Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - The FIVE areas of your life you need to MASTER | Clutterbug Podcast # 193

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

Are you in control of all FIVE of these areas of your life?! Mastering the "BIG FIVE" is key to being a happy, healthy and prosperous adult. In today's podcast, I break down these FIVE areas and share simple ways to overcome procrastination and finally be in control.      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

Let's talk about the big five, the top five things that as adults, we need to work to master in order to make the most of every single day. Hey, Clutterbugs, welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. If you're watching this podcast in the video format on my podcast YouTube channel, you see that I look like a hot mess sandwich and I have like a virtual background where I'm recording this because my office is torn apart. We just put a new flooring. We're redoing the shelving behind me. So it was just like a really horrible background. So I thought, why not be in a forest today? And why I look like a hot mess, you might ask, it's because it's 10 o'clock at night on a Sunday. And this podcast is supposed to go

live on Monday morning. So I've procrastinated to the very last minute. I fell asleep on my face. So I've got like mascara running down, no makeup, haven't brushed my hair. And I thought, you know what? We're just doing this because the irony is I'm going to talk about procrastination, how to overcome procrastination in this podcast. And I am the queen of procrastination, obviously. But we're also going to talk about the big five because no, well, some people are perfect, but majority of us are not perfect. And we are still, going to procrastinate things sometimes and we aren't always going to do everything awesome. But if we can focus on these five areas and at least have some semblance of control in these five areas, we are going to have an awesome life. These are the things that we should be working on. Over everything

else, we should have these like relatively under control. And the rest of our life, life is gravy. If we just focus on these five areas, we will die in our old age, looking back, thinking, I lived a good life. I did a good job. I am an adulting boss, right? Okay. So let's jump in. What are these five things? How do we focus on these things if some of these areas you're struggling? And how do we overcome the procrastination? If one of these areas were not really crushing it and we want to work towards how do we yeah get ourselves motivated to actually do these things and achieve control in these areas. Without further ado friends let's just jump in to the top five why I wanted to do this podcast today I said I was going to jump right in and here I am ADHD at its

finest why I wanted to do this podcast today is because the same personal, but I have a friend and a family member and someone else in my life right now who are doing the life coach thing. So they are starting new careers out as life coaches. And I in the past have hired a life coach. I personally did not have a great experience because what I found with the coach that I hired was they didn't have these five areas of their life under control themselves. And so I wasn't getting a lot of value because at the end of the day, when we're hiring the life coach or we're having somebody because we want to improve ourselves, it's one of these areas that we want to improve. And if they haven't had the experience of figuring out how to get

these areas under control, how could they possibly help others? Is my personal opinion. And so because I've been talking about a lot about life coaching with friends and family members, and it's kind of like topical in my life at the moment. I thought it would be cool to talk to you about that, not about life coaches, but about these five areas and get you thinking about your own life in a different way. I am not succeeding in all of these five areas, but I used to be failing in every single one of these areas. So progress has been made, and my life has drastically improved. Now, without further ado, let's jump in to the big five. The big five are health, money, career, relationships, and home. And we're going to work through each one of these. I want to break it down

because it doesn't mean we like are baller bosses in every area of these things, but it does mean that they are not a struggle. So let's talk about what that means. First, health. You don't, you don't have to be a size zero with rock hard abs to be in control of your health, but you do need to eat healthy foods because that's how you nourish your body. You need to move and exercise because we know that that increases longevity and overall like just life happiness because you're not sore and you're limber, you'll live longer, just overall health. We need to eat healthy. We need to exercise. And I think lumped into that is being proactive about our health overall. So visiting doctors, maybe taking vitamins, drinking water. This is one area I suck so hard at. Just health in general

is my biggest struggle hands down. I am terrible at this. And it is always, the thing that's in the back of my mind that I want to make a priority. So talking to you about health, I can't really offer twice. I'm just like, I have all these things. I just put together like a little home gym area and I bought, I always am like buying water bottles and setting alarms. Like, today's the day I'm going to work out. So it's ridiculous that I'm here. I have, I struggle with this area. And there are going to be one of these five that you probably struggle with, too, and that's okay. Because life isn't about, we don't wake up one day and have a brain transplant and we're totally different people. It's a slow process of moving towards becoming in control of all of these things.

