#64 Stop Overcomplicating Healing: A Simple System for PTSD Recovery | 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. Welcome everyone to our Recovery Secrets Daily coaching session. It is so good to be here with each and every one of you on this Tuesday morning. We'll give everything a kind of a second to connect up here, but we have some awesome topics planned out for the week today. Brad will introduce our topic in a little bit here, but awesome topics all week, and I think Something that I'm really excited about this week that we talked about last week that we were going to talk about— we talked about talking about this week last week— is, is beliefs as a processing tool. So I'm really looking forward to that. And we're actually going to do that on Thursday of this week to make sure we have a little extra time afterwards if we need it. But this lovely man to my right here is Brad.

Good morning, everybody. Great to be here. Great to see you bright and early. I hope you guys had a fantastic weekend and a fantastic Monday. Playing with this, this weird dough ball thing that we got yesterday. It's kind of fun, but I'd be distracted if I have that the whole time. But today's topic is all about simplicity, how to bring simplicity into your life, into your mindset, into your routines, and into the processing process. So simplicity is all about reducing overwhelm, making things easy to take action on, and really focusing down on the most important things. So that it's easy to take action on. So you get, you see the biggest results. And a lot of times we think we have to do more, right, to get more results. And in some cases that's, that's right. But a lot of times it's about doing less. It's about doing fewer things, but doing fewer of the wrong things and just focusing on the small portion of the right things. Because generally there are just a few things that give you the results you want in life. And if you just focus down on those few simple things, Everything else gets easier. So today's about simplicity, bringing simplicity. It's a much more important topic than it might seem on the surface, but it is huge. So if you're suffering with overwhelm, you're not sure what to do, you're confused, everything in life seems so complex or hectic, this coaching session today will bring clarity to your mind so you, you know exactly what you want to take action on. You can take action on it and then you actually see results from it and then you can keep going and you gain motivation and momentum. So It's going to be a huge topic. For me, it was, it was huge. Still is huge. I'm always trying to simplify things. So that's what we're talking about today, but it's great to see all you guys.

Yeah. And there's a lot of power in this topic, right? Not just for, not just for overwhelm, but also for if you want basically the results in your life faster, very often we need to uncomplicate everything that's going on. Right. So simplicity is going to, excuse me, come into play, you know, yes, if you're feeling overwhelmed, And yes, if you like already are aware that like you overthink and you overcomplicate and stuff like that, of course it's gonna come into play, but it's also just gonna come into play even if you feel like kind of things are going well and you're looking to dial in a little bit more. If you ever find yourself confused, but also if you ever find yourself like thinking, I, you know, I wanna be getting there faster, or I feel like I could be getting there faster or more efficiently and all sorts of things like that. So let me welcome some people here. Welcome Carol. Welcome Jen. Welcome Jeanette. Welcome Tony. Welcome Lena. Great to have each and every one of you here with us today on this lovely, lovely Now, Brad, you had already kind of mentioned that simplicity had played a big role in your recovery. Do you want to share like a little story about that or anything in regard to that?

Yeah, yeah, I was just thinking about that. And I, I mean, I just remember, I reflect back to, you know, when I was at, you know, my rock bottom, where I was, you know, addicted, doing nothing all day, just in pain 24/7, super depressed, stuffing my face with food and everything else and just watching movies all day. And everything seemed so, so overwhelming to the point where it basically crippled me. My emotions were overwhelming. Just the thought of doing anything overwhelmed me. And I wasn't going anywhere. I was just spinning my tires. So then—

I've never heard someone say that expression like that. What usually people say, spinning my wheels. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. I was spinning my Goodyears.

Spinning my Goodyears, my Firestones. So then I, I, I like reflected, I asked myself the question and be like, All right, all right. There's like, there's so much that I could do, but like, what's, what's, you know, this was some, this was a concept I learned earlier in business. Like, what's the one thing I can do just to make everything easier or unnecessary? So it's a very focusing question. What's one thing I can do? Right. And in that, in that one question, it was able to simplify things down. Right. And at that time, or at this specific time in my life, I knew some, some processing tools, right? So I went to some therapy. I, I tried out some processing. I started learning some stuff on my own and I was like, all right, one thing I'm just going to try to do one thing every day. Right. I keep it very simple. I am not going to try to do a million things. I'm not going to try to change my whole life in a day. I'm not going to try to put in a morning routine, evening routine, all these different things and make a perfect work schedule. I was just like, let's just, let's just get out of bed and do some processing. Right. And if you do that, that's a huge, massive win. So I didn't have a morning routine at the time. I was just like, if I could just wake up, go drive somewhere, drive to this parking lot and just do my processing. It doesn't matter if, and I had other goals as well. Like I would, I wanted to go to the gym after that and I wanted to go to work and do these other things. But I was like, if I just get this one thing, that is going to be a huge win, not for myself. And it's going to give me the results I want. So then I started doing that. And my one goal when I woke up is like, it doesn't matter what else I do today, but I just got to get in that processing session right when I Right in the morning. And what I found is that I actually started making progress, right? It wasn't overwhelming. I wasn't like, oh, what do I need to do? I need to do this and this and this and this and this. It was like, no, I just, if I do this one thing, then that's it. That's a win. So I started doing that in the morning. I just started processing for, you know, 30 minutes, an hour, however long I felt. I didn't put a lot of pressure on it. Sometimes it was 2 hours or 2 and a half hours or 3 hours, just depending on the day. And I started to get better. And, uh, after I did the processing sessions in the morning, after, you know, a few sessions, I started wanting to do more. So I wanted to go to the gym and I wanted to go to work and I wanted to, you know, do more things. So it really, really gave me so much power, so much clarity on what I needed to do. And it all came down to like simplifying and focusing down on the one thing, the most important thing, right? That's a big part of simplicity is, you know, you want to simplify things, but you want to simplify it down to What are the key actions I need to take in my life to get the results I want? Basically, what are the, what are the biggest levers that I can, I can push in, in my life to make change?

