Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - 15 Simple Ways to Improve Your Life Overnight | Clutterbug Podcast # 230

Episode Date: July 1, 2024

Do you feel stuck and bored? It could be that you just aren't getting out of your comfort zone. I've put together a list of 15 simple things you can do to challenge yourself and step just a little bit beyond what you think you are capable of!  It's time to start living a happier and more passion-filled life. On the other side of uncomfortable is a stronger, smarter and more joyful you!   You can find more Clutterbug content here: Website: http://www.clutterbug.me YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clutterbug TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clutterbug_me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clutterbug_me/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Clutterbug.Me/   #clutterbug #podcast     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you happy? Are you happy with your life? Do you feel fulfilled? Do you feel excitement or do you feel stuck? And do you feel like you're just going through the motions and it's this mundane day in, day out, always the same? If you feel that way, I want to encourage you to get out of your comfort zone. because on the other side of your comfort zone is where real growth happens. And I'm going to share with you 15 easy things that you can do today to start feeling excited about your life. Hey, Clutterbugs. Welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. Today I wanted to talk about Comfort Zone.

And I want to share a story with you, something going on in my life. And while you're listening to this, I hope to inspire you and motivate you to take a few, little steps outside of your comfort zone. Maybe not as drastic as the step that I've recently taken, but there have been some surprising benefits. And I want them for you too. But before we get started, I really want you to take this opportunity while you're listening, while we're hanging out together today, to do something in your home to make yourself proud. Or go for a walk, exercise, move your body. Don't just passively listen to this podcast. This is a really amazing opportunity for you to kind of double up. Not only are you going to learn something and get

motivated and feel inspired, but also you can get something done. Are you ready? Jump in, get up, get moving, and let's talk about your comfort zone. Before I share a quick story with you, I definitely want to talk about what your comfort zone is. It's basically where you feel stable, you feel steady, but also you're unchallenged. And most people are living inside their comfort zone on a day-to-day basis. We're going to a job every day that we know. We know pretty well. It kind of feels routine. We come home. We do the same routine things. We're not really doing anything that's scary or new or drastically different because all of those things feel very uncomfortable. And I think it's human nature to avoid uncomfortable situations.

Our brain is designed to protect us. So anytime anything is even remotely anxiety-inducing or different or strange, our brain floods us with a bunch of chemicals that makes us want to, retreat and stay safe. And in the wild, I feel like this is an excellent defense mechanism. But in the society and the world we live in today, it can also keep us really small and stuck and not learning or doing or trying new things. When we never really challenge ourselves, how could we possibly know what we're capable of and how can we build resilience for when stuff really gets bad how are we going to handle that if we're so used to never dealing with adversity?

Okay so I'm going to start by sharing a little quick story with you. Some of you guys know recently I became a volunteer firefighter. I'm going to be totally honest with you. I have no idea what I was thinking. I have been volunteering for St. John Ambulance for a few years. I became a certified medical first responder. I really loved the education. I loved the idea of being there for someone in their darkest time and being able to help them,

being able to provide them emergency medical care. It just, it felt right. It feels right. It feels like something I should be doing. and I wanted more of it. So I thought on a whim one day I could be a volunteer firefighter in my community. All the firefighters where I live are all volunteer. They do get paid. We do get paid. But everybody has a regular outside other job. And then everybody wears pagers. And when there is an emergency situation, the pager for the closest station goes off. All the people who are at that station get a

page and if you are able to you drive to the station and then drive to the incident so i was like this sounds amaze balls and everybody i talked to about it said listen cass listen listen listen you are 45 you are in terrible shape i mean they didn't have to say this they knew it's pretty obvious i'm not strong i don't work out i don't do anything like that ever in my life ever. But I ignored all of that. I didn't really even look into what was involved. I just applied and then went, took the various tests, got the job and started doing the training. The amazing thing is the training is online school. I have a big textbook so I'm reading and plus I'm doing the online school and then in-person classes for practical training.

