Have you walked into a room and forgotten why? Do you ever feel overwhelmed by negative news, stressed, anxious or down in the dumps? Maybe it’s time to take on a mind cleanse. Host Amelia Phillips and Meditation teacher, writer and founder of The Broad Place Jacqui Lewis discuss the simple, yet powerful tools in a 14 day mind cleanse that will detangle our brain, reconnect us, centre us, and help us to feel a whole lot better.
Below is an unedited transcript of the podcast episode:
I dunno about you, but since having kids, I feel like my brain is fried constantly bouncing around from work to kids to logistics. It’s like alphabet soup in my head, combined with endless lists. I go from feeling like a hypervigilant super mom one minute, then to dropping all the balls, walking into a room, not remembering why I walked into that room, , it’s just sense.
Be crazy. I just crave that still centered feeling that I get on rare occasions, but to be honest, I just feel even too busy. Stop and search for them.
This is healthy. Her with Amelia Phillips. If like me, you feel like your brain is at full capacity. In fact, it’s overflowing. If you feel overwhelmed by negative news, stressed, anxious, or maybe down in the dump. Maybe it’s time to take on a mind cleanse. Just like after a holiday of eating too much and drinking too many cocktails, we like to take on a body cleanse.
Well, maybe a mind cleanse is just what our mind needs. Jackie Lewis is a highly respected, well known meditation teacher, writer. Educator, speaker and co-founder of the Broad Place, a platform for modern meditation and mental clarity. Ugh, I need some of that. She leads individual group and corporate workshops around Australia and globally, both online and in person.
She’s written multiple books and has just published her latest creation, The 14 Day Mind. Which immediately spoke to me because I love practical, actionable messages that have that rich deeper meaning behind them. So Jackie, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me on. So tell me, why did you see a need to develop a 14 day mind cleanse?
Essentially, it came from working with so many students for such a long time all around the world, and there’s just so many similar themes that keep popping up. It doesn’t seem to matter people’s social socialeconomic status or their relationship status or where they’re at with their work life, the need for clarity and that.
You know, getting back to that simplicity, I feel like everyone’s so overwhelmed and the pandemic really highlighted, I think for, um, most of the people that I’m in touch with, the need for better emotional and mental health. And so I wanted to create something that was digestible easy. I mean, I’m a mom. I work full time.
I don’t, you know, in particularly my line of work, you know, you can read these huge tons, these like enormous books, and then at the end, You know, some philosophy, but you don’t know how to implement in your life. So I want to take all of that and give it put into like a little package so it doesn’t matter how pushed you are, how little time you have, you can pick up this book.
You pretty much straight away start implementing tools. It’s not like you need to read eons and eons of information to even get a agist. You straight away start implementing things that are gonna help you feel better. So that for me was really, really important. I really like that because. I feel like especially a lot of the messages in this beautiful book of yours, you know, it, it, it’s not complicated to implement them.
Maybe the philosophy behind them is really rich and amazing and, you know, nuanced and complicated, but the actual steps and the things that we need to, to do and not that complicated. But when they’re given to us in an actionable way, that means we’re going to actually sit down and do. The benefits you receive are almost instantaneous and that’s why I’m really interested to delve in and kind of find out what is in this 14 day detox.
So can you give us a bit of a kind of an overview? Are we gonna be waking up and awing every day? Do we have to walk around barefoot? Have I got a hug, a tree ? I draw on a lot of really beautiful, ancient Eastern philosophies, but I really also try to strip a lot of the woo woo out of it. There are like facets of me that quite.
Certain things about the w we were seeing, but most of the time I just need practical, You know, I, I want really grounded, I went scientifically based, distilled knowledge. Um, so the book is really a reflection of that, and essentially it’s a, we call it a 14 day mind lens, but it’s seven days worth of tools.
And then you rinse and repeat them for another seven days. For two reasons, so that there’s a really great term called habit clustering, which is a neuroscience term, which was when we do one thing, wow, we make a commitment and we start to feel good. Then what happens is it’s easier to cluster things around that.
So I wanted to give people. Two weeks of really giving themselves a bit of a digital detox. And again, it’s not like you don’t use tech for two weeks, but understand. So I understand the push and pull between their healthy habits and the ones that really aren’t serving them. And I know this so intimately for myself.
