7 Shifts I've made that have changed my daily life

Today I'm sharing 7 things I've done recently that have influenced my mindset, joy, and overall life outlook. I hope they inspire you, too!

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You are listening to episode 210 of the Mindful Productivity podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Steckler. And this week, I want to share seven shifts that I've made that have completely changed my daily life, from mindset shifts to looking at things differently to things I'm doing regularly and some bigger projects I've been working on, these things have completely transformed my life in more ways than I could have ever expected. And my hope is that if you're feeling low or you're in a current slump in your own life, this episode might bring you a little hope and inspiration into some ways that you can meaningfully improve your life. So let's go ahead and jump into this week's episode. Welcome to the Mindful Productivity podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Steckler, and this is the place to be to live a more mindful and productive life. If you're ready to turn daily chaos into calm and start your days with intention, then get ready to join me as we dive deep into mindful living and personal productivity. It's time to connect with your true self so you can live the life you want to live. And it all starts now. Welcome back to the podcast, friends. I have been spending a considerable amount of time lately thinking about the past seven years of my life. I know that's a very specific time frame, but for me, the start of 2016 leading up until all the way through 2023 has been one of the most difficult chunks of my life. And I was reflecting back on all the things that went wrong, all the struggles. And I was also really thinking about the seven cycles or the seven-year cycle. I've heard different things. I need to look into this about how your body generates and all this stuff. But I was just reflecting on how hard it's been. And I was also really feeling grateful for how so far in this new year, in 2024, I have felt exceptional gratitude and I only am feeling better and better about my daily life. And there are reasons for that. I think I also am just having a good moment in my brain. But I was also thinking all the things I've been doing leading up to this new year that have drastically changed my life. Now, just as an aside, and I just share this for some context, I am someone that is currently dealing with. I've been diagnosed with PTSD, and that is something that greatly impacts my life, has greatly impacted my mindset. I get nightmares all the time. There's a lot of things that come with that that make daily life feel like a bigger struggle sometimes. So when I tell you that I've been in a head space that's been just naturally positive, that feels like such an incredibly huge win for me because that's something that my entire life has not... That's not my baseline. My baseline has not always been just like, I wake up and things are good. I tend to look for the negative. I tend to feel very, very down and heavy. And so the fact that I'm not feeling that way is wonderful. But I was also reflecting on some of the things that I've built up in my life recently that have truly created momentum for making this process easier, making my gratitude and my good moods more consistent. Now, I'm not here. This podcast episode is not about telling you that you need to have a consistent good mood because we're not about that over here. We're not about toxic positivity. But what I will say is that some of the things I've done recently, I've just been blown away at how much it's improved my life, my mental health, my physical well-being, all of it. So let's go ahead and jump into this list because I think you're going to find it pretty inspirational. For the past year plus, ever since we moved into our new home here in California, my husband's in the military and we moved down here, I have been working to drastically declutter my life. And let me tell you, it has been a major process. I've always been someone that's had more stuff. But in the pandemic, I realized all of a sudden I had started accumulating more things at a rate that was just out of hand, could not keep up with it. My life became very chaotic. And in a lot of ways, I noticed myself trying to pad my life with stuff. That could be a whole other We will not get into that today. But I have been working on decluttering. And one thing I really realized, my biggest struggle in my house was that I could not keep my kitchen clean for the life of me. And I know a lot of people say that your kitchen is the heart of your home. I really resonate with that because if the kitchen is messy or dirty or any of those things, I can't function. It's hard for me to get work done in my business. It puts me in a bad mood. And so I finally, after a year of decluttering the rest of my house and slowly getting rid of more and more stuff, I had been putting off the kitchen. And so actually not too long ago, I finally sat down and took a whole day to go through everything that was in the kitchen. And this was big because I honestly