When You Don't Even Recognise Yourself: How I Got My Spark Back.

like I do that all the time. But it's something that I think you know, pretty much every person who's walked this planet has felt at one point or another, and it's something that can really creep up on us if we're not careful. And you will probably listen to this and could possibly be in this situation and not

even realize it. You guys are also going to grab another free be in this episode, which is a free work book, and this is going to help you get your spark back, So make sure you check the Stow notes. So let's get into it. I you know, six months ago, I got out about at home to start my day. I walk over to this full length mirror we have in our bedroom. It's leaning against the wall, and I started you know, doing my hair and putting on my makeup, and I put on the clothes and all the things

I had to go to work that day. And I stared into the mirror and then what was staring back at me my reflection was a girl I just didn't even recognize anymore. It wasn't essentially you know, how I looked, which also was like you know, eyebags for days all the things. But you know, she wasn't crying, she wasn't falling apart, but she just looked flat. And I realized I didn't even recognize myself anymore. It was like someone had like turned down the saturation of my energy and

my life and I didn't even realize. And the worst thing is when this happens, you don't just wake up colorless. You don't just wake up losing your spark, feeling burnt out. It happens slowly and quietly, while you're still functioning, while you're still doing school drop off and you know, getting the emails done and looking like a normal member of society. But it's almost like a hum in the background until one day you and you realize that you are just a shell of who you once were. You know, this

episode isn't about to glow up. It's about how I realized I was burnt out and how I worked out how I got there, and how I slowly brought my color back, which you know, if you have never really experienced something like this before, of feeling just feeling not yourself, it is kind of overwhelming and you just kind of feel stuck and you don't know where to start to

start feeling like you again. And sure, I know this topic can be a little bit depressing, it can be a bit of a towner, but it is an important one and I truly believe that there's so many of you out there listening who will realize that throughout this episode. You may have lost your spark a long time ago and you've just been living in survival mode. So right now we are going to break you out of that

and give you some steps. And this is the story of how I found my spark again and got my color back, and it's not as complicated as we think. So if you're feeling a little bit gray right now, this episode is for you. And this is the unfiltered things I did to feel like Steph again. I don't know if that's good for Society. But I'm back. But before we get into it, if you're not subscribed to the show, please go ahead and do that right now.

It takes two seconds, and it will mean you never miss an episode, which trust me, you do not want to miss, because we are going to be cleaning up your mess mastering your MESSI life this season. And I just wanted to say, it's so nice to see how many of you guys out there are enjoying the show. And I've been getting dms and just like the reviews and everything is so so beautiful and it means the

world to me. And if you haven't already, please jump join our Facebook community and follow us on Instagram social media because I always will be dropping extra content and tips in there and Facebook the community is for you guys to take over the conversation and I can stop talking for a little bit, which is probably good. And if you found me over on Instagram and this is your first time here, hi, welcome, and I'm glad you're here. I'm glad the algorithm actually did its job for once.

And if you haven't already followed me on Instagram, it's at steph Pace Underscore where I share Yeah, like behind the scenes of the things and the stories I tell you on here. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but that's what happens. Now. Let's get into it now. First, how did I lose

my spark? The thing is, when it comes to losing you know, feeling burnt out or feeling flat, or feeling stuck, whatever we want to call it, in order to find our spark again, we need to work out how we got here in the first place, kind of like a maze. We need to work out where we entered from in order to exit. And the thing is, I didn't realize I was burnt out because I was still getting the things done. You know, that's the trap, because burnout doesn't

always look like what you think. It doesn't look like you not being able to move off the couch. And yes, there is definitely those cases, we know that, but a lot of the time that comes later, like the end, the hairy end of it, it can look like high

functioning emptiness. It's just kind of like you are just going through the motions of your everyday life and your everyday routine and you're not actually present, like you know, It's like you know when you're driving, you're driving somewhere and then you know, you get in the car, you turn on the NISI and you start driving, and then