And then we also do other training with the fire department like checking hoses, cleaning fire trucks, learning about all of the equipment. I digress. Out of my comfort zone. I am a high school dropout. I have not been to school since I was 15 years old. So going back to school, taking school, taking school, learning things, memorizing things, taking a quiz and a test once a week. That is outside of my comfort zone.

What I'm actually really enjoying it. I love learning. So I'm like that part I was like, this is amazing. I'm so glad that I did it. But it gets bigger and crazier than that. The physical, practical training on the weekends is completely kicking my butt. And I just want to give you kind of a rundown of what this looks like. And then I want to talk about how this is completely out of my comfort zone, the good, the bad, the ugly that comes with that. I have always been a person who is claustrophobic and I am afraid of heights. I know what you're thinking. Firefighter, okay, claustrophobic afraid of heights. Let's keep going. I also can't, this is my limiting belief. I can't lift heavy things, nor do I lift heavy things. I've been married

for a very long time. I've been with my husband like 23 years. Anytime anything's heavy or if there's any type of like have to pick up something or do any type of physical labor, I'm like, oh, I got girly T-Rex arms. Oh, Joey, I just girl. I just a baby. You have to do it for me. So I have avoided any type of hard work or hard labor for basically my whole life, but most certainly since I've been married to my husband. He does all that type of stuff. And I'll go a step further. I feel uncomfortable parking in the garage and oftentimes watch Joe to park and then back up the van for me because I'm just uncomfortable with all things uncomfortable. Okay. So physical training. We get to the fire hall. We have to put on our equipment, our PPE equipment, as fast as possible over and over and over again.

A standard uniform, they call it a bunker gear for a firefighter weighs 59 pounds. That includes coveralls, boots, gloves, a hood, your breathing mask, your SCBA mask. So everything's not even any skin covered. Your helmet, which is heavy. We have an oxygen tank that we have to put on quite quickly and of course gloves. We're doing this on the weekends. Outside, it is 95 degrees. And we are putting on this on and off, on and off, on and off. So we can do it as quickly as possible. And I feel like with the mask on and, and it's so heavy. And then while it's on, we're doing drills in full. So we're down. We're crawling on our hands and knees. We're army crawling. we are dragging our equipment.

We're quickly taking our packs off and then doing a three point, putting it back on. We're doing search and rescue training in the dark looking for dummies in smokehouses. When we find them, we have to then completely blinded because you can't see anything, drag these 175 dummies back out. And this is just like intro learning. And every step of the way, I think there is no way you can do this for even one more second. Every second, everything I do, I think this is it. Why? This is crazy. It's so heavy. I'm so exhausted. There's no way I can do this. There's no way I can do this. And yet, I do it. So last weekend was the one thing I was super most scared about, and that is learning to throw ladders,

they call it. So raise ladders. You pick up ladders. You carry it to the side of the building. You raise it hand over hand. You climb the ladder. You leg lock, hang off the side of the ladder, and like axe, use your axe and break open windows, like pretend windows. Also, climb. up a ladder while carrying another ladder over your shoulder while also carrying in your other hand something called a pike pole in full gear guys full gear 95 degrees climbing up on a roof putting the second ladder which is heavy as heck okay on then climbing on the roof then making sure it's sound with your pike pole and then having your partner hand you a chainsaw so that while standing on this roof in full gear. You can cut holes in the roof to vent it. I've never used a chainsaw in my life.

I've never climbed a ladder in my life. I've never been on a roof in my life. I've never lifted anything this heavy in my life. I've never done this all at the same time while being so hot and sweaty and soaked. I've never sweat, really. Not like this in my life. never played sports, never experienced any of this before. It was the most challenging, insane thing that I've ever done. And I thought about quitting every second, every second of that training. I got in my car to leave, soaking wet, just looks like I jumped in a pool wet. I drove home and I cried for three hours straight. I cried for three hours straight. Not to mention I did also drop a chainsaw on my partner's face at one point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn't running.

