6 Unexpected Lessons I Learned in Lockdown

Hello there, podcast listeners, and welcome back to the Love Life podcast with your old pal, Stephen Hussey. How goes it then? You know, it's no secret. We are, a lot of us are starting to emerge out of lockdown in various phases. Certain parts of ordinary life are switching back on. And in this episode, Matt took time to reflect on some of the things he wants to hold on to, some of the new routines, some of the changes in mindset he's made during this time of being stuck at home, I guess. And just to give you one of mine, which might seem a little weird, but I think during the lockdown period, I have learned to be the value of being more selfish with my priorities. And what I mean by that is I realized because I wasn't under social pressure to say yes to whatever social obligations came my way, you kind of had this perfect, you know, you never had to have that dilemma and just having the extra space from not attending social obligations that maybe actually I'd rather not have bothered with. You know, some obviously give me a lot of pleasure and fulfillment being with family, close friends, you know, important relationships. But just in general, the pressure to be out and just randomly filling up your time doing stuff when that's been crowded out and I've just been able to focus, I've been able to get some extremely high priority things done during this time, you know, particular writing projects and reading certain things that I've really wanted to tackle big reading projects and Just getting certain creative work done that, you know, is not urgent work, but work I've wanted to actually take some time to plunge into and I just realized, wow, it's because I have all this space where I'm not feeling obliged to fill up all my free time with social stuff. I am just being able to purely focus and sometimes it's like, hey, it's Saturday night and I haven't been able to go out and so it's like it's Saturday night and I'm gonna sit and do some writing and just just, you know, write a short story or I'm gonna tackle that big fiction book. I'm gonna watch that classic movie I keep saying I'm gonna watch. And just the extra free time has been incredible for even skills, like wanting to sit and take more time to learn languages and, you know, other little courses I want to do online. So, yeah, that's my lesson that. That being able to. Be unashamedly more selfish with things that are important to me. I want to take that out of lockdown. I want to take that mindset out of lockdown and feel okay. Like sometimes maybe I want to book a Sunday or a Saturday night to just learn a skill I've been wanting to learn and be happy doing that. So yes, let me know what you've learned during lockdown. Something New you've done some change to your routine or mindset. Email at podcast@matthewhussy.com All right, that's me done. Now over to Mr. Matthew Hussy for his lockdown lessons. Check it out.

Some places have opened up. Other places are beginning to open up. And I think this is an important juncture because I've had, like you probably, many realizations during this time. What I'm really afraid of is that those realizations will count for nothing if we just mindlessly go into the next chapter of our lives without finding a way to cement them. So I thought I'd talk about some of my realizations and as I do, it might evoke some of your realizations in a conscious way that you can record so that you don't let them go. Winston Churchill once said, Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and carry on. as if nothing happened. Let's not be those people. Number one, chores are more than bores. I have, I suppose, since an early age, even when I was coming up from nothing, had this entrepreneurial philosophy in my head that the moment you can delegate things so that you can continue to focus on the areas where you're most effective and most capable of growing what you're doing, You should. Whilst that's true, and some people have the tendency to under delegate, they at certain points in their life hold on to too many activities and then they never grow. I think I have fallen into the trap of over delegating to the point where there are things in my life that I wasn't doing anymore that meant I lost connection to my own life. I delegated Cooking to Postmates and Uber Eats, for example, and doing more cooking during this time has made me feel more connected to food, to life. It's added more variety to my life. It's just been a good thing. Not everything should be delegated all the time. Video games. I realized I like playing video games. I got addicted to Zelda: Breath of the Wild during lockdown. I haven't played video games since I was a teenager. I gave it up for like 15 years because I was just like, this is not, there's no utility to this. What's the purpose? What is it serving? But playing them again, I'm just like, why does everything need to serve a purpose? This is silly. Not everything has to have a reason. Sometimes you could just do something because it's fun. We don't want to, I don't want to be one of those people that everything I do has to be contributing towards some goal in my life. I was still doing too many things because of FOMO, fear of missing out. I think that it's interesting that many of us, including myself, have felt far more comfortable slowing down during this time because we know everyone else is too. If we were being forced to slow down, but no one else was, likely we'd feel very insecure about it. I think I would. That suggests to me that there are still too many things that I'm doing, not because I want to, but simply because other people are doing them, and I feel like, oh God, I should. I want to start making a far greater distinction between things that genuinely add value to my life, and things that I'm only doing because other people are going at that pace. I put too much enjoyment off. You know, there are things I've wanted to do for a long time. I wanted to go and travel India for a long time. Didn't do it 'cause I was always, oh, work, the next opportunity, the next thing. And now I can't do it this year. You know, that really should be a metaphor for life. I don't wanna go back to putting off things that I really wanna do for enjoyment because there's another opportunity or there's another work project. I wrote down, Miracle days are overrated. And what I meant by that is during quarantine, I got done a project that I'd been putting off that was a writing project that I decided to write 500 words a day and in a month and a half I got it done. This was something I'd been putting off for a long time. It got done because of consistency, not because of a miracle day. A miracle day would be me saying, I'm gonna write 10,000 words in a day and get this thing done. It's not realistic. I rarely ever have miracle days but I can reliably achieve things in my life in a relaxed way if I just focus on consistency. Lastly, I wrote down I'm still too hard on myself. For all I coach people on confidence and kindness and self-compassion, I still spend too much time beating myself up for not living up to an ideal, a standard that I've set for myself and the people around me have to spend way too many calories telling me constantly to not be so hard on myself. So I still have a lot to learn there. And I realize that I cannot take for granted that I am being kind and compassionate towards myself. It's something that I have to practice daily in everything that I do. So those are some things that I learned. What did you learn during this time? We have to hold on to those things. It's very, very important. Or whatever realizations and epiphanies we've had, I promise you, we will lose them. They will become not even a memory, a lesson we learned that we simply forgot. By the way, for those of you who want to continue your learning with me, and especially for those of you who are looking at this year and saying, I need to reevaluate what's important to me right now, what my values are and where I'm going, and I want to process for that, I have my at home retreat that many people are trying right now, and they're going through the entire retreat experience that I normally do live, but from home and getting tremendous results with it. I think this is an incredible year for growth and for those of you that want to invest in your growth, this is an amazing way to do it. It's the most immersive, deep process I have for doing that. So I'll leave a link here. Check it out. And as always, I will see you in next week's video.

And those of you who want to grab that link Matt just mentioned, it's MH Retreat at Home. So if you want to start transforming your core confidence, rewrite the script for your life today, go to MH retreat at home and you can start the process to getting your copy of the program. Okay, that is it. We are out for the day. Let us know again what you've learned during lockdown. I'd love to hear your lessons. You can do one, you can do three, you can do a top five email podcast@matthewhussie.com and if I get some good ones, I'd love to read some on the next episode, so yeah, please send them in. Alrighty. That is it for today from the Brothers Hussie. Thank you so much as ever. Go have yourself a cracking little old day. I'm gonna go and have a sit out in the sun because we've got apparently England is hotter than the Bahamas today, which I don't know what the Bahamas is like, but I'm gonna drink it in while I can. So I'll see you soon. Bye-bye.

I see the blog sites. Ookie got a new wife. Shorty got a new boo. Yeah, love.

Beautiful.

I'm looking for love.