Considering our Environments

In this episode I speak about the importance of considering the environments that we are in. I also diss briefly the impact negative words can have on us. When a person speaks negative words to us, those words can linger even after a person is gone. Based on the brains biase those words can repeat in our brains. I also introduce the 8 dimensions of wellness in this episode. I challenge us that not only should do we listen but we should create a plan towards what we are going to work towards changing in our lives. I remind listeners that change is a process and so is working towards becoming our best selves. 

Transcript

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Hi everybody, so welcome back to Becoming Our Best Selves. Thank you again for tuning in, and I want to thank you for being on this journey with me as we work towards becoming our best self. I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast and to listen to the past episodes. I thought it would be important for me to share some of my own experiences, the personal experiences that I've been through, just to share with you that regardless of who we are, it doesn't matter our positions, we're all going to go through something in life. We're all going to experience different situations. And as we go through those situations, we're going to need time to heal, especially if it's something that has been very traumatizing to us. So I want you to know that my experiences of having a past brain bleed, yes, it was traumatizing to me. And as I started and I shared in episode six, one of the things that helped me on my healing journey was the social worker and the assigned medical team that I had. You know, they really helped me to heal. I was able to speak through what I was going through, what I was experiencing. And I want to say that even when I left the hospital, when I left Toronto Rehab Center, the people that actually called me to check in on me to see how I was doing after when I left Toronto Rehab and I was at home, those people that contacted me just to pray or just called me and asked me how I was doing, that also helped my healing journey. So before we get into the details of this episode and just and the discussion, I just want to say and I want to share that if you know someone that was in the hospital and they came out, I want to encourage you that if you're able to call in and check in on them, please make sure you do that because it does contribute to their healing as well. So let's begin the discussion of this episode. First and foremost, I want to share with you that if anyone discourages you from working towards becoming the best version of you, I want you to start thinking about setting boundaries. And the reason why I say that is because it's very important to set boundaries in our lives. When someone speaks negative words over our lives, it does impact us. We know that words are very powerful. And most of the times, when that person is no longer around us, those words do linger and they can impact us. And actually, did you know that when a person speaks negative things to you, even when that person is no longer around, the words can come back and repeat in your brain. That is a brain's negative bias, is what it's called. Negative words do impact what we think, what we do, it even impacts how we see ourselves. It actually, the way how negative words impact us, it elevates our stress hormones, it can increase our self-doubt and cause even emotional exhaustation. And this is just based on some of the research I've done, based on you know the impacts of negative words. And I'll share what I've learned based on neurological research. Hearing negative words immediately releases stress-producing hormones like cortisol in the brain, interrupting normal logical and reasoning. So that means that the negative words do interrupt our normal logical reasoning skills. The brain does have something called the rewind effect. And the rewind effect, so that's the rewind effect, the rewind effect is when that person is no longer around, our minds can actually go back and dwell on the either bad things that were said to us, negative things, it can dwell on negative events that we've experienced. And most of the time, the rewind effect, it talks about that it will mostly pick the negative things or the bad events that we've experienced more than the good ones. So that's why I say that when someone in our lives have spoken negative things over us or in our lives, the brain unconsciously replaced those comments or what has been said to us. It's like a loop that actually happens, and that loop also causes frustration and it can cause anxiety. So it's very important that we assess our environment and again we set boundaries. Negative words also impact our self-perception, so the way we see ourselves, and it does have a physical and emotional toll on us. So when a person speaks negativity to us, we have to really ask ourselves: how is that impacting us? Are those words repeating in our minds? And I want to share that if you have people in your environment that are speaking negativity over your life, I do want you to consider the environment that you're in. And I want you to consider, as I said, the importance of setting boundaries. And it doesn't matter if they are friends or families, setting boundaries is very important in order for us to become our best selves. And I want you to remember this podcast is about working towards becoming our best selves, and during that process, we are learning and we are unlearning. The unlearning piece includes assessing the environments that we're in to make sure that we can become our best selves. Not only do we need to be safe physically, but we need to be safe psychologically as well. And that goes into psychological safety. Psychological safety doesn't only apply to the places of employment that we are in, it applies to the places of worship, and it applies to our homes, and it overall applies to the environments that we're in. So when we talk about psychological safety, do we feel safe to share our ideas, our thoughts, our suggestions? When we make mistakes, how is that looked at? Are those mistakes looked at as teachable moments? Because we're all gonna make mistakes in this life. But how others view our mistakes, we have to ask ourselves that. In our homes, do we feel that we have psychological safety? Because people flourish when there is psychological safety, when they feel safe physically, emotionally, and psychologically. So that's one thing I want to bring to our attention. Now I really want to pause. I want us to pause and reflect. And I want us to think about this intentionally. So as we pause and reflect, and we're working towards becoming our best self, we know that this is a process and it takes time. And in past episodes, I also spoke about mind, body, and spirit. What does that mean to you? And I asked myself the same thing. What does it mean to me? How am I going to be intentional in making sure that I am becoming my best self? And again, looking at the mind, body, and spirit. Because as I mentioned before, they are all interconnected. And one of the things I want to mention is that we do function best when, again, the environment is safe. But we also need to pause and reflect and be intentional. Okay. So I do want us to pause and just think about our environments for a second. I also want us to pause and think about self-care. How are we practicing self-care? Because I did speak about that in the other episode. Okay, so in other episodes, I spoke about the importance of self-care. And self-care should never be optional for us. It must be included in our daily lives or in our routines. I also want to remind you