You know, I call, our phones are like the little casinos, aren’t they? You know, they’re always goodness. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, it’s, it’s designed, the whole 14 days is designed to give you a lot of insight. What you’re doing, what works for you, what doesn’t work, and then giving you powerful practices to help you move away from the things that don’t necessarily serve you.
I feel like a lot of the time it’s not rocket science. We know what doesn’t work for us. There are some, always some surprises that I found when people do the 14 day mindfulness, but most of the time it’s like, This is really obvious, and I know I should be doing this, but we lack motivation, we lack inspiration, and we lack actually the path out.
So the book is designed to really just map it out so that we know how to get out ourselves outta that state. How would they feel differently at the end of the two weeks? What do you think some of the, sort of the key paradigm shifts in the way they feel would be? So the key ones for me have been from the feedback has been I feel so much more empowered and confident.
That for me is really, really important, particularly for women. Oh wow, that’s interesting. I thought you were gonna say relaxed or calm or whatever, but confidence why is. Why do you think that’s popped out as the big one? Yeah, that was a surprise. Feeling relaxed and and clearer and more grounded is sort of the secondary things that people say, but for me, the empowerment and the confidence is just brilliant because that is really the place from where when we really understand ourselves, we can actually start to make pivotal change and transformation.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t just happen in a light bulb moment, but we can have insight and we can have a realization and we can have an aha moment. But that usually is not enough to create transformation. not true transformation. And so I think by, you know, when people are like, every day they absorb a little bit more philosophy and knowledge, they implement the tool and it we layer, so it’s like building blocks and we layer a new one in every day.
And then by the end they’re like, Oh, I didn’t realize. This is simple and I can do it. And I just needed someone to hold my hand through the process. And then there’s this really brilliant feeling of going from, you know, overwhelmed feeling, incapable feeling, Um, I mean, frazzled. Yeah, frazzled. And just like, you know, like, you know, the system’s totally fritzed and that horrible sense that particularly I think, You know, as moms when the kids are little, I mean, my daughter’s nearly 16, so we’re in the hell realms of teenage years now.
Tell it to us lightly. Why don’t you, ? Yeah. It makes me regret complaining so much when she was like two and three . You know that state where you just feel like you’re never gonna get on top of it. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, It doesn’t feel like it’s good enough. You have this sinking. Oh, maybe that was just my experience.
Oh no, we’re, we’re all nodding in agreement with you here, Jackie. That sinking sense as a mom that you’re not doing it right and it’s never gonna be enough. And that neurologically creates a lot of extra adrenaline cortisol. So the 14 day my clean is really about regulating those hormones, introducing more happy hormones, making us like the meditators, a meditation practice that you do every day.
And it for, particularly on the meditation, the feedback’s been brilliant. A lot of people go, Oh, I’m trying to meditate. I can’t really do it. And I know that feeling intimately. Mm-hmm. , me too. I’m gonna get to meditation in a minute. I’m gonna be your number one hardest, um, hardest client ever, but will come to that.
Sorry, . Yeah, yeah. No, no. Absolutely. It’s one of my favorite topics, but you know, I think that a lot of the time we have this guilt and shame around the things that we should inverted coms be doing. But we haven’t been trained on how to do them properly, right? So everyone’s running around going, I should meditate, I should do this, I should do that.
But without the actual education on how to do it, there’s no wonder why we’re not doing it. It falls a bit flat. You, you don’t feel like, Well, to your point about confidence, you don’t feel like you’re doing it properly. It doesn’t really seem to be having that profound effect that you were hoping it would.
And so for the 14 days, the busy Mommy me says, How much time each day do I need to carve aside to be mindful and cleanse my mind? , is it something that we’re gonna, I. Out the day, or do I really need to sort of be carving out a few hours a day to focus on. Oh God. Hell no. Not a few hours. I mean, , but she’s like, I’m a busy mom.
What do you think? I agree completely. So there’s a 10 minute meditation set every day, and then there’s other little tools I can do. 10 minutes. Yeah, 10 minutes is achievable and you don’t need quiet. So you don’t need your kids to be, you know, silent. I mean, with mantra based meditation, there can be noise around.
So, I mean, I used to watch my daughter, again, that’s indicative of her age, but I used to watch Dora the Explorer. So I would put an episode of Dora on and that would be 18 minutes, and I would meditate for that. You know, that episode length, that was just enough to keep her still. And so it’s that fine balance between trying to reduce screen time from your kids and also trying to like have a pocket where you’re not gonna go insane in the day.
