Restructuring Your Life: Breaking Down the Path to Self-Improvement

Breaking life into manageable pieces can make restructuring your life more achievable, just like eating a pizza is easier when it's sliced rather than trying to consume it whole. Using a "four quarters" approach helps identify goals, gather resources, develop self-determination, and create a sustainable game plan.

• Identifying what you want to accomplish in both personal and professional aspects of life
• Building a supportive network of people who offer rational perspective and genuine help
• Changing negative thought patterns through daily affirmations and inspirational content
• Creating sustainable plans to maintain progress after reaching goals
• Recognizing personal warning signs when getting off track
• Practicing guilt-free self-care including adequate sleep and setting boundaries
• Understanding that thoughts become reality—what we believe manifests in our lives
• Letting go of yesterday to focus on what can be changed today

Make sure you're following the podcast on your favorite platforms and hitting that notification button so you'll be the first to know when new episodes drop. For collaborations, find us on Instagram at TheGagIsPod or email thegagispod@gmail.com.

Chapters

• 1:09 Welcome and Introduction
• 2:26 Breaking Life Into Quarters
• 4:27 What Do You Want to Accomplish?
• 7:26 Building a Support System
• 9:40 Changing Your Thought Process
• 15:15 Creating a Lasting Game Plan
• 19:42 Recognizing When You're Off Track
• 23:03 The Importance of Self-Care
• 26:44 Life Lessons and Closing Thoughts

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:35

Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Gag is Hot. I am your girl, charlie Shante. Thank you for joining me on another episode and, like I always say, if you're listening to this episode and it's a new episode, it must be Friday, but just in case you are listening to this on another day of the week, thank you for doing that too, I appreciate it. Thank you for doing that too. I appreciate it. And before we go on, make sure you are liking, commenting and subscribing. Make sure that, wherever you are listening to this at, you are following me. So on your favorite favorite podcasting app, apple Spotify, wherever, go in the right hand corner and hit that little notification thing Spotify wherever. Go in the right hand corner and hit that little notification thing. That way, when a new episode is released, you'll be the first to know, because guess what? It's going to already be there for you, and all you got to do is listen to it, because I release at 5 am, so when you wake up in the morning, it's already there. So on your way to work, all you got to do is just be like bloop, bloop and listen. Make sure you follow us on IG as well, at TheGagIsPod, and on YouTube as well as at TheGagIsPod.

Speaker 1: 1:53

Let's go ahead and jump right into it. I got a good one for y'all. Today, we're going to take a break from talking about that summer shenanigans and them kids. Y'all, today, we're going to take a break from talking about that summer shenanigans and them kids. Let's talk about a little bit of self-awareness, self-preservation, a little self-care for us. So go ahead and grab your drink, grab your snack, grab whatever it is you grab when you listen to this. Now let's go ahead and jump into this episode. All right, so in my rough drafts of this, I call today's episode uh, treat life like four quarters. Right now I don't know if that's going to be the episode, the title of the episode, but I feel like that. That's just like a good name for it, because I feel like when you are trying to restructure your life, sometimes you have to break it down, because it's easier to eat a pizza when it's in slices versus trying to eat it whole, right. So I feel like life is the same way, especially when you're trying to restructure, when you're trying to get a grasp on things. It's like, instead of tackling everything at one time, trying to get a grasp on things, it's like, instead of tackling everything at one time, let's just divide this up, see what's the most important and then see how we can, kind of like, do it from there.

Speaker 1: 3:06

I know this microphone ain't, finna, give me the blues today. Oops, I forgot to tighten it. That's why it's giving me the blues. But you gotta, um, you gotta break it up a little bit Now. This microphone ain't going to get me in trouble today. Please, microphone, not today, not today, Not snow of the day, but not today. But whatever, we're going to roll with it because I'll just go in and I'll just edit the volume, we'll just go from there. But y'all know how I do it I don't stop for no bloopers. I don't stop for no bloopers, I don't stop for no bloopers. So y'all, finna, get the real, real. So I got my notes today. It's no freestyle. So the notes is right here. So I started off by saying a pizza is easier to eat in smaller slices than all at one time, which I just said.

Speaker 1: 3:57

So the first thing is what do you want to accomplish?