And I think that's a really interesting way to put that. I love that, that whole story that you shared, right? Because there's a couple of key elements there, you know, not putting too much pressure on it, just focusing on one thing and then allowing it to lead to other things, right? So having the real focus be on just one thing, but then saying, okay, once we get done with this one thing, what's one other thing we can do, right? But I love the way that Brad put that. What's the biggest lever that we can push or pull, right? And so actually in The Art of Trauma Relief, I talk about that book. It's a book by Gary Keller and it's called The One Thing. And his, the, the question he repeats throughout the book, it's actually very, very wordy.

Yeah, it is.

It's what's the one thing you can do such that by doing it, it makes everything else obsolete or unnecessary?

Yeah.

That's the phrase he like repeats. That's the question over and over and over again. And if I didn't get it exactly right, I'm pretty sure I got the quote right exactly in the book. And it's funny cuz it's not a very simple phrase, but but it is all important. What's the one thing that you can do that if you do this one thing, other things become obsolete, right? And just in general, we have a lot of levers that we can pull in our life, a ton of levers, but there's going to be some levers that really push the ball forward. They're going to— they're huge levers, which means they're typically very easy to do and they're going to make the biggest difference in our life. And very often we get distracted by all the tons of things that we could possibly do, or maybe feel like we should do, or other people tell us we should do. And more often than not— I actually just read a paper on this— more often than not, the answer is very, very simple. It's very, very simple. And more often than not, when we take the time to actually think about for ourselves, have this independent thought of like, what do I need to do, or what could help me, you know, get to point X, The answer typically is very intuitive, very intuitive. But if and only if we actually take the time to think and then kind of trust ourselves, right? And so people will ask me all the time, which is kind of weird, but people will like stop me and typically people that are much older, I don't know, they'll just like stop me and they'll be like, you look fantastic. Like, what do you do? Right now, I don't do anything special. I don't take special supplements. I don't do a very special like kind of workout where I do 7 minutes of this kind of exercise and 2 minutes of this and 8 minutes of this. I don't do anything special. I eat right and I exercise, and that's always what I tell people. And very often what I've seen in my life is people are looking for some sort of magic pill. They're looking for some sort of shortcut. And so by looking for the shortcut, we actually pull on a lot of levers that actually typically don't do anything at all or do something short term, right? Instead of just focusing on this simple thing, right? Which is exercise and eat right. Now that's just an example of what a Again, it's very intuitive when you stop and you think. When you stop and you think, even if you think about okay, well, what does eating right mean? When you stop and you think, is it Pop-Tarts or is it broccoli? Okay, is it is it rice or is it French fries? Okay, and so when you actually stop and think about it, a lot of times we know the answer, and a lot of times the answer is right in front of us, and it's very very simple, and it's not all that different with recovery. So what we want to do is is really simplify, but we need to do that, or in order to simplify, we need to actually ask ourselves basically the right questions. And Gary Keller's is a great one. And something that we recommend in recovery is, and I'm going to explain it for those of you who don't know what they are, but we, we have something we call the 3 pillars of recovery. And it's a very, very basic outline for the roadmap to recovery, which is you need to master your mindset, you need to build unbreakable routines, and you need to process your past. So there's 3 things within that roadmap. Now, something that we'll present to our Broken to Unbreakable clients is this question of When you, when you have a roadblock, or just generally in your life when you're facing something, when you don't know what to do, when you're confused, ask yourself, is this a mindset problem? Is this a routines problem? Or is this a processing problem? And then take action on that, right? And so Brad, in his, in his story, you know, at some point in your head, kind of what you did there is say, okay, well, what kind of problem is this? What's going to solve this, basically? And said, you know, he had kind of said to himself, okay, so processing. So processing needs to be my one thing. Is this a mindset problem? Is this a routines problem? Is this a processing problem? Can help you figure out okay, so what kind of content maybe do I need to consume? What specific actions do I need to take if I'm not exactly sure of what actions I need to take? What direction basically do I need to go in specifically within my recovery journey?