the next minute you get to your destination. But you don't even remember driving there, Like you weren't even present, but your body was, and you managed to get you there safely, let's hope, but you weren't really there the whole time. Now, how sad would that be if that was your entire life. We don't want that. We want to be present. And the thing is when you are, when you've lost your color or lost your spark, that is exactly what you're doing. You're moving through your life

on autopilot. You're just surviving. You're not actually taking in the surroundings. You're not looking out the window and looking at the trees or you know, obviously we need to focus on the road, but you're not paying attention to like the music on the radio, or maybe the people, like the kids in the back and they're telling you funny stories. You're just doing the things. Now. For me, here's what losing my spark look like. You know, I was exhausted and no amount of sleep could fix that.

And as an insult miac. That's saying something. You know. I could rest so much and I still would wake up just feeling absolutely zonked, and I just like everything was a massive effort all the time. I also struggled to sleep at all and just get a normal amount of sleep, like being able to drift off without just feeling like the weight of the world was on my shoulders.

I know that sounds super dramatic, but I know you guys can relate to this, Like you just feel like life is heavy and you haven't been able to put down the backpack. And I always use this backpack analogy when it comes to life, and it's like we all have a backpack, and everyone's backpack has different contents. It could be past beliefs, it could be what happened on Tuesday, could be your to do list. It usually all these things,

and it gets heavy. And the thing is, if we don't take the bag off, sometimes we get very, very tired, and then we start forgetting things. We get sad, we start dropping the balls in our life and like some balls, as I say, some are glass and they can't be dropped. Like you know your health and your kids, and you know the important things and then when you start dropping those things, that's when this just explodes for you in

your life. And you know it can lead to depression and like burn out as we were saying, and it's just it can affect your job, it can affect everything in your life. So it's super important that we're aware of this. Another way it showed up for me was the things I used to love felt like nothingness. It was like a neutral feeling. So even like listening to my favorite songs, like I would not be dancing along.

And if you've ever had the pleasure of driving in a car with me, you would know I do karaoke every single trip. But it was just nothingness, Like I didn't feel anything. And I think for me, like I think I would rather feel sad than nothing, because nothing just it's just so empty and it's quite scary. Another thing was I was constantly bracing myself. I was waiting for the next horrible thing to happen. And I know, if you have someone with anxiety like myself, that's a

pretty pretty common occurrence. You do tend to brace yourself a lot. But it really was amplified. Small inconvenience felt huge for me. So you know when you're already angry and you're running around like you walk around the house and then you freaking top or your pants or your jump I gets caught on the door handle and you just lose your shit. That's what I mean. Like the little inconvenience is that normally wouldn't bother me, piss me off. I was not a happy person and I felt detached

for my own life. Like I said with the car analogy, you're driving somewhere and you just get there and you don't know how. I was disassociating for literally months at a time, and that's just so sad. I was just not there. I was there, but I wasn't there. And I know a lot of mothers can understand this. You know, the end of the day and you're with your kids, but you're not emotionally there. You're thinking about, Oh, I've

got to get this done today. I go to do the washing, I gotta get this emailed sent off, I need to make dinner. You're not actually present. And if we're like that all the time, that's when again we end up going to burnout, losing my sparkman also look like, you know, being productive still, but I didn't get the satisfaction when I completed a time, which meant even when I ticked things off the to do list, I felt nothing.

It was zero satisfaction from anything. And then of course I didn't recognize myself anymore, you know, wearing for example, like when I used to go at the gym, I used to love putting on a little kid said, and you know, making myself feel good because always felt like I would work out better, and when I was feeling flat, I would just chuck on anything and just go. And you know, the songs I used to play all the

time in the car, like and at home. Big one for me was when I do housework, I usually play songs. And then when I stopped doing that, even Ryan was like, you, okay, Like just the little things that you do that your loved ones know about, you stop doing them, and that's when you know there's something wrong. And that leads me to the saddest part of this of what me losing my spark looked like was I couldn't remember the last time I truly laughed, like actually laughed, not like someone

tells a really bad joke. Hint hint, Ryan, and you fake laugh, like actually barey laughed at something silly. So now you know what me losing my spark look like. I want you to ask yourself. Do I feel tired even after I sleep? Does joy feel muted for me? The things that you laugh, even you know, doing silly things like does it just feel a bit like it just doesn't hit the same way anymore? Am I constantly in the next problem mode? You're always onto the next thing?

