The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - How I Improved my Mental and Physical Health in 2022 (and How YOU Can Too!) | KEV Talks #14

Episode Date: December 26, 2022

In How You Can Apply 7 Key Life Lessons I Learned in 2022 I’m sharing 7 of the most impactful lessons I learned and helped teach myself in 2022. More importantly, I’m going to share how you can learn from my challenges and kick off 2023 on the right foot.Read more and listen at https://kevtalkspod.com/how-you-can-apply-7-key-lessons-i-learned-from-2022/

For me, the 2022 year started with a bang. I competed in a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournament, and I placed first in Gi, that's the pajama-looking things, and second in no-Gi, that's the tight shirt and shorts, more like submission grappling or wrestling. I had a terrible adrenaline dump, and before my first match, I felt my legs were going to give out. I'd had a few feelings of this earlier in the year, with nervousness and anxiousness, but I didn't really recognize what it was. But that day, in January of this year, I stepped onto the mats and competed anyway. As the year went on, though, I was faced with some serious family illnesses and some disheartening diagnoses. This added stress, plus my own post-traumatic stress and day-to-day work and home pressures built to a boiling point, and then my mental and pot boiled over, and I had a full-blown panic attack. It was this awakening I didn't want, but one that I needed. So, in this week's episode, the last week of 2022, I'm sharing seven valuable lessons I learned over the past year. More importantly, I'm going to share how you can learn from my challenges and kick off 2023

on the right foot. Hey everybody, thanks for coming to the KevTalks podcast. I just flew in and boy, are my arms tired. Hello listeners, thanks so much for being here, subscribing, going to KevTalksPod.com, following the blog there. Thanks so much for being here throughout the year, for staying with me as I pivoted. I hope this episode is helpful for there. Thanks so much for being here throughout the year for staying with me as I pivoted. I hope this episode is helpful for you. It was helpful for me to just go back and think about what did I learn this year? What did I help myself through? What did I get help from others from? And to share that with you all, because I know there's someone out there that's probably gone through similar things as maybe going through similar challenges like I

have. And I'll touch on those throughout this episode. But I hope that the actionable steps that I share help you and let me know. Go to keftalkspod.com, leave comments, give me some feedback, follow me on at Penel KG on Instagram and Twitter. Let's get into this list. So these are my top seven lessons learned from 2022. My number one is to get a hold of your vices before they get a hold of you. Now, for me, I've always enjoyed a good beer or bourbon. For a stretch earlier this year, though, I started to enjoy drinks daily as a way to cope with stress, which, as you all probably know, is not great. But it's pretty prevalent, particularly in COVID, post-COVID times, particularly in my genre of veterans and first responders. And just I got in that habit.

After my panic attack, I stopped drinking there for four months. I stepped into alcoholic anonymous meetings thinking, man, I've got to get help with this. This is a contributor. And it was, you know, I wasn't managing my stress well. It helped me learn it wasn't my only contributor. But I also learned that in the room, if you've never gone to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, it's an extremely welcoming group. I joked with my wife that it's like jujitsu. It's a group filled with people from all walks of life and you're welcome immediately and you will never understand it unless you've been there. And I also researched the smart recovery process, which is more of a therapeutic-based process and some actionable steps. That way, Alcoholic Anonymous is not necessarily faith-based, but it's faith-backed. I'll use that word. And that you believe in a higher power and that helps you. I also learned about myself. And

honestly, now I am drinking way less than I was before and not every day. And I have a much better relationship with alcohol. So if there's one quick action that I probably should add to both this as I go and read off the post that I made on kevtalkedabout.com, it's to have a reset, right? Do a reset. If you find that you're drinking a lot in general, right? Alcohol is just not good for you. Even red wine, the amount you'd have to drink to get, even though we enjoy it, but we like it, But if you have a problem with it, you need some help. So it's to take a reset. Give yourself some time to not drink. See how it is to go for a couple of days if you're drinking every day or a week or a month.

