How Healthy Habits Transformed My Life & Business This Year

I personally believe a lot of these healthy habit videos for entrepreneurs is a load of crock. In fact, I know so because I did some of these videos because I knew they were trendy and they would get clicked on. But while I was talking about these healthy habits that I was doing, I was struggling in real time. But in the last six months, probably because 2023 was a really rough year for me in the business and things going on personal wise, at the end of the year I decided something had to change, action had to be taken. And to share with you the things that I've been doing consistently that are manageable for a business owner running a business with small kids, what has been manageable to help me improve my mental health habits and also my physical health habits. And what I'm going to share with you I am actually doing. Not just because it's trendy and I've been doing it now consistently for 90 days. I think the first thing that I want to share with you is what has not worked for me and what has made me struggle in the past. Morning routines. Let's talk about them. When I started in this online space Back in 2015, between 2015 to even 2019, morning routines were all the rage. There were so many bro marketers talking about the importance of a morning routine and why you had to do 75 things before the butt crack of dawn if you wanted to be successful. And if you weren't doing these essential morning routine things, basically you were a failure. Well, during that time in my life, not only did I have a 2 year old, but I also had a newborn and who was the person majority getting up in the middle of the night? Now I gave my husband all the props. He definitely helped and took his fair share. But who are the kids going to want to go to when they get up at night? Me. Who are the kids going to want to go to when they wake up in the morning? Me. Do you think a mother of small children under the age of three are going to realistically have time to do this massive morning routine? Absolutely not. In fact, if you're a mom with 1, 2, 3, 4, even any children under the age of five, you know what it's like to just survive those mornings. In fact, I'm still surviving the mornings just trying to get get them off to the bus. At some point I realized I am not going to conform into this morning routine that they are preaching, but I am still successful. So doing this does not equal this. And if I don't do this, I'm not going to get this. You can still be successful without a morning routine and I'm going to let you in on a little secret. You can still be successful without making your bed in the morning because I don't now my kids are now seven and nine and I am able to do more things in the morning because they most times sleep through the night and when they get up in the morning they can pretty much entertain themselves. They can turn on the TV the order one does make her own breakfast. So I can start to formulate a morning routine. Now I don't do a morning routine just because I've been told to do a morning routine. I'm doing what I'm doing in the morning. I'm going to share this here with you in a moment because it's when I have time and the biggest thing that I do in the morning is walk. Now I'm not forcing myself to get up at 5am Again, I don't think it's critical for you to be successful and get up at 5am I think you need to find the time that works for you. For me the alarm goes off at 5:30 and I'm trying to get on the treadmill by around 6 o' clock and if I don't do this walk and it's usually usually 30 to 45 minutes so I can get about three miles in if I don't do it first thing in the morning, most likely it's not going to happen the rest of the day because I am just too tired and the kids come home and life happens. That is why I get up in the morning to do this. It is not because I'm told to, but I know it is not going to happen. I've also to reward myself to get out of bed realized that I can't make my morning routine be some hard workout or something that I hate doing. If I want to get out of bed at 5:30 in the morning I've got to enjoy what it is that I'm doing. So to reward myself to get up and walk I get to watch Netflix. I get to watch my trashy TV from the night before that I dvr. If they still say dvr maybe it's record, but that is what gets me up in the morning knowing that first of all it's just a walk which is totally doable and I get to watch something fun on TV with that. It has been a big change overall exercise for me. I am an athlete. I grew up playing all types of sports and for me a workout was hardcore sweating, exhausted. But as I continue to look into my health and figure out what was going on, why I was feeling the way I was feeling, I realized my cortisone levels were through the roof. In addition to the stress of having a business, I've got kids and I just couldn't put my body through the stress of a stressful workout. I'm also reaching an age where we start to think about hormone changes in women. And so for me to do these hard, strenuous workouts, it was not helping my body. In fact, it was causing more cortisone to pop through or push through my body. And so that is why I kind of