April Awakening

​[00:00:00]

Emma: Welcome everyone to another episode of the re frameable podcast, A podcast that brings you people's stories and ideas about how we can work to reframe our relationship, not just with alcohol, but with stress, anxiety, relationships, enjoyment, and so much more.

Because changing our relationship with alcohol is about so much more than changing the contents of the glass. This podcast is brought to you by the Reframe app. Reframe is the number one iOS and Android app to help you cut back or quit drinking alcohol. It uses neuroscience to reframe your relationship with alcohol and unlock the healthiest, happiest you.

I'm Emma Simmons. I'm a Reframer, a certified life coach and a Thrive coach with Reframe from New Zealand.

Kevin: And my name is Kevin, Bellack. I'm a certified professional recovery coach and the head of coaching at the Reframe app. How's it going?

Emma: Spiced it up,

Kevin: mixing it up a little bit.

Emma: It's fine. It takes me back to my radio announcing days on [00:01:00] voiceover recording days.

I don't think I did a very good job. I don't think my producer would've been happy with it, but it's fine. Anyhow,

Kevin: it was good.

Emma: I'm very, you didn't say my afterwards,

Kevin: so that was good.

Emma: Yeah. My name is Kevin Bellack. No, that's not my name. Yeah.

Kevin: Yeah.

Whatever you put up there, she's just gonna read it regardless.

Emma: Yeah, absolutely. Do a Ron Burgundy.

Oh.

Yeah. No I'm tired. We, Kevin and I were talking before we started recording. I'm tired. I had my youngest daughter's a just entering competition season for her dancing. So she did her first solo dance yesterday. So it was a big day of lots of energy, lots of nerves, lots of anticipation.

I don't know if I was more nervous or she was more nervous. And yeah. So now today is a crash and burn and go into hibernation kind of day, except I've gotta do the grocery shopping. Isn't that the bane of everyone's existence?

Kevin: Ugh.

Yeah. Now we can order it and pick it up. Like they just, they do the shopping for [00:02:00] you. And I don't, it might be maybe five bucks extra at the place we do it at. But it's so much, it's so worth it because we save so much money by not going there. Especially if I go there, all bets are off because it was a joke when we were going back home recently with my, from my mom and like my brothers like they put me in front of a screen.

Like we stopped at a gas station. We were ordering stuff. Like I came out and there was like, Hey, we're it's road trip food, right? And they're like, oh, I got a sandwich this. And I'm like, I got cheese sticks to share. And I pull it out and it's like a bucket. I've got

Emma: Six bags of cheese sticks.

Kevin: There was like literally like 20 cheese sticks in

Emma: there. I've got what a, is it just like a stick of cheese?

Kevin: It's a, yeah. It's, I remember a comedian I think saying Hey, would you like to eat five sticks of string cheese? No. What if we deep fried it and then you dipped it in marinara sauce?

Oh,

Emma: it's a good, yeah. Bring them on,

Kevin: right?

Emma: Yeah.

Okay. Now I understand what a cheese stick is. It's not just like [00:03:00] a slice of cheese and plastic. It's a, it's basically like cheese batted deep fried.

Kevin: Yep.

Emma: Dip it in. Yep.

Kevin: Yep. And or we're ordering like, oh, hey, we're gonna get some pizza tonight. Okay.

I'll go on the app and order it, and then all of a sudden the guy comes in, it's like stacked of pizzas and subs and, a lot of the stuff that we. People said they wanted and then a few things thrown in just for good measure. Yeah. What's this? A brookie, the Brownie cookie.

Oh yeah, that's a new thing.

Emma: I do that too. I hate making, I hate doing like a pizza order or something. I'm like, what? Can we just get one of everything? No, Emma, we don't need the whole damn pizza store.

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. And while I might see something on the app for the groceries that I'll be like, oh, I'll add that on.

It's just night and day different than going and being like, yeah, we'll get one of these. Yeah, let's go on this aisle.

Emma: See, we, yeah, we, in New Zealand, we can get, you can do grocery orders and they like deliver it to your car or whatever, or deliver it to the storage [00:04:00] locker. And it's $5 for click and click, which is fine.

Happy to pay $5 for peace of mind and ease and to take that stress outta my day. But they do really dumb substitutes. I don't know if substitutes are like, so one time we had, I had rice bubbles, rices on the shopping list. Do you guys have rice like cereal? It's like a cereal that, like Rice Krispies. Like a rice. Rice puff. Yeah. Like the individual little rice things.

Kevin: Yeah. But do you, have, you had like rice Krispy treats? Is that a thing?

Emma: Yes. Yeah. So that rice crispy treat is like a little cupcake thing, right?

Kevin: It's like a bar. It's like a bar like marshmallow and rice Krispy. Like the rice puffs.

Emma: Yeah. Yeah. So the rice puffs, rice's on the shopping list and they substituted it for Corn flakes. Do you guys have Corn Flakes? You guys have corn flakes?

Corn's? Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, okay, like close. It's a cereal. It's the same brand. Absolutely not. What my kids will eat for breakfast though. Yeah.

Kevin: Yeah.

Emma: And you can't make corny put corny [00:05:00] treats

Kevin: Corn Place. I mean you can, there is a,

Emma: just smash '

Kevin: em up and throw, melt them with marshmallow shirts. It different.

It's not the same. It's how's, is that

Emma: an accurate substitute? Yeah, like they do dumb and one time, oh, one time they substituted regular coffee for decaf coffee and I'm matched myself back into the shop and I was like, this is not a substitute. And the woman at the counter was like, I am so sorry. Clearly this person, like whoever packed your order does not have children.

Kevin: So you ordered decaf and they gave you regular No, I ordered

Emma: regular and they gave me decaf.

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. That's no way out. That is not

Emma: acceptable. Yeah.

Kevin: Yeah. That would've been funny though. My thing. I think it's, that would've been funny if you didn't notice though. And all week you're like, what? Oh, can you, what the hell is wrong with me?

Emma: Headaches and the, yeah. Full on detox from caffeine.

Kevin: Yeah.

Emma: I think I'm coming down

Kevin: with something. I think I'm dying. Yeah. I just

Emma: can't shake this headache. Yeah. Do I like Googling headaches? Migraines? Yeah. Oh my god, I have a [00:06:00] brain tumor.

Kevin: Yeah,

Emma: absolutely would've. But yeah, so I think it's just, I dunno, easier for me to go in, but I'm the kind of person, okay, so this is where my Audi, DHD brain, like I have my list, I know exactly where everything is in the supermarket.

I go through and I just express shop. I make a beeline for everything that I need. The only like slight deviation is if something's on special and I'll buy a different brand to what I normally would. But in. Husband loves going grocery shopping. He loves browsing the aisles. Yeah. And he makes an event of it.

And we, yeah. Our grocery bill is doubled by the time he comes outta the shop. Yeah. Which is fine because he finds some really cool, unique things. But yeah, we're like, apples were on special. So I bought apples and I'm like, cool. The kids don't eat apples anymore. They've moved on to

Kevin: tears. We, yeah.

Now we have way too many apples. Now we have a whole apple problem going on. Where?

Emma: Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin: Which they last a while, but,

Emma: and apple crumbles. Ah, in New Zealand it's vijo a season. And I know you guys [00:07:00] don't have fi jo as I wish I could bring some over to America to share with you.

Kevin: What is that?

Emma: You've had to feed Joe a candy.

I brought that to you last time.

Kevin: Oh, okay.

Emma: The little, the green fruits. Oh. For those of you watching, hold on. Let me just go to my fruit bowl. This is gonna make shit audio open as, as

Kevin: long, as, long as it's not the pineapple chocolate covered pineapple thing. Pineapple

Emma: lamps. They were delicious. They are delicious.

Kevin: Maybe I have, think of something else. I don't know.

Emma: Chocolate covered pineapple. Yeah, pineapple lumps. Yeah. I don't think you liked those but FIAs. But it wasn't like pineapple,

Kevin: right? It was Oh, okay. It's

Emma: like a pineapple taffy kind of thing. Yeah, chocolate. Anyway, this is a fi joa, so these grow everywhere in New Zealand, and they only shaped

Kevin: like they look like not.

Less round, like more oval limes.

Emma: Yeah, like a slightly flattened lime, yeah. Is what it looks like, but it's absolutely not what it is.

Kevin: Yeah.

Emma: I have a knife here, actually. Oh, look, this is not what I anticipated to do. Yeah. In this meeting

Kevin: On this week's episode of baking Championships.

Emma: So this is a Fiji, so I don't know.

I don't even know how to describe. Its kind like a, looks like a

Kevin: [00:08:00] zucchini insider, a cucumber almost. Like it looks just not.

Emma: Anything or a tammar. Do you guys have tamarillos over there?

