Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Get It Together with Cas: The Tough Love Edition | Clutterbug Podcast # 262

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

Buckle up, Buttercup, because today we’re talking tough love and small steps to BIG changes and create instant motivation. We’re going to tackle how to get your life together without feeling like you’re climbing Mount Everest - I’m sharing my favourite shortcuts and hacks that have seriously changed my life. Sound good? Let’s dive right in! Give Yourself a Reality Check - “NO ONE IS COMING TO RESCUE YOU”. We have the home, (body, relationship, finances etc) that we are willing to put up with. Don’t like where you are right now? Change it. Only you have the empower, so put on that cape and save your own damn self.   Break Big Goals into 5-Minute Goals - Micro Commitments are the secret. Train your brain to stop the “all or nothing” mentality by focusing on tiny 5-minute tasks.  Daily Brain Dump - Every morning write down all the things you want to get done and then circle the top three. Out of those top three, star the ONE that is NON-NEGOTIABLE and must get done that day. Try Hypnosis! I’m using an app called Kure and it’s been helpful! Change your brain just by listening. Create a Vision Board - Pick a few goals and dreams (make sure they are in the realm of possibility) and create a daily visual reminder! I have a FREE vision board template here: https://clutterbug.me/products/digital-vision-board-templates Get an Accountability Buddy! Schedule a weekly date through Zoom, a phone call or an in-person meeting and body double with someone while you get stuff done together!  Get in a Win before 10:00am - Do a small thing that feels like an accomplishment before 10:00 am - Examples: Make your bed, write a to-do list, stretch for 10 minutes. Habit Stacking - Do a new tiny habit at the same time as you do an old habit - Example: Write a daily to-do list while your morning coffee brews or take your vitamins when you brush your teeth. Make a Power Playlist - Make a playlist with all the songs that fire you up! Borrow Motivation - Watch and listen to FIRED UP people and borrow some of their passion and fierce motivation. Here is a good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4KsEUiw3gA Nightly Gratitude Journal - I know…don’t roll your eyes, just try it.         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 #mondaymotivation #toughlove Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you ever find yourself saying, just get your life together? Like to yourself? I do this all the time. I feel like a disaster some days and a hot mess. But I do have like little hacks and tricks and tips that have helped me come so far. And I cannot wait to share them with you. So if you want to get your life together for 2025, this podcast is perfect for you. Hey, Clutterbugs, welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. I'm excited today to talk. about let's get our lives together and some things that I do that actually help because the truth is inside I am a disaster I am not a planner I am not a person who does routines I'm flighty I'm impulsive I'm disorganized I'm all the things that make a hot mess and yet I'm able to like kind of hold it together kind of sort of maybe and I've found some things that really absolutely work for me and I call these hacks and I feel like the word hack is so overused so let's not call them hacks maybe. Let's call them easy life shortcuts, things that help me get it together

or at least feel like I have it together. And I in no way am suggesting that we all need to be perfect or what even does perfect mean? What I'm talking about is feeling like we have control over ourselves and the things in our life that we have control over, that we can have control over, feeling like, yeah, our house is tidy and practical and organized and functional. We're in charge of our health. We're feeling good and healthy. We're feeling in charge and in control of our finances. We're not in tons of debt.

We just generally are having a pretty good life. Things are just going smoothly. And of course, we're all going to have bumps in the road and we're going to have chaos that comes in, especially if you're me. I bring chaos everywhere I go, like a fun little party pet. But overall, I can honestly say I've got most of it together and I'm working on the other things. So today, I'm going to bring a little tough love because I'm honestly a really nice person. I swear I am. But I'm the type of person who needs a reality check and a kick in the pants sometimes to snap me out of the rut that I'm in. And if you feel like you're in a rut and you really

want to make some changes, you are in the right place. You've shown up for this podcast. You are listening to it or you're watching it because you've decided enough is enough. I want to make a change. I deserve better. I want better. But I don't want to wake up at 5 a.m. and go running and have an ice cold shower and have to do a bunch of push-ups. I mean, maybe you do, but I don't. I want all the good stuff without all the bad stuff. And I promise you, you can get it. And that's what we're talking about today. But we do have to get a little bit of a reality check. Because, and I'm going to say this again, and I said it before and it's harsh, but here's the thing. You have the home that you are willing to accept. You have the body that you are willing to accept. You have the