took off the hiit workouts and the running and now just focus on walking. And I love it. And I've lost weight walking in addition to walking. Once I got that step in my morning routine down and again, everybody's morning routine needs to work for them. If you have small kids, your morning routine is probably going to be very minimal. If you love mornings, your routine may be even longer. But for me, I had to get that habit down first. Walking from there, I had to shower. And I know that seems kind of weird, but again, if you're a mom, you went some days without showering. Let's be real, you threw on the clothes from the day before, whatever leggings were on the floor just to get up and get going with the kids. But now that I'm walking, I now take a shower every morning. But before I do, something that I've incorporated into my physical health is dry brushing. And I follow Lauren Bostick from the Skinny Confidential, and I love all of the products she puts out. So in addition to dry brushing, which I've added to my morning routine every single morning before I get in the shower, I also started using her sculpting thing about two to three times a week after the shower. I'm using these to just help me work on the hormones in my body, help me feel better. And then I love the the ice roller. So to recap, I walk for about three miles, I come upstairs, I do my dry brush, I take a shower and then body sculpt two to three times a week. And then the face sculptor, which are like these two little balls that I roll on my face. From there I am still because the kids can usually entertain themselves. And it's about 7 o' clock now. I can then do kind of my skin care and it's super easy. I just put some vitamin C on my face, I put some oil under my eyes and moisturizer and generally I'm good to go. I will talk about getting dressed here because there's a lot of ch on Instagram and whatnot on getting dressed for the job that you want. And I tried getting fully dressed, full on makeup, jeans, like I was going to an office and I'm going to be sitting in this office all day. I'm going to see my husband passing him up and down the steps because he works from home as well. And for me, if I can feel good and I look presentable to myself, I'm going to wear leggings. I'm just going to do it. It is my job. I am the boss of my business. I do think it's fun to, you know, get dressed occasionally, but I also want to be comfortable. So I will get out of my pajamas at least. And I try to put an outfit together with leggings and make it look presentable. Ish. But listen, I am not going out putting on slacks or jeans to make myself feel presentable. I feel presentable in leggings. Once I leave my bedroom there it becomes mom time. And that means making lunches, making breakfasts, getting the teeth brushed, getting clothes on and getting them out the door before the bus comes. And I'm going to tell you, some mornings are rougher than others. Now that you know how my morning routine kind of looks and how I've taken the morning routine for myself, I want to break down the the physical habits that I started doing in the last 90 days I feel have made a difference, and then share with you the mental health habits. Now, you heard me talk about walking, and that is one of the first physical habits that I definitely try to stay on track with. I try to get 11,000 steps in at least six times a day. That usually means 30 minutes walking, which gives me about two miles. If I do 45 minutes in the morning, that gets me about three when I'm off those steps. I do have a walking pad in my office that I will walk for an additional 30 to 40 minutes to get those steps in. I do believe just adding this consistency and getting those steps in has been a big game changer to my mood and my energy. Usually when the kids will come home from school, I'm just dead on the couch exhausted. And I can see slowly this year how my energy has increased. How I am like, okay, let's do this now or let's do that. Instead of all of us just crashing on the couch and kind of just zombie ing out watching tv the second habit that I did for my physical health is I hired a health coach. I've been saying for years, okay, I'm going to lose weight, I'm going to lose weight, I'm going to lose weight. And for me, I get into a cycle where I go hard and I don't see the results that I want because I'm not doing everything right. And then I slip back to what I was doing before. And so going into 2024, I knew I wanted to make a change, so I had to invest in somebody to help me do this. So I took the time in December to research some health coaches and speak to them as well and found one that I personally believe would work best for me. Could I be doing this health journey on my own? 100%. Does it make it easier or do I actually do these things because I know someone is watching me? Absolutely. Would I be tracking what I'm eating and making sure I'm eating the right serving size or portion size because she's watching? Absolutely. It also helps me when I'm feeling like, good grief, I did all of this this week and I didn't see a change. I'm totally failing at this. And then she points out from a bird's eye view, look, you're doing this and you're doing