that as you work towards becoming your best self, even me, as I work towards becoming my best self, it's a change and it takes process, right? Nothing happens overnight, and I think I might have mentioned that before. So remember that as we reflect on things, we need to pause and ask ourselves what are things in our lives that we need to change personally and professionally? We need to reflect on areas that we want to work towards changing. And we need to have a plan as to how we're going to make those changes as it relates to becoming our best selves. We do have to be diligent and we do have to be patient on this journey. As I mentioned before, change is a process. And I think about when I think about change and I think about you know just the process that we're going through. What came to mind is plants because I just got into gardening actually in plants. And a plant does not grow overnight, it takes nurturing, it needs sun, it needs water. And then I learned that you can buy nutrients at the garden store to help the plants to grow. Right? We need that nurturing and we need time to grow. We are not at the final stage yet. And I believe that as long as we're still alive, I might have mentioned this before: that we're always growing, we're processing, we're learning, and we're unlearning. So as you listen to this podcast, I just don't want you to listen. I want you to think about ways you are going to utilize the information that you're learning and the actions that you're going to put in place. I want to encourage you to be proactive and not reactive, which I'll speak about proactive and reactive in episodes that are coming up. I'll give an example. Sometimes we can be reactive. For example, I'll use an example here. So we may not exercise until the doctor tells us that we need to. We know that we should be exercising, right? Because exercising can just be walking, it can just be doing 10 minutes a day, it can be different things. But many of us we may not exercise because we feel we don't have to. But when the doctor tells us that we need to, that's when we start to. So being very intentional. Because I spoke about the importance of being intentional. We actually don't want a doctor to tell us, okay, this is what you need to do. So as we see things and we become more aware of what we need to do to become our best selves in our lives, we want to start being proactive and putting those things in place. And as I said before, change takes time, it's a process that we're going through. So be patient with yourself. And as you go through and you're planning, do step by step on the things that you want to work towards changing in your life. Okay? So as you listen, we're gonna try to plan, but not only are we gonna try to plan, we're actually going to try to execute. We're gonna try to be proactive instead of reactive. And again, both have their advantages. I'm also one, I'm also gonna speak about the domains in the next episode. And the next episodes, I'm gonna speak about, you know, the dimensions of wellness. So the wellness wheel or the eight dimensions of wellness is what some of us may know it as. So I'm gonna share a bit about what that is. So I'll just go through the eight dimensions and share that with you. And those who may do, you know, who may be social workers, or you might have heard about the dimensions of wellness before. So let me go through and share what those eight dimensions are. Those eight dimensions are physical, and I'm gonna read from some of my research. So the physical dimension, recognizing the need for physical activity, diet, sleep, and nutrition. That's one dimension. Social, developing a sense of connection, belonging, and well-developed support system. Okay, so we all need that social aspect. Our connections, the people we meet up, going out in groups, connecting with others is very important because that builds to our social well-being. Spiritual, I have discussed spiritual already, but I'm gonna go through that. So expanding our sense of purpose and meaning in life when we started connecting and spectral and spiritual, and I've kind of shared a bit of spiritual, how that spiritual aspect intertwines with the mind and body. And I've shared, you know, the spiritual, how it really affects us and how it affects our well-being. So the spiritual is also one of the eight dimensions: financial, satisfaction with current and future financial situations. So basically, we're looking at our current financial situation, and we're assessing it to see what areas does it need to improve, what do we need to do? Do we need to save more? Do we need to reduce our spending? So financial is one of the dimensions again. Occupational, personal satisfication and enrichment derived from one's work. So when we talk about occupation, I'll go through all of this in future episodes, but occupation, based on our jobs that we've selected or our careers that we're in, you know, are those careers that even if we didn't get paid, would we be in those careers? How would how do we look at the jobs or the careers that we have? And does it bring joy to us, you know, or do we go there not really wanting to be there? So that is very important, and again, that is on the dimensions of wellness wheel as well. Environmental, which I spoke about in this episode, the environments that we're in, they do make a difference. And I want to say that again. The environments that we're in, they do make a difference. So environmental, good, healthy environments that bring us joy, they're pleasant, they're stimulating environments that support our overall well-being. Emotional, how do we cope with things that happen in our lives? What are relationships that we're connected to? What does that look like? So coping effectively with life and creating satisfying relationships, how do we do that? Intellectually. So intellectual is again one of the dimensions. So the intellectual recognizing creative abilities and finding ways to expand knowledge and skills. So maybe we involve ourselves in workshops. For me, I like to read books, I like to read, I like to learn, I like to um, I guess, download, you know, articles. Those are one of the things that help me. Everything, again, everyone is different. But this is what I'm gonna basically be speaking. I'm gonna go more into the eight dimensions of wellness in the upcoming episodes, just so that we can go through it and maybe we can take a look on these eight dimensions of wellness and see what areas we're gonna put some things in place. So, what areas do we need to improve in? And all these areas, again, they are interconnected once again. I spoke about that interconnection and all of these areas, they are interconnected. So I'm gonna speak a bit more about that interconnection and how all these areas are interconnected and how they really affect overall our wellness. All right, so thank you again for tuning in into this episode. Thank you again for listening, and until next time, remember that we are working towards becoming our best selves. It is a work in progress, and nothing happens overnight. Think about the process of a plant and how that plant takes time to grow. All right, that plant needs to be nurtured, that plant needs nutrients, it needs water, it needs sun, and that is how we are as well. So the process of becoming our best selves, it's ongoing. We are still here on earth, right? Because we're still here on earth, we're always growing and learning. And as I mentioned, some things we have to unlearn because of what we were taught. All right, so thank you again for tuning in. I appreciate that, and have a blessed week and a blessed day. Take care and continue to work towards becoming your best self as I am doing the same. Thank you.