relationship that you are willing to accept. You have the finances that you are willing to accept. And until we realize that no one is coming to save us, there's nobody coming in to fix this or help us or make it better, we can't really make real change. We have to own it. I mean, this is actually a good thing because it means that we have all the power and all the control. And the crazy, amazing, beautiful thing is the really thing we only need to change is our brain, question mark. It's true. There's little things that we can do physically, little like habits that we can start, little tricks that we can do. But all of them are leading to the same the thing, which is changing the way we talk to ourselves, changing the way we see things,

changing our perception, and changing how we feel about ourselves. More love, more self-acceptance, and a little bit more motivation and discipline. And we can trick ourselves there all day. You ready? Okay. Here's what we're going to do today. Before we jump in and I'm sharing all the cool hacks with you, I want you to take action on something in your home and I say this all the time, but don't just passively watch or listen to this. If you're driving, yeah, that's one thing. But if you're sitting at home on the couch or on the computer, what the heck are you waiting for, man? Get up and let's do something.

Whether it's finishing the dishes, clearing off that counter, putting away a load of laundry, running the vacuum, do one small thing while you listen to this and learn and get motivated. So at the end of this podcast, your brain is better, but your space is better too. your house is better too because you deserve that you really do and you get to double up it's like double duty learning and doing at the same time all right the first thing i want to share is like a little tippy hacky thing i've said this so many times so many times um but i feel like it is a message that you need to hear and so do i a million times real change doesn't have to be massive to be meaningful. In fact, it's all the tiny winds throughout the day

that add up to the big, giant, massive wins. And doing these little small, tiny things is actually more impactful in the long run than a big change because it's becoming a thought habit. it's becoming like a even a pattern of a habit that we do over and over. We are training ourselves to be a different person. So sometimes when we're dealing with a mountain and a mess and a bunch of clutter or a really dirty house or we have a ton of weight to lose or we're just like super out of shape and it's like I could never run a marathon. That's insane.

I can't run to the mailbox. It feels so big and the wind seems so far away that it's hard. hard to get motivated to get started. But we have to actively change our mindset. Like I'm, I walked for five minutes today. I focused in the shower on trying to touch my toes. I did my dishes right after dinner. These small wins and celebrating them super important. So that's the first, I guess, hack is just literally breaking things down into tiny. We say five minutes matters. And I promise I got some new stuff you haven't heard of. But I got to get through. this one because it's super important. The tiny little micro commitments are key. And the book Atomic

Habits by James Clear was the best book I ever read about this concept. And it changed my life because it changed the way I thought about all the things I wanted to accomplish. And now I intuitively break things down into like little five minute chunks. What can I do for just five minutes towards this bigger goal? What can I do in just five minutes to make myself proud? And set a timer. They call them like five set five minute blitzes or five minute matter marathons where you set timer for five minutes and you can only work on something for five minutes. And when the timer goes off, you have to stop. Because this way it's proving to yourself that you can actually make a difference in a short amount of time and it's training your brain to do these little blitzes

instead of waiting for these all or nothing moments. So while you listen to this podcast, go to your stove or on your phone, set a timer for five minutes and just let it run in the background and do something. Make progress. Get ahead. See what you can get done in five minutes. Can you clear off the whole counter in five minutes? Can you put away a whole load of laundry in five minutes on your market set? Go. So that's the first one. And go. Okay. The second like tip hacky thing that I've been trying because I feel like I've gotten a lot of areas of my life under control.

But when it comes to health and fitness, my eating habits working out, I am not consistent. I drag my feet. I do not feel motivated to do it. I want it. But my actions say otherwise because I'm not always doing it. So, because I'm lazy and because I'm all about the shortcuts, what I decided to do was download a hypnosis app on my phone. And I downloaded this hypnosis app like three weeks ago with the promise to myself that

I was going to listen to it every single day. And it is a healthy eating hypnosis app. I do not know the name. I don't know. I found it on the internet. I'm not plugging it or promoting it. But the first three weeks, I set a reminder in my phone to listen to it. And I just snooze the reminder.