Which a lot of us already do that. But if you're always on the next problem mode, again, we're disassociating. We're not present. Do I already wake up tense? So you wake up and you're bracing for the thing, because the thing is when you wake up you should technically be quite relaxed, not like, let's go And does everything feel slightly heavier than it should? Again small conveniences, just like all the things you normally can function with, just

feels a lot harder. And have you laughed recently or had any fun? Because, as we know, as adults, we stop having fun, we stop doing the things for the sake of it. We only do things for a certain outcome, for having a cleaner house, making money, getting fitter, just boring shit like we don't just have fun, and this is where hobbies come in and you know, finding your yellow which I will talk about a bit later. Now, if you answered yes to any of those or even

a few, you're not lazy and you're not dramatic. You're probably burnt out or you've lost your spark and burnout and things like this is just a nervous system that's on high alert for too long. It's time to take a breath and take the backpack off and get out of the car. So this leads us to the question of how did I get here? You know the maze analogy? You know, I love an analogy. I got stop doing these, but anyway, the Mayz's analogy, how do we get in here?

We need to get the hell out of here because there's not fun time. Now this can be a little bit uncomfortable because you have to kind of really look at your life and what you've been doing and see what's been good and not so good. Like, we don't

just get here overnight. As I said, you know, and you might hate me for saying this, but getting to burn out and losing your spark is something that you actually co so like we participate in this, and for me personally, I realized I got here because I normalized urgency. You know, I glorified being busy, which is so easy to fall into. Like we just grew up seeing like you have to do more to be successful, You have to do more to be appreciated, to be valued, to

be enough. You know, I became the capable one. I never would ask for help, and that's always been a big one for me, is people please, are things we're not gonna ask for help. You're like, but you would do anything for anyone else, even when you're already you're already tanked and you've got so much to do, but you'll do anything for anyone else, but you will not just ask for help. I stopped doing things that didn't have an outcome, as I just mentioned, as adults, we

only do things for a certain outcome. I stopped doing the things just for fun, the silly stuff, and even down to I turned every hobby into a strategy, like I don't know if it's an ADHD thing, But even when i'd get into things like I remember when I was overhauling my business, I got heaps into notion. I don't know if you guys have heard a notion. It's basically

it's kind of like Trello or asagna. It's like a project organizer, but it can like organize everything, and it's really good for like teams, but also if you prefer to do things digitally digital I can't even say if you prefer to do things on the computer. So I got really into that, and then I was like, oh, I can make this into a really cool business, like like Steph is chill and I never And another thing is I never fully exhaled. I never just took a second,

you know. And it's like, you know, I always talk about the traveling goal post. I did a post them this a couple months ago, and it was like, for me, I'm always chasing the next thing, and even if I reach your goal, I won't even celebrate that. I won't even sit in it long enough to be like I did this, I did this. I'm looking for the next one, the next one, the next one. And the thing is I'm the one moving the goalpost. No one else is.

And if you're constantly doing that, of course you're going to get to a point of burnout and you're never gonna get satisfaction. You can't if you can't even reflect and be like I did this thing because you're looking at the next STARp, like the next goal, the next goal. There's no fulfillment in that. Because here's the thing. The one question I asked myself that hit the hardest was what quietly disappeared while I was busy succeeding or thinking that I needed to do the things to be successful.