really had no idea what all we owned. You would think that because we move so often, I would have a really good idea. But it's also really easy I did not pay attention because we have movers that come and pack everything up and wrap everything up. And then it just gets dropped off at our new location and I just shove everything into cabinets. At least that's what I did during this last PC as I just could not bring myself to go through everything. So I finally did. And I got rid of quite a bit of stuff in the kitchen. And I finally now have a place for everything. So that means there's no clutter on the kitchen counters. Every single piece of Tupperware has a home. I can connect all the Tupperware together, and that may take up more space in the cabinet. But if I go to get a Tupperware container, I have the container and I have the lid. I don't have to go searching for either one. They're together, combined, like little friends, and it makes my life so much easier. So I did all of this and I completely decluttered the kitchen, and I immediately noticed that I drastically had more mental energy. When I got up in the morning, I wasn't trying to ruffle through stuff to make my coffee. I wasn't frustrated that there was already stuff on the counter. If I wanted to make a smoothie, it was super easy because the kitchen counters were clean. When I got home from grocery shopping, I could put my groceries on the counter and not the floor. These things made such a huge difference in my life I cannot even tell you. My friends are tired of hearing about it because every day I'm like, I cannot believe how much more mental energy I have because I am not constantly having to move crap around on the counters to do basic stuff. It's allowed me to more easily cook healthy meals. For whatever reason now, eating a meal or going in to get a snack doesn't feel like this impossible task where I was mentally so over stimulated by how much stuff was on the kitchen counter that it just became this impossible thing, and I couldn't figure out why. So the fact that I've now done that has completely changed my life. In fact, that's why it's the first thing I'm sharing today, because it is probably the biggest impact in my life. And that actually led me to So doing something I wanted to do for a while, and that was getting myself a little reward. And I actually went out and I bought a small little 24-inch TV. It's only a 720p HDTV for the kitchen. And because I was talking to my mom and I was like, man, I love... I want to be in the kitchen more like meal prepping and doing all these things. But for whatever reason, even though I've got a cute little kitchen lamp in there, it just feels like a depressing place for me. And for whatever reason, it's It's a place where... My husband's deployed a lot recently. He's gone a lot. And I feel alone. I feel lonely in the kitchen. I'm not someone that feels that way very often. I am very introverted. I love my alone time. But for some reason, when I'm alone in the house and alone in the kitchen, I'm just like, it just feels extra that way. My mom was like, well, why don't you get a TV and put it in the kitchen? She's like, that's what I do. She's like, that's what I did when you were a kid. She's like, I had one of those double TVs with the VCR in it. And she's like, I watch movies and all this stuff in the '90s. I was like, man, you know what? That sounds fun. So I went out and I looked up and I found a really sweet deal on a TV. It's a little 24-inch thing. I think it has an Amazon stick built into it, which is nice because it has the little voice control. So if you're looking up a YouTube video or whatever when you're cooking, you can just talk in the remote. Fabulous. And I found a great deal on it. It was only 75 bucks. I was like, sweet. And so I went and did a curbside pickup at Best Buy. I don't know why I'm telling all these details. Took Bella with me. We picked up the TV, brought it home, set it up. And when I tell you, it completely changed the mood of my kitchen. And that brings me to the second point, which is I am now listening to music all the time. So we're going through these seven things I'm doing. This is number two. When I was in my early 20s and all through high school, middle school, you name whatever device I had at the time, a walkman, a cassette player, a CD player, and then eventually all the different kinds of MP3 players you could imagine, they would all break. I tried them all. I listened to them all. I always had headphones in and I was always listening to music. And then something happened as I just got older and grew into adulthood, where I just found myself listening to music less and less. And I actually just started... This TV just ignited this thing because I was like, oh, Obviously, I could watch shows or Netflix or whatever on there. But I could also, there's all the radio apps and all those things that I could download. So I did. And I started, I've been listening to music so often. The minute I go into the kitchen, I turn on that TV and I put on some music. And I'm a big fan of EDM. So that's my music of choice that I go to. It's got a good beat. It just puts me in a good mood. And I