And every night, I was like, no, I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow. I wasn't even listening to the app. So just letting you know, I'm not perfect friends. But then one night I was like, you know what? Come on. It's 10 minutes. Just sit and listen to it.

And it was crazy. So it has been three nights. so far that I've been listening to this hypnosis app. And obviously, I'm a person that's highly susceptible to hypnosis. I've never done this before. But when I could finally turn my brain off, and the first five minutes is like, sink into your mattress, feel your muscles relaxing and getting heavy. It's all that kind of thing. And I was kind of like rolling my eyes a little bit. And then it got into the second half was literally just mantras repeated over. and over again. Just positive affirmations, things like you deserve to eat healthy, nutritious

food. When you are having a snack, you pick things that's high in vitamins and nutrients. You treat your body well and you feed it nutritious food. You don't pick food that you know is filled with sugar and bad toxins. You choose healthy options for your body. It was things like this over and over and over again while I was listening while I was in the state of deep relaxation. And the crazy thing is when I woke up the next day, I went to go get breakfast and I'll usually grab like a muffin or a chocolate croissant or a cookie. I'll grab something fast. I literally was like, ooh, what can I have that tie in nutrients today? And I went in my fridge and I grabbed some fruit and some Greek yogurt.

What? And then later in the day, I literally caught my, like my first thought was, what's nutritious? How can I? And I was like, oh, no, I'm not going to have that. That's filled with toxins. This day one, friends, now we're on day three. So today is technically like day four of after I listened to it. And I haven't had, I still have my try lattes.

No, I'm human, you know, but I haven't had cookies, candy, anything like that. And I've had no desire to eat it. and all I've done is listen to some lady talk softly to me at night. So, I mean, I'm not, I'm not saying this is you got to sign up for some expensive hypnotherapy. But is there like an app or is there a YouTube video that's doing hypnosis that is geared towards whatever goal it is that you want to work towards, whether that is decluttering, organizing, cleaning more often, getting healthier, not spending money all the time, saving money, working on your finances. I feel like picking one big change and then doing these little things towards it, focusing on what

we can do in five minutes that works towards that goal, and maybe hypnosis. I'm just putting it out there. I'm not, maybe you're not susceptible like I am. But for me, maybe it's all in my head. Who cares? If it's working, it's working. That's all that matters. And for me, I find that this has been very helpful. Okay, another thing that I find crazy helpful

that I've been doing for a long time and then I wasn't doing for a little while, but I recently brought it back is a vision board. So I just have this, I just literally printed it off. It's just a template in Canva where I found some images of things that I want to accomplish and I typed in the words of things I want to accomplish and I printed it on my printer and I taped it on the wall. And the reason I know that this is crazy magical, not magical like woo-woo magical, but magical in that it works, is because the first time I ever created a vision board was years ago and it was the first time I had ever achieved extremely big goals in my life. And I was doing it subconsciously.

A vision board when you put somewhere that you see it every day, subconsciously, subconsciously you see it out of the corner of your eye it reminds you of what's important and you without realizing it will take small actions towards that greater goal it because we forget to remember and so a vision board is like oh yeah this is important oh yeah this is something you want and you will make little steps little steps all throughout the day without even realizing that you're doing it completely unconsciously towards this and i believe this with all of my heart so i don't think this is like some magical universe woo-woo thing. Though I'm not totally ruling that out, but I will say there is real science here and that a vision board can impact you in ways that

you can't even understand and all you have to do is take five minutes. It doesn't have to be a big Bristol board with you printing stuff off and sticking it on your wall. I literally just have pieces of paper beside my desk, but you can also have it as a backdrop wallpaper, on your computer. You can have it as a screensaver on your phone. And I've created you free templates for this. I'm going to put a link in the show notes or you can go to clutterbug.com, go to my printables page and scroll down until you see Vision Board template. These are free Canva templates. So Canva is this free app you can use. It will open it up in the app and you just drag over the images you want. You can search for them on the internet or you can.

You can search them in Canva. Type the words of what you want over mine. You probably don't have the same goals as I do. And then either have it on your computer, have it on your phone, or print it off. Easy, peasy, lemon, squeezy, something you can do in five minutes and see a real immediate impact on your life. I promise. I promise, promise. And I do think this goes along with the next thing that I was going to come up with, like, of like a little hack.