that, and we can't expect things to happen overnight. You're going to keep going. And she gives me that extra motivation to say, oh, absolutely, you're right. I'm going to continue to just stay consistent as possible, because my biggest problem when comes to my health habits is layering too many on, like, exercise, like walking, cutting calories, hardcore workouts, and then I just get tired and I don't do any of them. So she's just helping me get consistent with a few things first before we move to the next. I guess I can throw this other third habit in physical health as well. And it's been booking monthly massages. Now, the story behind this is usually after every launch I had, I said, I'm going to celebrate and get myself a massage. But my brain, my enneagram3 brain, just moved on to the next thing. I got to keep going, I got to keep going, and I didn't take the time time to rest and do something for myself. I booked my first massage back in November of 2023, and that was the first one that I had in 18 months. So what I did after that massage, I just went into the system and I booked out the next six months of massages so that I Knew one I was going to have to take off on a Friday because if you watched last week's video where I talk about planning my 90 days and how I've been inserting actual plants on Friday so I don't tend to slide up here and do work. Massage is one of those Friday activities. And because this is important to me, I make sure I incorporate it into my budget because I know getting a massage is not cheap for most of us. But I tied this in when we were doing our yearly budgeting plan and mapping out what we are going to spend and save this year with my husband. A massage each month was a must and I was going to make it happen where I could. Now I want to talk about the bigger changes that I made because my physical health wasn't totally off the rails. I worked out sporadically, I never really eat that terribly. But I did need to take some effort with my mental health. Now I mentioned my morning routine, that's been huge for my mental health. But when we're looking specifically at big changes that I made, my first mental health habit that I started was not coming to work or into the office right after the kids got on the school bus. What I was doing was go, go, go go, take mom hat off, put CEO hat on and not giving my time to adjust our transition. And this just kept basically my cortisone running through me, pumping, right, doing the mom stuff to get the kids out the door. Then I'm sitting down here getting to my employees and my clients and I didn't have a minute minute to just pull myself together. Now I block out 45 minutes. So while I get the kids on the bus around 8, I don't start or come up to my office until 9 o' clock every morning. What do I do during that time in between? Well, that's my mental health habit number two and it's been sound therapy. Now this is something that was recommended and is monitored by my mental health coach, Helen. She introduced this to me a few months ago when I was talking about the changes I wanted to make and improvements I wanted to make myself mentally and personal, growth wise. And she introduced this program for sound therapy. So again, the kids get on the bus, I grab my coffee, I sit on my couch, sometimes the fireplace is going and I do 10 minutes of my sound therapy. This therapy is supposed to help you generate new neuro pathways in your brain because when you're in a state of heightened stress, your neuro pathways will default back to the ones that they always have. And I could be totally wrong in explaining this. But if you want to improve on the way you react and things things and the way you respond to things, you've got to help your brain generate new neuropaths. And so the sound therapy helps you do that. And I will say I feel like I have been less reactive even. Like you know how your husband just like wants to come up to you and like bother you while you're packing lunches or you're doing something and you just want to snap. I do find that I'm less snappy. I also have found like business wise things, things that used to get me wound up and stressed out and overwhelmed don't as much. I'm able to take a step back, think through what is going on and then take action, not just make a decision and go forward. And my husband thanks the sound therapy Third mental health habit I've incorporated is reading. Now I've been saying I wanted to read more books for years and I don't. I mean again, I had small children and where was their time to read? So now I'm making time to read. Just like I make time to film YouTube videos, I make time to read. So after my sound therapy in the morning I spend about 20 minutes reading a nonfiction book book. Generally this will be a business book. When the kids come home immediately they wash their hands, get a snack and we sit down and reread for 15 to 20 minutes. Again they grab their book. I grab my book. So I'm getting about 20 and then another 15 of reading a business book every single day. And then to help me sleep at night, I have worked on putting my phone down by nine o' clock and instead of doing the doom scroll, picking up a fiction book and reading