Do a dry January or sober October or something like that. And if you're having problems, find a support group. And there's links to that on this post. That'll link on the show notes, like Alcoholics Anonymous. There's groups everywhere, rooms as they call them. There's also smart recovery groups everywhere. In fact, and near me, there's one for veterans and first responders specifically. It's also a national program. It's not quite as well as established or as big as Alcoholics Anonymous, but it's well known. And then review the resources on the All Clear Foundation. So I talked to Rhonda Kelly that came out last week, and there's great resources from the All Clear Foundation. And I've linked directly to those just about different

substance abuse that first responders, emergency responders can get into. It's pretty prevalent. And what I found super helpful, one I found, you know, when you reach out for help, like I didn't, I kind of secluded myself and just dealt with it and thought, oh, I exercise. But is to talk to friends with some familiar backgrounds. I have a buddy of mine, one of my best friends who I served with. We were both hospital corpsman in the U.S. Navy. So young kids exposed to death and trauma and things. And he's gone on to be a firefighter for 16 years, fire captain now. It was very, very helpful to talk to him to both get some real talk and to get some perspective

and to realize you're not alone and other people are going through some shit too. Right. And that's very helpful. So the first thing is whatever vice you have, for me, I started drinking too much and I had to get ahold of it and it didn't help the other parts that I had to fix. So that was very helpful for me to do a bit of a reset, take some time off, let my body and mind heal from that aspect and get to the second one. So the other thing I've really done, and I've kind of done this, is number two is find a way to give more than you take. And for me, I've always felt compelled to share information and lessons I've learned, whether I got to go on a staff ride at Gettysburg, a leadership thing, and I immediately did a big write-up and shared that with my teammates that didn't go, but the internal drive really inspired

me to start podcasting in 2018. I started with Between the Slides as a way to provide all hazards to management principles and best practices without having to travel. Honestly, I had younger kids, and then in 2020, I kind of pivoted as I in my life had pivoted a few years in then to kind of program and project management proper and focus a lot on those processes and getting more into interviews. And then this year, I decided to focus more on who I have been over my two and a half decades of professional work and really think about public you know, public safety and technology and healthcare, and then still talk to other folks about leadership and things,

but, you know, in the more specific areas. And so that's why I pivoted to the KevTalks podcast, like I've talked about. And I've learned that, you know, overall, just sharing my personal and professional experience has provided tangible benefits to others. Like I helped somebody pass the PMP exam and we only corresponded through Reddit, right? In the program management Reddit, subreddit, which I actually banned from because I linked to a helpful resource on my site. So shout out to project management subreddit

and anybody there. But someone had posted, hey, I want to pass this. And I shared what I'd written up. And actually, if you go to the Cap Talks podcast website, you can search like pass the PMP and those steps are there if you need help. But it validated, right? If you reach out and you're giving, you can have a really tangible asset or be a tangible asset rather to folks out there.

And it's not just about the numbers, right? On the show, some days I've gotten like a few thousand downloads and some have gotten like 10. And you know, do I want the big day? Sure. But I know that I impact doing this podcast and I hope it's impactful. And actually, if you want to help support this podcast and keep things going and help it continue to grow, if you go to keptalkspod.com, there's a support the show link and have a PayPal there. Any amount is helpful and it's appreciated. Actions that I think you can take and I've taken these is, again, post helpful information on LinkedIn. So share what you've learned in whatever amount of time you've worked in your profession as a post or an article on LinkedIn.

It's got huge exposure. So whether you're trying to grow a business or just be helpful, you can get it out there. You can throw it right out there. Just use something like Grammarly, write it up pretty well. And then also, maybe start your own podcast. There's tons of podcasts. There's, I forget however many, 2 million maybe, but there's not near that number that are actually active or maybe putting out good content, right? There's just people start them and they don't get instant success and they quit. Another thing that I started doing, so I started getting the matcha frappuccinos from Starbucks. That's the green tea frappuccino. I usually eat the mocha frappe. It's pretty good. It's a little frou-frou, but I like it. It's tasty. I don't get them all the time. I buy the people behind me

coffee. I just do it, right? So imagine you're in line and you pull up and if this has happened to you, I hope you felt great. And they say, oh, it's paid for. And it's a little thing. You could do that or you can contribute to a school that's paying for people's education or new books or go through your closet, go through whatever and donate things, but something to give back. And when you focus on others, it also helps focus less on maybe whatever thing you're going through. And that's been really helpful to me. Number three for me, and this is huge, and it's a very practical thing, is to get more and or better quality sleep. I realized my sleep

hygiene was awful. I was staying up late watching TV, action movies, or fight videos. And I didn't realize at the time, because I was having, you know, a few drinks, that it kept my brain in fight or flight mode, right? It kept it simulated. You're watching these things. It doesn't calm you down. It's not helpful before bed, you know. And so in addition to abstaining from alcohol, I reduced my pre-bedtime liquid intake just overall so I didn't have to get up to go to the bathroom as much and learn to practice better sleep hygiene. And that's, you know, I have links to those, but it's turning the lights down a few hours before bed, disconnecting from devices. But I also changed my mindset and this was huge. And if you go to KevTalksPod.com and look for

