. So to take kind of inventory of your morning routine, your evening routine, your healing routine. Now, if you haven't set these in place yet, you know, we've done coaching in the past where we've talked about setting them in place, but you can start to set these things in place. Start with your evening routine. But for those of you who have these in place, I want you to refresh on them. Take inventory of your morning routine. Is it helping you achieve the goals for the day? Your evening routine, is it helping set you up for success that next day? And your healing routine, is that something you're able to hit consistently? So take that inventory and then make any adjustments that you need to make, understanding that the goal of the routines is to help you achieve your goals. So that's typically the first place you need to start. What are your goals during the day? What's your goals for your healing routine? Now, that one we've kind of set up for you. Your healing routine, the goal is to get you to full recovery. Your evening routine, the goal is to set you up for success that next day. Your morning routine is to get you in the best state possible for that day to achieve what you want to achieve during that day. So some things to think about. All right. So those are your actions for today. Tomorrow we're talking about honesty when it comes to processing. We're going to take a little bit of a deeper dive on specifically the topic of honesty. That was one of the foundational pieces that we talked about. For that boot camp, but we didn't dive specifically into it. So if you have any questions, feel free to get them in. Amazing, amazing job with everything today. Keep rocking and rolling. We'll get to some questions. So Helene sharing, I don't really have routines set up either. I've been falling asleep on my living room sofa after eating dinner and waking up a couple hours later, not having set my evening routine or my morning routine. I've had some positive moments and then they went by the wayside again. So I want you to think about this, Helene. Most of us start in a kind of a place similar, right? And where you are starting this journey is a place of— it's a little bit of chaos, right? So that's okay. That's typically kind of something that happens there. So not having that evening routine is going to affect the morning routine. It's going to affect the healing routine. So what I would recommend doing, Helene, is starting with that evening routine.

Okay.

And starting to craft that so you can get yourself into a good spot, into a good place, right? So I'd have to imagine something along the lines— now my mom is guilty of this too, right? She'll fall asleep on the couch, watch some TV, and then like in the middle of the night, sometimes she'll go to bed, sometimes she won't. She'll just kind of end her night on the couch. But, um, you know, that you might transition after a couple hours after to going to bed. And so it Sometimes it's tough at first, especially because that is your routine. Your routine is, you know, having that dinner. I'm not sure if you said watching TV, but falling asleep on the sofa, right? Maybe you set an alarm to remind yourself right after dinner to go to bed, and you might not feel like sleepy in bed. So you might be tempted to like go out to the sofa, maybe put the TV on or open a book, whatever it is. And so it can take a little adjustment to get into that evening routine, but that's where I would start. Absolutely. Don't worry about morning routine. You know, you don't have to worry about healing routine right now either. Is start with that evening routine and then build from there. And that's how you're gonna get more consistent positive moments. That's how you're going to get them. They're gonna add up when you have that routine, when you have your hinge moments set up to give you that success. Yeah, that's what I had kind of figured, Elaine, right? So you wake up 6 hours later on the sofa and then you get up and go to bed. So that's not gonna give you the best night rest for a bunch of different reasons. So see if you can start with that evening routine and start kind of right away in that bed. Get all those 6 hours and then some in bed so you don't have to kind of make that transition. I love this. Larry's sharing, I like to write 5 goals for tomorrow on a yellow index card. When I do this, I'm more engaged. You can take this content and what I want you to always think about with the content is what's going to work best for me? You know, how can I make this content work best for me? And we're all different in regards to the way that we learn, the way that we interact, the way that we succeed best. And so I love that you do that, Larry, you know, thinking about your goals, writing them on an index card, or it could be a sticky note, putting them on your mirror. I'm a big sticky note person, you know, on my computer, on mirrors and stuff like that. You could, you could write them on a whiteboard. We have whiteboards all over the place here. It's whatever works best for you. You can write them in a journal, you know, you can, you can speak them and then listen to them. There's all sorts of things that you can do. So that's awesome, Larry. I love it. Awesome. Awesome. If you have any questions, feel free to get them in. Amazing, amazing job with this content today. So if we end a little bit early today, that is okay. What I want you to do is use that extra time as an opportunity to immediately take action on what we talked about here today. All right? So go right now, think about your routines, refresh on them, write them down, make sure that they're setting you up for success in your life in the different areas That they are supposed to set you up for success in. And if you're struggling with all 3 routines, strip it back to focusing on one. Start with the evening routine. Make that your focus this week. Next week, once you have your evening routine starting to rock and roll there, you can change your focus, or when you feel ready, change your focus to the morning routine. All right. So Jen sharing, it's taken me the last 3 months to get consistent in a good morning routine. I'm in a process of still adjusting my evening routine. With working in the evenings. I'm continuing to do gratitudes with my partner at night, which I love that you do that, Jen. I have a hard time shutting down at night from work. Tried a few things to shut