Okay. It wasn't running. But I was on the roof. I had cut the hole. I was handing him back the chainsaw. He reached for it. I was reaching as far as I can. I really should have came down a little bit, it was heavy. As soon as he had his hand on it, I let go. The ladder slipped because he was reaching. He almost fell off the roof, so he had to catch himself, which means he let go of the chainsaw, and it hit him in the face. And I felt pure panic. I felt like you are not capable of this, and now you are hurting other people, and what are you doing? And I just, I lost it. And I got home and I had a big old crowd. And after I had that big old cry, I really re-evaluated my day. I was never the last to get dressed.

I was never the first, but I wasn't the last to put the PPE, put my bunker gear on and off. I was not the last to do the crawl. I was not the last to throw the ladders. I was not the last to get up on the roof. I was not the last to cut the holes. I was not the last to find the people in the building in the smokehouse and drag them out. was holding my own with people half my age who've worked out their whole lives who are used to this stuff so i thought about that and i instantly felt proud i also realized guess what cass you are not afraid of roofs you're not afraid of ladders you thought you were afraid of heights you weren't even scared you were handling it also you can run a chainsaw also you can lift heavy things you are capable of more than you ever thought possible because you went out of your comfort zone. And I'm not suggesting you all become volunteer firefighters because crap is crazy. That was probably a little bit more drastic.

This is very drastic out of my comfort zone. But also, I have learned so much not only about firefighting and tools and the mechanics. panic of smoke and and just so much about medical things and and just man incredible amounts of knowledge in a very short amount of time but I've learned so much about myself I'm learned that I'm stronger both emotionally and physically than I ever thought I was and that I'm capable of doing big scary things and that I'm brave that I don't run away when things are scary, that I do stay calm under pressure. I am so glad that I'm doing this and so glad that I'm going out of my comfort zone

and doing things that I never thought I would ever be capable of doing, let alone at 45 years old. So I also realized something else. Saturday night I came home and cried for hours. And then I thought about all this. I went back on Sunday. And I decided, instead of always looking at myself and my own struggles, to look around at everybody else who was also taking this training. And what I saw was a 48-year-old paramedic who has been a paramedic for the last 28 years and decided he wanted to go above and beyond and also become a volunteer firefighter despite working full time. I saw multiple 18-year-old. old who are only one year older than my daughter, who just graduated high school, who are working full time at jobs right out of school, and who are now doing this as well. And they're terrified. I can see it in their eyes. This, no, yeah, this is my first time on a roof carrying power tools, but it's theirs too. These are kids. And they're doing it and they're brave and they're excelling. And I look at the guy who hit his finger with an X during forcible entry training a few

weeks ago, showing up with a cast on his finger. He's 23 years old. This is his dream. And he's pushing through pain that no one else is and he's not complaining and he's doing it and he's doing it with a smile on his face. And I look around at all of them. So many are married with families and kids and everybody else has a full-time job too. Everybody is coming from a different place and everyone is struggling and we're all dehydrated and we're all sweaty and we're all scared and we're all excited and we're all a family. Sorry, I got really emotional for a second there. My mindset shifted from Saturday where I was like, this is incredibly hard, this is scary,

this is you should not be doing this run quick quit quit this is horrible to sunday where i looked around and thought what a freaking privilege this is that you get to stand beside these people and do these incredible things and learn these amazing skills and have the opportunity to serve your community and save lives because somebody's got to put the fires out. Somebody's got to show up to those car accidents. Somebody's got to be there. And if all of us say that is too scary, I can't, it's for someone else. There is nobody to do it. And that attitude that shifted my mindset, I was like I had a great time. I loved every minute of that Sunday. And maybe next week when I do AutoX training and I'm cutting apart cars with the jaws of life, which are extremely heavy, or I'm running into a burning

building. I might have some panic and fear, but I also know that I'm capable, and then I'm stronger than I ever thought I was, and then I've got incredible people who have my back that I can count on. I went out of my comfort zone. I realized how resilient I am. And I want to encourage you to go out of your comfort zone again. I am not suggesting you run into a burning building, friends. This is not what I'm saying. What I am saying is you are capable of so much more, so much more than you know. You have skills you haven't identified yet.

