007: Mental health, manifesting and managing your life

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Causemetics.com/shine26. Hi guys and girls, thank you all for joining me once again. By now you know the crack. I'm Mart Tweedy and this is Cani Crystals the podcast. Wow, week 7! I can't believe how quickly these episodes come round every single week. And I don't know if any of you saw, but last week I was actually number 22 on the podcast charts in the UK for spirituality. Number 22! Can you believe that? So thank you all so much because it is, it's based on ratings, reviews, subscribes, and listens. So thank you all to everyone that's left a 5-star review. Thanks to everyone that's subscribed or even just listened. I'm absolutely living for it all. I honestly can't believe we're almost at the end of October as well. Like, the clocks go back an hour this weekend, which means that we get lighter mornings.

Yay!

But much darker nights. Wah! I'm not much of an early riser. I'm trying to get better at it, but I'm terrible. Like, I'll set my alarm for 6 o'clock on a morning daily, and I'm still hitting that snooze button at quarter to 8. It's ironic as well because I've got a book on my bedside table called The Miracle Morning, and it's all about getting shit done before the day actually starts. Oh God, the irony. So yeah, I'm gonna try and read that soon. I think I could learn a lot from that book. The end of October also means Halloween and Samhain as well, so I absolutely love Halloween, and this year I'm headed to Scarefest at Alton Towers for the weekend. And for those of you listening abroad, or if you don't know what that is, it's basically a huge theme park down south. It's one of the biggest in the country actually, and over Halloween they extend their opening hours. So usually they're shut at about 6 PM, but they're staying open till 11 PM so that you can ride all these roller coasters and things in the pitch black. But not only that, they also have people like dressed up as zombies chasing you around the park with chainsaws and things. Oh my God, I absolutely can't wait for it. So I'm going dressed as Voldemort and I'm literally just going to run around going like, "Ehehe, Harry Potter's dead, ehehe." So yeah, I'm going to scare a lot of children. Really excited. And whenever we go to anything like that as well, people tend to pick on me, so I think it's because I scream like a little girl. So although I'm looking forward to it, I'm still quite anxious and nervous at the same time in case I get chased. But yeah, pray for me. So yeah, this week I just want to start the show a little differently. So I'm going to talk about a really sexy subject: mental health. Let's get sexy! Not. But I just wanted to touch on this briefly in case anybody else needs to hear this as well. So to get it off my chest, As you've probably heard in past episodes, I've been super busy lately juggling my full-time NHS role with my Candy Crystals business. Now a normal weekday for me, and get a load of this, because it consists of doing my normal NHS job 8 till 4, then I take my dog JJ out for a walk, and then I hit the gym. I'm usually home for about 6 o'clock, and by the time I've had a shower and had me tea, I start packing orders about 7 o'clock. That can take a couple of hours most days, depending on how many orders I get. And then at 9 o'clock, I've maybe got an hour or so before bed, and that's when I tend to catch up on customer emails, social media messages, queries, and then I go to sleep and I do the exact same thing the next day. On a Saturday, I tend to record a week's worth of TikTok content, which is why it probably looks as though I'm always wearing the same clothes. I'm not, I just record them all in one day. As well as packing orders, And then on a Sunday, if I'm not busy with orders, I manage to get to visit my family. And I do all of this as well as keeping on top of stock on the website, which is manic as you can imagine. I order from maybe 11 wholesalers in the UK and I think 6 or 7 from abroad as well, because they all specialize in different things, you see, so you can't get them all at one wholesaler. And then not only that, I visit some wholesalers in the UK as well because it's easier to visit them. Then I order all the stock and all the packaging online. I'm keeping my house tidy. I'm cooking meals daily. I'm taking my dog for a walk daily. I'm doing my food shopping every week, catching up with friends. And I've been doing this constantly now for the last 6 months. And then I also recently added on this podcast, which I have to script weekly subjects to discuss. Then I've got to record it, edit it, and upload it, and that takes a good half day alone. And I think last week it all caught up with me and I hit the point of burnout. So I was packing up those Crystal Advent Calendars on my weekend off, and on the Saturday I worked for 14 hours knocking them up and packaging them all ready to be dispatched. When I counted how many I'd done in the 14 hours without anything more than