Kevin: No. Okay,

Emma: cool. Great. It's probably called something different. There's

Kevin: people listening to this be like, yeah, we do, and I'm sitting here.

I,

Emma: ah, yeah. So I guess it looks like it's green. It looks, and, but it's pale like cream and white on the inside. It looks kinda like a zucchini, but it's. This delicious floral flavor. Floral but it's grainy, like a pear texture, but it's juicy and you can only get it like April time of year.

And I refuse to buy them, although I bought, actually bought these ones off. Our neighbor who has a organic orchard or their family has an organic orchard anyway because our fijis aren't ready. But almost everyone in New Zealand has a Fiji a tree, if they've got any land and you just live off them and they're so high in vitamin C, which is what you need right now.

'cause we're heading into windows, so we wanna boost our immunity. So good. Anyway, Fiji and Apple crumble the best dessert ever. [00:09:00]

Kevin: Alright,

Emma: I lied. Anything with chocolate is probably better, but fed and apple crumble is to say

Kevin: it's not as far as desserts go in my, for myself that does not sound like it would be high on the list.

It, I'm sure it tastes good.

Emma: I actually Googled last week if I can bring Fi Jos into America so I can make you guys like something like actually give you fi Jos, but you can't. They take it off me at the border, which is sad.

Kevin: Yeah.

Emma: I wonder if anyone imports them. Anyway, sorry. Massive tangent. How did we get onto that?

Kevin: But as you mentioned, you're going into fall, we're heading into spring, or we're in spring right now. Which is on topic for cha Hey, sick wave. Yeah, let's go. We'll take this chance to segue into our discussion for today. And, you know, we were going to uh, talk about in every month on Reframe we have a monthly [00:10:00] challenge in the app, and you can join solo, you can do it individually.

You can join with a group. You can join with a group of people that you know and all get onto that group together. Or you could just, open it up and join a random group and just connect with people. I think it's up to 10 people right in a group. And, uh, it's around there.

Emma: I thought it was six, but they might have increased it to 10 since I haven't done a challenge in a long time, because I am I, my A DHD kicks in and I get distracted by something else pretty by the end of the month.

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. I thought it up to 10, but I could be thinking of another group in the app as well, another thing.

You're there with other people, at least six, maybe 10.

Emma: And it's, and I always say it's such a great way to meet other people. Yeah. And to connect with them a bit more one-on-one rather than just in the meetings. And every now and then in the meeting, you'll see someone be like, oh, is there any space on a group?

Or, I have a group, and I'm I have a group with a couple spaces left if anyone wants to join. So it's a cool way to connect a bit more and start building your accountability group or sobriety group.

Kevin: Yeah, the,

Emma: The sobriety [00:11:00] group or accountability group that I'm in now, we started with challenges and like slowly, like people would dip out and some people and we'd add a couple of people in.

Yeah. And then, I think I got booted from the challenges 'cause I was so terrible at remembering to do the tasks in the end. Yeah. But I've still got my accountability group. Yeah. So that's good. They catch me on for the accountability, just not for the challenges.

Kevin: Yeah.

Emma: Anyhow.

Yeah.

Kevin: You weren't checking off with everything every day. That's, and that's fine. But no, that is a great way to just find other people that you can connect with. And you know what, one thing I'll always say is you might not, if you just join a random group or if you join a group, you might not like everybody.

You might not get along, you might not connect. And it's not about getting along, it's just might not connect. Or some people might be more quieter than others. Others start. Yeah. But it's worth a shot and it. Is it worth a shot to do more than once? Just because you're like, oh, I joined a group and I it didn't work out on me.

And it was No one chatted. No one chatted. It was it sucked, right? Yeah. And it's okay, that's not every group, [00:12:00] but not everyone's like that. Yeah. Yeah. So keep trying. If you do have a, an experience like that, and I, talk about with these challenges, but that's with anything, right?

That's with, yeah. If you reach out and you join a meeting on the app or a meeting in person or something, and you don't, you, you're like, wow, it doesn't vibe. This wasn't this wasn't my people. However you wanna put that. Fine. If you didn't, if it didn't, like you said, if it didn't jive with you, then try a, try another group.

Try a different group go back to that group another time because not every group is going to show up the same way. All the time yeah.

Emma: Yeah. I think for those people, they're like, oh, my group weren't very chatty and didn't really connect join another one and I hope that the next one that you're like, oh my God, stop messaging me.

People you

Kevin: like Yeah.

Emma: Polar opposites there, yeah. It just depends on the, I don't know, the tone and the vibe of the group.

Kevin: Yeah. Give yourself a chance to be Goldilocks, to, alright, this group is too much. This group is too much. That keep trying until you find you're just right.

Emma: And you will,

Kevin: and again that's with anything that.

[00:13:00] Probably. Awesome. I'll add a probably in there. I don't like being so definitive on things. Yeah. But yeah, that, that applies to a lot of things. How about that? But with the challenges we do dry and damn January we have feel good February Mad March or no March Madness.

No good memory.

Emma: I was like, oh, how are we gonna go with this? You

Kevin: remember all of them? I can't remember, I'm drawing a blank on the exact March name, but we it was

Emma: March Madness. It wasn't match March Madness.

Kevin: Obviously that's probably trademarked and copyrighted and all that, but yeah, it was something I'm mad.

All right, one moment

Emma: please. Cola,

Kevin: we could pull, yeah, one moment we are as we pull this up. But April. April, and while you do that, look for that April is gonna be April Awakening. So nice alliteration when you can get it.

Emma: It was Med March Challenge.

Sorry. Mad March Challenge.

Kevin: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And, uh, but for April, we're doing April Awakening, and obviously in the northern, is it the whole northern hemisphere? Yeah, we're going, it's, [00:14:00] the whole hemisphere is going into

Emma: spring. Well done. Whereas is down

Kevin: under the southern hemisphere is gonna be going into fall um,

Emma: autumn

Kevin: or autumn or fall.

But ultimately it's like we're, going into a new period of time. And we're gonna be talking, planting seeds, cultivating growth, awakening. The senses to, a little bit of self discovery and things like that and blossoming and thriving moving forward, like towards the end, I, that's how it will a trend.

And so we want to just talk a little bit about that here today.

Emma: Ideas for April awakening.

Kevin: Yeah.

Emma: So planting seeds. Planting, when I think of planting seeds. Okay. It makes so much sense if you're heading into spring when you talk about planting seeds, but it can also apply in the southern hemisphere.

Kevin: Yeah.

Emma: Because this is the time of year where you plant your, sorry, excuse me, I've got a tickle in my throat. You plant your bulbs, you plant [00:15:00] your daffodils and you plant your oculars and your peonies and they sit underground and they don't really on the surface it looks like they're not doing anything for months and months.

And then come spring. They pop out and they blossom and they bloom and they're beautiful. Same applies. So we might be talking about planting seeds and and thinking about springtime growth. But I guess that's a great example of sometimes you plant a seed and depending on what that seed is or bulb is, it might take longer to blossom and longer to come to the surface.

And that's the same with, and that applies to us as people as well. Sometimes you plant the seed of sobriety or or self-help of some description and it takes a while for you to fully realize and understand and notice the change or the bloom in yourself.

Kevin: Yeah. And yeah, I always, I like, I really do love this.

Kind of thought of the seed or gardening or whatever. And I'm not a gardener. Like I literally [00:16:00] have a desk full of Lego tiny plants and a bonsai Lego tree over there because I had some real live plants in house plants in this in my office here that died,

Emma: didn't survive.

Kevin: Or, yeah, or I try and okay, I'm gonna water. I'm gonna do what it says and do follow the instructions. And it still did that, but it was like clinging for for a while or new sprout would pop up only to not last. So I'm like, all right, I'm gonna stop trying this and I'm just gonna build my own tiny plants.

Looking at it about like our journey too, what with anything, right? It could be with alcohol addressing our relationship with alcohol or, any kind of new. I'll say, I'll just say new. But anything that we're going to try and work on in our life I like the thought about being like a gardener.

And I was a, what I think is a shitty gardener in the past. I look at it as I planted a seed. I dumped a bunch of, when I wanted to make a change, I would plant a seed, dump a [00:17:00] bunch of fertilizer on it which only suffocated the seed and didn't let it grow. And tried to do too much too quickly, right?

Oh, if a little fertilizer is good, more must be better. And you know, I watered it too much. Not enough. I was trying to do, and I didn't slow down to the speed of that thought of of growth, of planting a seed, waiting for it to sprout, tending to it and all that.

I would forget about it. You could carry this metaphor to any different direction of change that you want and growth and all of that.

Google it, you get a bunch of suggestions on how to tend to plants or. Insert whatever you're working on here.