And obviously, the health is the one thing that's going to come last for me, but I know it's going to come because the other areas, I feel like I'm in control. They no longer feel like work. It's kind of like just working itself out. So the health is my priority right now. And as you listen to this, I'm hoping, first of all, you're taking action, doing something, but also thinking about your five areas and maybe which one you want to dedicate a little bit more time to. Do I procrastinate my health? Absolutely. Gotten way better at booking doctors. though. I'm like a hypochondriac. I go to the doctor. I'm not so good at taking my vitamins. I suck it working out and I've been eating terribly bad lately. So I need to be really proactive

in these areas. And I know why I'm failing. And that's, let's just jump into that. when we procrastinate, when we put off in any of these areas, it kind of really comes down to the same reasoning, whether it is your home that's cluttered or your finances or your health and your weight or your career, whatever it is. When we're struggling in these areas, let's be honest. It comes down to mindset, 100% mindset, which looks like different things for different people. For me, my big issue when it comes to health is I tell myself all the time, I'm just an unhealthy person. I tell myself, I hate working out. I hate the taste of healthy food.

I'm just a person who loves eating, but I'm just a person who loves eating. also know that I am an immediate gratification type of person. And especially when it comes to working out and eating right, I can't just do 15 minutes on the treadmill or 20 minutes on the treadmill or eat a salad for dinner and see results. I have to be good and consistent and like constantly have willpower or at least this is what I'm telling myself. I'm telling myself it's hard and I need to be disciplined and I'm not disciplined, so why even bother? And maybe this is a story you're telling yourself in the other areas too. But what I found, I used to tell myself those stories in the other areas too, what I found was it was just about making small baby steps in the right direction

more than I was making steps in the wrong direction. I didn't have to be perfect all the time. I just had to be good more than I was bad. You know, with the house, I just had to tidy up a few more times than I made messes. I just needed to like do the dishes every night. I had to, we're going to talk all about the, at the end of this podcast. We're going to talk all about the tools that I use to like get crap done. And I need to apply these same tools to my health. I know that.

Why am I not? I don't know. Brain stuff. Mindset reasons that. I need to work on. And we're also at the end of this podcast going to talk about how to change our mindset. So maybe I'll relisten to this and magically whatever. Okay, we're moving on. Health. Health is the first one. The second one is money. And what I mean by money is being in control of your money looks like not being in debt, especially consumer debt. So credit card debt. So credit card debt,

owing money for maybe like furniture that you bought where even like anything that you're paying high interest to and you're paying money just because you've borrowed money that is bad debt. Everybody's going to have a mortgage. You probably have car payments. We're not talking. You probably have student loans. We're not talking about that type of debt. We're talking about you spent more than you made this month.

and you put it on a credit card. And now you're paying the minimum, like the minimum balance to nothing. You're just paying interest. You're not even paying down the principle. And hopefully, but probably, hopefully not, but probably you're continuing to put money on the credit card. This is seriously dangerous. This is a huge, just, it ruins your life. And so being in control of your money means having the discipline to pay off the debt and not continually go into debt.