I love that. And kind of before you can even make those decisions, you have to decide for you what you want. And like Kayleen said, there's so many distractions in the world and so many things that you know want to pull your attention away. And if you don't make a priority in your life. If you don't choose what your priority is in life, someone else will make it for you, right? So like, we live in an age where there's so much information, there's so many different opinions. You go on social media, everything's on your phone, there's information everywhere trying to tell you to do this or that or whatever it is. And you just get so overwhelmed and you're not— you generally feel so much doubt and you're not really sure what to do because you have this option and this option and this option and this option and this option and this option. And you don't have clarity. And since you don't have clarity, if you don't have clarity on what you truly want, it's very hard to make a decision and then therefore simplify down your life to actually achieve what you want to achieve. So what predicates all of this is knowing what you want, getting clarity on that, and then also understanding that you can make that decision for yourself. And if you don't make that decision for you on what you want, somebody else will make that for you. I'm sure, like, Everybody's had this in their life, probably growing up with their parents where they're like, you know, like I didn't, I didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up. And my, my, my parents always said, you know, you're going to go to college, right? You're going to go to college. Does like, that's it. Period. Said, done, whatever. And I just remember, like, I didn't, I didn't even look for colleges and like, I didn't, cause I didn't really have an interest. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And my mom. Came to me and be like, "How about this college, this college, and this college?" I'm like, "Okay." And then mom was like, "Well, how about this major, this major, and this major?" I'm like, "Okay." And then so I didn't know what I wanted, and I wasn't confident in myself to make a decision. So other people in my life made those decisions. And obviously, you know, my mom was you know wasn't pushing me in the in the worst direction. But like there's people that will you know that are out there that if you're not making decisions for yourself, they'll pull you in all sorts of weird or bad or negative. directions that you won't be in control of. So I know it sounds like I'm kind of getting off topic from, from simplicity, but part of creating a life that is simple is knowing what you want. Because if you know what you want, every decision, decision that you make becomes very, very simple, right? Does this get me closer or further away from what I want? If it gets me closer to what I want, then I, I do it. If it gets me further away from what I want, I don't do it. So that is kind of like the, the foundation of this is like really asking yourself, what, what do I want? And I was talking to Kayleen about this yesterday, about like a really great question to yourself is, you know, basically projecting yourself out into the future and the average age, you know, it might be different for, you know, where you live and, you know, the gender and things like that. But average age is around 84 years of how long we live. And that's just a reality. That's just like, that's just what it is. So a great exercise to do is basically to project out in your mind. until you're 84 years old, looking back and be, and then ask yourself what needs to happen so that I basically minimize my regrets. Jeff Bezos actually did this. He called it a minimization regret minimization framework or something like that, but that's basically it. And then from that point of view, you gain so much clarity and like all the problems that you think you have really aren't big problems. And you, you choose like the things that truly matter to you. And then you're able to get clarity on that. So I recommend for people who want simplicity in their decision-making, to do that exercise, project out, write down, what do I truly want? If I'm 84 years old, you know, about to pass away, what do I want to have happened to have minimized my regrets? Right. Or to even better feel really great about my life.

Maximize your happiness.

Maximize your happiness. And with that clarity, you can truly decide and keep things simple in your life. Be like, this is what I want. This isn't what I want. So that's kind of what I wanted to say about, you know, getting, gaining clarity, how important it is to gain clarity. And keeping, keeping things simple.

Yeah, I love that. And we did have that conversation yesterday, and it was a lot of fun to have. And there's multiple ways that you can do that. For those of you who haven't yet done your Recovery Hero exercise, I don't know specifically the session, but we did an entire boot camp just 2 weeks ago, 2 and a half weeks ago, on building your recovery or crafting your Recovery Hero, which is all about getting clarity on what you want. And really, it's all about getting clarity on Who you need to become in order to fully recover from PTSD. So you can do the exercise, the 84-year exercise, or you can project yourself out further. Every now and then, Brad and I will be sitting there and you know we'll just be projecting out into the future and say something along the lines of you know just just picturing almost like visualizing together. I can't come up with the exact context that we do it in, but you know we're going to be sitting on our front porch in our rocking chair when we're our joint double rocking chair swing chair.

Yeah.