You are great at things that you think you suck at. There are things you love more than you ever could love thinking you could love doing something, but you just haven't tried those things yet. You have passion and purpose that you have not yet discovered because you're not going to find those things in your comfort zone. So let's talk about how to get out of your comfort zone. I have a list of 15 things that you can do, easy, simple things to get out of your comfort zone. And the first is try new food. And I'm putting this on here because I used to be a chicken nuggets and fries girl. My whole life, I was like, e, that's yucky.

I didn't want to try new things. It was like meat, mashed potatoes, spaghetti, maybe a taco, but mostly chicken fingers and french fries, the occasional burger, perhaps, and that's about as adventurous as I would ever get. Met my husband. He was like, yeah, let's go for Indian one night. I'll never forget this, Indian, and I had never even heard of Indian food. We went to an Indian restaurant. To me, it looked like some slop on rice.

And I was like, I'm uncomfortable eating this. First time I had buttered chicken, never had anything more delicious in my mouth ever. Chicken Korma, hands down, the best thing. I love Indian food so much. It used to be my favorite food. It was like I went from something that was like, oh, that's so gross. To what the heck where have you been all my life? This is amazing.

Absolutely. Put some garlic gnawn in there, some posmati rice. Listen, I would never have known that had I not pushed myself and got out of my comfort zone. The same thing happened with sushi. I don't like fish. I certainly don't like raw fish. I went to a sushi restaurant and I was so uncomfortable. I was like, I can't eat this.

This is all disgusting. That's a heck no. My kids were the same way. Thank you very much. But we tried some tempura shrimp. We tried a California roll. We tried a sweet potato roll, cucumber avocado roll. Guess what my favorite food is?

Sushi. I still don't eat the raw fish, but I will have crab and I will have tampura fish. And it doesn't matter. I love sushi. I love every kind of sushi roll. I am here for it. Also, all three of my kids, their favorite food. My mom came to visit me last year and I wanted to take her to a restaurant and I took her to a sushi restaurant and she wouldn't even try a piece. Wouldn't try it out of her comfort zone. That's disgusting. I can't eat that. I hate that. And that is this staying in your comfort zone. staying small and missing out on something really cool. My two favorite things.

My two favorite meals in the whole entire world. I also love Lebanese food. Try new food. There, I said it. Be adventurous with your food. Going on to the next small thing that you can do to get out of your comfort zone, which is visit new places. And yes, travel is an incredible way to get out of your comfort zone,

but you can visit new places in your home. hometown, go to a coffee shop that you've never been to before or a bookstore or go to a little art museum that you didn't even know it was around. Like just do and go and see different things. If every Friday night you're like, we watch the same show, we eat dinner, we like sit on the couch, we do the same thing every Saturday, maybe you do a little housework, same thing, same thing. what can you do? Where can you go? That is just like, you're like, I'm probably not even going to like this. This is weird. And I don't like art museums. I don't like natural history museums. I don't like going for walks in the park. I don't like going to coffee shops. Doesn't matter. You don't know if you don't like it, if you don't try it.

And maybe you tried it a long time ago, but you haven't tried it recently. You still don't know if you don't like it because you change. You are not the same person you were five minutes ago, let alone five years ago. You were always changing and evolving and growing. You just don't know because you don't give yourself the opportunity to realize how awesome and how far you've come. So get out of your comfort zone and go visit a new place. And I also got to mention learning something new. Everything is always changing around us. There's now AI. There's always new technology. It's crazy. Learn something new. You could just watch

things on YouTube or you can take a course to learn something new, something completely out of your comfort zone. My grandmother's funeral is coming up this weekend and we want to put photos on the big TV that's at the hall that we're going to. So everybody has photos all over the place, right? little everybody has photos on their different devices, whether it's their computers or their phones or their tablets. And I'm collecting all of them to put them on a key or like a little SD key to put them on the television. So I sent everybody a Google Drive folder. Just I made a Google drive folder and I was like, you can drag and drop the photos in here. Super, super easy. None of my family knew how to use a Google Drive folder. Didn't know how to, my mom didn't know how to drag and

drop or copy and paste. My uncle also wasn't aware. My aunt had no idea, had no idea about this type of technology. And I'm not saying this to shame them, but what I am saying is watch a YouTube video, learn something new, and it might seem irrelevant. How to use Google Drive, how to, I don't know, use Canva, how to use chat GTP. These might seem like, why would I need to know that? Why wouldn't you need to know new things? Learning new things expands your knowledge. It makes your fishbowl a little bit bigger.