Got Sleep? Whole episode focused on good sleep stuff practice. But I started to not linger on the negative thought of, oh, I didn't sleep my eight hours or seven hours, and I woke up four times last night. And when you stop thinking like that, you stop perpetuating the negative cycle of sleep. And that is huge. And you have to get to that point because I got bogged down with feeling like shit in the morning and being upset about it. And it just doesn't help. So, again, the actions that I took and that you can take,

disconnect from the online world one to two hours before bed. That's hard to do. Our phones are just constant, right? But grab a book and turn the lights down a bit so you can still see. Watch the video I linked to on the show notes. It's about cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. And learn about some more benefits of sleep from an expert, Dr. Tracy Marks. Go to her YouTube channel. It's super, super helpful. She was also on the podcast, so you can listen to that episode on any platform on this show, on the KevTalks podcast. Number four lessons I learned and I think you could benefit from is to reaffirm your why and then step towards your how. When I was exhausted, feeling depressed and anxious, and I felt like I couldn't go on, and not like I didn't want to, so not like suicidal or just more I didn't know how.

I would wake up and maybe I slept three hours, and I felt really bad. My mindset was negative. I reordered to myself my why. I thought of my strong, supportive wife of 21 years, my three beautiful sons. Then as I woke anxious some days and exhausted some days I took a step and then another and another and then my why acted as my virtual hand right that was on my back driving me forward now I understand not everybody out there has a why or has a spouse and kids or some system, but think about something in this world. Your why could be that

you like to see those flowers that are at the park or you like, I don't know, going for a walk or something. So we don't all have the same support system, but there's something out there that each of us can latch onto that's our why for pushing when we're in our tough spot. Actions that I took to help reaffirm or just to learn about my why and where I heard this saying is from reading Man's Search for Meaning. I've talked about that a few times. Super impactful book. And then think about your why. So read that book or listen to it. And then now that you know your why or when you know why, think about how you're going to move towards that. So baby steps. You don't have to figure out the whole plan now, but, you know, Google's a great thing. YouTube's very helpful. So if you can work towards your why, if you have questions about your

why, Reddit's helpful. I mean, the online world is actually pretty helpful. A key though here is don't let your emotions or thoughts take over, right? Emotions are fleeting. As you know, if you've ever gotten mad when you're driving, right? You get mad real quick and then it goes away, hopefully, soon after that or in some other time. But emotions aren't forever. And thoughts don't necessarily reflect reality, right? So if you had a negative self-talk, negative thought, negative thought about somebody else, it doesn't reflect reality.

So you can't let your emotions take over you can't let you can't be thinking oh well i thought this so that's just the truth and that's just how it's going to be humans are amazingly resilient you'll read that in man's search for meaning from someone that was lost his family his parents and his pregnant wife to the nazis and concentration camps victor frankl and then became one of the most influential humans on the planet in history. And so that's just amazing to me and really struck me and strikes me today. Number five, remember that how you talk to yourself matters. And I've mentioned this before as well, but again,

it's super impactful. So I listened to Gary John Bishop's Un-F Yourself, Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life audiobook a few months ago, his no-nonsense take, his no-nonsense talk struck me. And that's what I like. I've been around no nonsense people from growing up with my dad to being in the military and public safety. And it's very effective for me. And so he was all about that. Plus he has a cool Scottish accent. But the actions that I have taken that I've suggested that I suggest that you all take if you need to is to use I will or I will not statements. And I've shared this before, but use I will. I will do this positive thing to make myself better, or I will not do this negative thing anymore to keep myself held back or make myself worse. And that's huge. And how you talk

to yourself matters. Saying, oh, I'm awful, or in a conversation, self-deprecating, or joking around. That stuff adds up, even little things. So focus on what you will do that's positive. Focus on what you won't do that's negative. And I've done that, and it's made a big difference. Number six, rejoice in doing things afraid. This thought helped push me when I had moments. would, you know, be anxious and built up and man, what am I going to do when they when they filled me with that. And then I started listening to and I'd heard her before from my mother-in-law and my wife, Joyce Meyer. And I've gone back and forth as I talked about on Got Faith, that episode, you can check that out at keftalkspot.com, of religion, right, of believing, of not,

you know, seeing bad things and wondering how can there be a higher power of God, right? Of believing, of not, you know, seeing bad things and wondering how can there be a higher power of God, somebody that's letting this happen. And the thing that I love for me, the message that I get from Joyce Meyer, she both educates me about God, about the Bible, about things that I haven't studied near as much, but as equally to me is the practical application of just that knowledge or just life, right? She went through a horrible childhood. She was abused by her father. Mother didn't help. And, you know, she, this is from her saying this on her show. But so she talks about practically how she pushed past those things through therapy, through medication, through this, you know,