I use something called North Star Planning. and we've talked about this a lot and I have like a planner and everything but but what I really started doing was every single morning I committed no matter what to doing a brain dump a three circle and to pick one and because every day I make a coffee it's not really a coffee it's a tri-late I keep a notepad right there beside where I make this drink and I have it like open and And then every day, I just brain dump all the things I want to get done that day. And it's like a bunch of crap. Go to the post office.

And I got to book this thing for the dog. And I have to, because we're going on vacation. And I have to blah, blah, blah. And I put all the things, all the things. And it's like a lot. It's a lot. I brain dump the crap out of this. And then I circle the top three most important.

And then out of those three, I star my non-negotiable. And this, to me, is my North Star. my non-negotiable, the most important thing. Because it's really hard to pick what a priority is, isn't it? Like we have all these things we want to do and it's so overwhelming. And for some reason, we seem to focus on the things that don't really matter as much as other things or how do you even know what matters the most? And so practicing this exercise, writing all the cool things down, circling the three that you think are the most important or that will make you the happiest to do. and then starring the one that's non-negotiable.

And I think this ties in with the first thing, which is making these things small. So you can't write down like, what am I going to do today, declutter my entire house? That's not realistic. You got to brain dump realistic, tiny things. You're not going to organize your whole kitchen today. That's not realistic. It's not. One cabinet is, though.

one drawer is these are the type of things we brain dump you're not going to be like get out of debt you're not going to brain dump that that's crazy pants but can you brain dump automatically transfer $50 a month into a savings account can you can you do that and then go to the bank and set up or go online and set up a new bank account and do set up an automatic transfer that's something you can do today. Can you go for a 10-minute walk? We're not going to be like, lose 30 pounds and get buffed today. We're not brain-dumping that. But the act of doing this every morning consistently non-negotiable, putting all the things we want to get down, and then training our brain to prioritize, and it might be hard at first, but I promise with practice it will get easier. And then identifying

that one non-negotiable thing we have to do no matter what, even if our arms falling off, and we're dragging it beside us like a zombie. We're still getting this thing done. That is life-changing. Make sure to make it small friends. Okay, moving on. Accountability buddies. This is something that changed my life.

I read Gretchen Rubens the four tendencies years ago. And what I realized, I mean, I felt like I should already know this, but I didn't know this, my motivation type is called an obliger, which means I am not motivated by like internal things. If I'm like, today, Cass, you're going to work out for 15 minutes. I'm not, I'm not going to do that for myself. But if I, I am accountable to outer expectations. So if I tell my neighbor, I'm going to walk with you for 15 minutes at 10. am, I am not going to disappoint her. I am going to show up for her. So I don't show up for myself, but I show up for other people. And that's called an obliger. And why this is so important to know and understand what tendency you have when it comes to motivation is because now I know that if I want

to do something that I'm dragging my feet and I don't really want to do, but I know I have to do, but I'm just like, I'm having trouble self-motivating. It's because my brain doesn't self-motivate like that. I need to have an accountability buddy. So can I, if I have to clean my house, this is what I did without even realizing it in the beginning. My best friend, Jess and I would have a phone call every day when our kids were napping because we had babies born the same day.

Our girls, Abby, and Maddie were born on the same day. They're birthday buddies. Not the point. I'm rambling. And we would call each other at the same time and we would clean the house together while on the phone with each other every single day while our kids napped. We would just like clean together and catch up and talk about whatever while cleaning together. That changed my life. Any time I've actually gotten fit and was going to the gym consistently, it was when I hired a personal trainer and had an appointment and I didn't want to disappoint them.