Debt, that's the money aspect. Eventually, when we're out of debt, we can look at saving and then maybe investing and then creating like a nest egg so that we feel secure. we feel secure with our money with our financial situation but the first step is getting rid of the debt and i am telling you right now i sucked with money so bad i claimed bankruptcy at 24 years old and even after that so bad with money i didn't even understand what compound interest was and then even after i learned what compound interest was i still didn't care because I wanted the new shoes or the new television or whatever it was. I was so impulsive. I was like, I'll figure it out tomorrow. And I was always stressed, always broke, always on this hamster wheel

of paying for things that I had bought a month ago, never getting ahead. And it was a horrible, sickening, awful way to live. I thought, and I told myself at the time, I would, win the lottery or I would wait and someday like my next paycheck I'd put it all on the debt. I'd tell myself these lies. The next time I get paid or the next time I get a bonus or the next time I get money in some way I was going to then get myself out of debt tomorrow or was going to get a better job in the future and use that to pay off the debt. So I kind of lied to myself. I like dangled this, you know, reward in front of myself. But then when extra money did come in, I would tell myself, oh, I deserve the treat or I didn't have the debt.

I didn't actually put that towards the debt. I would treat myself to something. I got like a tax refund. I'm going on a minification. So dumb. So dumb. And the only way that I changed that behavior was replacing my own stupid thoughts with the thoughts of people smarter than me.

that's what worked for me. And I'm not going to say what's going to work for you. I don't, I'm going to say what worked for me is I had to listen to a lot of Dave Ramsey. I had to read books on finance over and over again. I just was constantly hearing the message until the message of other people of pay yourself first. Debt is like the worst than you can do to yourself. It's criminal to use credit cards and not pay them off every month. Like you're just patting these fat cats. wallets, and it's costing you so much more. You're paying double or even triple for the things you're buying when you're paying it on credit card and not paying it off. All these words of wisdom from people way smarter than me started replacing my own thoughts. And I also did this thing

that I'm so glad that I did because I knew I was impulsive and I knew I couldn't trust myself, but I also knew I was lazy. I went to the bank and opened a savings account that was not attached to my debit card that I couldn't use. This is back in the day before we had phones where we could tap, but it was separate. It was not connected. I had to physically go to the bank if I wanted to get and access that money. And what I would do is every time I got my paycheck, I would automatically transfer 10% over to that savings the day I'd. got paid. So the money would go in, 10% would just leave. I'd have 10% less money. But I didn't see where that money was going because I couldn't check my balance. It was completely like not attached to my other bank account. So it wasn't online. I had to go to the bank to get the balance. And I honestly forgot about it. It was like when I was like, oh, God, I'm so broke. I was like, oh, I do have that

money in savings. Oh, I'd have to go to the bank, to the teller and do this whole thing. I did didn't even keep my bank card. I was like, I don't want, you know, it has to be hard. And because it was hard, there was sometimes for emergency situations, I needed it. But nine times out of 10, I would just go without the cool thing that I wanted. I'd eat mac and cheese for dinner for a couple of days, or ramen, or not buy the new pants, or the new shoes, or go out for drinks, whatever it was, I just, I just went without. And then before I knew it, like literally after a year or two, I had a little nest egg saved. And that changed my life. It changed my life because once you start saving and seeing the power of the money that you have saving now that you can invest and that money's

making you money and you continue to change the narrative, it changes everything. So money. I'm rambling. The next is career. career is one of the top fives. And this doesn't mean that you have to like be amazing at your career. I think what this means is it has to be a stable job, one that you can trust, you know, that isn't going to be gone tomorrow. So you have security and also something you find fulfilling. You might be retired. You might be a stay-at-home mom. I still think when we talk about career, it's kind of like your identity. So being a stay-at-home mom is your career. Even being retired, are you a gardener? Are you a crafter? Do you volunteer? What do you do that's part of your identity?

Is it fulfilling? Do you have purpose and meaning in your day? And I think that is better than career, but we're calling it career, but you know what I mean. Maybe you write on the side. It doesn't have to make you money to be a career in this instance, what we're talking about. But you are, you do have something and you are in control of it in that. It fulfills you and that it's stable. Because without that, we can feel very lost and we can feel very like, I don't know, it's like something's missing. There's a hole in our lives, especially if we hate our job.