a 5-minute break, I realized I was only halfway. And I did the exact same on Sunday just to get through them all. Which meant that I didn't get to see my family and spend some downtime. And then the Monday I had off my NHS job, and I spent all day sorting out the labeling, the shipping, trying to organize these 50 huge boxes in my living room to go out. And have a look at the video on TikTok if you haven't already. And I was due to go at the gym at 5 o'clock, and one of the guys that I go to the gym with, Connor, had messaged me and just said, 'Why have you cancelled the class?' And I just suddenly sat down and burst out crying, and I just think I'd hit the point of exhaustion. I hadn't ate properly in 3 days. I think I'd had like a chicken wrap both the Saturday and the Sunday, as well as God knows how much coffee. My partner had taken JJ out for both his walks every day, and it suddenly dawned on me that I was due back to my NHS job on the Tuesday without having had a break for more than the time it took me to sleep. And my anxiety was through the roof and it really started to affect me mentally. Now, I'm a qualified Mental Health First Aider at work too, so although I'm good at giving out advice, I'm pretty crap at following it myself, but I knew that I had to chill and try to relax. So instead of going to the gym that night, I ran myself a bath. I turned my phone off, I went upstairs, lit some candles, put some bath salts in, and I just lay there in the bath for a good hour or so. Now I tried some breathing exercises and a short meditation, and this really helped to ground me, and I just wanted to share the method that I used in case anybody else ever needs it. So the method that we were taught about when I did my Mental Health First Aider training is called the 5-4-3-2-1 method. So what you basically do is you're using your senses, so using your 5 senses. So you start with acknowledging 5 things that you can see. So, laying in the bath, I could see shampoo, candles, a bath tray, a glass of water, and my towel. And then next you move on to 4 things that you can touch. So, I touched my hair, the water, the side of the bath, and a sponge. And then it's on to 3 things that you can hear. So, for me, it was the sound of the water in the bath, my meditation music, and the extractor fan in the bathroom. Then 2 things you could smell. I could smell my candles as well as the bath salts I had with me. And lastly, you think of 1 thing that you could taste, and for me that was the coffee in me gob that I'd just finished an hour before jumping in the bath. And that 5-4-3-2-1 method can be very helpful during periods of anxiety or panic, just when you're in your head, and it'll help to ground you in the present when your mind is bouncing around the various anxious thoughts. So next time you start with anxious feelings or mild panic, give that a try and see how you find it. Now, just from me sharing this experience, it's made me feel 10 times better about the whole situation. So I'm sorry if that sounded like a bit of a whinge, but it's always good to talk about mental health. I've lost 4 friends in the last 5 years to suicide, so I always tell people I'd rather receive a phone call at 3 AM from them wanting to chat than a phone call the next day to say the worst. I officially now know more people that have died from suicide than those that have died from cancer. That's not right. Get talking, help each other out, and be kind to one another. Right, let's lift the mood. With this podcast episode falling at the end of October, I think it's a perfect time to talk about arranging your life. Taking charge of your daily tasks and managing your goals. I do this at the end of every month, and I set myself new plans for the month ahead. I find that by splitting me goals down into manageable and bite-sized chunks, that I'm able to be a lot more productive and goals don't just pass me by. How many of us have just blinked, for example, at the start of 2020 and we're already at the end of 2021 with nothing to show It's crazy how quick time flies, and if you don't have that plan at hand, your life just whizzes past you. It's such an important part of manifesting as well, getting clear about what you want in your life and the steps that you're willing to take to achieve those goals. The more specific you are, the easier it is for the universe to deliver it to you. So get yourselves a blank sheet of paper or a notebook, something that you can write on and keep with you for the next 4 weeks. And I want you to list out every single area of your life, how you would like your life to look. Now, I don't just mean your day-to-day life. I mean every single aspect and area of your life. So get specific. What car are you driving? What job are you doing? Have you got a family? Where do you want to live? It's only when we start asking ourselves these questions that we get the true answers from our mind off the cuff. And then once you've done that, compare that to what your life is now. Now, for some people, I mean, myself