So I think there’s a juggle between honoring those two things, but in order to fit it in, a lot of the tools are integrated into daily life. Ah. All right. Well, you, Are you okay so far? My ears are pricked up and it’s sounding achievable, but let’s hit the hard one, Jackie. Okay. I have no problem with setting the alarm for 5:00 AM and getting up and training.
I’m fine with that. . Trying to meditate. I’ve probably had about five kind of failed attempts in my life, and I’m hoping some of my listeners might be relating to this or maybe you’re all just wonderful meditators and I’m the only failed one. But I like, and whenever I have people that are not motivated to exercise, I always have to paradigm shifted in my head to meditation.
I know how amazingly good it is for me, but you’re speaking to a false start meditator here. How can you help someone like me? What am I doing wrong and why is it not sticking for me ? So I would say two things. So first of all, you and I have like the flip side. I find the meditation. Now, I didn’t at first really mo I’m really motivated to do it.
Not always, but, but exercise for me. I’m like, oh, you know, I’m constantly trying to get out of it, even though when I do it, I know it makes me feel so good. So with that mindset there, with anything, when we first start, it’s very hard to see the results right away. To be like, you know, you’re at the gym and you’re checking out your thighs and you’re thinking where are the results?
And you’re mid session. So, you know, we need a little bit of a runway to be able to actually start to see the results. So on that with meditation, uh, one of the key mistakes people make is looking for the. In the meditation, right? So they’re sitting to meditate and they look for the results. In that, it would be like being at the gym.
I mean, if I go to the gym 45 minutes, say, I’m usually not enjoying that time, but I feel brilliant afterwards, right? I sleep better. I find I’m more motivated to eat healthier. I have more energy. But that doesn’t happen in the session, right? And so meditation’s really similar, so a lot of people are sitting there.
What’s going on? You know, I don’t feel good. I should feel, you know, all then and beautiful. I don’t feel anything like that. And so they think meditation’s not working for me. But a really great practice is where you see the output in your life. That’s where you should see the benefits of meditation. It’s not necessarily sitting.
And is it true to say that the type of meditation. That you choose to do needs to be matched to your personality type. Because I thought I was in like Flint at the start of the year. I used one of those apps and it was started at three minutes and I got all the way up to 18 minutes and then it switched to like the next stage and suddenly it was a silent meditation.
It wasn’t the voice guiding you through and there was no music. And that was when, uh, I’m tapping out, man. I’m not gonna sit in silence. That just sounds so boring. . Is there different types of meditation that, and we should be looking for something to match our personality? I definitely think so. I think personality and also lifestyle needs to be taken into account.
It’s something that I just desperately wish someone had asked me. I spent 10 years. Trying all like lineages, every technique under the sun, and nothing was really sticking. I had that experience you had. It’s like, Oh, this is kind of good. And then I was like, Oh. And then I’d wave, and then I’d falter, and then I’d try something new.
And so the most important thing I think people should know is that primarily a lot of meditation, if not most of the meditation that we now see in modern life actually came from monastic based practices. From a what based practice? Monastic. So what that meant, You just weren’t living in the kinds of life.
You know, people would go, I’m gonna not have a family and I’m not gonna have a career and, you know, dedicate my whole life to meditation and spirituality and, you know, they lived in ashrams and monasteries and the forests and so forth, and they, they’re the few, you know. And so when you look at that, you know, sit still and, you know, empty your mind of thoughts and find silence and peace.
That’s very hard to do if you are juggling kids and work and dropping, you know, kindy drop offs and school pickups and lunches and, and invoices and bath statements and, you know, we don’t have that structure to then be able to just sit and drop into a meditation that’s gonna be deep. I also on, for those, um, that have tried a lot of guided meditations, I think they’re brilliant.
Better as experiences. I don’t think that as a daily practice sitting and actually filling ourselves up even more with more voices and more information is also the answer. That’s really interesting. So what is the answer for me? What sort of meditation do you think I should try? I would definitely be going with mantra based because mantra based essentially was always meant to be integrated into.
Right. So it was meant is for people, practitioners, and students that had a lot going on and their minds already quite busy and their bodies are activated. And the mantra is like this beautiful little anchor that you can work with in particular ways to help the mind settle down and allow the body to release stress, tension, and fatigue, a word, a sentence, a sound.