And I had lots of jobs that I hated. I felt like I was filling the void with other things. What I really needed was a purpose and a meaning. And you can find purpose, even if your job isn't like, da-da-da-da-da, the best job ever. It's the mindset. What about this job do you love? how can we focus on on what does fulfill you of this job and how can we make ourselves like see the good in this job and if there is no good how can we work towards making a career change so that you at the end of the day when you get off work or you're getting up in the morning to go to work you can tell yourselves this is worth it because I'm helping people I'm teaching children I'm you know, bringing smiles to people's faces. I'm learning something new. I'm doing something I

actually love. I love my coworkers. Whatever it is, we need a career that's stable and we need something that fills us. Okay. Career. Moving on. Relationships. I'm going to be totally brutally honest again. Relationships is the one that I'm not so great with. I feel like it took me a long time. I nailed money. Okay, I nailed it. I got really good. I dug my way out of debt. I claimed bankruptcy. I went back into debt. Then I dug myself out of debt. I saved. I got nest eggs. Love my career. I'm so lucky. Even running a daycare I loved. I'm so, so blessed to have a great career. Relationships. I have a wonderful marriage. I love my husband. I could do better. in nurturing that marriage. We've been together like 22 years and it's become a little ho-home. It's become a little

like we don't date as much as we should. We don't. It's, I love him so much and he loves me. But I know I, it's work and I need to put effort into there. I need to put more effort in with my children. I love my children. dinner together as a family every night. We do family game night, but they're getting older. They're teenagers. And I feel like I'm spending less quality time with them because they don't want to spend time with me. And I'm like, oh, whatever. But then a week goes by in two weeks and three weeks. And it's like, when is the last time I've had like an hour conversation with them? I need to work on that. And I also need to work on friendships. And I have some great couple friends, but I don't have a ride or die person right now who I, well, I do. I have someone, but I

have a wonderful best friend, but I haven't seen her in a long time. I haven't like made time for her in a very long time. We live in different cities and I need to make sure I'm fostering that. So relationships doesn't mean it has to be a partner, doesn't have to be like a spouse or but there are people in your life that you love and that you trust and who love you, that you make time for, that you nurture that relationship so that you always know that there's someone there if you need them, so that you're not alone in this world, so that you have someone to walk through the bad times with and celebrate the good times with. And relationships take work an effort for some people. Some people are just like, la, la, la, they're just like, it's no work for that.

For me, relationships take work and effort because I like being by myself. I do. I'm such an introvert and I enjoy my own company more than other people's company sometimes. I just want to like chill by myself and watch some Netflix. But I know the importance. It's one of the five things. We need love and we need companionship. And we need other people in our lives. So this is an area that I definitely need to focus on. But it's not like I have, it's little things. I can put on my calendar every week to call my best friend or to have a coffee date.

Today I went to visit my mom. I just like, I didn't want to. I'm going to be honest with you. I did not want to visit my mom. I wanted to stay home and watch movies all day and eat popcorn in my bed. But I know I need to work on. nurturing that relationship and I'm so glad that I went. I'm so glad that I went. Going to bed tonight, I'm not going to look back and think, oh, man, it's too bad I didn't lay in bed and watch

movies all day. I'm going to think, man, I'm so glad I saw my mom because I really made her day and she needs me and it was great to connect with her and that makes me feel good. So let's move on and think about your own life and little ways that you could foster these. We're going to talk more at the end of this podcast about specifically how to overcome the procrastination if we're procrastinating one of these five things and little tips and tricks and kind of hacks that we can do to work on these areas. Okay. But the last one is home. The last five is home. And obviously the big thing is like having a home, having a place, whether we're renting, it doesn't matter, a room in your parents' house, it doesn't matter.