Speaker 1: 4:00

Like, what do you want to do? Do you want to now? This can apply to any area of your life. It doesn't have to just apply to your personal life. It doesn't just have to apply to your professional life or you know whatever aspect. However, you know, if you want it in your personal life a little bit, you want it in your professional life a little bit, you want in your professional life a little bit wherever you want it Like. These are just like my rules of engagement for how I break stuff down, and you know there's things I want to do in my personal life and things I want to do in my professional life. So I've got to start. I said I got to start breaking it down, and I always preach about going back to the basics. But what's going back to the basics if you don't even remember what the basics are? So what do you want to accomplish?

Speaker 1: 4:46

I know we're already in June, so there's literally only six months left in the year, and one of my big things that I want to accomplish is losing weight and getting back into shape. And I might look at me like damn girl, you in shape, you look good. Okay, yeah, granted, I do look good, but I feel like I can look better. And you might say well, you know that's an endless cycle, whatever, whatever I just feel like for me, I just need to lose a little bit more weight, because I've never been this big. I've always been a slimmer, petite type of woman.

Speaker 1: 5:21

And you know, for my birthday this year, you know, I got a couple of outfits that I want to get into and you know, it doesn't require me to drop hella drastic weight, maybe 20 pounds at best. Like the dress fits, but I want it to look a certain way. So I figured 20 pounds would be good, you know, or maybe 10, and then just tone it up a little bit. You know, just minor little adjustments. And then you know I also want to step up in my professional life. You know, at work, you know I want to kind of climb the ladder a little bit, you know, because I have those credentials and I have those abilities.

Speaker 1: 6:02

And then, you know, I just don't want to start feeling like I'm stuck. And you know I'm in this endless cycle and you know I'm not putting forth my full potential. And also in my content creation, because when I look back in my phone I have so much content from, like, the past five years that I could have been putting together and putting out, but I had that. You know that. What, if you know, what are people going to think? Type of attitude, when the whole time I should have just been worried about what I'm thinking and not worried about what everybody else has to say or think, or, you know, do, because at the end of the day, this is me, my hobby and how I feel, and it's not for anybody else. And so you, you do this stuff and then you have to think what do you need to get this accomplished?

Speaker 1: 6:54

And I say the biggest thing that somebody has to have to, you know, kind of set their life back up, even though it's their life. You have to have a very good support system. I'm not talking about, you know, somebody that's just going to always entertain you being negative or you crashing out or something like that. I'm talking about somebody who's going to sit down with you and be like, how can I best support you? You know that person that when you they ain't got it to give, they still give to you.

Speaker 1: 7:23

I have about three people like that that. You know, if I need to talk or I need some rationale, they're going to be the ones that I go to. Because do we laugh? Do we, kiki? Do we make jokes? Absolutely all day, every day. But at the end of the day, I know that they're my voice of reason. I can text them right now and tell them xyz, and I can be like man, I just don't get it. Something's wrong. I done dropped my phone, y'all something's wrong and they're gonna ask me. They're gonna're going to be like who did it? Who do I need to go ride on, and it's kind of like no, it's not like that. You know, it's not like that. Just, you know. Just I, just I ain't feeling. I ain't feeling good about life right now. You know things just ain't going the way that I think that they should go, and I just need somebody to be a listening ear and a voice of rationale.

Speaker 1: 8:28

I also think, in order to be successful with this, you need a lot of self-determination, changing your thought process. Now we sit here and say all the time, you know, your life becomes your words, and what I mean by that is the words that you think in, the words that you start believing, tend to end up becoming your life Like it's like you manifesting and you manifesting what it is. And a lot of times we, you know we have negative thoughts and you know we're like. You know I don't deserve this and you know I'm not good enough for this. And we start doubting ourselves. This, and you know I'm not good enough for this. And we start doubting ourselves. And is it that we doubt ourselves because of what people have told us? Or like why are we doubting ourselves? Why do we feel like we're not good enough? Why do we feel like we're not entitled to this? You know, why do we feel like we ain't good enough?

Speaker 1: 9:35

So you got to start with you in order to change things. You can't let other people yeah, your support system is there, they're good for you, they can help you along the way, but if you don't believe in you, how can others believe in you? Right, it just doesn't work like that, and other people can't want better for you if you don't want better for you. So one thing I started doing it.

