Welcome back everybody. It is Becky Williams and I am super excited about today's video. We're going to be talking about something that's very important, something that is talked about a lot, but I think because the subject is talked about so much, it's easy to believe that it's overused or that, you know, you know, everything could possibly, all the information that you could possibly have that you already, you already know about this. And the topic this week is about Mindset. 

So throughout the Sprightly Soul program, we have given you workouts, we've given you recipes, we've given you affirmations that are going to guide you and help you on your health journey. But today I really want to talk about something that's just as powerful that you can do for your whole body, for total body health. Okay. Cause that's really what we're striving for. We all know people that can, you know, look really healthy on the outside, but on the inside, they're just, they're negative and they're, they're unhappy and their habits are really bad.

And so it's all about total mind, body health for this week's topic. And like I said, it has become a little bit of a buzzword or a lot of a buzzword around health and fitness circles today. But I think a lot of times when we think mindset, we just think, okay, silent white room, you know, you have some succulent plants on the side and it's complete quiet and you're just sitting focused and your mind is empty.

Where mindfulness really is like at the core of everything that we're doing. And whenever I was going through health coaching school, one of the phrases that really stuck out to me and that has lasted is that tiny hinges turn big doors. So if you think about it, even in these big, gorgeous cathedrals, you have these massive heavy doors, that are going to take this heavy machinery to put into place. But if you look, the hinges compared to the size, you know, of a door is just like for a house, it's very small.

And so I think a lot of times when it comes to our health, we feel like we need a brand new fitness program. We need a whole eating plan. We need the shopping list. We need all these different things. We need this, you know, big 21 day reset to be able to get our health on track. And the truth is, it's just those little tiny things that you do each day. They're going to turn those hinges or they're going to turn the door. The truth is that if we do not get our mindset right, everything else just becomes harder. And so all of this becomes about punishment for our bodies instead of enrichment, instead of that whole health mindset.

It's basically, you're going to feel like you're swimming against the current in your health journey. This a lot of times in the groups, I see people who post and say, Oh, I fell off the wagon or I was so bad and I made these choices. And, you know, I've talked about it before, as far as with food, that it's food is not good or bad food. It's just, it's measured by nourishment. So we're given it so much power. But I think whenever our mindset is all over the place and we're not in unity with what we're thinking, then it's very easy. Like I said, to feel like you're swimming against the current.

And so I want to talk to you about two separate Stanford psychology experiments. I love these things. Maybe I'm a nerd, but maybe you are too. So you'll, you'll geek out with me. But the first study was done on hotel attendance. So if you have never worked in that industry, which I have not, it's a lot of work. You're lifting, you're bending, you're twisting. There's thousands and thousands of steps per day. You know, you're going up and down the stairs, all kinds of stuff. It's not easy. But the women that these psychologists interviewed, they didn't think that they had good exercise habits because they work so much. So they thought that because they weren't doing traditional exercise, you know, grabbing a YouTube video, going to, you know, an actual gym, paying for that membership, they didn't think that they were exercising.

And it was reflective in their health. So what they did was they sat these women down, just a couple of them, and they gave them a presentation about all the health and exercise benefits that they were getting simply by carrying out their job each day. And then they track the results of those women. So what do you think happened? Within one month, these women had seen, that saw the presentation, started viewing their body and their body at work to be part of their exercise regimen. And they begin to see immediate improvements in their blood pressure and in their body fat. That is the power of mindset.

Another Stanford study showed that mindset can control you in a negative way. Unfortunately, for some reason, we as humans are going to gravitate towards that negative way. In our nature, it is not to gravitate towards the positive way. So unfortunately, this one gets us probably more than it should. But the study of health data looked at people whose health habits, like exercise, diet, weight gain, weight loss, smoking, etc. They're identical. So they took this group of people who basically had the same habits each day. And a lot of them were even tracking workouts that they were doing.

The one difference between these two sets of people that they were studying was their mindset. So what the researchers found that the people who believed they exercise less than their peers, even though they really didn't, because we talked about their habits were the same, right? They were much more likely to have died years later, whenever there was a follow up study, simply because they felt like they weren't doing enough. And like I talked about the post and things like that in the Facebook groups. I fell off the wagon. I'm not doing enough. I just need to get my head in the game. I need to try harder. This is not about willpower. It's about mindset. Okay. And one sample group, excuse me, the negative belief group, the ones who thought they weren't doing enough, had a 71% higher chance there. Okay. That's a huge percentage. We're not talking about just a marginal difference here between these groups. That is way over half. Okay.

