Healthy N Wealthy N Wise

Depression: My Top 3 Ways How I Manage or Stave Off Depression – powered by Happy Scribe

Hey, hey, everyone, happy Monday. Happy Monday. Hope you guys are doing well. It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve done a Monday podcast. I do have had a big week in podcasting last week. So I took the week off from my monologue and I was actually inspired by a coach call that I had last week, just talking about the cycle of life and what is happening in the world and how it’s really impacted a lot of people’s mental health.

And I, by all means, am not immune to mental health obstacles, challenges, essentially having the blues or some might call it depression. I’m just, first of all, want it before I start this topic, I want to say, number one, I’m not a therapist. I’m not a doctor. What I’m sharing with you guys today is meant to be for salespeople, entrepreneurs, solo partners that are out there and just some days are challenging.

Last week was very heavy because everything going on in the world just a lot a lot of stuff happening in the news and big court case ended and there was just a lot and I was super fortunate that just before that week, I had just come back from a three day solo retreat, like the first time I’ve done that, where there is no agenda, no business, no conference, no funeral, no family obligations, and no no kids and husband.

It was just me and I cried. I released a lot of emotions. I really got to rest and reflect. And when I came back and just was kind of hit back into the thick of it. Right. Because you if you can’t avoid paying your bills most of the time, right. You you’ve got to keep going through this thing called life and business sales. Income bills. Family means home schooling. You know, it just piles up after a while.

Right. And if you know a little bit of my history, I struggled with some pretty nasty depression, anxiety back in the Great Recession when I went through a journey of homelessness. And it was really, really at a place of loss. And I was grieving a lot of different things at that time. A friend who had committed suicide, being homeless, having my bank accounts cleaned out, all the things the silver lining from that was I learned and was equipped with a lot of tools, a lot of amazing tools.

I understood how important nutrition was, how important meditation was, how important gut health was. Hence the name healthy and wealthy and wise wasn’t just a Oh, I think I’ll call my podcast healthy and wealthy wise. There’s a big, big, big, deep story there. So today I wanted to after a call that I had with a coach last week who is guiding me through not quote unquote strategies, tactics and how tos, but just really having that honest conversation of what do you do when you feel down?

What do you feel when you don’t feel fulfilled, when you’re depressed, when when things are just kind of too much for you to take in? How do you keep moving forward? So I will tell you, I’m going to give you three tips today. And it’s it’s nothing to do with food nutrition. Even though I do want to impress upon you, it’s really important to do your best right to eat clean most of the time. I always say the 80 20 rule, 80 percent of the time you’re you’re you’re eating clean.

Twenty percent can be naughty fun, whatever. Obviously, I’m a big fan of meditation. I’ve had meditation guests on my podcast. All of those things are important. Sleep. Oh my gosh. If you don’t get good sleep, anybody who’s had a newborn child understands what I’m talking about. They they use sleep deprivation as torture with hostages and third world countries. So it’s really, really important. But today I want to talk about things that, in my experience and opinion, are even slightly more important than any of those other things that I said before.

And as always, if you guys are tuning in, please don’t forget to say where you’re tuning in from, if you’re inside of my health and welfare. And why is Facebook community feel free to give a shout out where you’re tuning in from. Hash tag, live, hash tag, replay. So I want to go ahead and I’m not going to take too much time. But I want to share with you my three key takeaways from this past year through pandemic, through grief loss, through pivoting, through home, going through.

Can I just can anyone else help anyone else relate to anyone out there feel like sometimes your head is spinning and you don’t know where to begin and maybe you felt kind of doubt or you don’t have to be diagnosed with clinical depression to feel sad. Right. And I again, being not a therapist, not a doctor, but having been working with a therapist the past year and been working on talking with friends the past year and even better communication with my spouse, all of those things have helped.

And and what I learned through trial and error, through failing forward, were these three key things. So go ahead and write this down. If you happen to be tuning in live and you you want to comment below with a question, because I work with my clients on this. Again, not being a doctor or anything, but having lived it, having experienced years and that’s plural of depression, postpartum and then just standard life. I’ve studied it.

You know, mental health is is actually one of my top why is my passion that drives me, I want to give millions of dollars away to mental health research and create my own organization at some point where we are getting to the root cause of this stuff. So tip number one for me was writing out my vision or reviewing what I have been coached to write out from my coach, writing out my vision or my perfect day, getting in alignment with my heart, getting into alignment with my hopes and dreams and my beingness, being in alignment with why am I here?

To me, that is fuel rocket fuel. It’s it’s just as powerful, if not more so. And again, this is my experience and where I’m at today. More powerful than your workout, more powerful than than eating clean. It’s it’s it’s aligning your head and your heart minds because you have a you have a brain in your heart and it’s really allowing yourself to I don’t have a pen right in front of me. Take pen to paper. And be writing out, rewiring the neural pathways in your brain, saying this is what I want.