A place that's secure that you live, that's safe. A home. Everyone needs a home. A place that's their safe nest from the rest of the world. But when we talk about being in control of our home, what I mean by that is taking it a step further and is it clean? is it organized? Does it reflect you? Are you proud of it? Do you find it beautiful? This is important because, again, our home is very much tied to our self-esteem and our identity. And it also is the foundation for our life. And when it's chaotic and messy and cluttered and it can make our

brain feel that way. Because our environment affects us emotionally and physically. And so we spend a lot of time in our It needs to be restful. It needs to be a place we can recharge. It needs to be a place that we feel good about and proud of. It doesn't have to be perfect magazine fancy fancy house, but we should be able to keep up on it in some way. Be in control of the house, in control of the laundry, in control of the dishes. Doesn't mean it's always perfect, but it isn't out of control. know what I'm saying? And I used to be a super slob. I used to struggle with this. I feel like I've nailed the house. I've nailed the house, the money, and the career. The relationships and the health, not so much. But I'm working on. But three out of five, friends, three and a five, not so shabby. And I know the areas now that I need to work on. And this isn't, again, like, this isn't about perfection. This is about identifying these five things and realizing the importance of, of them in our life and also realizing that we cannot just go from zero to in control overnight. We cannot go from out of control of these areas to in control of these areas overnight. It is slow, tiny baby changes. That is how we succeed. That is how we make a difference.

And it doesn't always feel like the small things are making a difference. But that is the secret to being in control. of these five things and like rocking our adult life. I got us take a second to thank today's podcast sponsor, HelloFresh. It is a busy time of year right now. Fall, all my kids' birthdays, we're going to have to start Christmas shopping soon. It's banana pants. And I need dinners to be easy. So every week, I get three meals delivered from HelloFresh. It's three nights a week. I don't have to plan. I don't have to rush and get fast food. I get nutritious, gourmet, chef-inspired meals that are fast. There's over 40 recipes to choose from, and a lot of those are 15 minutes to a wholesome,

homemade meal. It's a lot cheaper than takeout. I can tell you that, and I feel good about what I'm feeding my family. Right now, go to hellofresh.com slash 50 clutter pod and use the code 50 clutter pod for 50% off plus free shipping. That's hellofresh.com. And the code is 50 clutter pod for 50% off plus free shipping. So now we've talked about the five areas. Let's talk about how to actually tackle them and get in control of them. I feel like I've been kind of lazy with the health and the relationships. I need to work on that. But I What I can talk about are the little things that I did with the other three, because I'm telling you, I was out of control in all of these areas. My relationships were a mess. I was in an abusive

relationship for years and years. I didn't really make time for friends. I didn't even speak to my parents. Yeah, every area was in absolute shambles of my. Of my. life in these five areas. I was like a hoarder level slob. So how? How, how, how, how? Do we dig our way out? How do we know where to start? How do we stop procrastinating? And I can only share with you things that have worked for me. And the biggest thing that worked for me in these areas was focusing on my mindset. And the truth was, I didn't believe that I could get my house under control. I did not believe that I could ever be out of debt. I did not believe that I would ever have a job that I loved.

But it didn't mean that I couldn't act like it. I had to kind of fake it till I made it in these areas. I couldn't wait till I felt like I was good at those things. and I know that this is exactly what I need to do with my health. I cannot wait until I feel motivated or I feel like a healthy person or I feel like a person who likes to eat salad. I just have to act like a person who likes to eat freaking salad. I have to act like a person who likes to work out. And I'm not going to feel that way, but I've got to take the action, even if it's five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, towards that, because then when you start acting like it, the feelings

come next. Especially if you are a perfectionist, if your big issue is you're afraid to fail or you think something's going to, it's like, what would it matter if I spend 10 minutes? It's not going to make a difference anyways. I can't change this. This is the way I always am. or it's too big, what would be the point? I'm wasting time. I'm going to fail anyways. All this fear, all this anxiety. It's really stress and anxiety that causes us to procrastinate because our brain is allowing us to kind of get out of feeling those bad feelings. It wants us to feel good right now. So what do we do? We avoid. We eat. We watch TV. We do something fun, we buy something, we scroll the internet. All of these things are just avoidance,

avoiding the stress so we can feel good in the moment. But the problem with this is we just feel worse tomorrow. It's only making the problem worse. We're kicking the can down the road and Every time we do this, the can gets bigger and heavier, and it's a bigger job for us to do. So we need to stop looking at all of these areas of our life that we want to improve, like these huge undertakings. Like, I'm in debt up to my eyeballs. How could I possibly, you know, get out of this huge debt? Today, I'm not going to get a coffee at Starbucks.