And we're going to talk about fishbowl at the end of this. And the really negative thing that could happen when you don't realize you don't know what you don't know. When you're just swimming with the same fish and the same fish bowl your whole life, you're missing out on the great big sea around you. So learning something new is a great way of getting out of your comfort zone. Number five of things you can do is try something adventurous. Like try something a little bit scary. Doesn't have to be chains on a roof scary while the building's on fire.

But it can be going on a roller coaster when you've always told yourself you hate roller coasters. It can be, I don't know, like doing that. that tree top adventure type things where you're you're locked into a harness and you're going across like, you know, zip lines and going across. It's safe. It's safe doing a little like, I don't know, wall climbing, mountain climbing thing. You don't got to jump out of a plane to be a little bit adventurous. Do something that is a little bit scary. Even going for a height. Make sure you're doing things safely. But yeah, a little bit of fear is not a bad thing. It really isn't. And what's going to happen is you're going to be actually quite proud of yourself for doing it. You're going to get a

whole bunch of like dopamine and serotonin because you've done this really exciting thing. You're going to have an incredible story to share. And you're really going to realize that you are capable of doing more than you ever thought possible. The sixth thing I wish everyone would do is, volunteer volunteering is dying it just is nobody's volunteering anymore and i don't know if it's a combination it's probably a combination but i don't know if it's because everybody's just so busy now that they don't have time to volunteer for charities volunteer in their community help out other people without receiving anything back or if it's just the world's gotten a little bit more selfish. It's probably a combination of those things. But you've probably noticed if you go

to church that less people go to church. But I've certainly noticed I used to work for charities, the Lung Association, United Way. And everyone who volunteered was older than 60. And with the aging population, there's just less and less young people getting involved in their community. But we still need people to be involved in the community. We need them to run these amazing events that we want to do. We need them to provide services. We need them to keep the community safe. We need people to volunteer because it's all about the greater good of our community.

We have to help each other out. It takes a village. We all have to be there for each other. And that means sometimes giving a little bit of our time. to make the world a better place, to leave it a little bit better than we found it. And you don't have to volunteer for hours and hours a week, but you can volunteer at the next Terry Fox Run. You can volunteer at the next whatever event is going on in your community.

You can volunteer to tutor a child that needs help learning to read. You can volunteer with St. John Ambulance and learn CPR and be able to protect someone and help someone and save a life perhaps if someone in your community needs medical assistance. There's so many ways that you can give a little bit of your time and make a big impact, but more importantly, I think, than even all that great stuff, is it really allows you to grow. It really improves your self-esteem. It makes you feel good about your contribution to society.

It makes you feel fulfilled. It gives you purpose. It's just as good for you as it is for the people you're helping. So think about volunteering today. Number seven is something that I need to work on, and that is talking to a stranger. So a really great way of going out of your comfort zone is just doing things that make you incredibly uncomfortable, like striking up a conversation with the person in front of you at the in the line of the grocery store. I'm not good at talking to people. I have social anxiety,

but I think a lot of people have social anxiety. And now most of the time when we communicate with other human beings, it's through a screen. We're texting them. We don't even call on the phone anymore. And it's really hard to make new friends when you're not talking to strangers. So be the brave one who talks first. Introduce yourself to someone, a neighbor. just start a conversation with a stranger and I know it's hard but being out of your comfort zone is supposed to be hard. That's the whole point. I threw in number eight here because this is scary but also something that I think everyone should try and that is filming themselves. And I know I'm a YouTuber so I've been doing this a really long time but I talk to a lot of people who say I would

