The work we do here is to help you create a the mood that helps you lead a happy life. We learn tools to manage our mood around challenging circumstances and improve our situational depression.
However, this does not mean we use our mood to lead an exhausting and busy life that takes more than it gives.
Your mood is not a Dr. Pepper. It's not there to help you keep moving. Its there to signal what you actually need.
Our life should support our mental health, not the other way around.
Listen in as I teach you the 7 secrets to living a life that supports your mood.
interested in SHIFT? Want a free call with EMYLEE? Grab a spot for a free call here
Find more information and Free resources HERE:
https://hernextstep.limitlessfemalecoaching.com/landing-page-her-next-step
Have a question about the program or something you want answered on the podcast? Come chat with me on instagram!
@Limitlessfemale
The work we do here is to help you create a the mood that helps you lead a happy life. We learn tools to manage our mood around challenging circumstances and improve our situational depression.
However, this does not mean we use our mood to lead an exhausting and busy life that takes more than it gives.
Your mood is not a Dr. Pepper. It's not there to help you keep moving. Its there to signal what you actually need.
Our life should support our mental health, not the other way around.
Listen in as I teach you the 7 secrets to living a life that supports your mood.
interested in SHIFT? Want a free call with EMYLEE? Grab a spot for a free call here
Find more information and Free resources HERE:
https://hernextstep.limitlessfemalecoaching.com/landing-page-her-next-step
Have a question about the program or something you want answered on the podcast? Come chat with me on instagram!
@Limitlessfemale
Hi, I'm Emily. With the Limitless Female podcast, you are listening to episode 118, creating a Life that Supports your Mood. Woman, welcome. If you're a mama who is feeling all the feels of motherhood the ups and downs of hormones and maybe even depression then you are in the right place. Limitless Female is your confident inner voice, helping you master your mood and create the epic life that calls you. My goal is to show you just how enough you are, so you can show up limitless in your own life. Let's get started. Good morning everybody. I'm so excited to chat with you guys today and to talk about creating a life that supports your happiness.
Speaker 1:A lot of times when we think about coaching or thought work, we are focused on managing our mind around our current circumstances. So we're working on the way that we think about the way we live, the way that we think about our spouse, the way that we think about our kids and their sports and their activities and being in the car, the way that we think about even the world, what's going on in politics or people who have differing opinions than us, because a lot of these things we can't change, and so, of course, learning the skill of managing our thoughts is massive, it's huge. But we also are allowed. You guys, I'm giving you the permission right now, even though you never need my permission. I'm giving it to you that we are allowed to change circumstances in our lives so they improve our mood. A lot of our mood is a result of our environment, and not our environment directly, because we have thoughts about our environment, but we can't manage our minds around every thought 24, seven. Nor should we. We don't have to. That's the great thing. We have autonomy. We are human beings. We are not at the effect of our environment. So not only is our environment not creating our mood directly, but also we can choose our environment. We can choose how many hours we're in the car. We can choose how often we see people. We can choose whether connecting over Facebook is considered connection to us or if connecting to somebody in real life is considered connection to us. So today is unique. Today I'm giving you permission to try to change your circumstances. We'll be okay if we can't change them because we have thought work, but I'm telling you that you can go out there and change the circumstances.
Speaker 1:And I watch documentary about blue zone places, and blue zones are places in the US or sorry, not in the US. All over the world, there's actually only one tiny spot in the US and I'll tell you about it where people live to be over 100 years old in a high amount of them. And there are only a handful of these blue zones, y'all, and only one of them is in the US. I don't even know if it's considered a blue zone, but this gentleman who created the documentary about blue zones looked in the US to see if there was a place where people were living over 100 and at this percentage, and he did. He found a place.
Speaker 1:So I want to talk to you guys about what I found in common, and one of the main things that stood out to me is that they were happy. The documentary is to show longevity right, because if we're talking about blue zones, we're talking about how long people lived. But when I presented this idea to my son, he's like why don't really care to live to 110? And I was like, well, you would if you were happy? He's like, well, yeah, I mean, if I could do the things I wanted to do and I could still think and talk and move. And I said, exactly, nobody wants longevity if they're not happy. What we really want is happiness, and I think the reason these people lived is because they were happy, right, and it's that circular effect. They got up because they were happy and then, because they got up, it made them happier and then it just like flowed into the next day. And we need this reciprocal effect. We need to manage our mind in order to be happy, but then we need to manage our life so that being happy isn't so hard and we can do that. We can take that kind of two prong approach to managing our thoughts and managing our life and, like I said, you're allowed to do that. So let's talk about these places, these blue zones, and I'm gonna tell you the different categories that I believe we need to adjust our life. And this is what I'm implementing into SHIFT, my mood membership for mamas, because I wanna help them take steps to adjust these areas of their life. And let's talk about some examples from these different blue zones that kind of show these different areas that we can change. So these are called, I like to call blue zone living.