When we're you know 102 years old watching our grandkids play in the yard and you know. Singing songs to each other, and so there's multiple ways that you can do this in regard to clarity. And one thing I I want to just bring up because for me it's been tremendously helpful in my life in regard to getting clarity is you know a lot of times we can say okay so you want to get clarity on what you want out of life right? So I'm going to ask you a question: What do you want? What do you want? And if your mind comes up blank or if you find yourself just grasping with like 2 or 3 things that you want, that's pretty normal. That's pretty normal. And then I'm going to ask you the question, well, what don't you want? And if you start to kind of, you know, rapidly go down that list of here are the things that I don't want, figuring out what you don't want is a great jumping off point for figuring out what you want. And it's been tremendously helpful for me in my journey, in my recovery. When I was really, really struggling, I had no idea what I— there was like one thing that I knew that I wanted, and it was like a happy family life. Like, I want A ton of kids, and that's what I want, right? And that was one thing that I knew that I wanted. So I wanted to be a mom, and I wanted to have a bunch of kids. And other than that, I had no idea what I wanted. I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. I kind of had an idea that I wanted to be a teacher. This is not what I thought I would end up doing or be teaching in this way. And I didn't know the other areas. And so I kind of started asking myself, you know, what will— here are some things that I know I don't. I know I don't want to be in 50 years from now still having nightmares and flashbacks and unable to sleep through the night. I know I don't want to be last out with my partner. I know that I don't want to be in a profession where I feel like I'm faking certain things, right? And so that was my experience in elementary schools, or, or pretending things are more important than they are, right? So I worked in some really tough districts when I was student teaching for elementary school, K through 6, and they were really, really tough districts, which meant the kids You know, were hurt. I mean, honestly, a lot of them had PTSD and we're trying to teach them math and trying to keep them focused on, on schoolwork, which of course really can't come first. Right. And so that was something that I didn't align with, with the field or, you know, telling kids like, you have to go to college because it's the most important thing you'll ever do, which I don't believe. Right. And all sorts of things like that. So I, I, once I was in that profession, I love teaching. I love working with kids. I love working with adults. You know, I taught sailing for a very long time and I knew that I liked that. But I knew there were also things I didn't like. And so for me, creating that list of here are the things I don't like, here are the things I don't want, it really helped me narrow down. I know I don't want to be addicted. I know I don't want to, you know, feel pain and then drink. I know I don't want to do drugs. I know I don't want to watch TV, you know, as much as I was at the time, or really at all. I know. And then you start to kind of figure out, okay, so I know I don't want to do this. And then basically, well, what do you do with that time? Well, I know I want to read more. I'd love to read. You know, 52 books a year, right? A book a week, whether it's self-development or just like a good input as like a nice fun novel, or more books than that. That would be amazing. The amount of time I watched TV many years ago could equate to— I can't even tell you how many books a year, right? I know I don't want to be scrolling on social media at all during the day, ever. Okay. And so what do I want? I know I want to learn how to cook healthy foods, right? And so it all starts to kind of come into play. But very often the what do I want is clouded by the unknown. But we are often very, very clear on what we don't want. So it's a great starting off point. And honestly, it's been transformational for me because it will help you find the way to what you want. Even if you sit down and do the exercise and you just list things that you don't want, start changing those things. You don't even have to know what you're going to change them to. So at some point I was like, okay, I want to, or I don't want to be addicted anymore. And that was step kind of 1, that was step 0. And then it led me to kind of all these other things.

Yeah. Yeah. And that, that really is the first step. And it's so important. It's so important. You, you kind of determine this for yourself. And that's why that, that, uh, that exercise of projecting yourself and self out into until you're, you're 84 or whatever age you want to choose in the future. It's why it's, why it's so powerful is because it like nothing, like everything that doesn't matter will fall away. Like if you're on your deathbed looking back, you're going to be like, well, this, this little thing, like, like, you know, my partner leaving dishes in the sink. Really not that big of a deal. I wish I dealt with that differently so that we could have a happy relationship and have a really fulfilling relationship together. And like with that, with that perspective, it's such a powerful perspective because all the little things stop mattering and you start focusing on the most important things. So from that sense of clarity, so that's kind of like the first step to like gaining kind of simplicity in your life is like you gain clarity on what you want, not what anybody else wants, but what you want. And that's a great exercise to do. From there, you know, it's very easy to make decisions. Like I said before, if it aligns with what you want, you do it. If it doesn't align, you don't do it. Very simple. Every decision, does this align with what I want? Once you have clarity on what you want, very easy, very easy decision. But then you go a step further. So that's just kind of the first step because you can, you can know that, hey, I want to work out or I want to, I want to get healthy. I want to be healthy. So I live a long time. Well, then you start digging into that and you're like, oh, there's There's the keto diet and the vegan diet and the paleo diet. And this person's saying this and this person's saying this and this person's saying this, that this is the best way to get to where I want to go. From there, you simplify it a level further. So that's when you start really analyzing the options out there and you really kind of distill things down to the most essential things, the things that are going to, like I was saying earlier, basically that are the biggest levers, right? The things that will get you there In the most efficient way possible. So with the example of like recovery, right, there's a lot of things you could be doing with recovery. There's over 100 types of therapy you could do. And all of those people who do those types of therapy would be more than willing to be like, yeah, come, come spend an hour with me once a week. But not all therapies are created equally. Not all processing tools are created equally. Not all relief tools are created equally. Not all recovery programs are created equally. They're very, very different.

Yeah.

Like if you go to, let's say we were looking up yesterday, I was just going to share this story. If you go to chest therapy, legit thing, you're not going to see very many results. It's not, even though someone might say, hey, you know, you have PTSD, come to this chest therapy and it will heal you. You can do that. And your life would be simple because, you know, I'm choosing something and this, I think this aligns with my, my goal. But if you do chest therapy, unless you have a really powerful placebo, placebo effect, Ain't gonna do anything. But if you do that versus the processing tools we teach you in here, like bilateral processing, which we're going to get to at some point, or protectors that we talk about on coaching session 35, if you do that tool, you're going to make massive leaps in a fraction of the time. So it's about looking at inefficiencies and like, that's just natural in the world. If you, if you guys have heard of the Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule, it's just, it's basically like a natural law where like A small fraction of things that you do or that happen create most of the results. So for example, a small amount of your traumas, if healed, will give you the most amount of peace. So like the biggest traumas, if you heal 20% of your traumas, it's going to give you 80% of the peace. If you like, 20% of the processing tools out there are going to give you 80% of the results. And it even goes out to like the world. It's like, you know, most, and it's not, it's not always perfectly All right.

We are live here again, part 2 for— I forgot, I can't pull it down cuz you're so much bigger than I am.