have noticed that my mood is just through the roof lately. So now I make it a point to listen to more more music all the time. I also think it's really helpful because I'm someone that will naturally ruminate. I need to get out of my mind and out of my brain. I am someone that will think things into oblivion and overanalyze them and Honestly, I will go back in my past and bring up stuff that's really difficult. And so listening to music distracts me in the best way. It keeps my mind occupied and it gives my brain something to float with while while I'm doing other stuff. So now when I'm in the kitchen, instead of thinking about all the reasons to be sad, I'm like, oh, my God, what is this new song? I want to add it to my Spotify list or just find myself singing along or dancing or just having the time of my life in the kitchen now. And it's really, really fun. It's also inspired me to keep the kitchen cleaner because I know that if I go in there to do the dishes, I get to listen to music, and that really makes me happy. So having music on all the time is really, really great. I've been listening to more music in the car as well and taking time to connect my phone to the Bluetooth if I want to so that I'm really listening to music that I want and not just flustering through all the radio stations until I find a song that I like. And it's also drastically decreased my screen time in terms of time on my phone and time doomscrolling or even watching TV, ironically, having the TV in there. Even though it's on, I'm listening to So that's been really nice because I find that I'm just doing some of those other things less. The third thing I want to mention is that I'm focusing more on what I have and not what I don't. And maybe that sounds like an obvious gratitude practice, but I'm someone that I'm currently 36. I'm currently thinking about where my life is, what have I done or not done yet, what if I don't do big milestone things that everyone else is doing? And I spend a lot of time thinking about all those things, worrying about all those things, right? And I think it's also really fascinating just the patterns of what we all tend to worry about and focus on in different decades of our life. I remember in my 20s feeling like, oh, I don't have a career yet or I haven't done this and that. I'm so old. And now that I'm approaching 40, I'm like, you had so much time. What were you worried about? But these feelings are all valid, right? We all go through these different phases. But in focusing on what I have, not what I don't, I don't just mean being like, oh, I have a muffin in front of me. I should enjoy this muffin instead of wishing I had pancakes. I don't just mean that, right? In the simplest of terms. I don't just mean being like, I have a roof over my head, blah, blah, blah. Like, yes, all those things, 100 % great gratitude practice. More so, I've been going deeper with it. So I've been really focusing on what I have, So one thing that often comes up for me is I have that tender spot, right? Where if I see other people having time with their grandparents or spending time with their dad, I get really sad because those are things that I no longer have in my life. And it can be really easy when you don't have someone or something to be like, oh, man, life would have been so much better, right? Life would be so much better if my dad was still around. But I flipped that more and more. And I think, yeah, but your mom is still here and Gosh, our relationship is so amazing. We talk all the time. In fact, the other day she was saying, because we do a call almost every day. And she was like, I think we talk more now than when you lived here, right? Because I've had to move away. And I'm like, yeah, I think you're right. And I've just been trying to focus more and more on what I have. And what happens when you really focus on enjoying and finding the joy and what's right in front of you is that you just naturally stop worrying so much. It's really reduced a lot of my anxiety and repetitive thoughts because I'm not thinking about what's on the other side of that fence, right? What is the grass greener? I'm really like, man, I love my home. I love my Squish and Ballows in my office. I love my Bulldog and our cat, even though our cat screams bloody murder all the time the second she thinks she's going to get food. I love that I have this amazing husband. I love all these things, right? And so in doing that, when you really crowd out your brain, when you really just fill it, I think I imagine these blobs of sparkly pink joy in my brain. And if each one of those things is something that takes up space in that mind space in my brain, it just fills up every orifice and corner and gap, and there's not room for anything else. So then instead of feeling like, man, I wish I also had this, it's almost like, I can't even imagine having more or because of what I already have. I hope that makes sense. There's always going to be times in our lives where we're sad or we miss people or we have regrets. But there's really something powerful about digging really deep and really acknowledging what you have because chances are that you have something, a friendship, a