SHOW NOTES

In this episode of Habits for Humans with Pamela Henrie, we discuss how we all want to experience more peace and joy in our lives. Awareness and reflection are the first steps in getting in tune with our best selves, of discovering what we truly value, allowing us to cut what doesn’t fit and make room for positive habits and activities that bring us joy.

Welcome to Habits for Humans, the show that explores how to program your brain to maximize your potential. The goal of this podcast is to teach you how to instill systems and habits to live a healthy, sustainable, deeply satisfying way of life.

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OUR HOST
Pamela Henrie is the owner of The Success Choice, and the creator of the award-winning Success Choice Planner, Choosing Joy in the Journey Journals, and the Success Choice Challenge workshop. She regularly writes for the Daily Herald in her column “Choosing Success.” Pamela is passionate about inspiring herself and others to improve themselves and their worlds and to choose joy in their journey. Her planners, journals and workshops help you filter through the noise of life and establish positive routines to find balance, order, and joy in the journey.

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TRANSCRIPT

hi, welcome to habits for humans. The podcast that explores what makes people tick. And how to program your breakfast brain of ours through habits. We’re going to explain why sometimes we can feel like rock stars and like, we’re just doing amazing. And other times we can feel like we’re floundering. If we want to be healthy and happy, what is the secret to programming our brain to maximize our potential? I’m your host, Pamela Henry. And today we’re going to explore four principles that are foundational to maximizing your potential. We have several giveaways for our listeners. So free give away alert. If you like giveaways, please listen until the end. First a word from our sponsor. This episode of habits for humans is brought to you by card salad, a company that provides done for you meal planning. So you’ll never have to reach for that Mac and cheese or Doritos or whatever it is that you reach for. And the success choice that provides tools for helping you filter through the noise of life and establish positive routines to find balance order and joy in the journey. Today I will be both the guest and the host. So the first few episodes. We’ll be foundational principles that I will discuss, and it’ll just be me being the host and the guest. And then we’ll start interviewing other guests. So I’m going to interview myself as if I’m the guest today. And I don’t usually speak in third person, but here it goes. Pamela Henry is the owner of the success choice and the creator of the award-winning success choice planner, choosing joy in the journey journals and the success choice, challenge, workshop. She regularly writes for the daily Herald in her column. Choosing success. Pamela is passionate about inspiring herself and others to improve themselves and their worlds and to choose joy in their journey. Her planners, journals and workshop. Help you filter through the noise of life and establish positive routines to find balance order and joy in the journey. So we always start with one habit that helps us to manage our wellbeing and our stress levels in our life. And for me, this habit is exercise. And it’s not just exercise. It’s exercise that I do with friends. I work at home a lot, and so I. Enjoy getting out of the house and getting around people. So exercise is something that’s really beneficial for me with friends.