I know.

So we'll kind of recap on what we talked about here today because our internet cut out and we're actually not exactly sure when. But we'll see if we can get some people on here with us. We're on the phone maybe, obviously. But, and then we'll move into our Q&A. So welcome Christina. Great to have you here with us. We'll see if we can get a few more people in. Welcome Mimi. Great to have you here again.

Yeah, so sorry about that. We, you know, the internet just kind of pooped out on us right there. I was having a little trouble yesterday too, you know, get on the internet, but we reset it. Hopefully we get it fixed, but we're here. We're here for you. So if you guys have any questions on the topic, basically what I was saying at the end is, you know, basically kind of the different steps you go through to basically get to a point where everything is simple and you're focusing on the most effective things. And like I said before. You start with gaining clarity and that question of, you know, looking, looking and projecting yourself out until you're, you know, 84 or again, whatever age you want to be looking backwards. That's how you get clarity on exactly what you want because all the trivial things when you're looking back from that perspective just fall away. You're like, most things do not matter. There's only a very few things in my life that really matter. And that's what this is about is focusing on those few things that truly matter to you. Okay. Something popped up and froze us for a second. So when you're looking back from that perspective, you realize very few things matter. And for me, it's like Keely matters. My family matters. My business matters. Certain goals I have in my business matter. My health matters. And then my future kids matter. And then from there, you're able to not only, you know, focus down on the few things that truly matter to you, but then you start again, it's easy to make decisions. You know, does this get me closer to where I want to be? So you define, you get clarity on what you truly want, and then you start analyzing, is this the most efficient way to help me get to that point? Right? And like I was saying before, there's very few things that truly matter to you. And then there's very few things that will help you that actually move the needle in the area that you want to do. So for example, with us, you know, watching a movie together is not nearly as connecting. And we don't, we don't have as great of a—

We don't grow.

Outcome. We don't grow as a relationship. And it doesn't grow— growth doesn't necessarily mean Deep conversations, but our relationship doesn't deepen as much as if we had a dinner. You know, alfresco outside. What's alfresco? I think it's just outside. I could be totally wrong. Yeah. Which we did the other night, where we have we had a hammock out. We pulled that out into the into the yard, into the grass. We pulled out some lawn furniture. Shiloh was out there too, and we had dinner out there, and it was very nice and peaceful.

We saw turkey.

Got some nature. We saw turkey. A lot of wildlife, bunnies, different things like that. And that was so like, that moment for us is a lot more impactful for our relationship than just watching a movie. And I'm not like, we still watch movies. Like, I'm not saying like, you don't ever have to do, like, you don't have to be perfect. And again, it comes down to you as an individual, what provides you with value? It's not what you think will provide or make your relationship the best it can or your health the best it can. It's like, to you. What is the best to you? So there are very few things that matter to you, and then there's very few things that will actually move the needle in the greatest amount of greatest way to give you the most results. And that's what you're looking for is like those asymmetrical asymmetrical kind of actions where you put in this much effort but you get this much outcome because there's some things that you do where you put in this much effort and you get this much of an outcome, right? Like chest therapy would be like you put in this you could do chest therapy for your entire life and you do this much effort, you're focused down on that and you get this much of an outcome.

I mean, maybe I'm wrong with that, but I think it's a very niche specific.

Yeah.

And we were, I don't remember what we were doing yesterday, but I was reading something on it and, you know, they, it was kind of like a recommendation on, on chess therapy and like who it would be good for. And one of the things that they said in this blog was, you know, if you don't know how to play chess, Or if you're not willing to learn chess, chess therapy is not likely to work for you. So I thought maybe, maybe was an unspoken truth that we understood about chess therapy. But, but the point being, you want to think about things that are impactful for you. You want to care about things that are at, at the end of, you know, time here, at the end of your time here are the things that matter. And I remember reading or listening to a number of years ago, and I forget the exact number, but 50% of people who are gonna come to your, like, end-of-life services, your funeral, your wake or something, are gonna come weather dependent. And I think that's a really kind of startling kind of thing to think about is like, even when it comes down to people in your life, like, who are the people that are the biggest needle movers? Who are the people that matter? That really truly matter to cultivate the relationships with? And it doesn't mean ignore the other people, but really like spend your time wisely and think about you know, what do I want and what relationships do I want to cultivate? Which ones are the most important? Which ones deserve the most attention? And same thing with your actions. And by the way, you should be one of those relationships. But same thing with your actions. What actions are going to get me as far ahead as possible, as far ahead as I, I want to go?

Right.

And specifically in recovery, right, we have the pillars. And the pillars are a great guiding force to say, okay, what kind of problem am I facing right here? Is this a mindset problem? Is this a routines problem? Is this a processing problem? To help give you some clarity. But then in general, just kind of start to think about, is what I'm doing going to be impactful? And is it the most impactful way to achieve some sort of goal, right? We don't have to reinvent the wheel here. We absolutely want to use our, our wheels and our tires and our Goodyears and to allow us to achieve the goals as quickly and as efficiently as possible. So you don't have to reinvent the wheel, but really start to kind of think for yourself in regard to what actions do you need to do day in and day out, or even moment by moment, right? What kind of problem am I facing right now? Right now I'm anxious. Is this a mindset problem? Is this a routines problem? Is this a processing problem? Okay, this is a processing problem because I just got triggered by something. So let's go do some processing on this thing. So you can ask yourself moment to moment, but then overall as a, as a mindset and as a life skill, Start to bring this simplicity forward because the simpler you make things, the more effective and efficient you're going to be, the faster you're going to get to your goals. And that doesn't mean there's pressure. It doesn't mean it's a race, but you're going to be much, much happier overall by eliminating a lot and focusing down on the things that matter.