love to, you know, do make TikToks or make a real or share a great tip with the world, but I'm uncomfortable being on camera. I would encourage you to just give it a try. You just pick up your phone and film yourself doing something. You don't ever have to post it. That's not what I'm saying. I mean, that's going to be the next thing, which is posting something online. I digress. Just filming yourself though. One, one little, make one little video just for fun for no other reason other than you want to give it a try and see what it's like and it's going to be scary and it's going to be uncomfortable, but you might surprise yourself. You might find out that you really love it. You might be a YouTuber a year from now with a million subscribers because you pushed yourself to

try something new. So, yeah, there. The one. is film yourself. The other is if you're super brave to post it on the internet. You can even post it anonymously, but putting yourself out there with coming from a place of like, I really want to help somebody. I really want to make a difference. I really want to teach somebody something cool. I know. It's an amazing feeling, but it is scary. It's super scary. But you could do scary things. You just might find that you're great at it and you love it. Number 10 is really easy, but also uncomfortable, but it can be amazing. And that is change your look. Dyer hair red. Cut your hair. Completely buy an outfit that you wouldn't normally wear. Change your look. If you never wear makeup,

maybe try a little bit of makeup. If you always wear makeup, maybe try changing it up a bit. This is a small thing that we can do that actually has a big impact. on our confidence unless it goes bad, but even then, we got nothing to lose. Literally nothing to lose. Hair grows back. We can die at a different color. What are you scared of? Number 11 is have a yes day.

I don't know if you've seen that movie. It was like, I think it's called yes day, where the parents were not allowed to say no to their children for an entire day. Like, they had to say yes to absolutely every single thing. thing. I think maybe this is slightly drastic because my kids would be like, let's go to Disneyland. So you need rules, right? And boundaries. But the idea of a yes day is actually pretty cool. And something I want to try with my kids coming up. I'm a person who tries to always say yes to new opportunities, even if I think they're weird or I don't think I'm going to like them.

because all the things that I've really discovered that I like the most and that I enjoy doing have all been things that I wanted to say no to in the beginning. That I'm like, trivia night, I am stupid. I have a terrible memory. I suck at trivia. So the first time my friends asked me to join them for a trivia night, I was like, no, I can't do that. But then I thought, I can't say no.

I got to say yes. I got to say yes more. I got to go over my comfort zone. Now, trivia night is literally one of my favorite things to do. Playing board game nights with them. Love that. I used to be a person like board game is for nerds. Guess what?

Giant nerd right here. Love board games. We do this event called a road rally where we dress up in costumes, decorate our car, and drive around looking for clues as a big race against a bunch of other people. And the first person to find the final place wins. I did not want to. I'm like, that does. No, thank you. Guess what? Love the crap out of that. Yepers, friends. Say yes to things.

If a friend asks you to go do something that you don't want to do with them, yes, I will. I will give it a try. I will try thrift store shopping with you. I will try antiquing. I will try whitewater rafting. say yes, say yes to things. Just might find out they're your favorite things to do. Number 12 is super ridiculously easy, but also somehow kind of hard. And that is listen to different music. I'm going to tell you the truth. I have always said I hate country music.

I can listen to any music, but I hate country. And I've avoided listening to country. Like, I hate country, I hate country. was driving home from the firefighter thing on Saturday, crying my eyeballs out. The whole way, oh, I cried. I was so emotional. And so I wasn't really paying attention to what was on the radio. And somehow it got to the station called 88.7, which used to be alternative rock.

So it used to be one of my favorite stations. It was like top 40 or whatever. And so I have it programmed. But now it recently became country. So whenever I turned. my radio on and back off sometimes because that's like it's called present or whatever number one like it's a preset it's probably preset anyways not the point it's number one when i switch from my bluetooth back to radio it often goes on this country station and i immediately turn it because i'm like