BE YOUR BEST SELF

Okay. We are going to jump into our topic today. And I talked a little bit in my bio about establishing a life of balance order enjoy. And sometimes I can feel like a tall order and especially joy can sometimes feel elusive. It was a search for joy. That was actually the catalyst for my whole business. About 15 or so years ago, I attended this panel discussion where three women who were pillars of the community talked openly and honestly about their struggles with depression. As I sat in this room by the questions, the comments and the tears, it was clear that there were so many that were struggling with this. And this happened to be a group of women, but men aren’t immune to this challenge. As I sat there, I noticed that there were some recurrent themes that kept coming up that seem to be contributing to this depression. And probably the most common one that kept coming up over and over again, was this all or nothing? Mindset. Thinking they were either a complete success at something or a complete failure. And they were regularly measuring themselves against other people and usually their weaknesses against someone else’s strengths or measuring themselves against some unrealistic perfection and always fallen short. So this was probably the number one. Thing that kept coming up. The second one was that they were feeling stagnant in their life. And sometimes even a little resentful because they felt like their husbands or other people were building their careers and getting some recognition and developing skills. Where they were only while she only there. Their efforts were only noticed when they didn’t do that. They were constantly washing the same dishes and clothes over and over again. But then they felt guilty that they were feeling resentful because of course they loved their families and this was a life that they had chosen. And they of course wanted to be there for their families. But they were feeling stuck in erupt. Can you relate with any of these feelings or any of these topics that I’ve just been talking about? I know for me at that time, I really related. About five years before this particular meeting. Or a panel discussion. I had gotten remarried. And I had one child at this time and my husband’s four children came to live with us shortly after we got married. And it was a huge adjustment for everyone. My husband’s CIT children needed to adjust to a new school and a new home. My son needed to adjust from being an only child to one to five. And because my husband worked long hours and commuted. Can you Ted? We decided that I would leave my career and that I would become an at-home mom. And then two years later, we had a child together. So at the time that I was at this meeting, we had kids in high school, middle school, elementary school, and a toddler. So I spent a lot of time in the car. Driving kids to, and from three different schools. And our kids were all involved in lots of sports and different activities. So I was regularly running kids to basketball, baseball, football, chair, volleyball. Um, Music lessons, concerts games. Um, all kinds of things. As well as doctors, dentists, orthodontists, we had the three kids embraces at one time. Not to mention. We had four teenage boys who were growing and we went through a lot of food. And thank heavens. We had an extra fridge out in the garage because between our boys, we went through about 10 gallons of milk a week. People would always give me strange looks as I’d walk through the grocery store with 10 gallons of milk in my cart. But this was a huge adjustment and I realized that. I had given up some of the self care routines that used to be a big part of my life. I wasn’t setting goals for myself anymore and I wasn’t. Having personal development. Um, I wasn’t focusing on poker. Uh, personal development, like I used to. That personal development. I became a passionate mind after I got divorced. I developed a passion for personal development after my divorce. When I got divorced, I was starting a new life with my almost four year old son with no house, no car, no alimony. No job, no career. No savings. I was having to move into my basement parents’ basement apartment and start at the university. So life seemed a little bit bleak at the time. And I still remember sitting on the airplane with my son sitting next to me asleep. And I was thumbing through this inflight magazine and I came across this advertisement for Tony Robbins personal power program. That was a 30 day program. And I really couldn’t afford it at the time, but I felt like I really needed something positive in my life. And I went ahead and bought it. But what this did for me. Was it established some positive routines of listening to something educational or motivational every morning. And it helped me to envision a better life for myself. After I finished listening to this. 30 day program. I listened to his personal power or not power talk. Series where he interviewed different experts and authors. And then after that, I started going to the library every week and I would check out books or audios about personal development. And I read hundreds of books. And I tried to glean the most important topics of each book and I took copious notes. I was a single mom for eight years before I remarried. I really felt like this habit of personal development was instrumental in helping me to get my degree, to be able to buy a house and a car and create a great life for myself and for my son. During that time I was working during the day as a small business coach. And at night, one night, a week, I taught a personal development and time management course. But when I remarried, it was a big adjustment. I went from one child to five immediately. I had teenagers suddenly with all that entails and then having a new baby, I of course, was super overwhelmed. And had given and had lost some of those old routines and a spark that doused. As I was sitting in this panel discussion and looking out at these women and looking at myself. The thought came to me. We are raising this next generation. How are we going to teach them how they can be their best selves? If we are feeling unhappy or unfulfilled? I had this overwhelming desire to want to do something about it, but I just didn’t know what to do. But I did start reading again. Every day, I started reading and writing and filling notebook after notebook. After two years of daily study and research. I came up with the idea. Of creating a growth oriented and routines and reflection based planner. I put together a focus group. And with this focus group, we refined this planner over the course of almost a year. Before we put it out to the world. And then. Later added a journal and. Workshops and other programs and products. So, but getting clear on what I needed and what I valued. And then working towards something that was something that was meaningful to me, really helped reestablish that joy in my life. So now we are going to. Talk about