included, we're scared of doing this. We're scared of being brutally honest about what it is that we truly want, especially if it's different from what our lives look like now. Now, it can be a scary thing to say that you're not happy with what you have, but look at it this way: what you have now is your worst-case scenario. So through visualization, through positive thought and the Law of Attraction, you can only go up from here. So tell yourself, even if this fails and it doesn't work, it's fine. You just go back to this level because you're already here. This is your comfort level. You're comfortable. This is your standard. The only way to go from here is up. So comparing each section from where your life is now to where you want it to be you need to break that right down. For instance, if you're single and your ideal life is one with a partner and a child, what steps are you going to take, and more importantly, willing to take daily to reach that goal? Would you stay indoors all day and all night? Absolutely not. You could choose something as small as doing yourself up and wearing a smile to the supermarket. You never know who's going to see you, You could research and attend a singles night at a local bar or restaurant, but your aim ultimately is to be seen. So by staying at home, you're not helping yourself. So if your ideal partner doesn't know that you exist and you don't leave the house or put yourself out there, how would they even know anything about you? So this is taking small steps of inspired action towards reaching that goal of you getting with someone and for you to find your soulmate and start this family. Now, you want to break this down individually to every single day. So every single day, you're just challenging yourself to step out of your comfort zone, even if that just means saying hello to the cashier or something at the supermarket, the person that's on the checkouts. Just something that pushes you out your comfort zone that you can do on a daily basis. I know you don't go to the supermarket daily, but you know what I mean, like say hello to the postman, for example, say hi to your neighbors, that kind of thing. Just push yourself out of your comfort zone just that little bit every single day, and it will increase your confidence. So find some time daily to visualize on every area. Now, this can be done in as quick as 5 minutes per day, and 5 minutes a day over the course of the month is so powerful. Never underestimate just 5 minutes. What I used to do is I would whack my headphones on with some meditation music on my walk to work. And I'd utilize that time, which is about 30 minutes each way, and I'd visualize how I wanted my life to be. Another way I ensure I do this daily is I have to-do lists. Now, I know they're nothing new. To-do lists have been around for years, haven't they? But seriously, it helps you get shit done. It's such a sense of accomplishment to tick things off your list. It keeps me in check, if I'm honest, and If I know that I have to do certain things throughout the day, it ensures that everything is on my radar. If I'm stressed out, like I have been lately and I was last week, and there's something on my to-do list such as take JJ out for a walk, I'm running low on time, I could always then delegate that task to my partner. So yeah, it just generally keeps me ticking over daily. I shouldn't have said the words take JJ out for a walk because he shot from underneath the couch there. He thinks it's walkies time now. I'd also be grateful and thankful for the life that I had now, because without showing that gratitude for what I had, I wouldn't be able to grow or make those changes that I wanted. And when you're visualizing, remember what I mentioned to you in previous episodes. You want to use all 5 of your senses to take you there in your head. So if you're visualizing yourself attracting that soulmate—

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Mate, you want to visualize yourself with them. What do they look like? What do they smell like? What do they sound like? Feel that warmth of their touch on your skin. Feel yourself holding their hand, for example, or being hugged by them. By doing this, it tricks the mind into thinking that this is a memory instead of a wish. Each day, remember to take that inspired action towards your goals to help them along the way. And before you know it, the month is out and you'll have reached your targets. I did this myself in September this year. My sales in August had gone down compared to the months before, so I pictured myself receiving 300 orders within the month of September. I split it up thinking to myself that this was only 10 orders a day, which is totally manageable and really achievable. Every day when an order came in, I would say out loud, "Thank you so much." And I would really feel grateful and happy for having received it. I would imagine those notifications coming through on my phone. It got to one point even where I found the noise that Shopify makes on YouTube and someone had put it