028: How to protect your energy

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Hi guys, welcome back to Connie Crystals the podcast and welcome to another week filled with me rambling away. It's Friday, we're one step closer to the this summer. Hopefully this absolutely shite weather does one. And today is also Good Friday here in the UK, which means a few things. One being that this weekend you can stuff your fat faces full of Easter egg chocolate, Mini Eggs, and all that jazz till the cows come home, and the calories won't count. Another being that it's bank holiday this weekend.

Woohoo!

We get a 4-day weekend. Another being that I'm off to see Little Mix tomorrow night. So excited. And the best one of all being that— drum roll please— Today is my first day of being self-employed. That was a pathetic drum roll, wasn't it? Sorry. Today is my first day of being self-employed and being basically the director of Canny Crystals, having that as my job title. So excited. So yeah, yesterday was my last day working for the NHS. Officially I leave at the end of May, but because I had so much annual leave and flexi racked up, yesterday was properly my last day, like, in the office. So from now until the end of May, I'm on annual leave, but I'm officially finished. I don't have to go in anymore. I don't have to do any more work. I am literally like done with the NHS, gone forever, bye-bye. So my laptop's gone back, my iPhone's been handed back. I bought and treated myself to a sexy new computer desk chair which I'm sitting right now. It's leather and it's amazing, I love it. It reclines and oh, it's just lush. I just feel like such like a businesswoman. Anyway, um, I'm just high on life today, sorry. So today is the start of something amazing and I'm just so, so happy that I can go on this like journey with you all by me side. And I'm just so excited to start and put all of me creative energy into this and make it work. I've got so many ideas and literally can't wait to get started with them, get cracking, and just provide to you lot all this new stuff that I've got in my head. Ah, it's gonna be so good. But yeah, I also want to say a big thank you from the bottom of my heart as well for all your gorgeous feedback on last week's episode too, about investing in yourself with personal development. It's been so lush this week to read through all your messages and comments, as well as like the amazing 5-star reviews that were also left this week on the podcast pages on Apple Music and Spotify too. You lot are absolutely incredible, so thank you so, so much. I really do appreciate it. Anyway, let's get cracking with this week's episode. And funnily enough, can I just say, I'd only just wrote the title of this week's episode in mind and sat down with my laptop to write down some pointers and ideas of things that I wanted to cover, and I received a message from Kirstie. Kirstie, you know who you are, and yes, I'm going to read it out. She said, "Hey, hope you're good. Just catching up on a few episodes of the podcast. It got me thinking of something I wouldn't mind hearing a bit more on. It's been a busy month or so. I've just bought a house and moved in, currently 6 months pregnant and about to finish work for maternity, hence the catching up on episodes. I was wondering if you could mention how to maintain a positive mindset and keep healthy habits even when life gets in the way, even when it's positive things that you're dealing with, and how not to be distracted and fall into old negative thought patterns during times like this. So how weird that I'd already sat down with the title of this week's episode as 'How to Maintain a Positive Mindset.' So Kirstie, or as you shall now be known, Psychic Sally, this episode is dedicated especially to you. So where do we begin? I feel like as the weeks go by, it's getting harder and harder to cover things that I haven't already talked about in past episodes. Episodes, so apologies if there's any overlap. But as I've spoke about before, maintaining a positive mindset is crucial and key to manifesting a happy, positive life. For us to vibrate at that certain frequency of gratitude and love, we know now that we have to maintain that positive mindset, and that'll help us ensure that we're on the right track, basically. It does become hard, of course, when life gets in the way. You might remember in a past episode that I talked about how I got sucked into a drama at work with an ex-colleague that I absolutely despised. Hi, Paul. And that kept dragging my energy and my positive mindset down. So I'd say that my number one tap— tip— my number one tap? My number one tip is to focus on you. Don't get too involved in the dramas and the troubles of others. All energy is magnetic. Before you know it, all that negative energy will just be stuck to yours, and that'll be dragging you down along with it. You'll then end up getting more and more involved in the situation, and before you know it, you're at the center of an absolute a shitstorm. It's spiraling all around you in every direction that you look. Your best bet is that when drama starts, to try and use a phrase or an action, some kind of anchor that will deflect the conversation from going any deeper. Of course, you could just turn around and say something like, "Um, can we not talk about this please? I'm trying to be a better person and not let negativity into my day-to-day thoughts." But obviously you might offend the person wanting to blow off some steam. So as soon as you feel the conversation is starting to get a bit too bitchy for your liking, do what I do. If you sense there's drama ahead, just maybe look at your phone quickly and say something like, "Oh, I've just got to quickly ring so-and-so," or, "Oh, I've just got to quickly take this call," and divert yourself away from the situation. You've then bought yourself some time to think about how you're going to defuse the situation and avoid the drama, how you're going to come back into the room and talk about something totally different. You've bought yourself a bit of time, okay? And hopefully by then that person has already ranted to other people that are in the room and you're not part of that conversation, okay? At the end of the day, you need to preserve your energy. Don't worry about other people. You need to preserve your energy. You, you are the one that determines your own reality by the way that you react to the outside world. When something happens to you, you get to choose whether it's a positive or a negative situation and how you react accordingly. Even when you get out of bed on a morning, you've