Today, I'm not going to buy this thing on Amazon. Today, when I get paid, I'm going to transfer $100 into a savings account and just do that automatically. I can set that up today. It's little baby steps. And when we make a mistake, we forgive ourselves and we're like, okay, whatever, I've made a mistake today. So I'm going to do better tomorrow or right after today. I'm like right this next minute. So, an example is. Today I was driving to my mom's and I really wanted to stop and get McDonald's fries and I realized like I only have to have willpower while I drive past the McDonald's. I don't have to have willpower all day. I only have to have willpower for five seconds until I pass the McDonald's

and I really wanted to pull into the drive-through. I really, really did. But I had the willpower when I passed it. And on the way home, I hadn't, now I hadn't. Now I hadn't. eaten all day. I was like, I only have to have willpower while I drive past the Starbucks. I didn't do it. I got in. I got myself a tri-lottee and a cookie. That was bad, but I didn't get the fries. And I got to do the not getting the fries more than I get the fries or I get the latte or I get the cookie. It's not about perfection. It's about in a moment having the willpower more than I don't. But somewhere in our brains, we look at it as like we have to be good 24-7.

We can never spend money again. We can never mess up again. And then when we do, we're like, well, see, I knew I sucked. I might as well just go back to sucking all the time because I'm never going to be perfect. that is the mindset that's keeping us from achieving our goal because we are going to screw up and we are going to spend more money than we should sometimes. But we need to actively continually get back on that horse in little tiny ways. Little tiny changes add up to big changes.

And it starts with our mindset for giving us ourselves when we make a mistake and telling ourselves we can do this and acting like it even if we don't feel like it. Acting like it even if we don't feel like it. Whether it's relationships, you're not really loving your husband right now. Maybe your husband's being a boob. Maybe your husband's sucking real bad and you're just like, all you want to do is punch him in the freaking face. But you know you want to work on the relationship.

How do you act like you have a loving relationship with him but without feeling like you have a loving relationship with him. Can you rub his back? Can you tell him that he's amazing today? Can you thank him for the things you are appreciative, right? Can you snuggle and cuddle him even though you don't want to? We take the action and the feelings come later. We don't want to work out. We hate working out. God, we didn't want to work out. We were going to wait till we feel like it. Or we can say, I'm going to get on the treadmill with my iPad or my laptop or something. And I'm going to watch a show for 15 minutes and I'm just going to walk for 15 minutes. I'm going to take the action even when I don't feel like it because the feelings come later. I'm going to choose a salad over a burger, even though I don't feel like it because the actions

come first and the feelings come later. It's the mindset shift that we need to do. And a very effective way of doing this is reminding ourselves what would tomorrow me want me to do today. Because we don't think about tomorrow us. That's why we're doing all this negative behavior. Because tomorrow us isn't even, we don't even care about her or him. It's like that person is another person and screw them. It's about me in this moment. What's going to make me happy. but when we consciously ask ourselves and remind ourselves that tomorrow us is going to have the burden of what we did today, that kind of stops us in our tracks a little bit. So what would tomorrow you want you to do today when it comes to money? Would tomorrow you be happy