Speaker 1: 9:59

I find these little inspirational quotes and on my calendar at work, I write them down, you know, so that I can just look at them. And I always write them down a month in advance, and I just write them on random days and I just look down at you know, like that day, and I'm like, wow, that really makes sense. That really hits hard. That really hits hard right now. But you know, like I really needed that, like yesterday I looked at my calendar and what it said on there is I can sum up life in three words it goes on. And that's true, it goes on.

Speaker 1: 10:36

And then one from last week that I had was um, how did it go? Um, don't let today, don't let yesterday take up too much of today. And it's like man, because yesterday already happened and you can't change it. So why are we bringing that into today? And I've had to realize that you can't change what happened yesterday, you can't change what happened the day before, you definitely can't change what happened last week or things that have happened months or even years ago. So we can only, you know, we can only take care of what has happened today. You know, because what they say at the end of the day, the day got to end, and when that day ends, whatever you're going through that day, it may linger on because it may not be a quick fix, but your thought process about the situation has to change. You cannot take that situation, that situation can't get better if you keep going day after day after day after day and you keep thinking negative about it. It's like, how is the situation going to change if you just keep thinking negative about it?

Speaker 1: 11:53

So I was dealing with a situation just a few days ago and it's not even my situation to deal with, but it was brought to me and I spoke to the person and I was like look, this is what it is, this is what it ain't. I'm just coming to you and telling you because I love you and I'm here for you, but I'm not going to speak on it, no more after this. Like, I'm telling you how it is, I'm putting it all out there on front street and if you, you can either accept it or you can't. Like I don't really care if you do or you don't, because in the long run, I'm not being, I'm being affected, but I'm not being affected to the degree that it's affecting you. So I'm just here trying to lend my support, trying to lend my shoulder and trying to lend my love.

Speaker 1: 12:38

If you don't want to listen, I can't make you listen. I can't, I can't make you want to do better and I left it at that and I can tell I'm growing because the old me would have been trying to badger and like well, why don't you listen. And you know, a couple of years ago I had to learn like you, listen, to understand, not to respond. So you have to have those positive thoughts in your head before you can start saying, okay, this has got to get better, whatever. Whatever. Like it start with you, it start with you and then you take it to your support system for kind of like a back, like they, your backup dancers. You know, you, you, you can be, you can be the front singer in the group, they the backup singers. You know what I'm saying. That's just how it has to go.

Speaker 1: 13:36

And so I go on YouTube every day and I find little clips, little church clips, and I listen to them. Just random one, whatever's in my suggested, I go and I listen to them. And you know that's how I kind of get my day started. You know, I say my, I wake up, I say my prayers before I even get out of bed, before I even put my feet on the ground, and then I listened to my, to the message, and then I sent it to Nikki and then I go about my day. And you know, I in order. Order, for this is how I operate. You know, sometimes I need a little. I need a little motivation. Sometimes, you know, I don't always have it, and this is the way that I sometimes get, you know, my motivation and it helps me to think positive and, you know, help me kind of get my day started and move things along.

Speaker 1: 14:42

What I also realize, which I'm calling the third quarter, is you got to create a game plan that's going to last, because we can sit here and say, ok, say, for instance, you have a credit card and you have a balance on it and you're like, all right, I have this plan to pay off this credit card, right, and once I pay it off, I'm going to be happy. Okay, that's fine and well. But what are you going to do to keep that balance from getting back high again and getting out of control? Because you always come up with a game plan to get to where you want to be. But what is the game plan? To stay where you are, to stay grounded. To stay where you are, to stay grounded, to stay humble, to keep you in a state of positivity, to keep you in a state of well-being and not wandering off to where you were.

Speaker 1: 15:49

Because what tends to happen is you get grounded and you start wandering. And you start wandering and you wander farther than you were. So say, if you had that credit card and you had like a twenty five hundred dollar balance on it and you paid it off and you're like, all right, cool, it's paid off, I got it. And then you start doing the same thing over and over and over. The next thing, you know you have five thousand dollars balance and you're like well, how did I get here? And then you come up with a plan and then you get it back down to zero and then it goes back up again.