Yeah, I mean traditionally, so there’s, when we say mantra, it gets confusing cause there’s so many different types. You know, there’s intention led in mantras and be mantras and so on. There’s, I teach a really simple practice called, uh, the Mind Cleanse Meditation in the book, which is, uh, there’s a really simple mantra there.
We also do a program called called Mind Fit, which is an online program where you receive two mantras on how to meditate, and then I teach integrated, which is one on one or in a small group, which is essentially a form of TM ORIC meditation. TM is transcendental meditation. That’s a quite kind of cool one that all the celebs do.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s, um, it’s a really well known, it’s been around for a really long time. So I teach, I teach from that lineage as well, but it’s a, you know, it’s 20 minutes, twice a day. So I’m always seeing people, you know, if you can start with 10 minutes with a mantra, um, that’s why we sort of have the stages for people.
They can get, you know, with the book, they start with 10 minutes, single mantra. They get a feel for it. And you, the response is always, people are like, Oh, now I think I know what’s going on. I, and now I, I couldn’t sit before I was agitated, I was frustrated. I was, you know, essentially it was making me more stressed, if I wasn’t meditating.
So the mantra, I’m like, This is gonna help enormously. And someone said to me the other day, it’s like the bomb for my soul. You know? I’m like, Oh, I’ve got something to work with when I’m meditating. I do feel. It’s something that we should persevere with doing, especially given the symptoms that we have that I was mentioning at the start of the chat about brain frazzled and all of that.
So I’m a believer in it philosophically. So it’s great to be able to get some tips to apply it practically, and it’s something that I do feel. Would make such a big impact. And that’s why I think, you know, those of us that are false starters need to persevere.
I wanna talk about some of the other tools. I don’t wanna give too much away because I do think it is such a great program and it really does need to be all kind of packaged. But talk me through the other big factor when we think about cleansing, our mind is obviously screens and you talk about the power down hour.
So what is it and how will it cleanse our mind? So Matthew Walker is a sleep scientist, and when I first heard this start, I was so astounded because I really do try to take really good care of my mental health. You know, particularly in the line of work I do, and I’ve got a lot of tools and practices and so forth.
Yet late at night, I would sit on my phone, right? Right before I went to bed, and it was sort of like a check my calendar. Like WhatsApp and dms and this, that and the other. I had no idea that that is actually then depleting the quality of sleep by 30% and sleep for me, I mean as parents is so important.
So absolutely in that hour before bed, if you can power down and. So it’s actually quite challenging to do, and some people once, once you start doing it, you think, Oh, I couldn’t ever go back. But that’s why I’m like, if you do it for two weeks, you’ll get a really good read on where you are at with this.
But that one hour before bed, no screens. So that’s no iPads, no laptops, no television, no phone. What it becomes is a lot of people fun. Interestingly, particularly moms, it becomes this sacred hour where they’re really just honor themselves. So that’s when they bathe or have a, you know, self care routine.
Do the scrubbing and the dry skin brushing and exactly the thing for they. Everyone’s say, I don’t have time for that, you know? Then they were actually, they’re not on their screen. They have time. So making a beautiful pot of herblet tea, reading a book, conversing with a partner, and the shock, the feedback is, I had no idea.
From the moment I wake until the moment I go to sleep, generally there’s some screen in front of my face. Yeah. It’s so true. Do you think as a stepping stone, For those that are just sitting here shaking their head thinking, I, there’s no way I could do that as a stepping stone. I mean, there’s two stepping stones.
You could either do half an hour or all screens off, except if you’ve got like a television that you’re watching some slow crime show or something like that, that’s a little bit slow and it’s not so close to your face, are you saying no, you just gotta ditch it? Or would you see that as it would be okay to do a stepping stone?
I think that everything that points in the right direction is helpful. So that weaning off can be really, really helpful. But the science would disagree with me. . The science. Yeah, the sciences, that any of that blue light, those screens that our eyes, uh, like are available to our eyes under any kind of context is, is going to set us our neural pathways off in a particular way.
Don’t you love. Say relaxing and winding down to like a crying. I know. I noticed that. I So just, you know, like something like the Ozarks, you know? Yeah. You know, Stranger things walking dead just to relax. My parasympathetic nervous system. Sure. . All right. I’m hearing you loud and clear, honey. And you also talk about reducing mashing.
What’s that? Now? This is my favorite term, . I do like it. Yeah. Mashing was a term that I, I came up with when my daughter was little, and essentially it was because I felt so time poor and I was so divided, like, you know, if I was at work, I felt like I needed to be with her. And when I was with her, I felt like I should be at work and.