Emma: And isn't that like the classic kind of almost New Year's resolution or when we decide to get healthier, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get healthier, I'm gonna give up alcohol and I'm gonna be healthy, and you're like, cool, I'm gonna do all the things.

And then you burn out and it doesn't Yeah, it doesn't click or Yeah, you do, you try and do too much too quickly. And so I think [00:18:00] yeah, same as we're just like plants, we're living things you've gotta a little bit at a time and plant the seed, give it a little bit of water, give it a little bit of sunshine, and just let it slowly blossom rather than be like,

Kevin: oh, the water or the fertilizer,

Emma: Go.

Kevin: That's not how. Blossoming work,

And it needs, it requires time. It requires patience, whether it's waiting for something to grow or making a change we need an, I, that seed of an idea to take hold, but we also need to plant it. I. You can't, we can't just expect to know how to do certain things.

Kevin: And that's where listening to podcasts, listening to books, reading books, going on the Reframe app and doing the daily tasks. And even if you open up a daily task, you're like, I know this. Like whatever this is, I, I know what this task is gonna tell me. No you don't because you haven't read it and it, this one might say something.

Emma: [00:19:00] Yeah. One little sentence that you're like, huh.

Interesting. And that's the same with, I think with community meetings as well, is you don't know what you don't know and you don't know what's gonna work for you until, and someone will go, oh, I tried X, Y, Z. And you go, huh, I've never thought of that.

Okay, I'll give it a go. And you can give it a go and it might work. You could give it a go and be like didn't connect, didn't work. Yeah. Sorry. If you can hear my dog greeting everyone in the street right now. But yeah, jumping on community meetings because we don't, you've only got so many ideas in your own head, I guess. yeah. And this is where collaborative, community recovery is amazing because you get ideas from other people that you've never considered thought of, been introduced to.

Kevin: Yeah.

Emma: Yeah. I'm trying to think of an example of something that I actually, early on in my sobriety days, I literally, I would not that I necessarily got, oh no, I think I did get this idea from another reframer of all of the fruit and each, I would cut up and put into meals. I would save the seeds and I would literally, I would have a stem and I'd like, and I'd taught myself how [00:20:00] to, put them in what are they called?

Kitchen towels. Paper towels. What do you use? Call them kitchen towels. Yeah. And a little bit of moisture, a little bit of cinnamon. So don't go moldy. Put 'em in the fridge to hibernate them or germinate them. I did all of that and I planted, and now I've got a couple avocado trees growing. I tried to grow an apple tree, but that, I

Kevin: dunno,

Emma: it's not clearly not growing two years on, 'cause I don't know where it is.

But yeah, I think that was one of the there was a suggestion or someone else in the reframe app had said that they were doing it and that became my like, sole hobby for the first month or two of my sobriety journey. Or one, it became the, my vitally absorbing interest was trying to grow things from seed.

Kevin: Yeah. It. Anything like that where, I've seen people, I've seen a sourdough bread phase of throughout meetings where people are like sharing that and by numbers, all the cre, I'm gonna go on what colors?

Emma: Paint by numbers.

Kevin: Yeah.

Emma: Crochet.

Kevin: I started cross stitching. Cross

Emma: rich.

Yeah.

[00:21:00] It, it's cool to watch though, because you do you, yeah. You get introduced to these people and then you'll notice like, I don't know, six months later you're like, how's that sough? And they're like, ah, yeah. That was good. Oh yeah,

Kevin: it was good. It was a lot of work. I can buy to the store, so I'm just gonna do that.

But others that can be that, it's like coffee. It's, I can go, during the week I'm gonna sit there with my, Keurig and get pop a cake up in and drink my strong coffee out of that. Because I'm lazy, because I wanna focus on other things, is the better way to say that. But on the weekends, I'm gonna take a little bit more time.

And I, not always, of course, we, every day is different. Every day can be different. But grind up some beans, put 'em in my coffee maker that I have, or, I know you were making it in French press earlier, or I pour over, or, it's like, how do you, what is that ritual routine?

Those types of things can change and we can make them into something that [00:22:00] really supports what we want to do, even if it's almost tangentially, is that the right word for that? Or even if it's not directly right. It's, it doesn't have to be a direct thing that we're doing for. Whether it's oh, I wanna get stronger and work out more.

You know what? That could be the sourdough bread because I pause and I, or the coffee in the morning because I am taking time with a ritual to get my day started, which makes me want to wake up earlier and start that, which makes me want to then. Okay. I'm ready. I started my day. I'm gonna go put my shoes on and go outside now for a walk or run or whatever.

I'm making stuff up your habit.

Emma: Stacky. Yeah. I pulled

Kevin: back on my sourdough bread to workout correlation that I started out with there. I'm like, I don't know where I'm going with that. Maybe.

Emma: I don't know. I don't know. I've never made sourdough, but I know neither. You've gotta nurture the

Kevin: yeast or whatever.

The yeast, the beginning of it. Yeah, whatever. It's called the Mother. Mother. Oh no. Yeah. [00:23:00] Am I thinking kombucha?

Emma: Maybe? Yeah. I think we both, no, that's the ko. Oh, look at us. Not. Alright,

Kevin: moving on.

Emma: Cool.

Kevin: Let's stay away from that tangent vortex that we were just about to dive into from the, that we dunno

Emma: anything about.

Kevin: Yeah.

Emma: But yeah, no, you're right. Like you habit stacking like your, okay, so your goal or your, you set the intention of I want to get stronger or I want to get fitter, or, okay, let's go with, it always comes into to exercise with us. But anyway yeah, I wanna get fitter and stronger. So what are the, like we've planted that seed.

I'm gonna get fitter and stronger and I have this goal of I'm going to do tension ups. That was my goal during lockdown, one of the lockdowns. 'cause in New Zealand we had so many, so how do you, yeah. How do you start that? What are the steps? How do you habit stack that? Okay, so I'm gonna get up maybe I sleep in my exercise gear so that when I wake up, I don't have to get in to ruffle around my drawers and find exercise gear and get into cold exercise gear in the middle of winter.

So maybe you sleep in your [00:24:00] exercise gear, maybe you get up and you make that cup of coffee. But while you're waiting for the kettle to boil, kettle is not something I've discovered is not something many Americans have. When I was at a friend's place in Texas, she didn't have the kettle.

Kevin: Oh yeah.

Emma: So I was boiling water on this stove in a pot.

Kevin: Yeah,

Emma: it's a

Kevin: kettle.

Emma: It depends. An electric jug.

Kevin: Yeah. No, I have,

Emma: you know what it is, right? I have a

Kevin: one or two kettles. Yeah. But no, you're right. And if we don't, tea isn't as prevalent and therefore I think we have other things that maybe focus more on coffee and that's it.

Emma: Oh. Yeah. You said Keurig before.

For those down under Keurig is like a coffee machine. You buy like pods to put in it.

Kevin: Yeah. That's what it is here too. It's a brand of a

Emma: yeah. No, but we don't have them down here.

Kevin: Oh, I thought you were saying you did. Sorry.

Emma: No. We don't. I that I just, I was introduced to that for the first time in, in Texas as well.

Yeah. Any who? Massive tangent. So you're boiling the kettle, you're boiling your water to make your coffee. Yeah. Or you've put your pot in your machine and you're waiting for the water to heat up whatever way. And [00:25:00] maybe you have a glass of water because that's part of your, like getting healthy. So you have a glass of water while you're waiting for the kettle to boil.

And then, but you're looking forward to that coffee because once you've had that coffee, you know that you're gonna go and do your little workout. So just by setting the intention of or planting the seed of, guess that seed is okay. Tangent, Emma. There are two. I can see two, two spaces where we've planted a seed there.

I can see we've planted the seed of, I want to get stronger and do tension ups, which was planted maybe a month ago. But I can also see that we've planted a seed or maybe we've used fertilizer Ooh. The night before by going to bed in our exercise gear. So it's not necessarily about waking up and knowing that we are going to, it's setting that intention the night before and then carrying it through.

Yeah.

Kevin: Yeah.

Emma: Did you like that tangent? I

Kevin: did. I wouldn't say that's a tangent on point. But there

Emma: were just so many connections.

Kevin: Yeah. And that's, I remember someone saying on a meeting, I probably mentioned that here too, in the past we were talking about morning routines [00:26:00] and and again, this was like a little nugget that I pulled from a meeting where the person said my morning routine starts the night before.

And I was like, that's brilliant, because that's so true. It's not just about the time that we're doing something. And you can extrapolate that out further too. It's if we have those times of the day, let's say that I would come home from work and I would get home at seven o'clock, and I would, that would be the time that I would maybe pour a drink.

Um, it's, we can sit there and focus on that time, or maybe it's like later night I would be drinking more and all that. But how can we. Look at the areas around it as well, and it's like those little things that can make a big difference of why first obviously we wanna, why do I feel like I need that when I get home?