i hate freaking country it's horrible but anyways i was driving and i'm like kind of like bop in my head like hey this is actually i actually like this actually like this after I was crying. I didn't change the station. I was like, I'm going to listen to this all the way home. And guess what? I really enjoyed it. And I thought, do I like country now? I'm a person who likes 90s hip-hop rap. So this is a stretch. This is out of my comfort zone. And then I thought, is this because I'm getting old. But also, it was really good music. And I got to give this a chance. Maybe it's that I like lots of different kinds of music. And maybe I've been missing out. And maybe I like classical music. And maybe I don't have to have these hard rules of what I like and what I don't. And I got to just

try new things. I want you to think about what kind of music you think you hate. And I want you to actually give it a chance and listen to it. 14 is hard. It's learn a musical instrument. But hear me out. And I know we all want to learn a musical instrument, but it can be expensive because you've got to buy the instrument and you probably need lessons and it's like, oh man, this is all like when it's hard. But what about a kazoo? What about harmonica? What about spoons? You got some spoons in your kitchen.

What about just watching a YouTube video and like, you know, I don't know, trying to learn to whistle or something. You don't know until you know. You could be like an expert spoon player. This could be your hidden talent that you didn't even know you had because you thought it would be weird or you haven't even thought to ever think about trying it. My daughter, when she was nine, loved Grace VanderWall. We had watched her and she had won like America's Got Talent or something. And my daughter was like, I want a ukulele. So we picked her up really cheap, inexpensive ukulele.

and that was her Christmas gift. She taught herself to play a song that day, continued to play, taught herself with YouTube, an amazing ukulele player from that. She taught herself to play guitar, bass guitar. She can play piano. She can learn it all by ear. I don't know. She's like some sort of musical savant. It's like, what? But if we had never gotten her that little ukulele, she never would have known. And my other children tried it. It wasn't their jam. That's cool.

But if we don't try, how do we know? And last but not least, I want to encourage you to create a vision board. Sometimes I think the most uncomfortable thing is dreaming, allowing yourself to dream big and have big goals. allowing yourself, giving yourself permission to say, I think I'm capable of this big thing. It's hard. It's hard to have that kind of self-confidence or even fake that kind of self-confidence. But maybe you want to be an astronaut. That's a big stretch.

Maybe you want to own your own business. Maybe you want to be a YouTuber or a podcaster. Maybe you want to have a spotlessly clean house. Maybe you want to have a bigger house. Maybe you want to travel the world. Allow yourself to really dream big and go a step further and put it on a vision board because a vision board means this is a goal I'm going to achieve. This is a goal I know I'm going to achieve. Give yourself permission to have faith in yourself because you are capable of big,

incredible, amazing things. When you go outside of your comfort zone and give yourself permission to truly dream and permission to believe in yourself, challenge yourself. You have no idea how far you can go. But it starts with getting out of your little fishbowl. And what I mean by your fishbowl is the people that you associate, yourself with every day that you're always around. Oftentimes, you only know what they know, and they only know what you know. And it kind of keeps you small. Same circle of friend group, same circle of family. I know for myself, I thought that I was one of the hardest working people that I knew. I looked around at friends and family and I thought, wow, I'm doing a lot.

and and I'm achieving a lot. I'm a big fish in my little, in my little fish bowl. And then I stepped outside of my comfort zone and met incredible people who are doing insane things and realized, I ain't nothing. And I don't mean that in a bad way or derogatory way towards myself, but in a way of realizing how much more I could do and how much more I could push myself, and I thought I was doing as much as I possibly could, but I added this whole firefighter thing on, and I'm doing that too.

And I'm doing okay. And I'm not failing and I'm not struggling and I'm not feeling crazy overwhelmed or stressed. And I'm handling it. And I didn't think that that could be possible. And I'm working out and I'm getting in shape and I'm feeling strong. and I'm associating with people who are in a slightly bigger fish bowl. And it's kind of awesome. So I wanted to share this podcast with you today just to give you a different perspective

and hopefully encourage you with these 15 things. Eat some sushi tonight if you've never tried it or go to an Indian restaurant. Visit a place you've never been to. Volunteer for something. It can just be one singular, event in your community. Sign up for a 5K. You don't got to run it. Maybe just walk. Be adventurous. Do something out of your comfort zone. Thank you so much for watching this podcast. I'll see you guys next time.