Because success looks different for everyone. To you. It could be you know, being that really hands on mom who does puts in food for all the baked sales and is it all the canteen and all the things like that, Or it could be you're someone who maybe wants to get a promotion or anything. Everyone's so different. But when you make your titles and your goals who you are and base your worth of that, that's the problem here, Because He's the truth. You can build a beautiful life

and still slowly disappear inside of it. And you know, for me, what fate was play color, music, effort, movement for fun and just fun. Just because I didn't just lose my spark or color, I deprioritized it. I did not put that at the top of my to do list for a very long time, and that's all me. But it's also actually a good thing because what you don't focus on you can choose again, you can go back to it. And this is where we're going to

do a routine review. So in order to find our spark, we need to dissect our routine and day to day life over the last few months or however long. You feel like you've been driving an autopilot because without the awareness, it's like trying to build an IQ of furniture piece without the instructions, like Ryan Pacee tries to do, and I end up standing there with twenty screws and the table's been put together, and I'm like, is this thing going to fall apart? Like me and my soul? And

don't worry. I made you a free workbook for this step, which is linked in the show notes. Write down your daily routine in raw and very very honest detail. Now, look, you don't have to show this to anybody, so you don't have to tell anyone that you eat twelves for breakfast, not speaking from experience or anything like that. So the good, the bad, and the ugly. So if you wake up to your kids screaming in your face every morning, and then you scroll on TikTok for about three hours. You

got to write it down. Now. Step two, I need you to grab two highlighters, and we're going to categorize the parts of your routine that are either creating a positive or negative ripple effect to your life. So this is really going to help you pinpoint how and why

you're currently feeling like shit. So if you see your days filled with just tasks and there's no breaks, there's no resets, there's no like getting outside and touching grass, that's kind of important apparently, And or maybe you're doing the things you're not eating enough, or you're not eating like any protein. Like we got to like look at these things. We want to look at, you know, the very basic things of being a human to make us feel good, which is your food, movement, sleep, rest, those

types of things. So let's just pretend your positive ripple effects is a blue highlighter and then negative is a red. If your routine is filled with red, it's pretty obvious that we need to change some things, you know. So the majority of your routine is just not looking after yourself and it's just red. We need to insert some blue in there too, what steps I actually took to get my spark back. Let's go. First thing is I stopped pretending I was fine. We don't need to be

martyrs here. And I know a lot of people like you know, when people it could be your best friend, they're like, hey, you going, and we're like, oh yeah, good, thanks, and you're like, oh, I'm actually quietly dying inside. But anyway, like, we need to just be honest with ourselves and even other people, which I'll get into later, but when you stop pretending you're okay and admitting it to yourself that you're burnt out, disconnected, running on empty, that's the second

you stop pretending and you can actually take action. Because awareness is so important. If you don't have awareness, you're not going to do the steps. And I'm sure we know people in our life that you can see their self sabotaging themselves and they do not have the awareness to stop it. So that is so so important. And this brings me to step number two. I found my moments of yellow. Now you might have seen the trend

going around is who is your yellow person? And the whole idea is your yellow person is the one person that feels like sunshine, the one that makes your nervous system relax, you unclench, you feel safe around them. They make you laugh, the one that makes you feel warm and safe. And online everyone's posting their partner, their dog, their kids, which is so so beautiful, and I love that because we all need yellow people in our lives.

But here's what I realized when I was standing in front of my mirror that day, when I saw this girl I didn't even recognize staring back at me. Is I had so many beautiful yellow people in my life, people that felt like sunshine. I had so many beautiful, beautiful humans surrounding me, and I still felt gray, which meant something quite uncomfortable. Is it meant I couldn't outsource my spark or my happiness. I couldn't rely on someone else to bring back my color. I had to become

a little bit of yellow for myself. I just become my own yellow person. And then that got me thinking, what if yellow isn't just a person? What if it's a moment, What if it's something that you create. I'm sure you guys have heard of glimmers, also a trend online saying to look for the glimmers in your life, which is little sparks of joy. It's the same thing. So I started asking myself, what are my yellow moments? What are the glimmers that I can create in my

life that can make me feel good. They don't have to be big events or life changes. It doesn't have to be like I need to go run two k's every day. That's also not a glimmer for me in general, let's be honest. But for me, it's something like browsing books in a bookstore with no intention of buying one. It could be, you know, loud music in the kitchen