I'm probably stressed. I'm a little tired. I'm all, all those things. So it's like finding ways to, change that up. But it [00:27:00] could also be like tomorrow I signed up for this class that I'm gonna do. So I have to it, it can work in reverse too. Like my evening routine can benefit from my morning routine as well.

We're not talking about routines. I'm going off on that a little bit, but it's the, I can, I'm, I need to show up tomorrow, so I'm going to change the way I do things tonight, or I know this is how I show up. Here, and I'm stressed and I'm all that. So what can I do throughout the day earlier on to plant little seeds that are gonna help me if I'm taking this in the wrong direction with the seed thing, but but insert things throughout my day to help me in that moment.

It's not be all about that moment, right?

Emma: It's almost a chicken or an egg kind of thing. Yeah. You, yeah, you, if you have a good nighttime routine, it benefits your morning routine and your, benefits your day. But then also if you have a good morning routine and a day routine and, if you wake up and exercise and physically energize and use your energy and then mentally use your [00:28:00] energy throughout the day, and then you go to bed early and you read a book perhaps instead of doom scrolling and that's gonna help you sleep, which is gonna help you in the morning.

Yeah. Chicken rink. Yeah. But it's all about those, yeah, those little seeds or those little bits of fertilizers, those little bits of fertilizer throughout the day that help encourage and nurture your, nurture your blossoming. Nurturing your thriving. Yeah. Yes. Hashtag get thrive. Hashtag get

Kevin: thrive.

Emma: I'm gonna make you a t-shirt with that on it, by the way. It's coming. Yeah.

Kevin: I feel like we had inserted another hashtag, I don't know if that episode's out yet or not though. I can't remember what it is though right now. So it's probably, oh God, it's probably a good thing.

Emma: It's just. Dumb thing Emma said that didn't come out right.

That's not dumb.

Kevin: It's funny.

Emma: Hashtag Emma and words are funny. Anyw

Kevin: who I mean, but you can keep and I've thought about this in a lot of different ways too. Like even the whole, I'm gonna carry this gardening thing one more step. It's, sometimes we grow too [00:29:00] big or grow out of the space that we're in, and we need transplanted in some way, right?

We need to a bigger need a bigger pot. Yeah. A bigger space to thrive, or a different space to thrive because the conditions currently aren't good. And I, I think about that as like our current environment, like the people, places, things that we are, that are around us. Yeah, that might, we might need for whatever we're doing, we might need to.

Not like up a little. Totally remove, like it's not like we're ripping ourselves out of that and, dramatically and planting ourselves just randomly somewhere else. It's more methodical, more thinking of this more and I dunno it's a little bit, yeah. It's not so abrupt, I guess is what I'm going with here because, it can cause stress to do that.

It can cause, it can stunt our growth for a little bit maybe until we really take hold in that new area. But in the end, that can help us grow even more, 'cause we need to change up our environment.

Emma: Yeah, and it can just be little tweaks. Like instead of having [00:30:00] your third cup of coffee for the day, or sixth cup of coffee for the day, maybe you spice it up and you have a herbal tea.

And that one little change, like just changing that environment, changing that thing can help you grow because maybe that one cup of herbal tea turns into a glass of water, which then reduces from six cups of coffee to five cups, to four cups, to three cups to two cups, to probably a healthy one cup. But let's be honest, look at the size of my cup.

Those of you listening, the cup is almost the size of my head. This is my second cup of coffee. Yeah. Oh, it's just like my alcohol pores, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I just have one. It's just one. One glass. Yeah, it's just one. It's actually six, but yeah,

Kevin: that's,

Emma: but it's just one. Yeah.

Kevin: Looks like,

Emma: it doesn't say how big the mug is on the bottom, but yeah, it's from my chin to my eyebrows for those listening and not watching any who

Kevin: I was.

Im, and I immediately wanted to be like, no, whenever you're like about the if you go from six cups to five [00:31:00] cups to four cups, it was like

Emma: no.

Kevin: We

Emma: increased increase caps. Emma can't decrease. Yeah,

Kevin: no, but exactly like it is that baby steps too, right?

Emma: Baby steps, tiny little changes can definitely help move us in the right direction and sometimes.

Okay, good. Good segue for Emma. Sometimes it's about removing things instead of adding things in. So instead of being like, I'm gonna drink more water, I'm gonna eat healthy, I'm gonna drink more water, I'm gonna hydrate. So you're still drinking six cups of coffee, but you are also gonna drink eight glasses of water a day.

So you are gonna add in the water. Yeah. Like my bladder might explode if I tried to do that. So sometimes it's about what do I need to remove? And this is part of the April Awakening. Challenge as well is like assessing and looking around at what's going on in our world and what are we doing and okay, so we wanna be healthier or we want to exercise more.

Okay, but then what, where is that gonna fit in? Do I need to remove something [00:32:00] from my life from my day? Maybe your spring awakening is about I actually wanna have this beautiful, clean, tidy home as I look around at an absolute disaster of a living room because I didn't clean at all yesterday because of being a dance mom.

Okay, cool. I wanna have a perfectly clean, open home, ready home. How am I gonna do that? Because I'm not gonna be able to do that with, running around after two kids and two jobs and all of that kinda stuff. So what am I gonna remove? Am I gonna remove dance momming or am I gonna remove. A whole child.

No, I'm not gonna remove a whole child.

Kevin: Remove, removing is, am I gonna remove the expectation that my house has to be perfect or look a certain way when I know I'm doing other things that are more important to me

Emma: that I value more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah. So say, yeah. So my, my goal is to have it perfectly tidy house.

Okay. Then maybe that means I remove my I remove my expectation on myself to do a grocery shop in [00:33:00] person. And maybe I do that online. Yeah. Maybe I remove the expectation that I'm gonna walk the dog for an hour every day and I give that job or that task to someone else. Just Yeah. You can't, instead of adding things in, sometimes we need to remove something.

Kevin: Yeah.

Emma: So I wanna drink more water. Cool. Then I probably need to drink a little bit less coffee. I want to back to the chin ups because I'm looking at my chin up bar that hasn't been used in months, years. I want to do 10 chin ups. Okay. That means I might need to do less Pilates. I don't do Pilates, but, yeah.

I need to do less of something. Maybe I need to read my book less so that I can exercise more. I dunno. Yeah. These are all good things that I'm trying to cut out of my life though.

Kevin: Yeah, because that's definitely like where we need to look at because we can't do everything right. A lot of the things too, the way I have seen it or have tried to see it more of is like an [00:34:00] energy issue. It's not oh, I can do more. I can do this, I can fit this in. I can fit that in. It's, do I have the energy for it? But also do I, I can't possibly have the energy for everything, and if I devote more time and energy in one area, I have to take it away from another, and that might seem.

Obvious, but I don't think it is. I think that's where we just add and add an add and if you look Google a life wheel and mm-hmm. do that exercise where life wheel has different slices. It's like a, it's a circle and it has different pie slices in it where, one might be nutrition, one might be our health, one might be our sleep, one might be our work, one might be our finances.

Mindfulness, creativity, hobbies, relationships, social life. There's, you can make your own and assess it. But in the center out for one of those slivers, let's just say it's for my sleep. Like [00:35:00] I, the very outer edge of the circle are all tens. And in the middle you start, and then you go out 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10.

And you like, great, like, how's my sleep right now? Right now Id probably get my sleep a five. Ooh,

Emma: that's good.

Kevin: Maybe a three like that. It's a tossup like that's where it's trending. But if I wanted to, but maybe my work is feeling like an eight and my, maybe I'm working out more. I'm not at the moment, but maybe that's an eight.

Maybe I'm devoting a lot of time to maybe I was running or working out more and the more we devote time to those, the less I might have for sleep. But if I want to get more sleep, then I, something has to give somewhere. And a lot of times we're not open to giving or. Said another way, removing something, right?

And I think that's [00:36:00] a big problem with when we approach something, when we approach a change we need to become aware of everything that we're doing and be open to actually changing, actually making changes that will work for whatever we want. Because too often we just try and add that other thing in, like you said okay, I'm gonna, in addition to the six cups of coffee and whatever else I am going to add in a gallon of water instead of a half a gallon of water, or, whatever.

The, I'm gonna add in that just more more, instead of looking to maybe remove a cup of cups of coffee and therefore I don't need as much water to flush that out or something.

Emma: Yeah. It's, yeah we tend to. Add on and sometimes, we're saying removing as if it's final, but I don't mean it like that.

Yeah. Like it's for, it's reducing or yeah, removing still the right word, but it doesn't mean that it's gone forever. So say your focus is on I, I want to, your goal to run a marathon. Cool. You're gonna need to focus a lot on running. [00:37:00] And so you might reduce some of your time in the gym, still exercising.