on for like a 10-minute loop. So I was literally playing that in my ears, imagining like that noise over and over again so I could hear it. And I was imagining all the orders were flying through and just while I sat and did that meditation for those 10 minutes, I got 6 orders. So it does work. The more gratitude that I started showing, the more orders that came flying through. And like I mentioned before, I kept taking inspired action. I started knocking up empty boxes ready for those orders rolling in so that I was prepared, and I was letting the universe know that I was ready to receive those orders. And like I say, I was listening to the noise that my phone makes when I get a sale. I was visualizing me heading to the post office with the bags of orders. There was one day I took action where I knew that the new moon was coming up, and I'd had a couple of messages on Instagram from people asking what to do. So I felt inspired to make a little TikTok video in the hope that it would help to boost sales of one of the books that I sell on the phases of the moon. That video went viral overnight. It had over 2 million views, and needless to say, my sales went through the roof, and I absolutely smashed my targets that month. So that was just one part of my life that I managed to change by writing down where I was, where I wanted to get to, what actions I was going to take, and visualizing how I was going to get there. For September alone, I think I wrote 12 different actions on things that I wanted to change. So it all just depends on how many that you want to change, how many actions you're willing to take on a daily basis. But like I say, it's all about just making those small changes. And at the end of each month, I would score myself on a scale of 1 to 10 on how I've been feeling with things like healthy eating, my relationships, my happiness, my money. And then I'll try to either balance or increase that score the month after. So if my score for that area goes down in that month, I know that I need to then create a plan to increase it the month coming up. I think it's great to reflect on the previous month too, to see what you could have done differently and what you could have changed in that month, and that helps you to improve in the future. I sometimes even make affirmations around what I could improve on and then repeat them to myself over the next month. So when it comes to November, for example, I've already started writing down that I need to take more time out for me. I also want to try and maybe reduce my NHS working hours, that kind of thing. But it's to help me mentally and to help me be able to cope. And I think just by being more organised in certain places, I wouldn't have been half as stressed as I was a couple of weeks ago. So even making those small changes in your life, sharp build-up to bigger things, you can fit much more in a month than you think. I recently read a book, for example, called The Compound Effect. I think it was by Darren Hardy, and in it he talks about the compound effect and how it's similar to a snowball rolling down a hill. It starts off small, but it accumulates in something a lot bigger by the time it gets to the bottom. And one of the examples he gives straight away is if someone came up to you and asked, Would you rather have £1 million right now or 1 penny that doubles every day for a month? Which would you choose? Now, straight away, even I said the million. I mean, who wouldn't, to be fair? But let's look into that. 1 pence a day, okay? So on day 1, you have a penny. Day 2, we've got 2 pence. Day 3, we've got 4 pence, then 8p, then 16p. So by day 10, you would only have £5.12. Still doesn't seem like much, right? But then that doubled over the next 5 days would be £10, £20, £40, £80, £160. So on day 10, you've got over £160 quid, and that jumped up quite quick. So sticking at that rate, by day 20, you would have just over £5,000. By day 25, you would have over £167,000. And by day 30, you would have accrued just over £5 million. That might sound crazy, but have a look for yourself. 1 pence to £5 million just by doubling it in just 30 days. That is the compound effect. A small but simple change that eventually snowballs. You can incorporate this into your daily life in lots of ways. So like I mentioned earlier, even just taking those 5 to 10 minutes out of your day to visualize or meditate. It doesn't seem like a lot, but over a month, that means that you visualize, say, 10 minutes a day. That means you visualize for 5 hours across that month. Or chipping away at a book. So one of my friends, Nikki, she kept telling me that she's got 2 kids, she works a full-time job, and she was saying, "I just don't have the time to read The Secret," the book that I recommended in the first episode. And I told her to just start reading 5 to 10 minutes every day, and by the end of month 1, she'd finished it. She couldn't believe that even in her busy life she'd managed to read a book. Every night she was going to bed at 9 o'clock, and from 9 o'clock till 10 past 