while I cook. It could be you know, maybe I'm staying home for the day but I do my hair for no reason because it makes me feel good, Or going for a walk with nothing in my ears except stepping up I'm choking, and just being, you know, actually present in my own life for one time. Just moments that you have that don't have an outcoming. You don't need to achieve anything but glimmers just to light up

your day. Because here's a shift. Your yellow person makes you feel safe, but your yellow moments make you feel alive. And that's why we've lost us spuck, because we have not felt alive for so bloody long. It's time to wake up again. And we can't always rely on others to inject joy into our lives and day to day lives. We have to create it for ourselves. Now. The second thing I did is I stopped bracing all day. Now, right now, right this second, I want you to take

a deep breath. I want you to unclench your jaw and drop your shoulders. I bet you so many of you just then did not even realize you were doing those things. You know, we all know the feeling that we're constantly clenching, waiting for the next bad thing to happen, as I mentioned earlier, but you know, we're just stuck in this fight or flight mode and that's not good for us long term. That's actually meant to get us out of trouble, especially when we're cave men and we

had to run from like sabertooth tigers. But now we don't have that. We just have like to book doctor's appointments and they feel basically like the same thing. So one thing I did for this because it's not easy to relax and unclench all the time, But I did this by setting reminders on my phone. Now, please change your arm tone to something relaxing like music, not just the normal way of bed breap, because that's not going

to help the case at all. But I would do this four times a day, and when every time it went off, no matter what I was doing. I could be working, i could be cleaning, I could be doing anything, I would just check in with my body. Uncleanch my drawer, take a deep breath, drop my shoulders. And then it

started becoming more of a habit. So when I started really tensing up, I would notice it a lot quicker, and you can think it changes like it really really does help your nervous system if you can try to check in with your body more regularly. I also did this, why trying to when I could take micro moments throughout the day to just again get out of my head and into my body. Because I'm a thinker. Sometimes I don't like like it. Let's be honest, I do some

dumb shit, but I'm always in my head. A majority of us are in our head. So the best way to get out of our head and into our body is by taking notice of what is around us. So let's, for example, pretend we're washing up the dishes. I want you to feel the warmth of the water on your hands. I want you to hear what it sounds like as the water hits the dishes. I want you to smell, and you can. Maybe you smell something not so pleasant, but at least you're present in your life. So just

taking notice of your surroundings. It could be your kids laughing in the background, or maybe they're punching on but you know, we can't be perfect here. Now, there's this really good grounding exercise, which I'm sure you guys have heard of, and this is something I taught my kids. So say, usually they do tell you to do this when you're having like an anxiety attack or something, but

basically it's good to do whenever you can. So when you're doing one of these things like washing the dishes, and you want to focus on being present and you're not too sure how to do that, just name five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can feel, and two things you can smell, Because honestly, that is the quickest way to get out of your head into your body again. And for me also, you know how like at the start of a new year.

Everyone kind of likes to have a word or a mantra to live by. My mantra for me when life feels like a pressure cooker is I'm not saving lives. And this helped me so much in my business. When you work in marketing and online, everything feels like you're saving lives, but we are not. And I say this to the team a lot when something happens that goes wrong. We're not saving lives. You know, some of you might

be maybe for you're doctors, but otherwise we're not. And another big one I love, and this is more related to like technology and especially emails and things, is their urgency is not my emergency. I know it feels like it. Our body thinks we are being chased by a sabertooth tiger, but no, it's just Margaret emailing us about an account. Okay,

we're good. The next thing I did, and this is not a vanity thing, but as I stopped dressing for survival, as I mentioned when I lost my spark, I stopped putting an effort into my parents, and we're not We're not trying to be materialistic. We're not trying to be like you know, have you know Vanity or anything like that. We're not doing it for Instagram. But you don't understand how much it affects you when you stop taking pride

in your appearance. And it's not to like yeah, it's not to please everyone else or try and get attention. It's just for you. Like I know this. So many women in my life. We're in our thirties, and the amount of times I hear them say I am dressing up for me is amazing. I love it so much. And again for me with the gym, I bought these matching cute sets. Now I like wearing them to the gym, and I do it for myself. I don't do it for anyone else. I don't give a shit what people think.