Lord knows I didn't want to go. I was going for them, not me. I need this. And there are ways that you can get an accountability buddy without it costing you anything. You can do a Zoom call with a friend. You can reach out to online communities like in the Take Your Houseback group. There is accountability body doubling zooms that run almost every day as part of that Facebook group. But maybe you're part of another Facebook group or a community group. Can you reach? out and see if someone either virtually or on the phone or maybe in person can do something with you and be your accountability body doubling person, whether it is cleaning because man, just having someone on Zoom with you while you clean, it's proven. It's science. Body doubling works. And you're

showing up because they've shown up and you're doing it with each other. You've carved out a block of time and you are going to get so much done. So that is a hack. I 100% recommend for whatever area of your life you want to improve. How can you have an accountability buddy to help you do it with? And your accountability buddy, I should say, cannot be your spouse or partner or children. And the reason is we're so close to our immediate family that they're kind of, they're kind of an extension of ourselves. And so it's a lot easier to disappoint them as bad as

it's just science. It's true. We can kind of like say to our spouse, oh, I know I promised I'd do this with you, but let's just do it tomorrow instead. Whereas if it's a separation, so someone you're not as close to, it's very hard to back out. You really don't want to disappoint that person if you're an obliger and you want to show up for them. So quick tip, quick tip. Okay. Next, another one. I'm just rapid firing these at you. You're probably like, are you writing these down? Don't write them down. Listen to it again. Keep taking action. Do something amazing right now. Five minutes. That timer's probably up. Reset it and do something else. Come on. You got this. You can relisten to this. Take action. Maybe we'll break these steps down in the show notes and you can read it later. Right now, it's about getting as much done as possible. so at the end of this podcast you've learned, you're inspire, you're motivated, but most importantly, you are proud of the progress you made. You have filled a trash bag with things to leave. You have cleaned something and caught up in one area. You have made a difference because you are amazing.

Okay. Another quick tip that I've been doing is get a win before 10 a.m. If you don't wake up till after 10 a.m. I don't know, pick a time. But, you know, within a two to three hour window of after you wake up, what win can you get? Because the science shows that feeling proud of yourself, accomplishing something small, even if it's like make your bed, make your bed is a win. It sets the tone for your entire day and you are more motivated the rest of the day if you have a win in the morning. and your win can literally be writing your to-do list that you could double these up write your brain dump your to-do list circle your three pick your one that can be your win that you did you did that unload the dishwasher win celebrate i am amazing look what i did and i think that's why a lot of people

exercise in the morning because they wake up in the morning and they'll go for a walk or they'll go to the gym or they'll exercise and they now for the rest of the day are in the mindset of I am an amazing fit person that does good healthy things for my body. You know? So it's easier to choose healthy food the rest of the day. It's easier to take the stairs over the elevator the rest of the day. It's easier to be in that mindset, that motivated mindset about your health the entire day because you've got a win in the morning. Now I'm, I'm, I'm, know this yet i have not worked out in the morning yet but maybe this hypnotherapy will trick me into doing it but that's okay i can get other wins in the morning i can get up and get dressed and put on my sneakers and i can

stretch i definitely can make my bed i can empty the dishwasher i write my to-do list little tiny wins in the morning set the motivation tone and set your attitude for the entire day so focus on what you can do before 10 a.m. One win is all you need. Okay. Another thing, we've heard this a million times. It's called habit stacking, but it's real, my friends. And so habit stacking is when you're in the habit of doing something like I make my chai latte every single morning and right beside it, I put my notepad. So while I'm making my drink, I'm brain dumping. If you have a new habit, how can you, you stack it with an existing habit that you already have. So you want to do something new, but you're like, that's so hard. Creating new habits is ridiculously hard. So what do you just do

all the time that you can stack on top? I used to forget to take my medication. So I started keeping my pills stored in the same drawer as my toothbrush on top of my toothbrush. So every morning when I brush my teeth, now I take my medication. When they were stored in a different place, I would just forget. So I stacked my morning pills with my teeth. toothbrush because I unconsciously brush my teeth no matter what and now I never forget to take my morning pills or my vitamins same thing friend what can you stack and there are a ton of examples and what I love to ask is chat gtp if you use that if you haven't give it a try man totally free and tell it your habit that your big habit that you want to do and then ask it to break it down into tiny little

actionable steps you can take and give you examples of how you can stack these things with existing common habits that people have. It's amazing. Chat GTP's amazing, friends. It's amazing because if you're like overthinking it, this can help you make it easier. So, yeah, habit stacking, pretty amaze balls, break things into tiny things and then do it at the same time that you do things every single day, whether it's in the morning getting dressed, maybe you, I don't know. I don't know. I'm bad at this. Chat GTP will be better.