9, she was picking up that book and just reading a couple of pages. She was chipping away at it. It all mounts up. It sharp builds up. So just think of any other areas in your life My dog has just kicked my microphone. Sorry about that. Just think of any other areas of your life where you can dedicate 5 minutes a day to have that same effect. If you want something a bit more intense, maybe try an activity for 1 hour a day. So, over the course of the month, that would be 30 hours. Now, that's more than an entire day per month spent learning a new habit. It's mad to think that we sleep on average like 8 hours a night. That's a third of our lives. I'm determined to get up an hour earlier. I know I was saying at the start I've got that bug. I'm going to read The Miracle Morning. I really need to. So yeah, give that a go throughout November and see where you are at the end of November. Then compare that to where you were now. The changes will blow you away, I absolutely promise. And the last thing that I wanted to talk about today is a little show on Netflix called The Goop Lab. I've recently watched this after putting it off for so long, and I don't know how I've never watched it before. It's basically Gwyneth Paltrow sending her staff to try out these different life experiences. Give it a watch. Oh my God, I actually loved it. So one of the episodes, for example, was about Wim Hof. And I've followed Wim for years on Instagram. He's been on TV a few times. People call him the Iceman, and he believes that by exposing yourself to cold temperatures, you can strengthen your body and even fight disease. He has a very specific breathing method that he uses when he gets into the ice water. I've even got it on my Apple Watch. I've got it set up so before I go into the gym, for example, I do this little breathing exercise in my car. And that breathing exercise, it's thought that that breathing method helps people to overcome things that their bodies are going through. So scientists have done some experiments, for example, and they're learning about how his breathing techniques affect the brain and metabolic activity, inflammation, pain, and they're trying to learn if the results are due to the breathing exercises, the meditation, or the cold exposure. He did a trial, I think it was like 2014, and the participants in this study performed the breathing techniques such as consciously hyperventilating and retaining the breath, because that's what you do. He says like fully in, fully out, and you're basically going like that over and over again, but then you hold the last breath. And when you hold the last breath, you can hold your last breath for about 3 to 4 minutes. He's been on This Morning with Phil and Holly before. It's crazy. But these people in the study, they did that, they retained the breath, they meditated, and they were immersed in ice-cold water. And the results showed that the nervous system and the immune system were both influenced by this. And scientists believe that this could be especially useful in treating inflammatory conditions, especially things like autoimmune conditions. People who've learned the Wim Hof Method also had fewer flu-like symptoms. And I'm sure it was 2014, the group that you had, there was like 26 trekkers, they'd used the technique while hiking Mount Kilimanjaro and it was useful in preventing and reversing symptoms that developed. Isn't that amazing? So yeah, one of the episodes, Gwyneth sends her staff off to this really bloody cold place. I can't remember for my life exactly where it was, but they were all made to do yoga in their bras and knickers and in the snow, and then they dive into a lake of ice, and it's all about the mindset. Each episode is only 30 minutes long, and there's only 6 episodes, so you can have the whole series watched in 3 hours. Whack it on while you do some ironing or something. There's even one episode on about how we're all made up of energy, and that really is to do with manifesting and things. They even do a little experiment, which is really cool. So let me know if you've seen it before or what you think of it. And I just want to apologize again for today's episode being a little different. I think lack of time as well as me having my little mental health wobble earlier in the week, it just really knocked me apot with the week. And before I knew it, it was Thursday, and I usually have my podcast all scripted, recorded, and edited by the Wednesday night. So yeah, I'll be back on form next week, don't you worry. If there's anything that you'd like to hear from me on next week's episode, let me know. You can reach me on TikTok and Instagram. My handle is @KanniCrystals, or my personal, which is @MartTweedie. All links are in the show notes. And please, if you haven't already, don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast. Tell all your friends about it, as per usual, and don't forget to visit my website cannycrystals.co.uk, and I'll see you all next week. Bye, guys!

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