some. Or during this study. That I have been years of study and all these books that I read, I gleaned some. Some principles that I feel are critical to helping you become your best self and to establish joy in your life. And today and over the next couple of episodes, we are going to talk about four foundational principles that I think are so important. The first is awareness. And awareness is all about living intentionally. And taking the time to discover what is influencing you. And what you truly value and want and need in your life. The second is. Reflection and evaluation. It is so easy to compare ourselves with others. And to feel like we’re not measuring that. But if you’re regularly reflecting and evaluating. If you’re thinking about what’s working in your life, what’s not working. What lessons have you learned? Then it’s easier to see your growth and your progress. And it we’re so much happier when we’re only comparing ourselves with ourselves and with our potential. Not comparing ourselves with anyone else or with some unrealistic idea. The third principle. Is having goals and milestones. I think it is so important to have something meaningful, to work towards something that excites you, something that gets you up in the morning and keeps you going. Maybe it’s a new skill you want to develop or a new project. But something that excites you. And last but not least. Least is establishing routines and habits around things you value. And making them automatic. Actually all of these things that we’re talking about. Our habits, creating the habit of awareness, the habit of reflecting and evaluating. And the habit of. Establishing goals and milestones. And our all habits, but making those habits automatic is what creates that lifestyle that you want and needs and helps make it sustainable. We’re going to start with awareness, which is being intentional and really being intentional and taking the time to discover what you want and need. And we all want to be our best selves and I’m sure we’ll all are all aware of habits that we want to either get rid of. Or new habits we want to instill. I know for me personally. The habit of snacking in the afternoon is something that I would like to change. At three o’clock. I can almost set my watch by it. At three o’clock all of a sudden my energy drops and I want to reach for something sugary or salty that will help boost that energy. But when we do succumb to a habit that we’re not excited about, our tendency is to be rate ourselves to be, oh, I can’t believe I did that. I can’t believe I ate that again. And why do I do this every day? But that doesn’t help you. That just keeps you stuck. When you instill this habit of awareness, you can start to think. Hmm, why am I doing this? Why am I eating this right now? Maybe you think, well it’s because I want more energy. You can think maybe there are some other options that will bring about that same result. So if I want more energy, perhaps I could go for a walk instead. Or maybe I want to pre prepare some healthy snacks that I can feel good about. Or maybe I just want to take a nap on the couch for 10 minutes and boost that energy. So when you create that awareness, you can start to pull in different choices that will fit with what you want and meet. Now let’s think about some things that influence us. The environment and media are a very powerful influence. Especially as we look at our phone through social media or magazines or TV shows. We can think that we need to look a certain way. Or that we need to have certain things. I know if you like to watch a lot of home improvement store shows, you might think you need to make, make these improvements in your own home. Or you might need to look a certain way. Those things influences. Also our upbringing and culture are important influences and it’s good to look at that. Also our friends, family, neighbors, all influences. If our friends, for example, are all getting a new car, we might think we need a new car. Or if our neighbors all have their kids enrolled in some activity, we can think we need to enroll our kids in that activity. If you don’t take the time to really get clear about what you want, what you need, what you value. It’s easy to just go with the flow and you exhaust yourself trying to measure up to all these different expectations. And as you’re trying to measure up to these expectations, do you ever feel like you’re on a stage and you’re up there performing and out there in the audience or your friends and your family and your coworkers and your neighbors and everyone that you know is judging you and watching whether or not you’re going to fail or whether or not you’re going to succeed. We all want to feel accepted. And a part of a group and we all fear failure at times. It’s important to realize that this is normal. We all feel this way at times. Where it becomes a problem is where we start to measure ourselves against perfection and feel like we have to always measure up to that perfection, or we’re not okay as a person. It’s important to realize. That everyone fails. Everyone makes mistakes. But when you make a mistake through the lens of awareness, those mistakes can then become learning experiences. Growth experiences we can improve and learn how to do things differently. So when we know that we can learn from our mistakes, the world doesn’t seem like such a scary place. Now we are going to move into some reflection. So if you have a journal or a notebook handy, I would encourage you to pull that out. So maybe you could take some notes as you have any insights or thoughts as we go through this next section. So we’re going to talk about becoming aware through different areas of our different areas of our life. And am I planners and journals. I talk about eight areas of balance. The first area of balance is spirituality and values, which is aligning your thoughts and actions with truth. So I believe that there are universal truths and there are personal truths. So universal truths are true for everyone. These are the natural laws. And personal truths are true for you individually. So for example, Universal truth. Would be or something that’s true for everyone would be that we perform better. And we’re more alert when we get adequate sleep and rest. But the particulars of the fat may vary from person to person. For example, I have a friend who does her best work at 4:00 AM. So she goes to bed really early and gets up really early and she gets most of her work done before other people are even awake. I have another friend who comes alive at midnight. And she gets her best work done from midnight until 3:00 AM. So these two different friends. I have different personal truths around their best energy levels with regards to sleep. So as you go through each of these areas of balance, think about what the universal truths are and what your personal truths are in each of those areas. And then the more that you can align your thoughts and actions with those