One, one of my favorite quotes on simplicity, I think it'll be a great way to just close things off here. So if you guys have any questions, feel free to put that in the comments and we'll get to that. But I think we can wrap it up with this quote. If you're ready to wrap it up on the topic.

Yeah.

An Einstein quote. Cool. All quotes. Which I think is a great quote. Make things as simple as possible without making them simpler.

Could you explain it? Yeah.

Simpler basically meaning just like less effective. So make things as simple as possible without making them simpler, without making them less effective. So like you, you distill things down as far as they can go. Until like you start removing essential pieces that make it worse. But what you'll find is that you'll, you'll like remove things in your life, right? Maybe you remove TV or you remove watching the news or you remove certain things from your morning routine and you just make it simpler and you find that you're not, you don't lose anything, but you actually gain a lot of stuff because then you can focus on the right things, right? So a lot of times success is in elimination, right? When you remove things from your life, things get better. Right. So it's kind of the philosophy of less is more or less, less but better. And it's such a great philosophy. It'll bring so much peace to your life because you're gonna be focusing on what you want and doing the most efficient things to get you to where you want to go.

So if you have any questions, feel free to get them in the chat box there. I was able to get my computer up, so that's what I'll be looking at to answer the questions. But this week we have some awesome topics. Today we talked about simplicity. We're going to also talk about making good habits as easy as your bad habits seem to be, which is an awesome topic to chat about. We're going to talk about beliefs, which are really, really essential, but specifically we're going to talk about beliefs as a processing tool. So how you can actually use that during your processing time, which is awesome.

It's gonna be huge.

And we're also going to talk about self-discovery. So a lot that we're going to talk about this week, and then we're really, really excited about that. So make sure you stick around for that. And not next week, but I believe the week after will be another boot camp already, which is crazy. The time just flies by. But we will do it— be doing a boot camp on boundaries. So We'll spend the whole week doing a deep dive into boundaries. So you can look forward to that as well. So if you have any questions, feel free to get them in.

Yeah. Uh, boundaries, the boundaries bootcamp was suggested by you guys. So we're gonna dive deep on boundaries. It's gonna be huge. It's gonna be amazing. I'm excited for that. Again, in about 2 weeks, you can look forward to that. And for those of you who don't know what bootcamps are, that's where we do a super deep dive over the course of an entire week to go deep on a concept that needs more time than just A single day. So you kind of get the day-to-day coaching like this and the Q&As, and then you also get those really deep dives on the bootcamps once a month.

So thank you for sticking with us there through our little technology glitch, a little Wi-Fi glitch. It's a beautiful day. There's no reason the Wi-Fi should have gone out. It's not windy. It's not raining. Although there was one session we did like in a thunderstorm and I had said like, listen, like if the Wi-Fi goes out, there's a good reason for it. And it didn't, but then it's just like a beautiful day and it's So technology is great when it works for me. Mimi sharing, dealing with an ant infestation in my new house with a smile and lots of ant traps and Raid because I have my super crow family in the backyard that have their 3 babies and had their first flight over my head this weekend. That's amazing. That's amazing. So much happiness there. No ant will ruin that. I love that, Mimi. And that, I mean, just bringing that into your life, like, that's, I think, a really good definition of the little things. Right? The little things. When you get to the, you know, the, the last days, you're not gonna remember that. Or you might remember that just because you were like, that was such not a big deal because it was like a significant moment in my recovery. But, you know, those little annoyances that we face kind of day to day or throughout a lifetime are really just that. They're just little annoyances and they're, they're nothing huge and they're nothing big and they're nothing worth getting upset over and stressing out over. So I love that. That's a great example of that.

Yeah, it's a small example, but a big, big example because you just look at a lot of people's lives and small things can set them off in wild ways. So it's great. You're looking at it, you're like, how can I make this positive? Just kind of naturally, it seems like, which is awesome. And you've made such amazing progress.

So we're proud of you. And you put a lot of work in to get to the point where that like becomes natural, becomes the default, becomes the instinct of just This is the situation. I'm going to deal with it. Also sharing so much gratitude to have witnessed that moment of the client. So of the crows, like having the first flight—that's so exciting. I remember during the pandemic, we during the very, very beginning, where like no one was even driving anywhere and stuff, my parents, you know, were in a certain place. My dad was very, very sick, and we had kind of communicated through technology, obviously a lot at that time. But then at some point. He had found some sort of webcam somehow, some sort of live webcam about osprey. Remember this?

Yes.