This is why I’m here. I actually have an exercise on my blog and I’ve talked about it before, but it’s been a while. And I know that a lot of people are going through a lot right now. And so I just want to remind you guys that this this is a really, really powerful exercise. Don’t take it for granted. I was actually just on my trip last week to Cabo or a week and a half ago now. I was reflecting on how far I had come since I first wrote my perfect day.

And I was blown away by what I had accomplished in just six months of writing out my perfect day and starting to live to be it by writing it and every day connecting with it either just even reading it out loud or tweaking it, refining it.

Over the course of time, I was really able to get it into my being, get it into my being. So if you haven’t done that exercise, I would encourage you. And I’m going to after this. I’m going I’m actually dropping this in the show notes. But if you all you have to do is go to Loess, coffee, dot com forward, slash writing, hyphen your hyphen, perfect hyphen day dot com. If you can go there and look for that, there’s a video that supports it and actually teaches you the science behind it and the why and and all of the things.

So, again, that’s tip number one of how to either stave off, prevent. Or manage. You can you can have like I have, there’s times, especially after loved ones past, you have this loss of not seeing and hugging people in person, all of those things. Right. There’s there’s there’s a lot of reasons to have an underlying feeling of of loss and grief. Also, you can call it depression, the blues feeling sad, feeling like you don’t have a pick in your get up or you know what I mean.

So first of all, even even acknowledging that it’s normal and then being able to journal about it and dream and look for your future. Right. Just really also sitting with it, that’s going to be actually part of tip number three. So I don’t want to give it all away, but by being able to write that perfect day every day, it gives you hope, gives you direction, and it’s rewiring your your subconscious mind. So tip number two is having a routine every day, having what I call the non negotiables like first thing in the morning.

You’ve you’ve read the book American Morning. That’s great. But sometimes it might even be too much. I say go off very, very, very, very simple things like getting your lemon water. For me, it’s lemon water, apple cider vinegar, deep breathing exercises and gratitude exercises. I also even have a candle ritual that I liked. And what are those non negotiables? And then as part of my morning routine, as human beings, we do crave structure structure to start your day.

Even even if all hell breaks loose by the afternoon or by noon, you want to be able to get your most valuable stuff done at your highest and best productive time. And for a lot of us, it’s in the morning. If it’s in the evening for you. Great. I was one of those people who could never work out really well in the evening. I could blow it off if I didn’t have accountability partners. I got it done first thing in the morning.

So it was done. I didn’t have to think about it and I felt really, really good. So that’s what I do now in the morning is it’s already noon after twelve thirty here. Guess what? I got all of my routine income producing activities done for the day. So now anything extra is gravy on the top of the mashed potatoes, right? I got the the appetizer in which was my negotiables, my morning rituals. Then the main course for me is my income producing activities.

That’s my routine on other days. This is Monday, but Tuesday through Friday, I also have my coaching calls with my clients because I’m at my highest and best energy. I also have my coach call with my coach again. I’m at my highest and best energy. So these Monday through Friday routines and even weekend routines have been so life giving and for me, even life life saving and income producing, because when I’m showing up at my highest and best getting things done in a routine fashion, you’ll see here I have two things that I’ll share with you autobiographically.

This is my daily compass. You can barely see it. But on the top there, it talks about what am I committed to today based on my values, my mission, my vision. I also review my perfect day, OK, and what are my big rocks for the day? And then I write down my time schedule and what am I committed to myself, to my family, to my clients, all of those kinds of things. And I’m not sure why.

Guys, I apologize. I’m looking really blurry all of a sudden. I don’t know what happened to my Web cam, but if you’re listening to this on iTunes, I probably look better. They’re so awesome. Adiele Wonderful. Yeah, it’s it’s a good thing. It’s a really, really good thing to get that routine. And if you don’t already have it, go to Daily Compass and Guide Dotcom. That’s where you’ll get my time blocking also routine tool, mental health tool, I might call it.

Because if you wake up and you don’t really know, I have some rebels out there. I know where you are. I know who you are. This is what I don’t like routine. I don’t want to commit to that. And I’m just saying, if it works for you to. You kind of fly by the seat of your pants and you feel good and you’re happy and you’re your health and your wealth and everything is intact, great.

I just know as as a mom, as a wife, as a business owner, as a leader of leaders, I have a lot of head stuff. I have a lot of things, a lot of shiny objects and distractions.

If I don’t write this down and review it and do a midday checkup from the neck up, as soon as I’m done with this, I’m going to reward myself with reading an amazing book and going for a short walk. And then I’m back into my next meetings. But I also reflected on what I did. I also wrote down all of the people that I called, all the people that I messaged, all of the follow ups and the leads. I got all of that done this morning already.

So routine again, tip number two is to have a structured routine and written down daily. So you’re already if you’re already writing out your perfect day, then, of course, having that written out routine, as Jim said, would you begin your day when it’s finished on paper, it gives gives a dopamine hit. It gives a serotonin boost oftentimes because, again, you’re focusing on the good stuff, the good stuff that you want to focus on and ignore the morning news, ignore if you have to ignore Facebook in the morning.