You still wanna be going to the gym, but you might remove it or, and you might tweak your focus on muscle growth into like functionality and then and so you, you reduce it or you remove your time in the gym, lifting heavy weights for that time being while your goal is to run a marathon. Then once you've run the marathon, you can go back to lifting weights.

It doesn't mean it's removed and gone and Yeah. Never happening again. It's just, for the time being to achieve that goal or that, whatever it, whatever aspect of your life you're trying to improve. It just needs tweaking.

Kevin: I think about the, I've finished like that 75 hard challenge a few times, and that's a perfect example too of you're adding stuff in that maybe you're not doing it's you're adding in 2 45 minute workouts.

You're adding in a gallon of water. You're adding in reading 10 pages. What else? I always miss stuff, but it's, you're adding these things in and that's one of the biggest problems. People think it's a physical challenge. I always say it's a mental challenge. It's a mental [00:38:00] challenge. To fit that into your day, because there is plenty of times in those 75 days when I was up at midnight.

Walking outdoors. Oh. Or up at two? At 2:00 AM I'm like, I gotta read my pages. And you know what? Suffer sleep, obviously. And that's not a sustainable thing that we can do all the time. Obviously, I, you make changes along the way when things come up. It's okay, anytime. I, so I joke when I did that challenge, you have to drink a gallon of water or four liters.

And I'm like, you only have to drink half a gallon of water after 10:00 PM one time to make sure that you frontload the water in your day from that point forward. Because you wanna talk about brutal sleep, drink a drink, two liters of water and go to bed

Emma: right before bed. Yeah.

Kevin: No, good luck.

Absolutely not.

Emma: Absolutely not.

Kevin: Yeah. So what can, again, given yourself becoming aware of it, and that's like the whole April awakening type of thing. And that's like the first step is we need to plant the seeds. We need to become [00:39:00] aware of what we want. What seed do I want to plant?

And go ahead. And where's

Emma: that motivation coming from to for that?

Kevin: Yeah,

Emma: like what, you've planted the seed, but where's the motivation? How are you gonna, how are you gonna fertilize that seed?

Kevin: Yeah. The mo and the motivation might be there, but is it going to continue? So it's setting yourself up for success in that way too.

Because obviously motivations can be internal, external, intrinsic, extrinsic, that we can look at it from those perspectives of, okay, where am I getting this? Am I being motivated by other people who are, maybe , someone says I need to stop drinking or drink less, that's an external force.

Now, I could also have an internal motivation for myself to do that, but it's like, where are these coming from and what's going to. What's gonna last and what's going to carry me as I go with, and that's where doing the April challenge with a group [00:40:00] external mo motivators can be helpful. I know I am, I rely heavily on external motivators to do a lot of things that I want to do in my life because, it's like I'll post something on social media, like I'll put it on my stories or something, which I haven't done in a long time.

But I always say I wanna get back to just haven't done it. But I'll post stuff there and I, it's like I'll post, oh, I'm doing 75 hard, or I'll post oh, day one complete. If using that example. And I'm not doing it to be like, Hey, look at me. I'm doing it to be like, Hey, look at me.

If you don't see me tomorrow, say some shit.

Emma: And that's where the whole community calls Kevin out when we don't see day three. Yeah.

Kevin: Yeah. And then it's Kevin where'd you go? Where's that one? Where's that post? And that goes back to, okay, how can I, knowing ourself too and knowing how we are best motivated and it can be different though, but, we need I think a little bit of both.

There needs to be, some people are, will say that they're very internally motivated and that's great. [00:41:00] I'm not a, I'm not a big fan of motivation to begin with. Let's, I'll just throw that out. You might have heard that in the past too, but it's it's, how do we. How do we make it part of our life?

How do we make, if we're gonna be motivated by something, how do we make it a practice? How do we, that's been my word of the week. I did a a meeting on that where it's, how can I incorporate these things tangibly, more tangibly into my life to help me because motivation's great, but it's a very abstract, it can be a very abstract thing.

And I talked, I was just sharing about our, we were talking about our whys in a meeting today, and asked about the our why, meaning, our reason for, and I was going about it for a reason of making a change related to alcohol, but it could be your why for anything. But I said, I.

Our wises can be fuzzy. And I use that word because that was from one in tiny habits. In that book by BJ Fogg, he talks about [00:42:00] a fuzzy anchor. And an anchor is something that, it's similar to habit stacking, but habit stacking is a little bit different. And I'm not a big, I'm not a big fan of habit stacking the way most people think about habit stacking, because most people think I can just stack a bunch of shit on top of one another and it'll be good.

That's not how habit stacking should work. It should be a little bit small. You can't just constantly stack things up. Otherwise it's gonna, it's like Jenga. It's gonna fall over and not work. But the fuzzy, the anchor is something that we connect, a behavior that we want to do too. And we don't want fuzzy anchors.

We don't want like an a fuzzy. An example of a fuzzy anchor is, uh, after dinner I'm going to do x what's after dinner mean? Is it

Emma: nine o'clock? Is it straight after dinner?

Kevin: Is it a time, is it, when is it when I put my fork down on the plate and I, from my last bite and then I, after dinner, I'm going to journal and then I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone and open up my [00:43:00] journal app?

Or is it you can get really granular. You should get really granular with some of these things because it's okay, what do I do after dinner? I take my plate into the kitchen. I want RINs it off. I put it in the dishwasher or put it in the, I know it's, I'm not saying I do these things all the time.

I'm just saying this is an example. But where do you, where does that stop for you? Because everybody's gonna hear that and think of something different. So where does that stop for you? And so it could be after I. Finish eating, put my dish in the dishwasher, wash my hands and dry them off with a dish towel.

After I hang up the dish towel, I will blank. So you get to a more concrete thing that can be that indicator that, oh, okay, this is when I start this I tie a lot of things to coffee in the morning and that, but motivation is something that could, can be very fuzzy. So it's how can I make that a little bit clearer [00:44:00] about what I want from, and make it clear on how I can remind myself about it too, so that I can keep it going and that I'm thinking there like reminders throughout my day that whether it's a post-it note on my mirror or in on my dashboard or in places that you can see it, to remind ourselves of maybe why we're doing things.

Emma: Yeah, I'm a big fan of, like I've said for a long time, and I didn't realize this was a, like a DHD thing, but if it doesn't, didn't realize it was an A DHD thing until somewhat recently, but if it's not pinging at me or beeping at me or flashing at me, I'm not gonna remember to do it. It just, it's gone.

So I'm a big fan of reminders, alarms on my phone. And

Kevin: just to throw out a warning on those if anybody else has this, if you get too many, they don't, you just

Emma: ignore all of them. They

Kevin: don't matter anymore. And that's where designing our environment and making sure that yeah, those those come at the [00:45:00] right time.

Emma: Yeah, if you can help it, I've had that problem as well. Yeah. But also another thing for me is, yeah, it has to be, it can't be written down in a book and put away because I'm not gonna see that either. Like diaries, daily planners things never really worked for me. It's gotta be, yeah, a post-it note on a mirror, on a door, on a cupboard.

It's gotta be written on my hand or Yeah. It's gotta be somewhere where I'm actually gonna look at it. 'cause if it's in a book and tidied away, it's gone.

Kevin: Yeah, it's gone.

Emma: And one of the, the kind of a great tip I've given a few clients on, like when they're really struggling to get that day one under the bout of being alcohol free or they keep slipping, say put a post-it note on the steering wheel of your car so that when you get in your car, it'll say, it doesn't have to say.

Don't buy alcohol or it doesn't have to say, something aggressive. It can just be like I choose me, or I choose healthy, or I choose positive or some kind of catchphrase. It's gonna remind [00:46:00] you that you're a new car, but you're not gonna go to the bottle shop and buy alcohol. And that's, and it's just one of those little I dunno, motivating things, external motivation.

It came from an internal motivation and you've made it an external motivation to remind you this is what we're doing. Or even like a screensaver on your phone maybe, or like a post-it note on your wallet or like post-it note on your bank card, maybe however you would normally pay for things. Little Yeah.

Notes to remind you that, to look out for

notes, to remind you that this is the path we're on, this is the track that we want to be on. We made that decision. And let's, yeah, let's keep encouraging ourselves to do it.

Kevin: Absolutely the keep encouraging ourselves to do it. And finding different ways to do it. Like you said, it doesn't have to be anything specific directions on that post-it note.

It can just be something that means something to you. And that's powerful. I like to use humor too, like in those [00:47:00] things, say, have a little note for me whenever I come back into my car or whatever. But yeah,

Emma: So I've shown this many times before, but I've got the reframe brain tattooed on my wrist.