truths, the happier you are, and the more fulfilled that you feel. So the next area of balance is emotional fitness. And this has letting go of things you can’t control. Forgiving yourself and others and having new positive outlook. Next is health and physical, which is creating and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. So just for another example here of a universal truth in this area is that we have discovered that smoking is harmful for your health. And this has been, uh, an accepted universal truth. But a personal truth might be. You know, different diet and exercise programs, you know, what you eat and how you move might vary from person to person. So it’s important to really become aware. Of what works for you and create that awareness around your health and exercise and movement needs. And as you go through some of these areas and activities, some activities will bridge over multiple areas. For example, I talked earlier about, I like to go to this exercise class on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays with friends. So this fits into my health and physical of course, because it’s exercise. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I go to the gym with my husband. So, of course, again, this is a health and physical. Area. But it’s also a relationship area because this is a bonding activity that we do together that builds our relationship. Next is financial self-reliance, which is maximizing independence. Next is service or help others, which is making a difference. Then organize, unify. Improving your surroundings. I think I might have skipped over learning create, which is studying topics of interest and creating things you value and developing new skills. Like I discovered in this meeting, I think that we flourished when we are developing new skills and creating things and, um, learning new things to develop ourselves. So reflect on where you are and where you want to be in each of these areas of balance. And we will include these in the show notes. So you can refer back to it as you do some evaluation to see where you are and where you want to be in each of these areas. So by doing this evaluation and recognizing what’s important, this really helps you to prioritize the events and activities in your life. Have you been overwhelmed by your to-do list? I know that a lot of times when you’re overwhelmed with your to-do list, it’s because you’re looking at everything that needs to happen that day, or maybe even that week. All at once. And that can feel overwhelming. But when you have figured out what you want and what you need and what you value, and you’ve created your list around those things that you value, and you’ve been able to eliminate and get rid of some of those things that don’t fit. And then if you can prioritize that list, then you can look at just one item at a time and feel confident that that’s the best use of your time at that moment. So creating that awareness really helps you to prioritize. So awareness is really an activity of trial and error. It’s really being intentional in your life and figuring out what works, what doesn’t, what can you learn? What can you do differently? And reflecting and writing about this really helps you improve and get more clear on what you value. Another thing that it does is it really helps you to put a, to filter all the information that’s coming at. You. All the expectations and information. Through those values so that you can let go of some of those things that no longer fit and you can make room for habits and activities that do fit, and that do bring you joy and help move you towards your values and goals. Another thing it does is it helps you to recognize opportunities that you may not have otherwise recognize because you weren’t clear on what you wanted. I’ve heard this so many different times of people that had opportunities come to them. Once they got clear on what they wanted, because. It’s almost like it was attracted to them. But they at least became aware because they were clear on what they wanted. So I encourage you and will challenge you even to spend the next week or two. Evaluating and writing in about each of these areas of balance. Maybe you want to just do one area a day. I think about where you are, where you want to be, and maybe some things that you could do to help try to help close that gap. You could even use some meditation to help get you in that frame of reference. I know. I do years ago, my son, when I was visiting him in Florida. He invited me to do a 10 minute guided meditation with him every morning. And I did that with him and I really loved it. It was, it was very helpful. And then a few months later, when he came to visit me, he asked if we could do it again, which we did. And I suggested we add journaling. So he did a little 10 minute meditation and then following the meditation, we pulled out our journals and we wrote just for however long he wanted to. And for me, this was life changing. This really helped improve my awareness in so many areas of my life. And it was also a good time then for me to pull out my planner when I had my priorities more cemented in there and to evaluate my day or my week or my month and get my planning done. So just taking that time to pause and to reflect and to write is super helpful. And helping you to pull into your life, those things that are most meaningful to you. And to start eliminating things that no longer fit. So today we have talked about two principles, the awareness. And reflection that are so important in helping us to become our best selves. In this habits for humans podcast, we strive to help you develop positive habits and routines to help reprogram your brain to become your best self. Not someone that you had someone else’s expecting you to be, or someone who feels like they need to perform for someone else, their friends, family, or society. We all want to experience more peace and joy in our life and putting in these habits of awareness and reflection helps you to recognize what’s influencing you. What you want, what you need and what you value. And this could help you filter through all the information coming at you so that you can eliminate some things that are no longer of value to you. Things that you can get out of your life so that you can make room for more positive habits and routines and activities that bring you joy. In our next episode, we will continue to explore these principles. And in particular, how to choose a goal that excites you. And how to use habits to accomplish meaningful objectives in your life. So, thank you so much for joining us and for joining us for this habits for humans podcast, that teaches you how to build amazing, an amazing life by developing intentional habits. Remember to check your show and show notes for these areas of balance that we talked about as well as make sure you take advantage of the free giveaways. And thank you in advance for giving us a positive review. Have a great day.