I was never really landing in the moment. So what I was doing was, you know, what’s heavily lauded is multitasking that I call matching, which is basically when tasks that shouldn’t go together go together. So for example, when you, you know, when you’re like bathing, you’re bathing your kids and they’re being uber cute and they’re in the bath and playing with their duckies and blah, blah, and you are just like, Just gonna slide my mobile phone outta my pocket and quickly text and emails.
You’ve been spying on me, Jackie, haven’t you? Those little cameras. Um, but you know that now you’re not really concentrating on your emails, nor are you really being with your children. Oh, it’s the worst feeling. Yeah. And they know it, and you know it, and then you end up sending some really bad email. You know, and then now the person on the receiving end knows it.
And so basically mashing is being the first step is just being really aware of when we’re doing it and then asking ourselves the question, Is this what I wanna be doing? Cause I would get to the end of the day and just felt like I didn’t really get anything done. I felt overwhelmed and I felt really, I felt underappreciated and I also felt under, like, I wasn’t even valuing myself in the process of the day.
So this was basically, I map how, just choose a few things. Just do them with total presents. Once you get a taste for how good it feels to do one thing well, things start to shift and change. It’s very hard when you’re in the state of, you know, like overwhelmed to know how good it can feel to just know that you’ve done a task with all of your presence.
And the other thing is, And this is not a scare tactic, but maybe it’s . What we have is we have mirror neurons in our brain, and the mirror neurons are the monkey, sea monkey do. It’s how we teach a kid eat, right? We’ve got house spoon and we’re going open wide. We’re opening your mouth while we do it. So they copy us.
Right now, kids, their mirror neurons are incredibly strong in the developing brain. So if they see. Constantly fractured and trying to do multiple things at the same time and feeling overwhelmed. The mirror and neurons kick in and they monkey see, Monkey do. They will try to, They mirror that. Exactly. So it’s important that we can, not just for ourselves, but for that legacy of parenting.
Set a couple of solid examples and understand. Why we do it, you know, when we do it and then sh start to shift that. And I’m not, By no means am I saying you’ll never mash again, but it’s just knowing the feeling of how good it feels to do something well is just like I do blame screens for a lot of our mashing because it is so easy now to have work constantly in our pocket.
And my husband took his email off his phone and that made a big difference, I think, for all of us to have a think about. Well, how can we do that? I know I’ll sometimes pop my phone in the other room. I’ve been trying to do that 4:00 PM till bedtime, no phone. I mean, at the end of the day, who really needs to contact me during that time?
Everyone I love is in the house with me and anything else can wait till tomorrow or after 8:00 PM So I think it’s saying, Well, what will work for me is it. Certainly turning off all notifications. That makes a massive difference. Is it putting your phone on do not disturb? Is it turning off the wifi so that you can only receive texts and phone calls?
There are so many little things we can do, but we just have to be proactive about it to just get those screens out of reach. And what about the morning ritual? You’re a big fan of the morning ritual. What ingredients do you believe makes up a beneficial morning ritual? So for me, a morning ritual that I’ve found, and I work with a lot of really high pressured CEOs as well, that are like under incredible time constraints in regards to global time zones and so forth.
And I found that the morning even it just, you do not have to be a morning person. But a really solid morning sequence that sets you up for stability and lateral creative thinking throughout the rest of the day is invaluable. And something that’s portable so that no matter what’s going on, you can take it with you in like a little concertina.
So for example, my non-negotiables, uh, always, um, a cup of tea. So whether that’s Oh, me too on. Yeah. If I have, like, if I’ve only got a little pocket of time, I’m having like a strong English breakfast tea with milk. If I’ve got a longer period of time, I’ve got the luxury of having a teenager That’s self sufficient now.
So I’ll. Like a beautiful zen tea ceremony. Um, but there’s always something hot to drink. I always meditate and again, the time is dependent on how big the concertina is. I’ll try to connect with nature in some particular way, and I read something inspiring. So if it’s like a weekend, you know, I might go for a walk on the beach or reading maybe one of my fair, like a really big beautiful bulk.
You know, if it’s a weekday and I’m being really pushed, you know, that’s a much tighter sequence. And the reading something inspiring might just be a verse from doubting or a verse, uh, you know, a piece from Marcus Surrealist meditations. I’ve got a kind of a couple books that I sort of go Yeah. Just kind of glance at really quickly.