It's, how big would that be? It's like a centimeter and a half, or maybe, I don't think it's about an inch wide. Anyway, I got the reframe brain tattoo to my wrist. It means nothing to most people. And re framers would recognize the logo. But for me it's it's not like a. Blatant, I am sober. I will not drink.

I do not drink. It's, so to anyone in the, I guess the outside world, anyone not familiar with reframe? It's just a kind of funky design on my wrist. Some people will be like, oh, what's that about? And I'll explain it to them. And now in my journey, I'm happy to explain to them what it is and why it's there.

But for me it's a constant reminder. Every time I reach for a glass, it's a reminder that I will not drink. But it's also an acknowledgement of how fricking awesome I am that I've done this, I've managed to break this cycle and break this habit of negative drinking habits, yeah. A really positive way of [00:48:00] putting, being a shit heed drinker.

Yeah.

Kevin: And that's, I, and I'm a fan of, I have all kinds of you got

Emma: a big, you doubled down and got a big reframe brain.

Kevin: Oh yeah, I did. Yeah, I, but that was fun. It's proportionate to all my other tattoos around it, so it's good. But yeah, no, I was, I think you

Emma: just uncovered courage for me to get bigger and more Ted.

Yeah, that's what I heard.

Kevin: Yep.

Emma: Yeah.

Kevin: I'm planning mine right now same I got but I have all, I have a lot of those similar ones too, where those reminders. The simplest one I have on my left outer wrist, it just says now, but it's in like the old, alarm clock with the red digital letter numbers.

And it has an n in that format with the two, the colon or whatever, and ow after it. And it just says now, but it's like in the digital clock font. The time is now. [00:49:00] Yeah. And I. It's I said something else earlier, I can't remember what it was about. It's not oh, posting on social media.

It's not look at me. It's not look at me, I'm enlightened. I live in the now. No, that's a reminder for me to live in the freaking now. It's okay. It's a it's a grounding technique for me, almost i, that's what I use a lot of these little things for and you don't have to go.

Permanent. You don't have to go get a

Emma: ted on your list like us.

Kevin: Yeah. And since I've gotten the nail tattoo as well in the last two years, my wife has never asked me what time it is because on day one I'm like, yep, for the rest of our life. Every time you ask me what time it is, guess what time it is.

It's now it's now

Emma: time.

Kevin: It it's not gone, it's not been lost on me that she has never asked me. I've been waiting. She's never asked me what time. It's

Emma: poor wife.

Kevin: I know. There's so many random phrases in my head that just get fired off whenever [00:50:00] she says certain keywords and puts them together.

So what else? So we're with this whole, April awareness and Yeah, like we said, it's spring here and it can be, you don't have to be going into spring to do some cleaning, decluttering, spring cleaning, whatever you wanna call it, fall cleaning. But what does that, what do you feel like, what comes up for you whenever you think about that?

Emma: Yeah. I I mean it does, it makes sense it still makes sense for me in heading into Autumn to do like a, I guess a detox or a revisit or a an assessment. I know that sounds big and scary, but like looking at where we're at and what's going on for us.

Kevin: In many different areas, right? It could be physical, it could be digital, it could be in our, what's taking up space in our mind?

Emma: Yeah. What's, have you noticed, is there like a negative thought pattern that you've Yeah. Like having, have reflecting on [00:51:00] what's happening throughout the day.

For you in your mind, am I regularly talking negatively to myself? Am I regularly putting shoulds on myself? And how can I how can I change that? How can I revisit that? Do I want to revisit that? Something I'm working with my therapist on is doing more kind of I noticed that the wheels were starting to fall off for a little bit for myself.

We've, we're going through a really busy season in our family's life, and it was really hectic and I was starting to feel really disconnected from myself, and my therapist was like, you know what? What's. She made me sit down and reflect what's happening? What's missing? And like where, what are you forgetting to do or what's not happening?

Not what are you forgetting to do? She would never say that because I forget all sorts of things. Yeah. Anyway I don't know what I'm forgetting. I don't forgetting everything. No, she I noticed that I've stopped meditating because I'm busy. I put an emphasis on stretching and mobility. I have terrible hips.

They like to pop out and dislocate and it's painful and horrible. Yeah. They don't, yours [00:52:00] don't mind it.

Kevin: I don't pop out. Yeah. I raise my hand because I was like, me too on the hips, but mine are just super tight and affect my back Yeah. And everything else.

Emma: And so I said, so I'll go to the gym and I'll do my morning workout and then I come home and I'll stretch for a good, like half hour and do this mo mobility workout mobility routine to help stretch out my body.

And it's been working really well. But that means I haven't been. Getting home from the gym. Gym, I said gym, having a coffee and sitting on the deck and watching the sunrise and doing a meditation. So my meditation's missing, which then means I'm less grounded and less kind of present within myself.

And working with my therapist, she helped me recognize that. So going into this season, I think I'm, I still want to do the mobility training, so how am I gonna rejig my mornings to feel? Or maybe I don't do a morning meditation. Maybe it's an evening meditation.

Kevin: Can I ask when you're doing the mobility and stretching?

'cause I have a picture in my head like what I'm doing. What are you doing?

Emma: I'm doing

Kevin: Are you specifically laying [00:53:00] ground? I'm horse squats. I'm doing

Emma: all sorts. I'm all over the place. I'm doing single lited legged squats and single lited legged IDLs. And I'm doing

Kevin: so it's more working out.

And doing movement versus I am getting down on the ground and doing a lot of yoga poses and holding them longer and stretches of that. Yeah. Okay. So I

Emma: could, yeah, I could do that. I could do focus more on yoga and doing more of a meditative yoga. Something I do I want to find on the encouragement of my therapist, find like positive affirmation type meditations.

And I can't meditate unless someone's telling me what to do when I meditate. I cannot sit down and meditate by myself, and I has have to have, it has to be a guided meditation. So that's I guess my goal for the week is to find a guided meditation that's that includes positive affirmations.

Because positive affirmations still feel really icky to me. But so yeah. So cleaning out or, yeah. The April awakening for me is okay, it's more of a clean, out of my mind and my brain and my thoughts and [00:54:00] reassessing all of that and being a bit more introspective, I guess I was gonna say introverted, that's not the right word.

Introspective of what needs a detox?

Kevin: What needs a freshen. Yeah. At the

Emma: moment it's my mind.

Kevin: Yeah. At the moment for me, it's my body. I'll say movement. I. Is something that, uh, I let that seed die a few months ago. So that is and I could point to many different reasons why.

But

Emma: do you need to though? No, that's an interesting que like do you, does there need to be a reason? It just, it did and let's carry on.

Kevin: I feel it can be helpful to, so it depends, right? It depends on if you, oh, if I'm making excuses, which I could see it as that, but if I'm making excuses, if I'm trying to be, if I'm beating myself up too much or whatever, I can it can be helpful for me to look back and say okay, what's made this difficult?

Why hasn't this been working? And I can [00:55:00] see that my back has been an issue this past year. And it's, that's a chicken and the egg thing too, with my movement and that keeping up on it in a specific way, but it was always like one thing led to another. And then this year dealing with, uh, family member being sick and the loss and that just been and busy and all that.

It's just I haven't had the capacity. That's not the time. It's the capacity to really commit to that. But I am feeling like now it's now's the time, plant that seed. Show up just a little bit and. Allow it to grow at a natural rate. So you don't throw it again back again. Yeah. Let's not go again.

Emma: Yeah. Let's not go into 2 45 minute workouts like every day. I can't

Kevin: promise that. But that being said, my, my 2 45 minute workouts can be a 45 minute walk and a 45 minutes of me stretching on the ground watching tv.

Emma: Good point. Yeah.

Kevin: [00:56:00] I allow that. It's

Emma: not going to 2 45 minute, like a HIIT class, 45 minute hit class and a 45 minute.

I've never,

Kevin: that's why I've never done that's no. 'cause you can't do that

Emma: then would end in Kevin lying on the floor with a broken back.

Kevin: Yeah. But my motivation might be to do those types of things that, like I mentioned, 75 Heart before, like a challenge that has stuff like that. As long as I show up for it, meet myself where I'm at, and not where I used to be or where I see somebody else is.

Allowing myself to grow at a natural rate. Again, continuing to fall back to the seed thing. But but

Emma: it's so we should, we, I think we will do a podcast eventually on analogies on our journey. 'cause you, we do, we throw out a lot of gardening analogies and there's what's the other one?

Like a sea or a ship? Sailing analogies and our journey. Yeah. But it's, I'm a big visual thinker, so it works for me. Yeah. Yeah. I need images.

Kevin: Yeah.

Emma: Yeah.

Kevin: There's a lot of correlations to like getting stronger, working out, that type of thing. Where you have to show up [00:57:00] consistently and all that.