I wanna wear the cute sets. And I used to always only wear black to the gym, and now I wear colors every day and I love it. So I started to physically bring my color back by caring about how I showed up again and not for Vanity, not for anyone else, but for me close color style effort, and I realized I missed the girl who cared, so I started dressing like her again. And the thing is, there's a lot of science to this. This is not

just Steph talking shmack. There's a concept in psychology called in clothed cognition, and it means that what we actually wear influences how we think, feel, and behave, and not just how others see us. So psychologists actually found that people wearing symbolic clothing like a lab coat associated with doctors, performed differently on attention tasks than people not wearing it, simply because they had the lab coat on. So that tells us something very powerful. It is clothes don't just

cover our bodies. They interact with our psychology and we can embody the clothes that we wear. There has been so many studies done, and apparently this thing called fashion psychology, which I had no idea even existed, but they show our clothing choices affect our mood and our confidence and how we see ourselves and also how we interact with

the world. Like I'm sure you remember a time back in the day when we used to go out and do things and you bought a new dress and you popped it on, and your makeup just looked really good that day, and you went out that night and you just felt so confident, but then there's times where you know your makeup sucks and for some reason it's not working and you have nothing to wear and you're just in a bad mood. It's because it's psychology. It's not

just because we're vain humans. These studies also show it's actually a mood enhandser, and it makes so much sense. It's like when we buy a new outfit that just fits its so perfectly, we feel like we can take on anything. And that's because our brain's like, let's do

this thing. And I'm sure you've even seen that. There's a thing called dopamine dressing, and it's like a stole in our culture at the moment, and it describes dressing in a way that boosts our moods, so people might wear like fun things like Lauren, who works for me, Steffe's planner. She's our marketing manager. I love what she wants to work every day. She always has something like with cats on it. It's always bright and colorful, and even when I see her, it makes my day feel better.

So not only is it making her feel good, it's making me feel good. And I'm not saying let's go out and buy a whole new bloody wardrobe. I'm just saying, choose one thing maybe past you always did. It could be a certain lip gloss, maybe a perfume, even maybe a certain top or a color that you wore, and just start with that one thing. Because so the thing is, when you've lost your spark I get, you can feel

so down. It can be really really hard. But if you can just pick one thing that the girl who had color used to do, do that to start with that, and you'll be surprised because as soon as you do that, like close signal identity to your nervous system. So sometimes you can dress your way back into yourself, which is wild. But one thing I did that really helped me work through my postntal depression to get myself feeling better was

I would wash my face. I would just put on a comfy little matching track you set I got from Kmart, put on a better lip gloss, and I'd put brush my hair and put in a ponytail, and it would make me feel so much better. The next thing I did is I stripped my days back to basics. You know, we all get caught up in the hustle culture of doing more and being more, which I can one hundred percent be like. But when we're like this, we really do need to go back to basics because our nervous

system is already in overdrive. So if we could just strip it back to the essentials. So for me, especially with work, especially when you work in social media, you can feel like, oh my god, I need to post every single day, I need to do this, that and the other. But I was like, no, you know what, if I can do two to three posts this week, that's enough for me. If I can check my emails even once at the end of the day for ten minutes,

just for the urgent ones, that's enough for me. As long as my kids are fed, even if it is for a couple nights. Maybe it's you know, you have bloody uber eats one night, Like, it's enough as long as you're being fed. Just strip it back to the basics. And when I even say this, I also mean the things that are important, like you don't have to go and go straight back to the gym. But if you've gone from being stuck in your house and not touching grass and your nervous system is still a bit cooked.