relationship, an experience, a lifestyle that someone else in the world would try to have. And really just realizing how special that is for you can be completely, completely life-changing. The fourth thing, the fourth shift I've been thinking about that goes a lot in tandem with this is really shifting my mindset that happiness does not mean that nothing bad can or should happen. And here's what I mean by that. I, like I said, have had this seven-year-long stint that just feels like I've had some of the worst luck ever. I go back in my diaries and journals or Facebook memories and I'm like, man, I forgot about that or like, wow, what a rough time. And I've said that so many months out of the past seven years. Like, wow, this might be the hardest thing I've ever went through. And then something harder has happened. And it's like, man. And I remember I got into this pattern for a while because at some point in your life, unless you're lucky and it doesn't happen, you're going to have things happen back to back. And it's going to feel like, what did I do to deserve this? That's a very natural human feeling. I also, in my early 20s, got into this really, personally, I think, toxic spirituality place where I really thought that it was my fault or I could control more of my life by controlling what I thought or writing stuff down a lot or any of those things. And I think a lot of young people go through those different phases of magical thinking, if you will, or get caught up in it because it can be fun. But the more I realize that life just happens and that for me personally, this is my belief, there's not necessarily a reason behind any of it. Things just happen because they happen. There's something that takes the pressure off of that. And now when something bad happens, instead of me adding it up in my mind is like another reason why my life is so awful. Like, why do I have to go through this? It's more acknowledging that things will go wrong. Your life is never going to get to a place where things don't go wrong. You're never going to get to a chapter in your life where there's never any more problems. And raising my Bulldog, Bella, and taking care of her every day has really been a great example of that. When we first got her, we went through There's so many different medical issues with her. She's had so many different surgeries and things. And I mean, Bulldogs tend to. But I remember feeling like every time it happened, I just couldn't believe it. I could not believe that we were having to spend money at the vet again. I could not believe that she had another infection or this or that and the other. And so then every time it happened, I'd be like, of course it's happening again. Of course, all these things are happening. And now I'm to the point where where I've accepted that having a dog and having a bulldog specifically means that things are going to happen. Yeah, she's going to get allergies. She's going to get ear infections. She's going to have things happen. You're going to have to make decisions. You're going to have to spend money. Sometimes you might not be able to do what you want to do with the vet because of financial reasons. But you will always make the best decision with the information that you have at the hand at the moment you have it, right? You'll make the best decision with what you have, with what you know at that moment in And just thinking about all of this has really shifted the way that I look at the outlook of my life, because in the past, if something bad was happening, I couldn't simultaneously find joy at the same time. Now I'm able to recognize that there are difficult things that can happen in my life, and I can also make an amazing dinner, and I can also still enjoy parts and moments of my life. Happiness does not mean that everything is going right the same time. It means that you're finding happiness in different moments despite what might be happening. Number five, and these are all building on each other, and that is I have spent more time in my little nudge to you, spend time acknowledging your struggles. I think it's also natural for us to be scared of spending too much time going over things that are hard or things that have happened in the past. But there's something to be said about acknowledging struggles and also reflecting on them. I was actually going back through some of my voice memos in my phone. I have some back from 2015. And what's really funny to me is every time I've been extremely sick to the point where I've lost my voice or I have a cough that sounds like I'm dying, whatever reason, I made a voice memo. Why do we do this? I made a voice memo like, smelly cat, basically. Like, oh, my God, I'm so sick. Hear how sick I am. And it's funny. And I was going back through and I was actually surprised by how sick I got in both 2022 and 2023. Like, horribly sick, back to back issues, had some antibiotics, and then that made things even worse. You know what I mean? Just like, you're so sick and you cannot believe how long you're sick. Like, those two years, I was sick back to back, both years, twice for over a month each time. So four months out of 2022 and 2023, I was really