Stack away, my friends. Stack away. All right. Next, power playlist. Ha ha, ha. Okay. So anytime I want to work out, but I'm not feeling the mojo, which is every time I want to work out, like, I get motivated to work out at 3 a.m. when I can't sleep, but I'm not going

to get out of bed, you know. But then in the more. morning when I could actually work out, I don't feel like it. I created myself a power playlist. And these are songs that get the mojo going. They get the juices flowing. They make me feel a little pumped. I'm a big fan of M&M's till I collapse. That's like my go-to song. Or Britney Spears, work B-I-T-C-H. Yeah, that's a, that's a, yeah, get it together. Tough love, kind of kicking in the pants that I need. And so I have this playlist and it's saved on my Spotify. And when I want to do something, but I don't want to do it, whether it is exercise or clean or, you know, whatever,

I put that power playlist on and I get a little pumped. It gets me fired up. It's a little bit, you know, it's a push I need. It's the push I need. Which leads me to the next thing that I do all the time when I just don't feel like being awesome and I just want to lay in bed and be a bum, but I know I should be doing things. I borrow motivation from someone else. You're doing that right now, listening to me. I hope I'm motivating you right now. Get up and do your dishes. No one's coming to save you, put on a cape, rescue yourself. That's the kind of motivation I need. But I borrow that fierceness from other people when I'm not feeling fierce myself. When I'm feeling sorry for myself, when I'm feeling tired, when I'm feeling like, ugh, I just don't want to,

but I know I need to. And deep down inside, I do want to. I just can't get the get up and go. I will watch a YouTube video of someone else who has that fire, and I instantly feel their fire. I borrow their energy through the screen. And I used to have this. app on my phone. I'm all about the apps that would every day, I forget what it was called, but every day it would like give me a short inspirational, like message was usually Tony Robbins or some other empowerful thing. But I was paying for that. And what I found was it was great, but I would forget to use it. And it's just a waste of money. So I just go to YouTube. And I will type in motivational speech or motivational videos or clips of motivational.

videos and they have like compilations and I've saved a bunch of my favorites and I just put it on in the background when I'm getting ready or I'm getting dressed or I'm in the bathroom having a shower or I'm driving in my car and I get fired up because I'm borrowing that fierce energy from other people which is probably why you're listening to this podcast because you want to get fired up and feel fierce too. It helps and it's amazing. So make yourself a playlist on YouTube or different podcasts that is like energy, friends. And when you're not feeling it, borrow it from someone else.

Okay, I'm yaking my face off. I want this to be short and sweeten to the point because I want you to get on with your amazing day and also feel proud of yourself. So right now, friends, do five more minutes of something big. Put away that laundry. Dust, dust your surfaces real quick. I don't know. Tidy up that clutter pile that's on your counter.

What? Your kitchen should sparkle, my friends, because you deserve it, because you're goddess and your kitchen should reflect that. Get in there and get that kitchen looking amazing. Set a timer for five minutes. Bust your butt. Move like the queen is coming herself. The queen passed away.

The king? Oh, we don't really want the king. You know what? I'm coming over. I'm coming over to your house and I'm going to bring a white glove and I'm going to inspect your kitchen and I hope it's worthy of you. I hope it's worthy of you. So set a timer, get in there and get it done. And I'm going to share a couple other quick little things that you can do. And one of them is don't rule your eyes. I'm just going to say it. Gratitude Journal. The first time I had a therapist, they recommended this, and I rolled my eyes so hard they could probably hear it. If I hear one more person tell me to have a gratitude journal, I'm going to vomit. Get, stop it. Come on with this crap and same thing from every freaking expert. Why are you

always saying to have a gratitude journal because it works. Because it works. It is, hands down, the most impactful way to get out of the victim mentality, to change your mindset to start being a positive person, period, honestly, because we are in the habit of noticing all the bad stuff and focusing on the bad stuff and being like a poor me and look at this and this isn't fair. Look what they have. Look what I don't have.