Speaker 1: 16:17

So we have to figure out, once we get to that spot where we're good and we're comfortable, how do we stay in that spot, what do we need to do? And in each time you're going to learn something different about yourself. But how many times do you have to wander off before you're like I can't keep wandering off like this? How many times do you have to go out here and get saved before you realize, oh, this ain't working, I can't do this anymore. I'm going to have to figure out a way that, once I get back on solid ground, I'm going to stay on solid ground, because I can't keep wandering off like that and have to, you know, get, you know, have to rescue and get safe. I gotta, I gotta, stay back here, because doing the work without having a plan, what is nothing? Because it's like oh, okay, I got here. Okay, how do I stay here? I'll just go day by day. That's not a game plan. I'll just take it day by day. It's not a surefire game plan. Me and Nikki have a flow chart that when the day is going bad, she'll be like you look at your chart today and I'll be like no. And then you know it's like did you do this, yes or no? Yes, ok, we'll do this. No, ok, we go OK. So this might be the problem right here. And then we have a solution for whichever way you go in the matrix. You know, that's, that's just how it goes. So having a game plan, you know, is what works best. And for me, when I get to where I want to be, I'm like OK. So this is how I got here.

Speaker 1: 18:02

What do I need to stop doing or start doing so that I may end up back where I was? So that I'm going to end up back where I was, so like with the credit card. So, for the example of the credit card. If I know that I was just out here swiping like tip drill and just swiping and buying and I really didn't need, I need to stop buying, I need to stop just swiping it. I need to be more mindful of what it is that I'm doing, so that I don't end up back over there so I could be like OK, well, I only use said credit card when I go X, y, z. I'm not going to take that credit card with me everywhere I go, because that's how you get in trouble. So I only take it out the house when I'm going X, y, z. It's not going to go everywhere, because if it go everywhere, I'm more likely to use it. You know, makes sense.