So what can you do to create a better mindset for yourself? If you're on board and you're like, yeah, man, I need to level up. I want to upgrade the way that I'm thinking. How do I do that? Of course, I'm going to give you the steps for it. 

So the first one is to practice gratitude and avoid seeking perfection from yourself. I'm preaching to myself right now, because this is something that's very difficult for me. I want to be perfect in everything that I do. Partly for the praise, I'll just be honest. But for the other part is I don't want to disappoint anybody. So all of us have these innate desires to, we're going to talk about with the Enneagram, all the different types. All of us have these in desires that are going to push us to do our best work and for different reasons. Okay. But, when you expect perfection from yourself, you're setting yourself up to fail because we are imperfect people.

Practicing gratitude is going to help to shift your mind, just like that group that we talked about that was exercising just as much as the others, but thought they weren't doing well. When you shift your mind onto things that are good and that are true and that are of a good report, your mind is going to be focused on gratitude and everything around you is just going to be uplifted and feel brighter. I have this, I wasn't even going to pull this out, but I had printed this off the other day. Make sure you can see this.

Maybe backwards. All right. So something even as simple as this. I just printed that off the internet somewhere. Okay. Simple thing like that. Like, here's my morning routine. Here are the top three things that I want to get done today. If nothing else gets done today. These are the top three things that at the end of the day, when my head hits the pillow, I feel accomplished. Okay, so three things for the morning. Also, what are you grateful for? Go ahead and write those things down first thing in the morning. This is a little caveat. I don't remember if I talked about this before or not, but with our kids at nighttime before they go to bed, I have them tell me at least three things. We do our best to do this all the time, but we do forget, but I'm going to work on being better with that.

At least three things that they're grateful for that happened that day. And so at the end of the day, they know, mama is going to ask them, what were you grateful for today. And so you can just always say food and shelter and my family because that is that something that happened today. No. Okay, you're, I'm glad you're grateful for those things. But those are lanyard things. Those are extra. What are you happy about that happened today.

It is easy to think that because you're in our Sprightly Soul program that one, one workout routine or whatever it is, is going to magically fix all these things that are happening in your life. And when it doesn't, you're going to think, oh, I'm not good enough or I just need to try harder. Okay, but by practicing gratitude, you  not only accept and love yourself for where you are right now. But the simple act of having gratitude can reset that mental frame on how you see yourself. This is going to reduce your stress, improve your physical health. It's also great for just that internal dialogue that you always have going on. Along with this, it's important to speak kindly to yourself. You know better than anybody else. You know yourself better than anybody else. So speaking kindly and watching yourself grow is the important thing here.

All right. The second thing to do is to be around positive people and influences. I always thought that this just meant the people that you carry around you. Well, I work from home. And so I'm, you know, I do get out for different social things. But for the most part, I'm just here with my family. So I always thought, okay, my life is shaped by my five closest people. Right? Well, what I didn't realize, and through researching with this video, it's not just the five people that are around you, but it's the people that you are watching. It's the books that you're reading. It's the podcast that you're listening to. It's the websites that you visit. All of those are your influence and they're shaping your mental nutrition.

So whatever you allow into your mind is just as important as what you allow into your body. Someone shared this analogy with me one time and just talked about like, how a colander, whenever you use a colander, like to strain your vegetables and stuff, like putting that over your head and just making sure that anything that comes in is filtered and that you're only keeping the things that are good and that are pure so that none of the other stuff can get in. So if that helps you, I know picture type things help me to remember stuff. So if you can picture a colander on your head, only let things in that are going to help your mental nutrition, not make it worse.

The third thing is to create healthy boundaries. When you don't set boundaries for yourself, it's very easy to get overwhelmed with everything that's asked or required of you, especially if you have other hats that you're wearing besides just an employee or just mom or just sister or just wife or just husband, whatever it is. Most of us are carrying more than one name tag, right? So setting healthy boundaries, you're creating space to allow yourself to grow. You're not boxing yourself in with boundaries. You're creating space. Okay, this can do wonders for your health and your mindset.