that you skipped stopping and buying that thing or getting that Starbucks? Tomorrow me would definitely be happy if I hadn't got the Starbucks. Tomorrow me would, would also be really happy when I do the dishes tonight. And tomorrow me would be ecstatic if I spent 15 minutes on the treadmill. Extatic. I had to tell myself this same thing when it came to this podcast. I was like, I didn't want to do it. It's now almost 10.30 at night. And I'm exhausted and I'm tired. And the last thing I want to do is record a freaking podcast. I was like, I'll do it tomorrow morning. But then I thought, is that fair to tomorrow morning's me? I got to film a video tomorrow. and now I've got to edit this and film this and it's a whole thing and I thought, you know what,

get up, record a podcast for a half an hour. Tomorrow you is going to be so appreciative that you did. And I promise she will be. And at the end of the day, I just, I didn't have to feel like recording this podcast. I just had to do it. I just had to act like I did for myself as a gift for tomorrow's me. And it doesn't have to be a great podcast. It's kind of craptacular. It's okay. I'm doing it. This isn't about perfection. This is about tiny things that we can do to make ourselves proud,

to get in control so that we feel better about ourselves tomorrow. Because all these little things add up to awesomeness. It's all these little things that add up to awesomeness. So here's two more things that I'm hoping you will find helpful to little hacks that you can do, especially for you overthinkers. So there's a lot, you're like, I want to lose 100 pounds and I want to get out of debt and I want to save $10,000 and I want to make a new best friend and I want to repair my relationship with my husband and I want to get clean and clutter-free house and I want to do that's insane amounts of stuff, where do you start? Oh my gosh, that feels very, very overwhelming. How could you possibly climb that mountain? And then your brain starts thinking and you start stressing about

all the things you have to do and making me making a bunch of lists and tomorrow's then. It's so much, so much. You are now mentally and physically and emotionally exhausted from the pressure you are putting on yourself. We know we need to get. these five things under control. But I'm telling you, this doesn't happen overnight. This is the slowest, tiniest crawl towards these things. So here is a way of achieving that without the endless to-do-lists and all the stress and all the things. You ready for it? What's your one thing today? What one thing are you going to do today towards one of these things? Are you going to go for a 15-minute walk? Are you going to give your husband a back massage? Are you going to do your dishes? Well, that's something different. We're going to talk about that and the other thing. But are you going to organize a drawer? You don't have to, you just have to do one thing a day. One thing a day. Maybe you make a salad for dinner and that's your thing. You could do one thing in each of these five areas if you want to

or the areas where you're really struggling the most. Like for me, I should do one thing a day for my health. That feels so attainable. And the great thing about the one thing is we don't have to make like lists of what that one thing is. It's whatever we feel like today. We can ask ourselves, what would a healthy person do today? And I'm going to do that one thing. And maybe after we do one thing, want to do one more thing, but maybe we don't. Maybe we want to do five things and that's extra amazing. But we have to at least do one. That is a non-negotiable, which is what we're going to talk about in a second. But the one thing. And if you do five things today, does that mean you get to take the week off? No. Means you were extra awesome, make awesome sauce today. But

tomorrow you still have to do one thing. And this is how we saw. slowly push the needle forward. This is how we make more good decisions than bad decisions, but not make it feel like this huge overwhelming chore. We have to completely change our personality. We just have to do one thing a day. One thing a day. And you can do one thing in every area or just the areas where you're struggling or just one thing and it doesn't matter. But you must do one thing. Okay. So that's one. technique. The second technique that I absolutely wholeheartedly recommend are your daily non-negotiables. Like non-negotiables. This worked for me in a way that I cannot describe because I am a person who is

all or nothing and I am a person who hates structure and rules and like doing like the things I'm supposed to do. But I needed boundaries because without boundaries. I just was running wild, friends. So what I put on myself is boundaries, like non-negotiable boundaries. Here are some examples. I do not drink and I do not do drugs and I do not smoke. These are boundaries for me because in the past I had struggled and I am not the person who can have like a couple glasses of wine with dinner.