down at night with audiobooks before bed and trying to go to bed earlier. I have to be disciplined with my evenings. Jen, yeah, I mean, that sums it up, I think, for maybe for the majority of us. You have to be disciplined with that evening because it's easy. Those last couple hours at night go by pretty easy. Right? So it's easy to either, you know, continue the TV show or continue, especially as it gets lighter and lighter out, just continue hanging out, continue reading, continue whatever it is. You know, I could take a bath forever. So continue taking your bath indefinitely. I worked with someone specifically on this, but what I learned is reeling that in is so worth it. And what I used to feel like is, okay, so if I— my bedtime's before 9 o'clock, right? So if I get to bed before 9 o'clock, I'm gonna miss those extra like 2 hours. You know, I was going to bed at 10 or 11. hanging out with people or doing whatever I wanted to do, getting work done, whatever it was, I'm going to miss that time. I wanted to basically have that time. And so what I learned is that typically nothing great happens in that time. Everything great happens before that. And so that time is much better suited for me for sleep so I can be best and better the next day. It always pans out for me. Always. To be in bed before 9, and I don't miss anything. And then my bedtime on the weekends, and you can get to this point if you want later in your healing. You know, I really want you to keep those consistent sleep and wake times for your evening routine at first because you're working to optimize, you know, your— what's going on in your brain in a different way. But how I've made that adjustment after healing is now 11 o'clock is my bedtime on weekends, right? Or Friday and Saturday night, right? So I have the opportunity to have those late nights to hang out with Not everyone is willing to kind of shut down and go home before 9:00 PM, but on Friday and Saturday night, it gives me the ability to do that. And so here's another example of— now, you might not want to do that specifically while you're working on doing your healing. That might be something you do afterwards. But a little example of how you can get a little bit flexible with this and change these things to fit your lifestyle and your goals, your specific goals. I love this, Helene, sharing. I guess the morning routine I have had So far as getting up and taking a walk outside for 15 to 30 minutes, as I'm a nature lover and feel more positive being outside. Yeah. So, you know, what's cool about routines is we typically have them. They just might be, you know, your routine might be roll off the sofa, grab a stale donut and a cold cup of coffee and run out the door. That might be your routine, but there's some sort of routine in place typically. And we can even look at that. You know, what is your routine without there even being any effort into it? I make adjustments based off of that. So that's an awesome, awesome thing to, to note, honey. That's awesome. So Joe sharing, I need to get more than 4 to 5 hours of sleep a night. There's so much going on and everything is important. How do you fit in everything you need to do when there's a lot you need to do? This is a good question. I find that a lot of times success is in elimination. And so the average American watches, I think, over 5 hours of TV a day. And I don't know if that number includes like social media and stuff. So the average American watches over 5 hours of TV a day. Now, that's not true for everyone, but on average, that's what's happening. That means some people are doing a lot more, some people are doing a lot less. Now, this is just an example, but if you start to eliminate things like that, if you eliminate social media and the time that sucks out of your day, maybe it's just while you're having lunch, or maybe it's that it keeps you up an extra hour before you actually get to sleep. If you eliminate certain things that suck up your time but don't add value, You're going to find that you free up a lot more time. And what I find— who asked this? Joe— is I have a busy schedule, right? And it's tight and it's packed and there's a ton going on in it, right? And what I find is the more that I take care of myself, the more I prioritize sleep, the more energy I have to do all those things. And the more I can actually get done because I've invested. I think of it like a deposit. When I go to bed earlier, when I get to bed on time, I'm making a deposit for that next day. And that next day I can withdraw all that and then some. Okay? And so these things add up. So the more you take care of yourself, the more energy you're going to have. Now, there's also other things that you can do. Success, I find, like I said, is in an elimination. What are some things that you might be able to eliminate? What are some things you might be able to systematize? Excuse me. What are some things, if possible, you might be able to delegate, right? If you are working with a partner, if you're working with, you know, other people that live with you, or if you can maybe delegate Whether it's the yard work or if it's cleaning. I mean, these are options for some people to delegate that task so it's kind of off your plate. So there's different ways that we can clear our plate. We can eliminate certain things altogether, but taking care of yourself has to be a priority because the more you take care of yourself, you're putting that deposit down, the more you're going to be able to withdraw from that the following day. Good question. So, I had also started to go to the gym in my apartment building and get on the treadmill for 15 to 30 minutes. Followed by some of the machines. I can thank rainy days for getting me in the gym as opposed to just walking outdoors. That's awesome. And I love your gratitude there for rainy days. So you're an outdoor person. It's raining. I don't get the chance to do the walk that I wanted. Or you could do the walk and just be wet and cold and freezing at the end of it. And then you're using that as an opportunity to walk on the treadmill and do those machines. That's, I mean, that's amazing. That's really amazing. Let me try. I used to go to bed at 1 AM, even later. Now I find myself falling asleep on the sofa at 9 PM. These are good indications, Helene. You are growing even, even though that nightly routine isn't in place. I mean, that is your nightly routine, right? Falling