Yeah. But I make sure that that lock together, there’s couple of things always being met. It’s just the most perfect start of the day, no matter where I am. Oh, I love that. And I really love that connecting with nature. And no matter where we. We can find some way of doing that. Even if you are sitting at a bus stop and you have to look up at the sky and you can see the moon as it’s slowly, you know, disappearing and the sun’s coming out, but it’s just going, Hold on.
What’s my nature moment? What’s my reading? Or my positive affirmation moment? I really love that idea of that morning ritual, cuz I do feel like it sets us up for the day. And kids love it too. I mean, when I first started doing this, when my daughter was tiny, like I sort of tried to exclude her from the process
I was like, This is just for me. And then I realized that actually. They love the sacredness. Oh, so value are they too? Yeah. Particularly when they’re little. Like I was really, you see them magic. They really love it. Like, you know, lighting a candle. Lighting the incense, quiet time. It felt mystical and beautiful.
You know, I was like really shocked at how much she, and like all the kids of our students are actually even more into it than the parents. They really revere it. So, Oh, that’s so sweet. What I also love in your book as a nutritionist, I was drawn particularly to the Mind nutrition chapter and I love this idea cuz even when you’re talking about the mind cleanse and some of the things that come in, it literally is like junk food for the brain.
Some of the stuff that we see every day, the content we consume. Can you talk us through why you think my nutrition is so I. I think my nutrition is so important because the state of our mind is also really governing the health of our body, and we spend a lot of time taking care of the body, you know, cleansing, eating the right things, taking the supplements and so forth.
But then the state of our mind, if we look at it through the food analogy, we’re binging, we’re snacking, we’re. Eating like junk food, sugary things, and a lot of it’s not healthy in a ver commerce for our mental health. We’re overindulging in social a little bit, you know, like with, with your diet, like yeah, sure everything’s permissible and probably good for you in little doses.
Yeah, in moderation. Yeah. But there’s that, you know, we don’t wanna be too strict in auster either. But also it’s like, what’s that balance for us at this moment in life? And particularly in the information age. It’s wild. Like we apparently know more than ever. The wisdom is not there. Yes. I really like the way you put that because I see this all the time.
I don’t need to tell you how to exercise and how to eat well. We know that. But you’re right. The wisdom behind it isn’t there. Yeah. That intuition, I think is being suffocated through like this Excess noise. Yeah, excess of noise. Hang on, give me one sec, because I’ve found this beautiful quote that actually Ann Mo Lindberg, you know, who had many, many kids, She wrote this, If I give me one second.
She wrote this the other, She wrote this in 1955 and I was like, Uh huh. Now instead of planting our solitude with our own dream blossoms, we choke this space with continuous music chatter and companionship to which we do not even listen. It’s simply there to fill the vacuum, and when the noise stops, there is no in the music to take its place.
We must relearn to be alone. And I thought it was so, this idea of like how inner music, like our inner wisdom and inner intuition and our heart centering, we are literal. The ca under the din of like looking at what everyone else is doing and doing scrolling and so forth. So my nutrition is basically taking stock.
So it’s having a look at, right, what’s my information diet look like? What, over the period of a couple of days, you know, can I do, can I, what can I pause and what can I invite in more of? So for example, I used to do this thing where I was, I loved, I’ve been doing yoga for 20 odd years and I was like, Oh, I’m gonna follow yogis on Instagram.
That’ll inspire me to meditate. But it was not right , it was making me feel really uncoordinated. You know, there’s always like someone upside down with like, you know, a sunrise coming through their crotch or something. Yes. So elegant . Yeah. That’s not what it’ll look like when I do yoga. And I really just went, Okay, I’ve gotta pause.
Following and watching things that don’t. It might on paper technically be there for inspiration, but it’s not making me feel good. It’s making me feel insecure. It’s making me feel unmotivated. So it’s getting really clear on the ideas about that. What’s filling your cup? What’s emptying your cup? Yeah, like what’s really working?
Unfollow, delete, get, get off that platform, whatever it might be. And you know, you talk about this concept of joy ride, which I think is a really great way to increase your healthy mind nutrition, where happiness shouldn’t be this far off goal. When I get enough money, I can go on that amazing holiday or that dinner with my girlfriends.