But also rest also incorporate rest but yeah,

Emma: thanks for a future episode. Watch this space. Yeah. So keep coming back like, and subscribe. I keep hearing pe the people on the podcast that I listen to be like, and subscribe and follow and I feel like we should do that as well.

Kevin: I think we see, there we go. People, we might say it at the end. Do we? Yeah, please. Like, And subscribe.

Emma: Oh, okay. Cool.

Kevin: Good. Share with a friend. Um, it's the adding in, it's removing, it's the, having that patience, it's, becoming aware of where you feel you need it, but also looking at it more, I think just long term and what can be that the thing that.

We're not just doing it for 30 days, right? It's not that we have to do everything. Oh, if we set out and we do this, it doesn't mean we have to keep doing it. Maybe we adjust it. Maybe we, [00:58:00] we let it evolve naturally, but, or we just take a little piece out of it. But how are we, I like the word sustainable.

How are we like being sustainable or get thrive thriving. Thriving in the long term looking ahead to, it's, it can be good to, I always think that, don't worry about scaling something that you're doing right away. Like just throw everything at it. It doesn't have to scale to a longer term period.

It's or, if you're thinking of being something, being sustainable that we do. We can do stuff that's unsustainable in a, in a small short period of time. I feel when we try things out and then we can, once we see how things might work and all that, then we can look at how it can become a sustainable part of our day or practice our life.

But yeah, what can we continue to do with that to grow it? I dunno, I all over the place there with the trying, just that. No. Looking forward. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that [00:59:00] side of things.

Emma: I was just thinking as you were talking about trying things, I was like, we might have this intention or this goal of.

I don't dunno. I'm gonna run a marathon. I keep going back to fitness because, I dunno, it seems like easy.

Kevin: Yeah, easy goals not easy. When I was 30, I ran a marathon, but I didn't do it for the day after the, or the day. No. Yeah, the day of the marathon when we were driving back home, I was like, yeah, never doing that again.

Emma: Yeah, but you you might set out with the like goal if I'm gonna run a marathon, and then as you're running you realize you got old hips like me and running a marathon might not actually be the goal that you want and that's okay. 'cause you've, you've tried it, you've given it a, given, it a crack and you've incorporated this into your lifestyle and it's okay to reassess and be like, actually this doesn't fit in with my lifestyle.

Yeah I did. I've never run a full marathon, but I've run three halves. And I. [01:00:00] Was getting super excited. I was like, yeah, I'm gonna work up to a full marathon. And then I realized my hips don't like running. Yeah. So with, that dream or that goal is being put in its place,

Kevin: Yeah. Or you could also start doing it and be like, I'm just doing this, the, this is a bucket list thing. I'm gonna cross this off and move on.

Emma: Do it once and Yeah. And then you, it doesn't have to be a sustainable goal that you do for the rest of your life.

Kevin: That, but I was also going, the flip side of what you were saying was that I could love it and I could go from just running that marathon and crossing off my list to.

Doing that more. Not necessarily I'm not saying word insert whatever you want for marathon here.

Emma: Insert hobby. Yeah.

Kevin: Yeah. But I could keep that going and that could be my new thing of just, it could just be running. I could be a runner. Mm. It's that whole identity thought process, but I'm just not a somebody who's checking off a marathon anymore.

I'm a runner now. And you can keep that going, but that can evolve in different ways as well. Maybe that turns into, [01:01:00] hey, you like to swim in the pool, obviously. Where else did you swim? I guess yeah, in the ocean, the sea, the, yeah, the, in the lake. Whatever. The lake. But I was like, okay.

But like I could maybe go from that to being like, ah, you know what? I love running, but it's not great for my knees oh, let me try swimming. Let go to the, let go to the local pool and. Some lapse, get some lessons on how to do it properly and things like that where you can grow, you can, it can branch off into other areas that you didn't even realize.

But only by starting, only by allowing that to planting that seed, allowing it to grow a little bit, do you, you realize that you hate roses and you want, you said peonies or whatever the something else and you can go that different route. You still want the flowers out there, but it's just different.

Beautiful blossoming, thriving, get get thrive.

Emma: I should take, get thrive.

I feel like we've.[01:02:00]

There are no more gardening analogies to be made.

Kevin: The only thing, the only reminder is just patience. I think that's my biggest thing too, is I want to get to a certain point. I wanna get things done, I want to get to, and it's yeah, it's not how things work.

Emma: When I, excuse me. Before husband and I got married, we were meeting with our celebrant, our pasta, and did that sound like pasta, like a noodle to you rather than church pasta?

Kevin: Given the context. I didn't hear it that way. I heard what you said, what you meant.

Emma: Cool. Okay, good. No, we weren't meeting with noodles. We were, although I would take pasta at a, anyway we were meeting with our pastor, our celebrant, and she was asking us things like, what is it like, why, what is it that you see in your fiance at the time that, what is it? Why do you wanna marry this person? And I was like, he has so much patience. This was before we knew I had a DHD before I was diagnosed, before I was medicated. So [01:03:00] this is me medicated. Can you imagine me? Unmedicated? Kevin, you have met me unmedicated. And like the biggest draw or one of the biggest draws of the reason that I love my husband so much is he has so much patience.

Whereas I'm ripped shit bust. I am like, get in there, do it, get it done. I want results now. And he's he's definitely my, like my calming like time takes time. One step at a time. Yeah. So I need to learn more from my husband. I'm like, you care if I have no patience. Does your wife, is she really patient and is she a calming effect on you?

Kevin: If anything, I'm probably the calming effect on her a bit. Oh, that's I, okay. From this standpoint, she said this before I feel it's more of my analytical, rational side is the calming effect, because not that she's not a rational, or not that she's a irrational, or not analytical, but I'm just to the [01:04:00] too much, so much I'm a little bit much I will admit but she'll bounce some things off of me to because she wants me to do that and help ground her in something that she might be not liking at the moment or something that's driving her nuts or whatever.

And I come in and I'm like maybe it's this and, or I'll ask some questions and then it'll be like, okay, I. Shut up. It's fine. Yeah. All right. Thanks. We're done. Thanks. Yeah. I didn't think of that, but that's a good point. Not all the time. But, and I can also have a, there's also a flip side to that, where that also annoy her.

Yeah. Yeah. Just lemme know. I don't need you to be rational right now. Or stop it. Yeah.

Emma: The best marriage advice anyone ever gave us was when your spouse comes home or, you're in a conversation with your spouse, and your spouse is starting to like rant or like having a moment, you can literally say to your spouse, do you need me to help you and help solve your problem?

Or do you just need to talk and rant? [01:05:00] And that is like the best marriage advice ever. Yeah. Because I husband and I both used to get frustrated with each other being, 'cause we'd be like have you thought of, have you tried? Let's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. It's no, I actually just wanna, so yeah, I get that.

Yeah. Sometimes we just need to, sometimes we need us best to bounce ideas off. Give us some patience, give us some guidance. Give us some analytics sometimes. Yeah. And that's, you just need us, us to be a safe space Yeah. To blurt.

Kevin: Yep. And that's, I don't know if I got that advice or I realized that I think more on this as I was trying to add patience in as my word of the year for 2020, I think it was.

But that was the thing too, where I was like, okay, I can, she's not asking me to fix this. Um mm-hmm. And mind you, okay, so let's say let's just use 2020. Mind you, we were already married for 17 freaking years at that point. Wow. You're

Emma: so [01:06:00] old.

Kevin: I know. Yep. We got married young. You did?

We were 24. 23. 24. Yeah. 'cause we're 20, 22 years married this year, but we've been going out since high school too

Emma: so cute.

Kevin: Yeah. And my daughter's gonna be an adult this year, which is crazy as well. I am old,

Emma: I still vote ish in New Zealand for university. An exchange.

Kevin: We floated it out there. Yeah.

Yeah. It's not a bad idea. I'll just say that.

Emma: It's a great idea. But send her over to mama m

Kevin: Yeah.

Emma: We're sending you to live with a stranger. Good luck. Hey, on the other side of the world. Yeah, you'll be fine. I.

Kevin: I'm gonna send her to go live with a stranger on the other side of the world. Living in your neck of the woods in New Zealand.

Isn't that bad? Probably not a bad [01:07:00] selection, at least.

Emma: Yeah. Could be worse.

Kevin: Could be worse. I doubt it'll happen though, but we'll see. It's always a chance. I'm

Emma: I'm like, I'm always throwing out like little fish hooks. Fish hooks or planting seeds everywhere of come to New Zealand, send your kids to New Zealand.

Do an exchange to New Zealand. How about a holiday in New Zealand?

Kevin: Yeah, there's a lot of dead plants there folks.

Emma: One day one of you will make it. Yeah, I have actually met, there was one Reframer that I met that came over to New Zealand and we went out for the afternoon. That was pretty cool.