got to start your morning strong. Treat yourself to some love and some self-care. Like lately, when I've been getting up, one of the first things that I do now is I make my bed. Now I know that sounds absolutely crazy and you might be thinking, "Martin, you lazy bastard," but I used to leave my bed till after I'd had a shower. So I'd get up out of bed, just toss the duvet everywhere, go and have a shower, get a wash, then come back and once I was ready and dressed, then I'd make the bed. But now I get up and it's the first thing I do. Unless of course Johnny's still in bed asleep because he's lazy. But I keep thinking to myself, if my bed's made, it's setting me up right for the day ahead. I'm not putting things off, I'm just getting shit done. So people really have to drag themselves out of bed, or like Johnny, like I say, he hits the snooze on his alarm 14 times before he even opens his eyes. Yes, that is a dig if you're listening. All that does is though, it's setting you in a negative state of mind for the entire day. So positive people create that long-term morning ritual and that reinforces how great life is and how happy they are to be alive and to actually have even woke up that morning. Whether you've got 1 minute, 15 minutes, or maybe even an hour, you can start the day in a way that helps you feel relaxed and helps you basically feel ready for the day ahead. While I'm in the shower, I'm repeating mantras and affirmations to myself, and I mean, I must look like a crazy lady. I'm visualising the water washing all me cares away. At 8 AM every morning, I do my EFT tapping routine for the next 10 minutes, and then I'll repeat my affirmations that I've said in the shower at 10:30, 1:30, 4:30, and 7:30. So I repeat them 4 times throughout the day. I've set alarms to remind myself to do them, or they just wouldn't get done. I've even started scheduling my entire day on my iPhone calendar, and I know that's no revelation to some of you, like, for using a diary, and you might be thinking, well, I've used a diary for years, Martin, get on with it. But I'm not talking about appointments or where I need to be or who I have meetings with. I'm talking about scheduling everything I need to do in the day for me. And yes, that even includes cooking, like cooking myself food, eating, going to the gym, that kind of stuff. And I'm really, really bad for it because some days I can work from the minute I wake up. So I might turn me laptop on. This was obviously like NHS style. So I would turn me laptop on if I was working from home. Soon as I got up, because it would take me half an hour to load up. While it's loading up, I've made the bed, gone in the shower, done me affirmations, made myself a cup of coffee, then come and I've sat down at me laptop. And I basically go to the gym at 5 o'clock and I'm doing my best and clearly have no energy. And Adam or Josie will say something like, "What's wrong with you today? You're not performing very well. What have you ate today?" And then it'll just hit me and I'm like, "Oh my God, it's almost 6 o'clock." I've been up now since 8 o'clock this morning and I haven't even so much as had a sip of water. I've had one bit of coffee and that's it because life just gets in the way. And then when I get in from the gym on days like that, they're the ones where I fall off the bandwagon. They're the days when I think, oh well, I haven't ate today, I now have no energy, I'm just going to order a takeaway and I'll start again fresh tomorrow. So scheduling and preparedness, scheduling in your phone calendar or paper diary or whatever it is that you use. It's so, so good for scheduling self-care and things to keep your mood positive throughout the day. Now, I don't just schedule stuff like that. I also schedule things like journaling, meditating, visualization, having something to look forward to after work. So, for journaling, usually I do this at night. I have a notebook on my bedside table. Just before I go to bed, at the moment, I'm writing down how the day has gone, what I was grateful for, I score the day out of 10. I write down what went wrong and why it wasn't a full 10 out of 10. What could have gone better? And then I'll write down some goals for the next day that I'd like to achieve. It'll just be really, really simple goals, like it'll be heading to the gym or making sure I go for a 2-hour walk or something like that if I've got time, as well as going through my calendar to check any appointments that I have coming up. And that helps me to keep on top of things. It helps me to understand where I am in reaching my goals. And when I meditate as well throughout the day, I tend to do the same thing most days. I have an app called Insight Timer. You might want to download it, it's totally free. And that app has like various meditations on there, most of which are free anyway. I think there are a few that you have to pay for, but the app overall is free. I'll put on one of those meditations anyway, and I'll lay down on the couch or the floor with me crystals, and I'll focus on me breathing. I'll usually set a timer for 20-30 minutes just in case I do drift off. And that really helps keep me sane. I know that sounds weird, but it really, really helps me to stay calm and collected. Sometimes the anxiety runs away with me throughout the day, and before I know it, I've gone through the whole day in a flap, and I've not really been productive. But meditating, usually just before me lunch break, helps me to collect me thoughts and re-energize me before heading off into the afternoon. And as I mentioned before, scheduling something to look forward to after work That's also a massive thing for me. It really, really helps me get through the day, especially in those cold, dark, and winter nights, just to have something to focus the day on if I know I'm going to be doing something in the evening. Sometimes it could just be going seeing a friend, sometimes it might just be going for a long walk with the dog, sometimes it might even just be like to schedule a bath and just have some like R&R, some self-reflection, and some you time. But whatever it is that you schedule to do after work, just make sure it's something that you want to do and not just something that you've scheduled to fill in the time or for the benefit of others. Okay, most days after work at the moment, like I say, I head to the gym. I know it's not everybody's cup of tea, but just blowing off some steam and releasing those positive endorphins, it really, really helps me to refocus. It helps us to let go of anything that I want to get out of me system from the day.