Speaker 1:So the first principle of blue zone living is to control your stress. So a long time ago, stress was really useful. We've talked about this. The lower brain offers stress on default because if a tiger is chasing you, we're gonna need some stress and in fact, physiologically, stress creates an increase in glucose and inflammation and this helps us to heal a wound. So it was really good for our survival to have stress, but now we have stress over things where we don't have a physical wound. We have stress over a project that's due or getting a kid to a activity on time or giving a talk in church or money. We have stress over all of those things and because it increases glucose and inflammation, it isn't surprising to me that we have an incredible rise in onset diabetes and in mental health issues and autoimmune disease. If you guys have been here before, you know that inflammation is the root cause, physiologically, to mental health and autoimmune disease. It's inflammation of the brain and the gut and it affects our body. It creates all those symptoms you hear people experiencing through autoimmune disease, like achy joints and arthritis and, you know, like gut issues, and they can't have gluten and dairy and all of those things, and so stress is one of those things that we can manage with our mind.
Speaker 1:However, however, one of the really cool things that they said in this documentary is that it's also necessary. It's not only do we need to control our stress, we also have to experience stress that it's beneficial if we overcome it. So this is just an example why we can't always change our circumstances, and that's good, Because they saw that in examples where people had been through horrific wars, like the people in Okinawa, could still remember the war, and because they could still remember it, they had become resilient. They had become resilient over their PTSD, over their experiences from the war, and it actually served them greatly. They lost over 200,000 people, but because they overcome came the PTSD. They had actually learned to manage their mind amidst the circumstance of the past, which they could not change the past. And so I just love this idea that we need to learn to control our stress, but also, if we do experience some stress or if we do experience some challenging times, that also will make you live longer. So it's all right, y'all, if you have stress in your life, learn to overcome it with thought, work and you will live longer. I thought that was so amazing.
Speaker 1:Okay, the second thing that I found in common was they all took one day to rest from the week, and people who attended a spiritual event once a week had an extra seven years added to their life. And this makes me think about behaviors, community purpose, contribution, influence, lowering stress, all the things we're gonna talk about today when it talks about having that kind of spiritual community. That's not just spiritual but it's religion, because a lot of us have feelings about religion versus spirituality. But actual organized religion allows us opportunity to do a lot of the things I'm gonna talk about today. And one of the blue zones out there was in Loma Linda, california, the only one in the US, and it was really interesting because it was a tiny little area that was highly had a very high population of seven-day adventists and they preach, exercise, community volunteer work as part of their religion and so even on the church campus they have all these pickleball courts, all these things, and it's like you should be there all the time at this church area. And it was interesting to me that in this community they were so happy because the church, the religion, actually provided them an opportunity for all of the different things I'm going to talk about here, because they had that church. It created community, they had a purpose, they knew somebody was waiting for them at the pickleball court every morning. They had an opportunity to contribute, to volunteer, and also actual physical exercise lowered their stress.
Speaker 1:So sometimes you guys, you can get all of these things from one place. It doesn't have to be complicated, and I don't want this to feel complicated. I want to offer you guys things that are not like some seven-day workout, because you don't need to do that. We always think everything needs to be huge to make a difference. It doesn't. It's small, consistent changes.
Speaker 1:The third things that I hear all the time now and my brain just can't wrap my head around it and so I have a hard time doing it, is walking. There was a little village in Italy and they were right above another village except they were a blue zone and the one below them were not, and one of them. They ate the same foods, they did all kinds of things the same, but the one main difference was that that village right above the other one in Sardinia, italy had like 40% steeper streets and stairs, and so these people walked everywhere. So did the village below them, except they were walking on much steeper walks. So walking and physical exercise the exercise that you just like in your day is so important for mental health and one of the things I wanted to offer to you guys is that we need to make the right choice, the unavoidable choice. So, instead of creating some seven-day workout program that's going to kick your butt, instead, let's work physical movement into our day. In Okinawa, they had no furniture in their houses, except for some pillows around a table on the floor where they ate, so they were getting up and down off the ground all day long. That's making the good choice the unavoidable choice. They had gardens. They had to tend to Right. That makes the good choice the unavoidable choice. All right.