Kevin: That is cool to

Emma: show them around.

Yeah. Auckland,

Kevin: it's on our list eventually. I don't know when that's gonna happen, but. Yeah, we shall see.

Emma: I'll just keep fertilizing it. It's okay.

Kevin: Uh

Emma: All right. What nugget have you, what's your nugget for the week? What's your I was today years old when I learned

Kevin: how to cross stitch. There you go.

Emma: So I love so much [01:08:00] that you're cross stitching. Yeah.

Kevin: You just threw that softball up there in, in the perfect way. You phrased that. Yeah.

That's my that's my nugget. That's my thing. I learned that. I actually, it works well with me. So interesting. So backstory on that is so my mom has always done crocheting, cross stitching all kinds of creative things like that.

And and I hosted the creatives meeting last week and we were talking about like creating a gratitude practice, but a creative gratitude practice. What could it be? And it could be any, it could be going out on a walk and taking pictures of things you're grateful for. It could be, writing down, writing things, writing stories, writing letters, writing just what you're grateful for.

Number of ways that we could create a tangible practice. As we mentioned before with it. And mine was I wanna finish an unfinished project, which was, because that was on one of the things on the list I shared. And that was, uh. 'cause my mom recently passed away [01:09:00] and she's made, I have gone around the house and, oh, actually here you go.

She's made a lot of very creative cross stitches as well as, and this one here is a small little one with the poop emoji on it that says, have a nice poop that she gave all of the kids for their bathrooms as a joke. One Christmas. I love it. But she's done like very, like she has one with a big sunflower on it that she made for my daughter that says beautiful, so B-E-Y-O-U and the O was this big sunflower and then the full at the end she's made stuff for my coffee area and all of that.

But she started and she is a Star Wars one here. But she started a Star Wars one and it was a big one. It's, I don't know what, I don't know the size of it, but I'm just, looking at the one and a half rectangle sections that she did was about like, five inches, let's say by [01:10:00] four, by five.

I don't know. Centimeters.

Emma: Paper size? Yeah, because I don't know inches very well either, but, so if it was, like, is it a, so a four, is it a two, A three, A one? Like how big? Is it the size of the whiteboard behind you? No. All up? No. Okay.

Kevin: Here's a, he's holding maybe not four.

Emma: That's like almost an a four size piece of paper for just one section there.

Kevin: Yeah. So one section. Yeah. There's 50 sections in this thing. Holy

Emma: shit.

Kevin: Yeah. And it's very detailed. It's a whole, it's it's a bunch of Star Wars characters all together in space, and it's a cool little image. But she started it and she joked that she did the math on it, that she, it would take her four years to finish wow.

At the pace she was doing it at. Yeah. You could do it quicker obviously, but, little she'd sit down and do it here and there at night, or so that's my gratitude type of practice that I'm, I [01:11:00] decided I wanted to work on. And that is. Finishing that cross stitch.

Emma: But learning how to do it first.

So you can't just charge into a massive, intense project like that. Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin: And that's where my llama comes in. 'cause I went to Michael's and I got a my, my llama kit that was a beginner kit and I've been doing that this week and I learned, so this is coming back. I learned that you like it.

I really like cross stitching because it works well with my mind because I'm doing it at night okay, like I'm done working and I'm gonna stop. I'm go downstairs, I'm gonna maybe, we throw something on TV and I would maybe just scroll on my phone or whatever before, now I'm sitting there and I'm just doing this and you have to.

Pay attention because you have to put the different colors in the right spots and all of that. But it's also that repetitive motion. I like putting Legos together. I like just following instructions and working with my hands that way. [01:12:00] And this is a much cheaper version of that. But it's definitely something that I'm like, Ooh, I could get yeah.

Involved with this. And I'm sitting there laughing at myself too. 'cause last Saturday I started doing the, this one and I'm sitting there and I'm on the end of the couch and er over there. And I just start laughing. They're like, what? I'm like, do I look as old as, I think I look right now with my, my glasses were sliding down to the end of my nose at one point.

And I'm just sitting there like with my tongue out, as I'm concentrating on something and I'm like, I just look ridiculous here. So it's just funny.

Emma: Cute. I can absolutely see how cross stitching would work with your brain. Yeah. Slightly analytical and process driven, but creative and Yeah. And doing something with your hands. Doing something tangible. 'cause you've got your ,fidgety fingers. Yeah. I love that.

Kevin: Yep. What about you?

Emma: This is probably the first week where I don't have a solid nugget to share. Normally it's me that's I've got a [01:13:00] nugget and I've got something that I've learned and you're like, oh, crap. What am I gonna say?

Kevin: No, I got nothing. I've learned nothing this week.

Emma: That's

Kevin: not a bad thing.

No.

Emma: I've been so busy this week where I've been. One foot in front of the other. And that's okay.

Kevin: You were a proud mama status yesterday with proud

Emma: Mama. Such Proud

Kevin: Mama. A dance.

Emma: Yeah, I was gonna say competition.

Kevin: Is it a competition?

Emma: It's competition, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Auckland West Dance Academy competition.

Yeah. So my baby who is now 10 competed in the under 12 category. So she was the youngest in her category. She got very highly commended. Didn't place, but it was her very first competition, very first time performing this dance that she's only learned for. She started learning it in end of January, so two months.

Still got very highly commended. She danced beautifully. I was crying. I was side stage making sure that she got on stage. Husband was in the audience with her dance teacher. Everyone was crying. It was beautiful. [01:14:00] Kevin didn't cry.

Kevin: I didn't, she sent it to me before this and I was watching it and she was like, we were on camera.

Like she was watching me. She's like, why aren't you crying right now? I'm like, I didn't realize I was supposed to. I'm like, this is cool. She's doing great. I'm pretty sure I don't have the same emotional connection as you. I was, I actually thought about, I was like, I immediately went back to, oh, I was so happy when Avery gave that up.

Just 'cause I remember those they weren't competitions either. They were recitals with the types she was doing. She did gymnastics too, though. That was also a good day when she gave that up and we switched over to soccer. Uhhuh.

Emma: I know. I'm a I of course I have a T-shirt that says Dance mom on it.

It's got my name on the front. Dance mom on the back. Dance school's logo because I'm that kind of dance mom. But yeah, no, that's, it's almost like my hobby is

Kevin: Yeah. And I didn't want to, I don't wanna offend anybody. I said it was a good day because she wasn't that into it. Your daughter seems very good, very into it.

Like [01:15:00] she loves it. Whereas versus Arie was like me it was okay. It wasn't that big deal. So I was like, okay, if it's not that big a deal, we shouldn't keep doing this because why

Emma: are we spending this much money on it?

Kevin: Yeah. It's

Emma: not cheap and it's a lot of effort and energy. But if it's a lot of time just sitting

Kevin: watching other kids too.

Emma: Yeah. I don't, which is fun. Maybe I'm a bad dance mom. I don't necessarily enjoy watching other kids dance. I like watching my kids

Kevin: dance. That's what I mean, I didn't want that. I didn't care about them.

Emma: My kids are amazing.

Kevin: Yeah.

Emma: Other kids. No, I shouldn't say it like that. No. Everybody's kids are

Kevin: amazing them.

I think you need a connection to it, right? Yeah, exactly.

Emma: You need a connection to the kids to be able to enjoy it. Yeah. Or to fully appreciate it, any who? Massive tangent. I don't necessarily have a nugget other than, or maybe my nugget is I do, my hobby is being a dance mom. My joy is doing dance mom.

Oh, that's, I was giving you, that's

Kevin: your nugget is you had that joy yesterday.

Emma: Big joy, big feelings. And completely [01:16:00] sober and able to feel and appreciate all those beautiful feelings.

Kevin: . Yep. Alright,

Emma: you gonna read the outro or am I, that's I did the intro.

Kevin: Do you want to read the outro? We'll switch totally up or you want me to the

Emma: outro? I can do it. I'll do it cold.

There's nothing in there that I need to change my name or anything? No. Okay. Thank you all for listening to another episode of the re frameable podcast, brought to you by the Reframe app. Reframe is the number one iOS and Android app to help you cut back or quit drinking alcohol. It uses neuroscience to reframe your relationship with alcohol and unlock the healthiest, happiest you.

If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe and share with those. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe and share with those that you feel may benefit from it. If you have a topic you'd like us to cover on the podcast, send an email to podcast at reframe app com and let us know.

I wanna thank you again for listening and be sure to come back again for another episode. Have a great day. [01:17:00] Bye friends.

Kevin: That wasn't as high as I, that wasn't as high as you get. And bye friends. Thank you. It didn't feel right, didn't feel natural. I tried

Emma: are you gonna leave it in?

Kevin: We're gonna leave it all in, even blah, blah, blah.

Yes, have a great day everyone, and we will see you back here soon.