for about 30 minutes minutes to help me go to sleep. So this is adding up now to almost an hour of reading a day coming from somebody who probably hasn't read a book in about two years. And I'm not done with the books I'm reading. Let me explain. I've also been adding audiobooks to my repertoire as well. And what I'm liking with audiobooks is I'm listening to more memoirs. So I'm going to share with you the list of books that I have read just in February alone. But I like listening to Paris Hilton's memoir and also Ali Webb of Dry Bar. I'm liking to listen to memoirs of the storytelling and I'm wanting to do better storytelling and listening to them share their story is what's been giving me ideas and insight on how I can tell better stories. But I'm listening to these audiobooks now when I'm on the treadmill, I'm enjoying that instead of watching my trashy TV when I'm putting my skin care on while I'm packing lunches. Anytime that I have a moment, instead of scrolling through TikTok or Instagram, I am now listening to audiobooks. I've actually been keeping a list and I am coding it as to what month I read it in January, Snowflake, February Hearts. And then what it was. Was it a book with a book emoji or headphones as an audiobook? So just in February alone I have read Book wise, hooked and $100 million leads. Those were nonfiction, sorry. And then the fiction books that I read were the Lost Summers of Newport so Good and the It Girl. Now as far as audiobooks that I have been listening to, just in the month of February I listened to Glossy, the Story behind Glossier, the Richest man in Babylon, Like I said, the Messy Truth with Ali Webb, Paris Hilton, the Memoir and on with Eliza Licht. Again, it's just getting me off my screen, so to speak, and reading more books and learning more storytelling techniques. I will say doing these changes has affected my business. It has allowed me to have more mental space to get creative again, think about creative solutions and be excited and motivated in my business. Because at the end of 2023, I will say I was struggling. I didn't know if I wanted to keep doing my business. It was just a really hard time time. It's given me the mental space as well and the physical ability because I'm not so tired and overwhelmed and stressed out to show up more, be more intentional with that showing up and make better connections here on YouTube with you guys and with my clients and my coaching program. It's also allowing me to be more confident in myself and showing up as me. I have been having a hard time showing up on Instagram. It's been a mindset thing that everything needs to be perfect. But because of the sound therapy and the walking and just taking care of myself, getting in a better mental health space, I'm like, why am I doing this? Just be me. It's listening to these women's stories as well and hearing them how they needed to be them is giving me the confidence too and allowing me to push the imposter syndrome down to again, just show up as me. And I'm not gonna lie, there are still days when it all freaking sucks. Business is sucking, the kids are driving me nuts and I just want to hide under my bed. And I want you to know we are all feeling that. Every business owner experiences that. And I just don't want you to feel like you're alone in feeling because not enough people talk about it. And it's my goal moving forward to be as transparent as I can about the roller coaster that is business ownership, balancing that and being a mom as well. And if you're like Trina, there's no way I have time to do this. I get it. If you have the small children at home or you're taking care of parents or your healthcare provider for somebody, I totally get it. But I do think maybe you want to think how can I incorporate something to take care of me because I didn't put the oxygen mask on myself early enough until I got to kind of a rock bottom last year. And doing this, I think me having to hit rock bottom realized these healthy habits I had to tie in are going to be critical to not only my success but my survival. Are there any specific healthy habits, mental health or physical health that you do every day that really helps you? I would love for you to share those habits so we can all learn from them down in the comments. I I'm loving new ideas as well as I habit stack as I get good at the ones that I'm doing and I get consistent adding more. And I will say a lot of the stress relief and having the time to do all of this is because I got really clear on what I needed to focus on in my business, which allowed me to alleviate so much extra work that I didn't need to be doing in my business. I basically just have three main things that I need to do each week in my business to get to the goals I set. If you're wondering out how did I figure out those goals, how did I figure out the metrics and then how did I put this all into action so I had the time to take care of myself? Watch this series that's going to be on your screen right now where I walk you through every step of the way from figuring out the goal, how to set the goal, how to track the metrics to make it happen, and then how to plan to actually do it all. I hope you enjoy that playlist.