Speaker 1:The fourth thing that all of these blue zones had in common is they all had a purpose. Now, I'm not talking about trying to figure out what you were meant to do in this life. That's a really big purpose, and you guys put this responsibility on yourself all the time. What am I here for? What? What am I meant to add or create or make a massive difference in the world? You don't need that. Your purpose is already being fulfilled. You are here on earth, you have a body, you are choosing right from wrong. You are learning, making mistakes Boom Done. I'm talking about your purpose daily. What do you want to do today? What do you want to create? It doesn't have to affect hundreds of people, it doesn't have to make the world better, it's just what is your purpose? And all of the doctors in Okinawa ask that question to their patients. They say what is your Ikigai, what is your purpose? And people will tell them oh, I have an Ikigai. This one man makes these beautiful instruments and he's in his hundreds and that is his Ikigai. He doesn't sell them, he doesn't feel like he's changing the world, but that's how he contributes. That's how he chooses to spend his day In Costa Rica, another place where they have a blue zone.
Speaker 1:They have the same idea, purpose. They have a word for it and it's plan de vida. So the same thing. They know what their plan de vida is, they know what their purpose is. Every day, people feel like they count, that they matter, that society needs them, that they're contributing. So that's why contribution is one of the pillars of shift, because when we contribute, we feel like we have purpose, and it doesn't have to be contributing in a way that changes lives.
Speaker 1:You can make t-shirts, right, you don't have to make a physical thing. Your purpose can be to journal about your day, every day for future posterity. There's so many ways. Right, your purpose can be a hobby that you're learning. You just have to have a purpose. We can't just get up and repeat the same tasks, like cleaning our house, that get undone anyways. That I don't think any of you guys would call a purpose Alright.
Speaker 1:Number five is a moai. This is a word from Okinawa that means basically like a co-op for living. So all these people, who were over 100, lived in this village together and they created a moai so that if somebody got hurt or needed them or got sick, they would all pull their resources, their money, their time, their energy to help that one person. And I feel like that's so beautiful and something that we're missing here in the US, and especially as women, we try to do things by ourselves. We do park, play dates that's good, but I would say, in general, my dream has always been to live back to back with a bunch of women that I like and have like gates in our fences, in a playground right there, or share a backyard, because dinner time was always that witching hour for me and I just thought, oh my gosh, if my kids could just run out to the backyard where I knew they were safe and they had all their friends right there. And I could go next door to Shani, or I could go next door to Chrissy and I could be like, hey, how do I do this? Or can you watch my kids while I give the other kids a bath? Or hey, can my kids hang around here while I run this kid to soccer? It just seemed to me that that really made sense.
Speaker 1:Now I'm not interested in sharing my, my husband, with another woman. I am interested in sharing my kids with them. I am interested in co-parenting, because it really does feel like you need a village to to improve our mental health. And so, finding a Moai, finding people in your life that you know you could write on your emergency contact form and if you don't know who that is, if you go to fill out that contact form and that's a struggle you need to spend energy and time creating your Moai, your group, your people that you know you could depend on no matter what, and you can tell them hey, could you be this person for me, like I need people in my life that I feel like could be there for me no matter what, just in really sticky situations. Can you be that person for me. You know, ask them, tell them what you need, all right. Number six is nutrition. Obviously, nutrition is huge. It blows my mind.
Speaker 1:I was watching a show the other day about mental health and they were talking about kind of that controversy between can a child have OCD or not and how the OCD diagnosis went way up at a certain point and people were questioning like, is it really OCD? Are we over medicating them? And a woman went to the doctor and she asked him. You know, she said we saw in the news that a child died from taking this medication that her son's on. Should we take him off of it? Should he be in therapy? Is there anything else that we could be doing to make him better? Because we just want to know that we're doing our part.
Speaker 1:And he said, well, therapy challenging, unless he was medicated, because he wouldn't be in a place where he could hear it. And I was like, okay, yeah, that could be true. And he said, so, really, there's not really anything you could do. And I, my jaw hit the floor. I was like, wait, he didn't say anything about nutrition. Like that thing we put in our body 24, seven. It affects the way we feel, y'all, it affects the way we feel. Nutrition is probably the number one thing that creates inflammation in our body what do we eat and what we don't eat, and the way that our genetics interact with that nutrition, and so you can figure out personally what your body can take and not take. Or what I think is even easier and amazing and that all these blues ones have in common is that you can't take it.
Speaker 1:All of these groups had an anti inflammatory diet. It was antioxidive, it had complex carbs, it had lots of legumes and fruits and vegetables and nuts, and almost all of them had no meat. Now, this is not like I'm not giving you a recommendation of whether or not you should have meat or not, but I'm just letting you know that all these blue zones none of them ate meat. They were all vegan, and so I just thought that was so fascinating. Even the Adventists, the Seventh Day Adventists in Loma Linda, california, were vegan, and to me that just was like dang like.