sick. Like, unbelievably sick. And a lot of that could have been due to getting out of the house again for the first time, moving to a new area, being surrounded by a bunch of new kids going to a new school, like Germ Central, right? But that really changed my mindset about being grateful for my health. But point is, acknowledging your struggles is important because it allows you to see how far you come, but also what you were able to accomplish despite all those things. So I look back at my past year my life. And even though it wasn't the most lucrative year in my business, I still look at everything else I accomplished, all the things I was able to move through, the very sparse amount of time I got to see my husband and all the things we were able to still enjoy together. And that is really important. Number six. This is something fun, but it can be fun to go on your own little scavenger hunt in your brain, and you can bring someone along with you if you want. But for example, and I started doing this unknowingly, this wasn't an intentional thing. But every month or every so often, pick something that brings you a lot of joy or pick something to get obsessed with and then look for it everywhere and just be surprised by how much joy it brings you. For example, right now, and most of the time, I'm obsessed with strawberries. I love strawberries. I love eating them, but I also love them in decor. And so it's been really fun because I've had strawberries on my mind and everywhere I went lately, that's all I see. You're going to find what you're looking for. And it's been fun, though, because I've brought my mom into this. And since we're in different states right now, it's a fun way to connect with her throughout the day. So while she's at work and stuff, if I'm out and about and I find something, I found a strawberry vase at Five Below the other day. And I was like, oh, my gosh, can you believe this? And I sent her this photo. It was like, all these strawberries. And she's like, that's so cute. And then she'll send me a photo. If she sees something that It's a strawberry or whatever. And it's just this fun back and forth. And then it just becomes this little boost of serotonin, boost of joy every time that you see one or you find one. And this could be a color. This could be It could be anything. It could be a frog, whatever. But it's just fun to focus on one thing and find it, right? It's a fun little mindfulness exercise that can bring you a lot of joy. Number seven, and I think this is so important. This is Something that is something someone actually said to me during my first corporate job when I was in the break room and I was like, oh, I just wish it was Friday. And this guy, I can't remember his name. I had never talked to him before because I worked in a company. There was quite a few people. And I'd see new people all the time in the break room. He whips around with his coffee mug and he looks me dead in the eye and he goes, don't you ever wish your weeks away? And it's always stuck with me. And I think about it all the time. I think about it when I'm driving and I hear them on the radio being like, we made it. It's Wednesday. Only two more days. And it'll be the weekend. And I get it. We all want to get through the work week. But there's something to be said about not just living for the weekend. And really doing what we can to cherish every single day. Just because it's Tuesday night doesn't mean that you can't make it special. And planning little tiny things throughout your week to look forward to can make all the difference. Your best memories don't have to only come from Saturday and Sunday or whenever your weekend might be. They can happen anytime. Sometimes this can mean watching a special show on a specific day of the week or or maybe you bake something fun on Thursday nights, or if you don't have a ton of time and you are exhausted when you get home, maybe it means that you have a special ritual or you have a special blanket that you get or a heating pad or a candle, whatever. Or just don't wish your weeks away because all those days that you're just grinding through and hoping will end are also the days of your life. Now, remember, life is not about arriving at any one place or destination. It's about enjoying the journey as cheesy and corny as that sounds. And truly, I believe that the more excited you can get about all the little micro moments in your life, the more happy and the more joy that you'll find. Because there's so many things that are hard to accept and hard to process in our world. And the more that you can find and claim your joy throughout all these hard times, the better it'll be. So that is my wish for you. And I hope that you enjoyed this episode. As always, you can always come and say hi on Instagram. I'm at Sarahh Steckler. If you want to share anything that you heard from the episode or let me know anything that you do that's similar. You can always find more resources for mindfulness and productivity and all of those things by visiting my website, Sarahsteckler. Com. Until next week, thank you so much for listening to this episode, and I hope you have a wonderful day ahead, no matter where you are.