Oh, I want this. Oh, this is the other thing. I was always like, I want to buy this or I want to go on this vacation or what's next, what's next, what's next, what's next. And I was constantly so focused on, on like the what I didn't have that I always felt kind of miserable. And when I started doing a gratitude journal, so every day writing down three things I'm grateful for, it shifted my brain in the most insane impactful way. and I did not expect it and it did not take long.

A few days, I started noticing things. And then I heard a podcast from Mel Robbins about noticing hearts. And I know I talk about this all the time, but she was like, try this exercise to activate your, oh man, science is not easy for me. Your reticular activating center. I butchered that. something in your brain, some brainy thing that's the bouncer that keeps you from being overstimulated and helps you only notice the things you've trained your brain to notice and ignore the things

that you don't care about. And so the exercise was to notice hearts, this is the Mel Robbins exercise, to notice hearts everywhere. So look at the clouds. Just one of those look like a heart. Look at that leaf. Does it look like a heart? Walk around and see if you see a heart on a sign. actively search for hearts just in the day then the next day try it again and then what happens is you start noticing hearts everywhere without you trying right there that painting has what looks like a heart in my office i never noticed that before and you just it's crazy it's crazy it's like when we were looking at buying a new vehicle and we were looking into teslas i'm like nobody even has a tesla and then as we were driving joe and i were looking we're like oh that's a

that's a Tesla. Then suddenly all I saw was Tesla's everywhere. My kids do. Look at the Tesla. Oh my gosh, there's so many Teslas. Why all of a sudden is everyone driving a Tesla? It isn't that more people got Tesla's. It's because suddenly my brain started seeing it everywhere. And this happens with positivity. When you actively at night are thinking about things that are good that you're grateful for, things that make you happy, your brain, your reticular act, I don't know what's called. It, without you realizing it during the day, starts to notice all the good and all the positive things in your life.

And the byproduct of that is you become a more positive, happy, grateful person who is content with the life you have right now. And when you are generally happy, when you love your life and feel grateful, you can't help but be motivated. motivated and energized because nothing zaps you like negativity. Nothing makes you feel like just laying in bed or sitting on that couch eating potato chips than all the, oh, this isn't fair and this and I don't have this and this didn't work out.

All that is soul sucking, man. It's energy sucking. It's motivating, sucking. Nothing makes you feel better and more energized and more happy and positive than happiness and positivity. There I said it. Okay, friends, there. Okay.

So those are them in a nutshell. I just wanted to give you a couple quick little things that you can do. Most important, if we're going like, okay, you're throwing too much at me, Cass. It's like drinking from a fire hose. I'm choking on all these tips you just gave me. Let's get real about the important ones here. Brain dump, circle three, star your North Star, the one. star the one and make sure it's a micro commitment a tiny win and try to do it or one of the other

two that you circled in the morning and stack this writing down every single list brain dump with something you do in the morning anyways put it beside your toothbrush put it beside the coffee maker just a notepad set a reminder set an alarm in the morning when you're doing something else if you have breakfast the same time every day. Have your alarm go off and have your notepad ready to do this brain dumpy thing. This is probably the most impactful thing. The hypnosis was cool. The accountability buddy also good. But if you have to pick one, my friends, it's the morning brain dump. Circle 3, Star, the non-negotiable North Star. I promise you this small, thing will have a huge impact. And if you're like Cass, I'm already doing that, vision board.

Vision board. Dream big. Think of all the cool things you want to accomplish in the next year or five years. And it isn't win a billion dollars. We're not, listen, we're not fairies here. We're not some magical leprechauns with a pot of gold over here. These are real life things. These are like in the realm of possibility. that you can do. Even if they seem big, they're in the realm of possibility of things that you can do. Print it off or put it on your phone somewhere you'll see it all the time and let subconscious magicness take over, friends. Literally doing it without even realizing it. Okay. I hope you're feeling like motivated. Speaking of motivation, go borrow some from someone else. Love you so much.

And don't forget about that free Canva template to help you design your vision board. I'm going to put a link to that in the show notes below. Have an amazing day, my friends. Have an amazing week. I hope you are proud of whatever you accomplished today. It was enough. And it was so much better than before you started this podcast. And you need to celebrate that. And I'm going to see you back here next Monday where we get pumped and do more awesomeness together. I'll see you then.