Speaker 1:Maybe that is the way, and I think one of the things that makes it could be the lack of meat, but it also could be because there's no meat. They eat so many fruits and vegetables to substitute the protein you get from meat, and I think that that multi, that mix of colors and different fruits and vegetables, gives us so many of the nutrients that we're missing. I mean, think about how many times you eat vegetables throughout the day. I just think we barely eat enough vegetables, and vegetables have so many amazing healing, anti-inflammatory properties. So I feel like it might not be the meat. Maybe eating the meat's not the problem. Maybe it's that we don't have enough of an appetite left over to eat all the vegetables that we need to feel good. So consider making that. The one thing that you're going to adjust is how many vegetables you eat.
Speaker 1:The number six was they made their partners a priority in their life and they invested in their partnerships. Their spouses were very, very important to them. Family was very, very important to them. Most of these places don't even have a word for retirement home, so they had the elderly in their house, and not just in their house, but they requested wisdom and knowledge from the older people in their family. They made them feel like a contribution, and they didn't do that to placate them. They really, really thought these people have something to teach me. They would teach them how to roll pasta. They would teach them all kinds of things that would pass down as traditions and would improve the mental health of the next generation.
Speaker 1:So we need to feel needed in our families and we can do that by taking care of and keeping the older people in our family close, but also investing in our partnerships, whether that's a spouse or a friend or a parent that's co-parenting with you. Invest in that relationship. I think it's interesting because sometimes a parent will be living with a child who has a child, and they'll be helping them, but they don't do a date night for them. We have to invest in the partnerships that are growing our family. Just like a C-suite, like a CEO, would have little retreats or meetings with the C-suite and all those people up there in order to have a really great company, well, we should also have date nights and retreats and weekly conversations with that person that we are co-creating with and basically running our household with. We have to connect with them, we have to have conversations with them. We have to make sure that we feel respected and we're doing things in our life that help us feel respected in that relationship.
Speaker 1:And number seven is joyful physical activity. Joyful physical activity Activity that's fun. So not only can we build it in like walking on steep steps or getting up and down off the ground, but activity that's fun y'all. When's the last time you made sure that you put in a physical activity that you were so flippin' stoked about? I'm talking about mountain bike riding, rock wall climbing. I'm talking about walking with a friend. I'm talking about what you would really think was fun, not just what you think you're capable of in the time you have. Like, oh, I guess I could walk with a friend. If that doesn't sound fun to you, don't do it. If you think cycling on the road would be fun, do it. If you think signing up for a kickboxing class at a real boxing gym would be fun, do it.
Speaker 1:Because, like I said, we're always trying to manipulate our mood with caffeine and medication and just anything we can get our hands on, even thought work, in order to show up at this life that we don't like. We don't like being in the car all the time. We don't like walking, we hate extra I hear people say that I hate exercising. We don't like our job. Change it. Change it. I dare you, because discomfort is what we pay to get the life we want, be willing to be in a little bit of discomfort to have the life you really want, and I promise you that life will eventually support your mood. Discomfort will be a short-term thing, because on the other side of that will be fulfillment and joy and relief and excitement and something you look forward to. That actually improves your life. And the last thing I wanted to say is that all of these things should help you be less lonely, and loneliness is really an epidemic here in the US, which is why we have so much depression and so much suicide. But loneliness can actually take off 15 years off your life. So if you think that it's not that big of a deal or that you can push through, or that you have better things to do than take care of this feeling of loneliness, I want you to know there is nothing more important you can do right now. If you care about your life. We've got to pay attention to the way we feel and we've got to do thought work and we've got to adjust our lives so that we can feel better. All right, guys, thank you for hanging out with me today. I hope you loved this episode If you want help with this creating this life and also managing your thoughts around the life.
Speaker 1:You have currently to create a mood that will help you create this life. You have got to join SHIFT. If you're interested, click the link in my bio or you guys can hop on a free coaching call with me where I'll coach you. I'll show you what coaching is like and I will give you more information about SHIFT. All right, guys, have a great day. Bye-bye. If you have questions about anything you've learned here on the podcast or want help with something going on in your own life, hop on a free coaching call with me. In just 30 minutes you'll have real tools for your unique situation. Go to limitlessfemalecoachingcom. Forward slash workwithme or you can find a link in the show notes below. Spots are limited, so grab one before you miss it.