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And I'll realign back to my goals and I'll hop right back on that positive mindset train. Exercise is a great way to maintain a good attitude because of all the positive chemicals that it releases into the bloodstream from your body. And studies have always found that between 3 groups who participated in high-intensity interval training, moderate continuous training, and no training at all, those in the second group of that moderate continuous training experienced the greatest drop in depressive symptoms and stress. So if you are looking for exercise to help you feel good, just get that heart rate up, but don't push yourself too hard or you might end up even increasing the overall stress on your body anyway. Last week's episode about self-improvement, that could also help you to maintain your positive mindset. Overload your brain with positivity. Like I said last week, there are millions of amazing books, podcasts, videos, information out there for you to absorb from other people who are inspiring and literally living the lives of their dreams. You can then tap into their positive emotions and their experiences by learning how they think and what they do to create their lives that they want. As I mentioned last week as well, you can do this in the morning, while exercising, whilst cooking or eating, on your commute to and from work, cleaning the house. There's always a time for positivity. And another thing that really helps you to stay in that positive mindset too is to watch your language. And I don't mean be careful you don't drop any F-bombs or anything like that. I just mean little changes in your language. Change the way that you think and how you act, okay? Whenever someone greets you and asks how you're doing, do you answer with like, "Fine," or, "Not too bad"? Think about just what this language is basically communicating to others and yourself. So, I always answer at the minute with, "Great, fantastic, amazing, fab," because not only does this remind me that life really is great, but it also helps the other person kind of shift towards a positive attitude as well. Does that make sense? Also, take some time to look at the way that your inner voice talks to you. Is that language positive or is that language negative as well? If it's overly critical or it's overly negative, it might be time to tap into some mindfulness meditation in order to shift your inner critic to an inner cheerleader instead. But all in all, you need to be wary. You need to be cautious about what you're taking in. Now, what do people call this? A positivity diet, I think it is. So I'm not just talking about language. But what you consume, so negativity from TV shows, films, what you're looking at on social media, the pages that you follow that might be like trolling people or like bullying people, like, but under the radar and you think it's funny, but all in all it's like negativity, do you know what I mean? That kind of thing. If you're feeding yourself with negativity all day long, then it's pretty obvious you're going to be feeling pretty negative as well at the end of the day. A great deal of the media thrives on negativity. Put yourself on a negativity diet, including people, and watch how much easier it is to maintain your positive attitude. You could start hanging out with other like-minded people and positive people. This is something that I've started doing recently in the last few months as well. So seeing my life coach, going to yoga, heading to the gym, it's all been with people that have the same or similar interests to me, and they're going through like the life experiences that I want to put myself through. They've got the bodies that I want to have. Do you know what I mean? Like, they've got the experience that I want to have. They're earning the money that I want to earn. When you hang around with people like that, you also should start showing your appreciation for the people around you. So by appreciating those around you for a job well done, their outfit, their smile, you start to cause a positive chain reaction. You need to stop complaining and focus on all the good that all the others are doing around you, okay? So don't you feel great when you receive a compliment from someone else? Well, if you want to receive more, you've got to start giving out more and watch what happens to the people around you. I know that one particular study that I read about this week found that people who sent out letters of gratitude experienced significant increases in their own happiness scores. So if you don't feel like writing a letter, you could always send a nice text to someone. It doesn't have to be a letter. You could send a text to someone who's recently helped you out, or you can send an email thanking, I don't know, your colleague for always, I don't know, helping pick up the slack around the office. Whatever it is, take some time to show that gratitude. Now, I know that all of what I've said there is pretty standard and nothing out of the ordinary, but it's how you prepare yourself and set yourself up that matters the most here. And that's the best possible way to stop these negative thoughts in their tracks. It's hard to be a constantly positive person. I know that. Like, But negative thoughts are going to bubble up from time to time. They'll be more frequent in the beginning, but they'll decrease as you practice the tips that I've talked about today. So when you start to notice negative thoughts, you can use a pattern interrupter to stop them dead in their tracks. So the idea is to