talking to, I think her friend or a friend of hers on one of the episodes where she told Joyce, well, why can't you just do it afraid? Right? So instead of saying, well, I can't because I'm afraid, I'm never going to do that because I'm afraid. And then stopping yourself, whether it's going outside, going shopping, you know, especially after COVID before if folks are afraid of germs and things. Well, why can't you do it afraid? What precautions can you take to make it better to make you more comfortable or flying? I am not a big flyer even though I've gone skydiving, which is kind of weird. It's a control thing maybe. But if need be, I'll do it. Or when I'm nervous and I've talked about being anxious, doing jujitsu, getting claustrophobic, but I'm going to keep going, keep doing it because I'm going to fight my fear. And I highly suggest folks do that.

And that changed my mindset forever. And so the action that I have take that I do each morning that I suggest is give her a listen, right? You don't have to change your faith. You don't have to change your spirituality, but just listen to her message, the pure message, right? That she says the practical application of it. So listen to her, uh, their 15 minute shots, right? In the podcast, and then make a list of things you're afraid of maybe, and think about how you can chip away your fears. So what are you afraid of? How can you push past it? Uh, and then, you know, listen to Joyce to get, get some tips. It's my suggestion. Seven, do hard things or doing hard things regularly makes you more resilient. I'm fortunate that before I was stressed out, had this panic attack, I had a good base of regular exercise that I've been practicing and still do, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

Both very hard. I would do really hard high-intensity interval trainings or heavy weights or run hills. Jiu-Jitsu is insanely hard. You're grappling people, trying not to get choked or limbs broken. That sounds pretty violent, but that's the basis of it. But it's also a great time with folks from all walks of life. And you're bonded by this struggle where you're learning a very practical, very effective self-defense and traditional martial art. And it's just awesome. And so having that base really put me in a situation to be able to be more resilient when I was, like I mentioned earlier, exhausted, didn't know how am I going to get through

this day. I felt awful. And it really made the difference. And so the actions that I have taken and will continue to take, and I suggest for you all, is when you feel anxious, remember the motto, move a muscle, change a thought. And that struck me from Emma McAdam from the Therapy in a Nutshell YouTube channel. Very impactful, right? So if you feel anxious, if you get up in the morning, then get up and get moving. It's also a reminder, the mantra on the Penelope Fitness Club YouTube

channel, which is my channel for exercise things, go check that out, is to get up, get after it, and wish you Godspeed. And so talking through that, that has to do with getting up and moving a muscle and changing thought is get up and make your bed, get after it with some kind of movement exercise, go for a walk, walk in place, walk around your house. If you have a home gym, go get a workout in there. If you are going to a gym, go do that. Just something. Something to get you moving in the morning makes a huge difference. And then wish yourself and those around you Godspeed, right? Which is good journey, which is I hope you have a great day.

Those kind of things. Being nice to others. Wishing others a good day, right? Looking at folks. If you're on Zoom calls, I'm on Zoom calls all the time. And saying hi to folks and not just jumping into the matter of the meeting, but actually talking to folks. How are you? How's your family?

How are your feelings or anything you need? It makes a big difference. But what helps us push through is if we, when we're in hard times, is if we put ourselves in hard times regularly. And it really made a difference for me. And I think if I didn't have that base, I would have had a much harder struggle. I'm not perfect and totally fixed. I still have some anxious days and things like that. But I put the work in. And that's, again, a key that I kind of knew but that was very hopeful to hear from Joyce Meyer too is you can have all this stuff. You can believe whatever you want. But you as the human being, you as the person have to put the work in.

And I've seen this on Reddit. I've seen it other places and there's a lot of woe is me and I've been there before. But at some point, the woe is me has to become, okay, how can I get some help and how can I push past this? And there are many resources, a lot of which I've mentioned. And again, there'll be a link to in the show notes notes but I'm going to leave with a quote from Viktor Frankl and the best wishes for all of you and and the biggest thanks for listening and staying with the show for coming back after I took a bit of a hiatus this summer that I needed and this is from

Viktor Frankl and again just one of the most impactful authors and humans that I've been influenced by through his work. Everything can be taken from a man, but one thing, the last of the human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. I hope these words echo. I hope you choose your own best way in 2023, that you enjoy those freedoms that you have. And I thank you for being here, for listening to me. I wish you all the best as we get into 2023. Remember to have a plan, stay informed, and get involved and make a difference. And I wish you all Godspeed. But for now, I've got to fly.