asleep on the sofa. But even though you don't have an ideal nightly routine in place, you're still growing. You're still making those changes and those adjustments. That's awesome. Larry, it would be a good idea to start to think about the evening routine. It's a really good place to start because sleep is foundational for a lot of different reasons. A lot of what we're doing in recovery is going to come down to What's going on in your brain during the night. So that's an awesome thing as well. I love this. Carol sharing, I go to an indoor walking track and I walk anywhere from 3.5 to 5 kilometers at a fast clip. That's awesome. For those of you in the US, that's like between 2.5 and 3 miles, between 2 and 3 miles. That's really super duper awesome. I love it. I have some speed walkers that I work out with and man, they cruise. Every now and then we do speed walking as like an exercise. In bootcamp, right? And of course I'm always tempted to, to run, but I mean, even jogging, like there's some fast walkers out there and some of them compete, which is super cool. So that's great. And I, even if it's not speed walking and it's just, you know, walking at a fast clip, you know, I think that's such a great example. You know, you can get out there and do some sort of exercise, right? You can get out there and you can move in some way, shape, or form, right? You can, it, it can just be walking. You don't have to get out there and lift weights and, you know, be one of those guys in the gym that is, you know, giant biceps. And you can be that too, but you know, you don't have to start there by any means, but you can just get outside and get moving, right? Just get moving, get walking, you know, and then you can increase that as you get better if you want. But if not, that's okay too. So I think that's just a great example of you're getting out there and you're doing it, and that's really fantastic. A lot of people work up exercise in their mind to be this big bad wolf. It's really not the big bad wolf because exercise can be anything. It could be a dance party. I could have a dance party sitting right here in this chair. Yes, I absolutely could. It could be walking. I mean, it could be jogging, it could be biking, it could be swimming. There's all sorts of things that you can do and it doesn't have to be this Everest-sized thing that we can typically make it out to be. So Just by starting to do some of these little things. Getting out, going for walks is a cool thing. That's one of the things I've always enjoyed, right? I have a sleep routine and usually wake up at the same time. That's awesome, Carol. That's awesome. It sounds like maybe you don't have an alarm. That's how I want you to eventually get, and that's typically how you can eventually get, is barring the few things that will make you sleep longer, right? Like being sick or being physically injured or something But if you hit that evening routine, this is one of the many reasons it's so important. If you hit that evening routine, the more you hit it, the more consistent you get, your brain is going to optimize for that. It's going to regulate to that. It's going to be right on track. And so, what you'll find and what I find is that I will get up typically 1 or 2 minutes before my alarm almost always because my Body is just in that mode. It knows it's time to wake up, like basically within the minute, like any second now it's time to wake up. And I wake up and it's awesome. It's not like waking up in like the middle of like a deep sleep cycle to an alarm and you're like, where am I? Right? It's a very natural wake up. And that's one of the many benefits of optimizing that routine and getting that routine in a routine, like literally in a routine, getting it steady, getting it consistent, getting it solid. And that starts with the evening. So, Body Cherry, I'm waking before my alarm more and more. Progress. That absolutely is progress. Yeah. And especially if you're finding that, like, many, I don't have maybe the exact words today specifically to describe this, but that more natural waking up versus like the forced waking up of an alarm where you're like kind of out of it, right? So the natural waking up where you're like actually almost refreshed and like ready for the day, that kind of waking up. is awesome. And if you're getting that around the time that your alarm is or should go off, that's amazing progress. And that's a really good indication that you've optimized that routine, but that routine fits you well. I try to do a set of exercises and stretches daily. Takes an hour or so. Sometimes I get busy and can't work it in. I like them in the morning, but I adjust timing as life goes. That's what this today is all about, is adjusting as life goes, adjusting as changes need to be made. I've adjusted a lot as Shiloh's gotten older. Right. I'm a lot more reactive to him. There's certain things now that he needs that I will jump at, right? That I know that he needs. You know, if he's asking for something, we've developed a relationship over these 12 years where he's telling me specifically what he needs. If it's the middle of the night that he needs to go outside and go to the bathroom, that's what we'll do. But, you know, you have to make these adjustments. It's part of life. It's part of the process. That's awesome, Jen. Awesome progress on that as well. Love it. Love it. So we'll wrap up here. Okay. Amazing, amazing job. Refresh on those routines. Focus on the nightly routine. If you don't have a lot in place right now, that's a great place to start. That's a great place to focus. So think about that. We have an awesome rest of the week planned. We're going to continue hopefully to get better, continue to be here for you each and every day. So we're going to take care of ourselves. I want you all to take care of yourselves as well. Bye. Making sure that those routines are helping you reach your goals. All right, so I love you. I believe in you at the very, very highest level. Awesome job here today, everyone, and I'll see you bright and early tomorrow.

Hey everybody, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you want to learn more about how you can coach with me directly, there's a link in the description you can check out. There's absolutely no pressure. The main thing is I wanted you to get value from this episode here, but I hope you have a fantastic day, and I'll see. See you in the next one.