And he had sent it to me and it was a live webcam and we would each just watch the osprey. And so I would kind of log on and, you know, I had it in a tab on my computer and I would click on it and just, you know, it would make me think of him. And it was super sweet when we watched them nest and then build the nest and then we watched them like lay eggs and the babies hatch and, and then the babies go and fly. And it was like really the coolest experience. And we would text each other and say like, You know, when I would pop on and they'd be doing something cool live, we'd be like, oh, check it out. And it was, it was a ton of fun. And so that's, that's an amazing moment. It's an amazing moment to be able to witness something like that. And I think for me at least, those moments can also put things into perspective when you see something in nature like that and how really kind of special it is. And wait for you to be adopted by the crows. I hope that, I hope that happens. I'm so happy that your new house— I don't know if you plan the house around that or that just happened to be kind of fate. That kind of put that, it sounds like near your house or right next to, or maybe on your house. But I hope that works out for you. Maybe. Good morning again, Carol. Good morning, Helene. Good morning, Ella. Great to have you here. I know we have some more people. Oops.

Okay. That's funny. Now we're all tilty. It's not that. Nope.

Sorry.

Oh, it's working fine though. Nope. Oh, it is working fine. Okay. On our screen, it's tilted. All right. We're having some issues today. Okay.

All right, Helene. So glad that you enjoyed the session today. Again, great to have each and every one of you here.

Ella says, releasing emotions foundational to processing. I must review then processing. Yes, releasing emotions is, is foundational. It's essential. It's required to know how to release emotions and let things go, open your heart and let, let the emotions flow out because that's part of why we're in so much pain is that all of that emotion and trauma is just kept in us and pent up inside of us. So Learning how to release that, release that in a safe, controlled way is essential. And I'm not even, I'm not just saying that. It's not hyperbole. I think that's how you use that word. It's, it really is essential that you will not recover if you do not know that skill. So I would highly recommend that, or if anybody who doesn't know how to release emotions or needs help with that, or needs to be, wants it to be explained further, check out coaching session number 13. For releasing inner emotions, and then our processing boot camp on protectors is session thirty-five. And you can just search that. There's a search magnifying glass in the upper left-hand corner of the online platform. So if you go to my dot my dot overcoming ptsd dot com, log in, go to recovery secrets. You'll find the little magnifying glass in the upper left-hand corner, and you can just search the numbers. The number thirteen. For the Releasing Emotions episode or $35 for the Processing Bootcamp.

And again, we're going to be doing this week a processing session specifically around beliefs, which I really, really like because releasing emotions is an extremely important part of processing. And it will remain an important part, part even when you're doing something like the belief processing. And I'm going to give you a worksheet And again, it will remain a big part. But what's cool about the beliefs processing specifically and the process we use for that is it's very, very logic-based. It's very intellectual. And so it helps you kind of make a connection between the intellectual and the emotional, starting with the intellectual. And so for anyone who kind of struggles maybe kind of getting in touch with those emotions, it's a good way to start because you can start on an intellectual level and you can go through this entire thing intellectually. And then, as you start to bring it forward into your life is where you'll start to see the emotions come into play. So, it's kind of like starting at a different point. So, you don't need to have that in touch with emotions before you start doing the belief processing, which is a cool element to that tool, is it's very intellectual, and then it builds into emotional as you practice it.

It's a great, great tool. So, I see on here, Carol says, simplifying my life is something I really need to do. This is something skipped.

Sorry, I wasn't sure which one you're reading off of.

Oh, simplifying my life is something I really need to do. This is something I really need to work on. It is a great topic. So something I want to, I want to hear back from you guys is like, what is one area of your life that you want to simplify? Something that you can do today or this week that you can work on simplifying. I know for me, even just last week, I simplified my clothes, right? I got rid of so many clothes. I, you know, Cleaned out my whole closet. I had some clothes over the past, you know, year that I wasn't wearing, got rid of them, simplified it. It's very simple, very easy, very clean, very simple process. Just little things like that. Like, what's one thing in your life that you want to simplify? Is it a routine? Is it something in your house? And usually simplification, what it means is elimination. You get rid of stuff. So another thing you can ask is, what do I need to get rid of in my life? It can be a person, place, Can, can you get rid of a place? Say person, place, or thing, or even thoughts, you know, simplify your thoughts.

You could simplify a place by like simplifying the environment. I don't know if you can get rid of a place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if you can eliminate like your bathroom.

Matter cannot be created nor destroyed.

Awesome. Great to have you here, Joe. Great to have you here, Isabella. Awesome, awesome. Mimi, I'm so happy for you that that was fate. I really, really am. That's, that's really awesome. Mimi sharing about crows, right? So I was hoping for crows to be adopted by a new crow family like at my old house. So here's why I remember it, right? Because I'm actually not a huge fan of birds. I really like them from a distance, but birds is one of the few animals that like, they don't really enjoy my personal space. And I remember there's at least one other member of Broken to Brave who owns a bird. And then I remember you talking specifically about crows and I'm so happy that You were able to have this experience on your move because they know how much that they mean to you and how much you love them, which is just so, so awesome.

What if it's the same crow? They just love Mimi so much.