Sometimes for some people, going straight back to where they were before. It's too much, so that's why we have that bridge in the middle. It can look like going for a five minute walk each day. It can look like just making sure you drink some water because apparently I heard it's really good for you, this water thing, so maybe we should try that. So we just want to bridge the gap between colorful you and the empty shell version of you. The next thing I did is

I returned to my anchors. So what I mean by this is past. Steph had always had the same routine of again going to the gym, and that for me, which is a long story which I will do another podcast on. You know, I started the gym as more of a vanity thing, like most of us do. We want to look hot. But then after a while I was like, oh my god, this really helps my anxiety and it makes me such a patient mother. Okay, maybe

not super patient, but better than before. So for me it became about my mental health, and no matter what was going on in my life, I would still go to the gym, even if it was, you know, at home with some waits. I would always do some type of movement because it was I needed it so badly for my anxiety. But when I lost my spark, I stopped going for about a year, which was like last year I did. And so for me, the gym was always my consistent no matter what was going on in

my life. Even you know, when Dad was sick and I lost Dad and Nan, I still went to the gym. Like obviously, once they passed, I had a couple weeks off, but I always went, always went, And you know, there's one routine for me. It just stayed steady with every version of Steff of what she was going through, because movement reconnects me with myself in ways that nothing else can. And I do hope one day you guys can find that too, because it's a human need, it really is.

But you know, for me, when I felt ready at first, I just started, you know, going for walks, and I didn't go straight back to the gym, like I mentioned, I like would work out at home just for ten minutes in my pajamas. I literally would do it in my pajamas. And I was still so proud of myself because I'm like, look, I still showed up. I still did the thing. And then but once I finally got back to the gym, soon as I stepped foot in that building, I felt like I was transported back to

who I was before. You know, it's like you know when you maybe go to a place and you used to go there as a kid, you go straight back to that version of you. Or maybe you smell something and it triggers a memory that helps so much, and that's your anchor. So anything you used to do. It could be you would make a peppermint tea at nighttime and you would color in. Do that, or maybe it was a certain play list she would play on the

way to work. Do that. Just whatever you can do to get closer to the version of you that was happier and had color Do that. The thing is because your brain can remember how you used to feel, and it makes that stretch and that bridge a lot shorter. The next thing I did was I switched up my environment. Now I don't have to be the first person to tell you how much your environment matters to you. Again,

there's studies shown on this. I won't go into it because I've already nerded out on you a little bit, but our body reacts to our environment. So if there's clutter and mess, you're gonna feel tense, you're gonna feel stressed. And it could just be like about wanting to change it up. Maybe you want to feel like you want you're starting a new chapter again. So it could be simple as like you know, you don't have to do a full reno, but like small tweaks, like tidy your

bedside table. Maybe put some essential oils in there. And maybe like at nighttime, you're very anxious and you're not feeling great, so put some things in there, like a little toolkit to make you feel better, Like your journal, like I love and I made our ride it out journal. It's from my staff face plan is write out journal. I had that major, I had a fresh one and I popped it there. And then like lighting a candle, maybe some new plants, just changing up some pillows that

you've already got. Just changing your space can really change your energy. Because the thing is when you see the same thing that maybe is tied to a negative experience or feeling, your brain's going to go back to there. Just like I said before, So let's change it up a little bit. Even if you go to Kmarte, just spend twenty bucks or just grab some things out and

switch up the house. A little bit, like you know when you were a kid and you would rearrange your bedroom and then you're like, fuck, yeah, new bedroom, knew me. Like you just felt like you're just like a new person, and you would wake up. So say if you moved

your bed. I used to love it when you actually would move the bed and you'd wake up, and then you look around and you're in like a different spot of the room and you just felt so cool, like you're like, this is so fuck, I'm so fresh, all right, So moving on, the next thing I did is I brought back rituals that younger me loved. So this really is related again to hobbies and things we do just

for fun. Again, So for me, that looked like, you know, things I love before kids, but things I love before my business and before the burnout, So you know, loud music in the kitchen, long showers, just as I can, like I feel like I always rush showers. I don't know if you guys are the same, because you feel like quick, I got to do bad time, I gotta do things, and I will have the fastest shower, whereas I'm like I used to love having a long shower.