I will do that every night then. And then I'm going to be drinking a little bit every day. I am, for me, my boundary is I don't drink and I don't do drugs and I don't smoke for my health. What I should also add to that is I don't eat like, I can't, but see, what I should do is I don't eat like processed sugar type thing. I know that would change my life, but I really love sugar. So I need to figure another non-negotiable. Maybe the non-negotiable is I have to exercise. for at least 15 minutes a day non-negotiable. It doesn't matter what I do, whether it's a walk,

whether it's crunches, whether it's jumping jacks, but I have to exercise for 15 minutes a day no matter what. That's a good one. That's one that I probably, yes, yes, I'm going to start implementing. With my home, it's dishes, laundry, and a 10-minute tidy-up, which I talk about at nauseam. But having those three non-negotiables, I cannot go to bed with a 10-minute tidy-up, which I cannot go to bed without doing those has absolutely 100% changed my life. In my career, my non-negotiable is every day, Monday through Friday, I have to create one thing, whether that is a podcast or it's a video or it's a short or it's a newsletter. It doesn't even like I have to do one thing a day in my career, in my business. I have to do just one thing. No pressure on what that one thing is, but I have to do one

thing. I also need to have these non-negotiables in my relationship. Maybe that's I cannot go to bed without kissing my husband good night. I cannot go one day without giving him like an unsolicited hug and kiss. And I know that for a lot of you might seem like obviously, but I am not an affectionate person and I feel like there are a lot of days where I don't kiss him. I need to work on that. So having these non-negotiable rules for me, maybe not for you, but for me, were like so changing. And how I did the ones, like a non-negotiable is like for money was every time I got paid 10% non-negotiable, no matter what, no matter what cool thing I wanted to buy would go into that savings account. And I still do that to this day.

Non-negotiable. I also never carry a credit card debt, non-negotiable. The credit card gets paid off every month, non-negotiable. Okay, so how do we do these non-negotiables? When it came to the dishes and the tidy-up, I had to have alarms because I forget to remember. So think about your own non-negotiables, and then you will have to remind yourself multiple times a day of these non-negotiables, of these hard boundaries that you're putting on yourself. And don't make them so insane. Like, I've tried to do the no-sugar. That was too big. Like, it has to be realistic, friends. Okay. Kissing my husband every day once a day is realistic. Giving him a back massage every day is not realistic. Right? Like, it has to be a realistic thing that we do.

even when we don't feel like it, we're telling ourselves no matter what we are doing these things. Cleaning the entire house from top to bottom, not realistic. That's crazy pants. Having your dishes done once a day, realistic. We can do that. That we can handle that. So creating this list of these non-negotiables and then reminding ourselves to do these totally game changer, man. Game changer. So write down your five things, the top five, health, money, career, relationships, home, and then really circle the ones you want to work on. And then is there a non-negotiable thing that you can add in those categories? Is there something you can do within those categories that, like, no matter what you're going to

do every day, something small, something realistic to continually push the needle forward, to get in control of those areas, to make a difference. And set alarms, write yourself post-it notes, put it all over the freaking house. If you have Alexis, make them remind you throughout the day that this is important to you because you are worth this, because you are important. Your happiness is important. And you are going to feel so much better when you are in control of these five areas and you don't need to hire a life coach to do it, friends. In fact, maybe you could be a life coach

when you get these five areas under control because you could teach other people how to do it. I'm going to work on my health and my relationships going forward. These are like, and I'm going to use these same tools to do it and I'll keep you posted and I cannot wait to hear what you're going to do. Let me know in the comments or let me know like, you know, next time you're following me or you're watching a YouTube video. Let's keep up this conversation about the steps and the actions that you're taking because your advice, your comments, your things that you're putting into this community are going to help others who are watching. You are going to inspire other people. You are going to help motivate other people. And together we can help each other make real

improvements in our lives. Thank you so, so much for taking the time to hang out with me today. I hope you're feeling inspired or motivated and I'll see you guys next time.