Speaker 1: 19:00

Good analogy how do you know when you're getting off track? So how? How do you know? Like, what is it? What would? What are your indicators? I know when I start getting off track, I get irritable and all I want to do is sleep and y'all might be like, oh, that sounds like depression. Okay, might be, but that's how I know I'm getting off track. And when I feel that coming on, I'm like, nope, we're not going back to that place Because, think about it. Why do you want to go to a place or be in a place where you absolutely feel crappy? You don't feel good and it don't feel good to be there. So if that's how it is, then why do we keep wanting to go there? And I know for a fact that all the crappy places I've been, I don't want to go back there. I don't want to go back there like it wasn't a good time, it wasn't a good feel. I don't want to go back there. So I make sure that you know I do what I need to do and I keep myself aligned, so I don't go back there. You got to make sure that you know the signs. You know, or if you have people close to you, they'd be like. You know you don't seem like yourself lately. You know like what's going on. You got to have people around you that's going to do a temperature check on you, because it's just like when a child is sick. You know like you look okay, but like are you? You know like everything good. You got to have somebody to check your temperature Because, although you may feel good, you may have a fever. You know what I'm saying. You may be walking around. It's like a baby, they walking around, playing, but they got a hundred and three fever. But they kicking and cocking and you're like, well, you know, like like you got to have somebody on your team that's going to check your temperature and if your temperature is too high you got to find that medicine to bring it back down. Because you can't stay operating at a high level like that. You can't live your life. A child, or anybody for that matter, can't continue on with 103 fever for a month. That's not cool, body gonna start shutting down. It's the same thing with people. You can't operate at this real, real high go, go, go frequency for a long time because eventually your body gonna start shutting down Because the body is not meant to operate on go, go, go all the time. So you got to definitely have people around you that's gonna check your temperature and help you bring that temperature down if it starts to get up too high. And I love my crew for that. Like they call they check, they take, they check my temperature. They be like I was good with it and I be like you might be right. You might be right because sometimes they know you better than you know. You be right. You might be right, because sometimes they know you better than you know you. So you got to make sure your support system, they're able to check your temperature to get you back and to you know, get you back on solid ground, and you know that's just what it is. So that's my little spiel for today. That's my little. You know, like my, just what it is. So that's my little spiel for today. That's my little. You know, like my little four quarters, like how I get myself back in. You know we got to make sure that we're practicing self-care because there are too many, too many things going on out here, too many illnesses that are creeping up blood pressure, strokes, heart attacks too many things popping up out here that are preventable if we only practice self-care more. You should never feel guilty about self-care Not never at all, because at any given moment I'm going to go make me a appointment to get me a massage, I'm going to get my nails done, I'm going to get me a facial or something. Self-care. Sometimes I just come home and watch Netflix. I know, like a couple weekends ago I laid in the bed all day and just watched TV. To me that was a form of self-care. I didn't want to do anything. I got up, I ate, I took a shower and just laid in a bed and watched TV, because that is what was comfortable for me, that was my self-care, like let me just lay here, let me rest. One thing I also started doing is I also sleeping with my watch on. And so I noticed that I wasn't getting sleep and I was like you know what this has got to change, because if I'm not getting sleep, then I'm not being the best version of me. If I'm not getting sleep, then I'm not being the best version of me. And over the past three weeks, like my watch said that like I sleep an average of eight hours and 15 minutes a night, like I am getting a good night rest, but before it said my average sleep was three hours and like 45 minutes a night, and I'm like can't nobody function off of that? And it was. I go to the chart and it would show me my patterns and you know it'd give you a little information. Like hey, like this is not healthy. You know, um, lack of sleep is not good for your brain, it's not good for your heart, you know it could set you up for, you know, diabetes and you know, like different stuff, like that. So I made sure I started getting my sleep, whether that mean I got to shut it down a little bit earlier so that I could get all those hours of sleep. You know whether I had to, you know, end my shows earlier. You know, put my phone down earlier. I do it so that I could be the best version of myself and I also, when I get off of work, I start putting my phone on do not disturb, because that's distractions. Those distractions can keep you from being the best version of you. It's outside noise, so you got to start blocking out the noise and I feel like the do not disturb function has to be the best thing that I've ever had. It shuts off the text, the calls, social medias, everything, and I am like great. I come home, eat dinner, take a shower, relax and watch a couple of shows and then go to bed. But I'm comfortable in that. That's my self-care and I love that for me. I just love that for me and I love that for y'all too. So I want y'all to practice a little bit more self-care. You know what I'm saying and you know, so that you know self-care is good for you because it helps with your immune system, because the more you stressed out and fatigued and stuff like that, the more it suppresses your immune system and the sicker you get. And it's going to be summertime. Who got time to be in the house? Because they sick? Okay, not her, not she. I got streets to be in Not really in the streets, because it's weird out there. Maybe I meant my sheets and not the streets. You know, heavy emphasis on my sheets. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're going somewhere else, but that's, that's my four quarters of self-care. Now, let's go with this. You can't make this up Right. So there I was, in you know new faces. He's supposed to be my, he's supposed to be my reminder sometimes. And I said, hey, lj, remind me on the way home, stop and get some gas. I said because gas light is on, so remind me, stop and get some gas. I said because the gas light is on, so remind me to stop and get some gas. He's like okay, mom. So I just happened to be getting ready to turn said corner to go to our home and this thing is bothering me To our home. And I was getting ready to get in the turn lane and the car started slowing down. I was like what in the world? And I looked down and guess what? Y'all? I had no gas, like all the like. When I put this video up, I'll insert the picture I had no gas, your girl was out of gas and I was like okay, but luckily there was no traffic and I was able to pull over into the gas station and get some gas. So kids gonna fail you every time. But he's like well, I didn't remember mom. I said well, I told you because I knew I was gonna forget. So how we both forget. I was like it was finna, be a hot ass. Walk home, bro, because you you supposed to remind me. Now you remind me when I owe you money so that you can buy them video games. But you couldn't remind me that I need to stop to get gas, like where your priorities at, bro, where your priorities at. And then we get to the gas station, he's like can I get a donut, bro? You couldn't even remember to tell me to stop and get gas, but you knew you wanted something from the store. Kids going to fail you every time, every single time, I was like go on over there and get your little donut. Hurry up, though, because I'm almost done paying, hurry up. And last but not least, last week well, not last week, but two weeks ago, because last week your girl was sick. So I get really bad migraines and the migraine had me down up under the sheets. I was in a bad spot. But last but not least, a couple weeks ago I forgot the song lyric of the week. Nikki said you know what? You forgot the song lyric of the week. And I was like I know I forgot something, so they're just seeing short. So my song lyric of the week for this week is Friday and Meek Mill. Proud of me, and as always, I've said it a million times Make sure when you listen to the episodes you're not just listening but you are downloading. Make sure you are following us. Make sure you're hitting them notifications so that when a new episode is released you'll be the first one to get it. You just ride on the work and listen to it. I will say dropping them kids off school, but it's summertime and ain't no school. Um, make sure you follow us on ig. If you want to do any collaborations, you can go on the IG page. The email is there. It's also thegagispod at gmailcom. And yeah, we about this thing? I am your girl, charlie Shante. This is the Gag. Is Pod, bye, guys.