An example of a boundary, let's say it's a time boundary. An example of a time boundary would say, you know, from 6 o'clock to 7:30, this is what we do, is family time in our house. We're going to be sitting down, eating dinner together, talking about our days, talking about what we're grateful for. Maybe it's watching a movie together, doing bath time, cleaning up the kitchen after. That block of time is our family time. And there's a boundary. If a client needs me, I'm not available. If work needs me, I'm not available. Okay? Only available for emergency situations. Instead of sitting there during that time on our phones, you know, my husband and I scrolling Facebook, scrolling YouTube, whatever, the kids on iPads, whatever. No, this is time. We're putting boundaries on our family time. Okay? So that's an example of a time boundary.

Also, it's important to get an exercise. This, just like I talked about in the beginning with the ladies who worked at the hotel, this does not have to be a workout routine or something that's scripted. I'll be honest, I don't do that well with following a workout routine. What I do well is being able to walk around the neighborhood with my kids, being able to go outside and work in my garden, you know, getting out there and cleaning the chicken coop. We've talked about these things. It doesn't have to be a specific regimen. If you do well with routine, you're in the right place because as a Sprightly Soul member, you do get a new workout routine every single week. Okay? You can also go back and access the ones that you have done before that were your favorites. Don't feel like you have to be boxed in and do the one for this week. If there's one from the weeks prior that you like, do that one over and over. There are no rules when it comes to movement. Just get movement in every day.

Another important aspect is about your exercise. If you can change your mindset that your exercise is not about weight, gaining weight or losing weight, it's about wellness. Okay? Just a simple shift in your mindset can help to not feel like exercise is such a burden. It's just part of your wellness routine. It's not about losing the weight. Okay? Set some goals, but don't be a slave to them. Also, one of the most powerful things, and a lot of people who think of mindset will think of meditation, but it is very powerful. You're getting different meditations each week, different mantras and stuff that you can practice, but a meditation practice is going to allow you to step back and watch your thoughts and emotions as they bubble up inside of you.

This is the most important thing. Just like the boundaries create space, meditation creates space for your mind. Okay? So if you can picture your mind as like a cluttered room and you have clothes coming out of drawers everywhere and you have baskets of toys or piles of paperwork from work in your mind for meditation, if you can just take all of that and just move it to the edges of your mind and be able to create space right in the center, you'd be able to just sit down and meditate. And be still for a little bit so that your world can stop spinning just to be still. It doesn't mean that you have no thoughts. It just means that you can sit and focus on one thought at a time instead of having your phone buzzing here and, you know, your computer alarms going off here and all that.

It's just about moving all that space inside your mind so that the very center of it, you can sit and be quiet and focus on what you're thinking. So you can see what kind of thoughts are coming in and out. Is it a bunch of negative stuff or am I pouring into my mind the things that are good and true? Okay? Moving right along. 

Finally, this is, actually there's two more, but this is almost the last one. It's to nourish your body, which of course is important. Your mind and your body work together. They work in synergy. It's perfect. But when your body is well fed, your mind has the tools and the energy to also be its best. So eating nourishing foods, drinking plenty of water, doing your best to stay away from those ingredients that you know will be harmful for your body. Remember we talked about in the dairy video, even health foods may be inflammatory for you. And so it's all about what is nourishing for your body. And again, your Sprightly Soul membership comes with tons of healthy, delicious recipes. We're going to give you the most power packed foods, the most vibrant foods, the most full of energy foods, nutrition, micronutrients, a balance of macronutrients, all of that. So we have that supplied for you. 

And lastly, this one's so important. Enjoy yourself. Okay. One of the main purposes of good health is so that you can enjoy a rich, full life. What's the point of being here if you're not going to enjoy it? You only get one, right? So if you're too caught up in trying to make everything perfect, make everything fit into, you know, this idea that you have of what you should be and all that type of thing, it really makes it difficult to dig in and to enjoy this level of life.

So keep your chin up, let yourself live the best life that you possibly can. I would love to hear your favorite tips in the Spritely Soul Facebook group. Let me know what kind of movement you're getting in. Let me know how this video has affected your mindset and helped you to upgrade and filter out all the other stuff that is not serving you. I will see you next week for another video. Make sure that you have the best week because that is up to you. Bye bye.