I haven’t even looked at my Facebook notifications. But once and then I caught myself and I said, nope, my reward later on is to look at my Facebook notifications and get back to that tip number three, last one. And the staving off preventing or managing, if you’re in that space to number three is probably could be one of the hardest ones.

However, if you do tip number one, that’s why I put them in the order that I did. And you do tip number two, tip number three kind of naturally flows to number three is setting healthy boundaries, setting healthy boundaries. Part of that is also learning how to say no. I’ve been recalibrating for the past six months, guys. When I wrote my first perfect day, it lifted my spirits. I’ll be honest, my mental health was going into the tank, the gutter last November because it just hit me all at once.

Pandemic Fatigue Zoome fatigue. We’re too much saying yes to too many people and I recognize that. And I was exhausted. And part of that exhaustion was the sadness, the depression and the silver lining. With that, as my coach said, OK, here we go. That’s right. Your perfect day. Let’s read the surrender experiment. Let’s work on that. Without your mental health, it doesn’t matter how much money you have, right? And I was making really good money already and I was still going down.

Mentally, right? And so ultimately, for the last six months, I’ve been unpacking, getting rid of things, saying no to things, even even the first week in April, I still got rid of two things that weren’t serving me, that were on my schedule. Still, after six months of getting rid of other stuff and other obligations and things that I said yes to when I wasn’t really, really, really figuring it out. Right. Even if it’s not easy to do this, because when people come to me and say, hey, Lois, I want to be with you, I want a joint venture, let’s do a webinar, let’s do a thing, I get excited, right.

Because it feels good to be appreciated and respected and in some ways not needed isn’t the right word, but but wanted to be a part of something. I’ve had to say no to some things that weren’t serving me. I had to say no to a global to global groups that were taking up early morning time. Early morning, I were talking five thirty a.m. and eight a.m. and it was it was taking me out of my morning routine of my income producing activities, and it just wasn’t serving me any longer.

So I felt even just in the past two weeks, so much lighter, so much even though last week was a really heavy week energetically because I’m an empath, it was it was just easier to still say no to certain things and to still honor my boundaries that I had set. So that’s again, the final tip. I don’t know if anybody has any questions before I wrap it up, but really, again, in review three tips that I’ve been working on the last six months myself to come out of a funk to prevent and or release myself of the blues, because it’s really all in the mind.

If you read the surrender experiment, if you start writing your perfect day, if you watch the video, if you go to my link, lowest copy dot com forward slash writing fan your hyphen, perfect day. You’re going to you’re going to start feeling transformed. To be honest with you, it’s better than signing up for another course that you’re not going to apply. Spending money on some other tool or thing you don’t have to write in your perfect day is worth millions of dollars.

Being in routine is worth millions of dollars. And then, of course, finally having healthy boundaries, learning to say no because you’re clear on what you want, which helps you be clear on what you don’t want. Your routine and structure tells you if you have time for that other thing that might be presented to you. And at the end of the day, learning to say no. Oh, it feels so, so good. So, so good.

And sometimes it’s not about even know. It’s just not yet. Hey, I’d love to partner with you for a webinar or that thing or whatever.

Give me 90 days. Give me ninety days. Because right now I’m laser beam focused on that one thing. And I will tell you, I think I’ve actually started losing weight because I took so much of these other things off of my business plate that my body is like, oh great, we don’t need to hold onto that anymore. Right. So please comment below if you have any questions, if there’s anything that stood out to you, that means a lot.

I’d love to hear from you. And of course, if you are having challenges, please reach out to a friend, reach out to someone that knows you to trust you. If you’re like me, I’m grateful for my therapist and I’ve really been working with her for several months now also. So please find a professional. What I wanted to share with you today is near and dear to my heart, but I also always believe in seeking help from those who are strange.

And last but not least, I do want to give you guys a reminder. If you’re hearing this on Monday or even as late as Tuesday morning, I do have a master class invite for you coaches out there who are looking to build a seven figure business in the next two years. And that might almost be tip number four, be a part of a tribe or a one coaching program where you have one voice, one program, one course to follow focuses is key.

And I see a lot of people struggling out there because they’re listening to too many coaches, too many podcasts, too many things. So, of course, if I can be of service or if you want to check out this masterclass that I’m partnering with two seven figure income mentors in the coaching space. I would love to see you there till next time, guys, here’s to your best health, your best health and your best wisdom. And if you felt you found some value in here today, please hit the share button.

Sure. This in a private message. Share this on your timeline. Sure. Those in your community, if you’re seeing this on YouTube. Tweet, tweet the YouTube channel link. Because you never know who’s hurting out there. You never know who’s struggling right now.

That could maybe identify with this message today because mental health can be a stigma. It can be a topic that most people don’t want to talk about. And yet we’re here to get through this thing called life together, as Prince would say. So have a great day. And until next time, here’s to your best health, your best and your best wisdom. Bye bye for now.