And then you know, so I brought that back. You know, journaling was a big one as a kid, I used to always write. So making sure I was journaling again, and not because I wanted to, like, you know, do my gratitude just journaling, just random thoughts and things. And then there's things like you know, singing badly in the car. I started doing that again because that, for me, is

so good. And also what I love about that is when say, the kids wake up in their feral and I'm trying to get them to school the best way and the thing I have always done in the past is I would put on a song they love and we would all sing it to school. And the kid that got into the car at home versus the kid that got out of the car at school were two

different people, and it's the same for us. I think we need to mother ourselves a little bit more, you know, have be a bit more compassionate, and let's baby ourselves a little bit. I think it's fine. And the last thing I did out of all this is I let myself be held as a people. Please it. As I said, we don't ask for help, we just push on and then sadly we do see things that happen to people and we're like, oh, I never realized that they were struggling.

It's because we bloody never say anything, like, you know, I let myself bet help by my friends, by my loved ones, by Ryan, and it's like not just physically, but like emotionally for me, I'm a big talker if you haven't realized, hence the podcast, but for me to like process my emotions and like what steps to take, I have to kind of say the same shit constantly

toil like kind of have something click. And I love that, like my you know, my cousins and my friends and Ryan, like I will repeat myself to them so many times and they just let me until like like until that little switch flicks and then I feel like I'm ready to do the thing, and you know, like you just

we just need to ask for help. And the thing like, it's so sad how we've been taught to just carry carry through and like carry our own backpacks and maybe not hand off a little bit to someone else sometimes because the thing is, I know, if your friend or loved one asked you for help, you would do it. You would actually, like I love helping people, I really do. I hate that people struggle, but I love to be able to help them. And the thing is, we don't

give ourselves the same grace. And I learned this too going through personnal depression, which also I noticed you with the whole dressing like with the whole putting more effort into my parents when I had postanal depression. And I'm backtracking a little bit, but with my postonal depression, I had that with both girls. And you know, when you've had a new baby, You're waking up, you're in you're covered in bloody milk, and you just got your pajamas on.

Every day, your hairs are rats nest and I felt shit, And of course it's a hard it's a bloody hard time. It's a huge adjustment. One thing I noticed when I just had the kids is, you know, as I mentioned earlier, I had personal depression. But I went to a mother's group and everyone there seemed like they were they had their shit together, and I was the first time mum and a lot of them were too, and I felt so ashamed. I was like, I should just know what

I'm doing. And I was really struggling with breastfeeding at the time because I had a place center. Sorry, I had retained less center, and my milk was drying up, which I didn't realize at the time, so that was fun. But I never said anything for so many sessions, and then one session I just was in there and I was defeated and I was like, you know what, I don't give a shit. And then I told her mom next to me, and you know what she said, and she was a mum. She would always looked so beautiful

and presentable. She looked like she had her shit together. And I told her, I'm really struggling. I've got I think I've got perstonatal depression. And she goes, oh, my god, me too, and then we spoke for an hour and o'hm, my god, my god. This whole time, we've been sitting next to each other just collectively alone, collectively and miserable.

And that's the difference, is like you just need to open up to other people because there's other people out there going through the same thing as you and I. It's so sad to think that we're just all collectively alone. So you know, let people hold you, like, don't be afraid to speak up. And I know there's a time and a place. But I do feel like the more that we are honest with each other, the less alone millions of people are going to feel. So I hope

this episode has helped you guys out there. Maybe I guess I said, maybe you're listening to this and you're like, shit, I really haven't been feeling like myself when I didn't even realize. So take the steps that you need. Make sure you jump in the show notes and grab your your work book to help. Really just look at your routine and see how you got here in the first place. And just remember your color won't return all at once.

It will come back in hints and glimmers, in moments of yellow, and then suddenly you're gonna feel like you again. You probably feel even better to be honest with you. So I hope this episode has helped and hit home for you. And please don't forget to check out my book Mastering My Messy Life, where I talk about all of this stuff I talk about so so much in there, and I think it will really help you, you know,

master your mess but also feel really really seen. Anyways, I love you, guys, and I'll be back in your ears next Monday. Bye.