That would be a good movie. I'm serious. That would be like— it could be called My Friend the Crow or something like that. I don't know. I would watch that movie. This feels— I don't know how far away you moved, Mimi. I don't know. Maybe you should look into this. But— oh, so maybe not. So they always go back to the same place from generation to generation, and they recognize human faces. That's amazing. That is really amazing. Crows were in that movie that The Birds, I think, was all about crows. I don't think they got it right though. Great to have you here, Claudia. Oh, I love this one, Claudia. This is a good one to eliminate. So Claudia's sharing, planning to, planning to eliminate my job. I need a more positive environment. That's awesome. That's an awesome, that's a great thing to eliminate. Honestly, that's a huge needle mover. The people that you spend time with, or if you don't enjoy a, like, not specifically a task, But if you don't enjoy a job that you do, that's going to be a tremendous relief. We have a friend recently that had a really stressful work situation and then was able to retire, whatever, leave the situation. And it's amazing what happens when you leave an environment like that.

Yeah.

Your whole— you know, it seems like everything's so chaotic and it seems— it feels like you're stuck in that environment. It's so negative and it just kind of drags you down. And then once you get free of it, after a little bit of space, It's amazing how up you can feel just because of that change.

Yeah. And again, it's, it's simplifying your life because that one area of your life, if, if you don't like it, if it is causing you a lot of stress, it's not just happening in a void in, in the time that you're at work. You're bringing that home. You're bringing that into the rest of your life. And when you're able to eliminate things like that and substitute it for something better, or sometimes just totally eliminate it so you don't even have to think about it. I'm not saying with that, with the job, that's probably unlikely, but With something, it just, it makes everything else so much easier. Like life isn't just, they're not different pockets, right? There's different like sections of life, but it's all life. And you can't affect one area without affecting another, another area. So when you upgrade that job to a better job with better people, all the rest of like the rest of your life is going to get better for that. So it's awesome.

And that's a really cool thing, right? And that's the power of the ripple effect. And that's kind of the power of what we're talking about today, simplicity and levers, right? So you make one change, it doesn't just change that one thing, it changes a lot of things. Specifically when it's something big like that and heavy like that, it's going to change a lot of things. It's gonna affect the way that you feel about yourself, the way that you feel about maybe that profession, or not specifically that job, but your overall role kind of in the workplace. It's gonna change the way that you treat people, the way that you treat yourself, the way that you spend your free time, who you hang around, the things that you do in your free time. It's an amazing, amazing thing to start to change. Isabella sharing, I'm cleaning out my bookshelf and paperwork. That's always a great thing to do.

That's awesome. That's a good one.

Carol sharing, I need to simplify so I don't have to do as much driving. There's another thing to simplify, right? Just in general, your schedule.

That's a good one.

Organize, right? To make maximum impact. If you have to drive to a certain place maybe a couple of times a week or a couple times a month, and you can simplify that to once even a week or once a month, You know, just kind of move some things around. That's an awesome thing. Isabella, no worries. We had a Wi-Fi issue. This is our second livestream because it just stopped. It just stopped working. So, so Ella sharing, I donated 3 boxes of Great Wares a few days ago to my granddad's workers, our extended family, simplifying my environment continually. That's amazing. And it really is amazing to make simplification a habit. You don't miss those things either.

Like, it's so funny. Things just kind of pile up. Like you and me, sometimes just like piles of, piles of notes when I'm like researching something or learning something. And I'm like, I am never going to read this. Never. And I get rid of it and I just feel better. So I think that's awesome.

Awesome. Awesome. So I love it. Okay. So the birds was ravens.

That, that makes more sense. Very cool. Very, very cool.

So Claudette sharing, it's a very monotonous job and I need more. I need more fulfillment. That's an amazing thing, right? So I'm not sure if you were here when we were talking about, you know, like, what do you not want? What do you want, right? In regards to what do you want? So you know that maybe you don't want something as monotonous and you want something that's more fulfilling. That's starting to get clarity on your life and your work.

Yeah. And you have power over that, right?

You're the only one that has power over that.

The clearer you know what you want, the easier it's going to make those decisions to actually go and get what you want. So it's great that you're thinking about that.

Isabella's sharing, I take notes in a book now of all the things you both teach me so I can have these lessons always. Note-taking is an amazing thing to, to do. I mean, if it, if it works for you, for some people it can kind of distract, but if it works for you in regard to your kind of learning style, it's awesome so that, you know, you're more engaged, you're focused on what we're chatting about here, and you can have them to kind of review at any time, which is a really cool thing as well.

I'm a notes person, 100%.

He's a huge notes person. I'm more fly by night.

Yeah, I, you can tell.

Is that a zing?

A little bit. Not a bad one.

All right, so if you have any more questions, feel free to keep them coming. Feel free to get them in and we'll answer them. If not, we'll wrap up here because we have just a few minutes left. Now remember, the rest of the week we have some awesome, awesome topics, including we're going to talk about how to make your good habits as easy as your bad habits, which is a great conversation to have. We're going to talk about beliefs as a processing tool, which is also going to be amazing. And we're going to talk about self-discovery. So a lot to chat about this week. And next week is our final kind of week of our round robin sort of schedule. Before we move into our boot camp, which will be 2 weeks from now, and that boot camp will be on boundaries.

So great job today. It was awesome seeing you guys, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow and then the boot camp in a few weeks. And hope you guys have a fantastic day.

Yeah. All right, we love you, we believe in you, and we'll see you bright and early tomorrow morning.

Alrighty, see ya. Bye-bye. 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 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 you in the next one.