interrupt your current thought pattern and shift to a more positive outlook. One way to do this is to set a visual or an auditory cue It can be something as simple as, I don't know, a bracelet that you wear each day or the sound of birds or the sound of a car passing outside the window. Whenever you see or hear the cue, you use that to shift your thoughts to something positive. So for me, as part of Money Bootcamp with Denise Duffield-Thomas, she talks about using iPhone passwords and your MacBook passwords, your computer, laptop, that kind of thing. Change them to a positive word. Or change them to your money goal. Every time I have to type my password now, that anchors me back to the happiness associated with that word, and it interrupts any negativity that's working its way into my brain. But ultimately, using gratitude is so underrated. So many positive things happen during our day, and we often just ignore them while letting one negative comment or even event ruin our mood. It can help to keep a gratitude journal where you just jot down things that you're grateful for each night or during the day. One of the best things about doing this is that in a few weeks or months or even years when you're feeling low and you've fallen off the wagon in terms of maintaining that positive mindset, you can then look back at your notes, your daily entries in the journal. You can see exactly what it was that you were doing when you were at your peak and it'll really make you realize how far you've come on your spirituality journey. This will help you not to fall back into that negative thought pattern, and it'll get you straight back on that positivity train. If you're listening to this episode, then you probably live with a roof over your head and food in your belly, which is a daily struggle for a large portion of the world. However, we often take these things for granted. We don't realize just how great, we have it, okay? So try refocusing your thoughts towards everything that you do have instead of what you don't. One study recently found out that reflecting on past experiences with a sense of gratitude can lead to increases in both hope and happiness, and that's a great reason to give it a go today. And lastly, remember to always recharge your batteries. One key to adopting and maintaining a positive attitude is taking the time to recharge. This might mean taking a few hours on the weekend to read a positive book or taking a few weeks for a holiday. It'll just help you recharge your motivation in life. If you're not in the position to travel, you could always just have a day out somewhere. Go for a walk in the woods, go for a walk in nature, put your feet in a little stream or river. Like, maybe not at the minute because it is absolutely Baltic freezing outside, but just somewhere where you'd simply switch off from the outside world and spend time in nature doing things that you love.. And just to leave you with this, something that Paul Brunson shared on Instagram this week I thought was quite fitting. He put on his stories, he said, "Filtering life is a superpower. The distractions you don't allow, the trolling comments you don't respond to, the nasty people you don't hang around, the content you don't consume, the opportunities you don't accept, the relationships you don't have. Every time you say no to someone entering your life, you're saying yes to someone else. The same goes for opportunities. Same goes for content. Saying no to the bad creates space for the good to enter. Let me know what you thought of this episode. You can DM me on either Instagram or TikTok. My handles are @cunnycrystals or @marttweedey for my personal. Both links are in the show notes. It was a bit of a short episode today. Well, it's not that short. It's still been 22 minutes, but hey ho. Let me know about anything that you'd like me to talk about next as well. Um, I do feel like I'm repeating myself in a few of these episodes, so please, anything else that you think I could talk about or anything else that you want me to talk about, go ahead, fire a DM. Don't forget to drop me a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever it is that you listen from. I'd really appreciate it. It takes about 20 seconds to do, but it really helps me out. So thank you so much from the bottom of my heart, like I said, if you've done it already. I'm going to be on another podcast in another couple of weeks. So Jude, my life coach, she's actually got me recording an episode next week. It's the first time I've been a podcast guest on another podcast, so I'm really, really excited for this one. Really nervous, but really bloody excited. So I'll share that with you as well in due course once it comes out. I'll also share the details of Jude's, um, like, business and things as well. But I hope you all have a beautiful Easter weekend, whatever it is that you get up to., and I'll see you all for another episode next week. So lots of love to you all. Thank you so, so much for listening. I really do appreciate it. Bye.

While every other channel is fighting for your customer's attention, podcasts are where they've already given it. No one accidentally listens to a podcast for 45 minutes. They choose to be here. They trust the voice in their ears, and when that voice talks about your brand, it doesn't sound like advertising. It sounds like a recommendation from a friend. Acast gives you that trust at scale. Digital precision, host-read authenticity, and performance data that proves it worked. Don't fight for attention. Buy it with Acast. Learn more by visiting acast.com/advertise.