12 Jun 2020 · 5 min
When everything feels out of control, four things stay in your hands: eight hours of sleep, less sugar, movement throughout the day, and quiet time to breathe. The host walks through each one and points to deeper resources on mind-power, activism, and spiritual healing.
This is Five Minute Friday. Welcome to this Five Minute Friday. I wanted to take a moment to get grounded, to get grounded in our thoughts and in our feelings, and come to a place of peace, a moment of reflection, a moment of love, a moment of clarity, and hopefully a moment of focus. You know, the world has been very complicated place lately, especially right now. Coronavirus has been consuming our minds and creating fear in our bodies and the news and media has taken over with it. And figuring out how do we open up in America? How do we open up around the world? protests and the fight for racial justice is surging. And of course, 40 million Americans are unemployed. There is a lot happening right now. And I want to remind you of the importance of self care, especially in this moment, because most of you are not taking care of your self care enough. You're not taking care of your of your mind, of your heart, and of your well-being. And I want to acknowledge that it's important to be engaged with the world. For some of you, there's no other option. Perhaps you're fighting for equality or hustling just to make ends meet week by week. There's a lot going on. However, there are things that everyone can do to make sure they stay mentally and physically sound. And if you want to make an impact on the world, or if you want to achieve personal goals, or just find happiness, in this moment, there are essential things that you can do, regardless of what's going on and how much noise is happening around you. And a few of these things, these simple basic things that we sometimes take for granted, we forget about, we overlook. The first one is sleep. Guys, I've researched so many sleep experts and doctors on the effects of not getting sleep on your body, on your mind, on your emotions, on the levels of depression that could come to you. sleep debt is a real thing. You can never pay it off. If you don't get the amount of sleep you need, you can try to get caught up, but you'll never be able to fully pay off that sleep debt. So get eight hours of sleep. Your body and your mind needs it, especially when it's under constant stress and pressure. Nutrition. I love sugar. I'm telling you, I don't do drugs, I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't do pills, none of that stuff. Man, sugar is my drug of choice, right? I love candy and cookies and cakes, but you've got to make sacrifices in your life to resist certain things that may be pleasurable and joyful in the moment to create a healthy environment for yourself long term. Because I could just have cookies and cakes all day and then I'm going to have a problem later. So we've got to sacrifice certain things now to ensure healthy lifestyle now and later. So remove the sugar. Those spikes in energy levels and crashes make you make poor decisions. I'm telling you, you can have little bits here and there, that's fine, but don't go all in on bad foods all the time. It's just not gonna be good for you. Move and stretch your body. Today I was doing a lot of conference calls on Zooms with my team and other people and interviews. literally I just got up during one of the team calls on Zoom, stood up, started stretching, doing some yoga stretches, got in a squat position and just moved my body. Sometimes we forget this, stretch, move your body. And quiet time. The best self-care you can do for yourself is to be quiet. Is to not reach for your phone. Is to not reach for the remote to the TV. Is to not distract yourself by reading some article. It's actually to do nothing. Allow your mind to rest by doing nothing and breathing deep. Allow your mind to rest. And if you truly want to learn more about how to harness the power of your mind and get to that place of peace and eliminate some of these distractions, then check out the episode we did with Sud Guru. And also, if you want to learn on growing relationships between athletes and activism and what's happening right now. Listen to the interview with Michael Bennett recently. And if you want spiritual healing through this tough moment, then check out the recent interview with Michael Beckwith. You may not have the power to change everything around you in this moment, but you always have the power to go back into yourself and change the way you think and feel through a practice, through doing the work. It doesn't happen automatic. You've got to show up and do the work. and we're here to support you. Thank you so much for listening and I hope you enjoyed this Five Minute Friday. As always, check out lewishouse.com for more School of Greatness inspiration and find me on social media @lewishouse and as always, you know what time it is, it's time to go out there and do something great.