That’s never gonna eventuate what you talk about it. It should be a daily reality. And to almost make a list. Happiness inducing activities that occupy a special place in your soul. That’s part of what makes you who you are. And I love some of the lists that you said and it resonated with me. You’ve mentioned already drinking a hot cup of tea, eating toast with an obscene amount of salted butter.
I have to agree with you even as a nutritionist, Ah, that takes me for a joy. Ride sleeping when it rains. Reading cookbooks, cooking with beautiful produce, the list goes. What are some more of your joy, ride those snackable happiness moments that you like to take in the day? So the, the key thing to understand about the joy ride that I really notice when I, particularly when I teach in workplaces, is they little seemingly innocuous things that very quickly get pushed off the list.
We feel like we don’t have enough time. So I notice this unbelievable correlation between I feel overwhelmed and stressed and I’m not doing the things that serve me, and I’m waiting for someone else. Like I’m gonna delay gratification and joy. So when your listeners are thinking about what their joy rides are, they’re the little things that usually will be.
Precious to you. So for example, for me, our little rescue dog, our last one just recently passed away. But you know, it was like she was such a snuggly little old lady and taking the time, you could go and give her a little pat or you could really give her a proper cuddle . And you know, when you’re like, I’ve got an email and la you know, you sort of like, hi and then put them down.
Whereas it’s like really luxuriating, I call it like juicing the orange of life. Like not rush. The conversation not rushing the, the coffee, you know, so one that’s really, really common is most people will say, Oh, I love in the mornings if I take the time to make a coffee or tea from scratch, you know, not just, and then I sit on my deck or my chair or whatever, and then I just drink the tea or drink coffee and then I go, Great.
Do, do that every day. Like, No, I don’t have time for that. I like grab a latte. The coffee shop. They realize, Hang in a second actually. I’m just lining up in the co. I’ve got a park, I’m lining up in the coffee shop. I’m looking at my phone the whole time I’m drinking in the car. I wasn’t even where I drank it.
So it’s really a reframe and a reclamation of the things that make us feel good. Oh, I love that. And I think to sit down, even just to sit down, for me to write my joy ride list out. Would be a great exercise in making me feel good because it would make me go, Oh my goodness, I have so many opportunities in the day to really feel that sparkle of joy.
So that’s something I’m actually super keen to do after chatting to you today, wanting to get your thoughts on it, and I will go and start that joy ride. Listen, I’d love everyone else to have a go at that. Finally, Jackie, for a mum listening whose brain feels like scrambled eggs, she can’t concent. She flicks from enraged.
One moment to weepy the neck, walks into a room, forgets why she walked into the room. This is me I’m describing, by the way, what’s something she can do right away to help cleanse the mind? Can I break this into parte and puppy ? Sure. I love it. Sure. Chunk it down for me. Girlfriend . So part A for me, the first most primary thing is compassion for.
Because as moms in the modern world, there is this insane expectation that we’re supposed to be way more on top of it than we are. And if you’re not doing it this way and that way, there’s compo, like there’s contradictory science and experts and everyone like it’s such an overwhelming space right now to parent.
And so, I think that actually compassion is the most key thing that we need to all, as parents start doing immediately. My methodology when I teach compassion is if you wouldn’t say it to your four year old, do not say it to yourself. Right? You wouldn’t. Oh, yes. As mothers, our self language is generally really harsh and horrible and it’s like things like, I can’t, You got, you’re an idiot.
You know? Why did you say that or do that? Or, I’m not onto this, or, Yeah, but you never say that to your. You know, And so if you don’t gonna say it to a four year old, do not say it internally to yourself that that for me is the first step of compassion. And without that compassion, you can honestly do all the things and tick all the boxes and still be cranky, right?
And still, you might manage to get through it all, but you’ll still have the best self care routine. But if you don’t have compassion, then it’s not coming from the right. So I would ask everyone that’s listening right now, just to pause as soon as we’re finished and just have a moment to really respect and honor how challenging it is to be a parent in today’s age, and to really just think of three things that you’re doing well, right?
It doesn’t have to be everything, but just three things that you’re doing well, and look at yourself through the lens of your children. That’s not redundant. If you have teenagers. Do not do that. , they’re just little kids. Oh, I love that. Yeah. So when they’re little, you know, like they think you’re amazing.
Like, oh God, they think you sing really well and you dance well and you’re funny and you’re all these things. They adore you. Yeah, they do do. And then yet we look at ourselves as a parent with a such a different harshness. So yeah. You got yourself a break doing well, mama. You’re doing well. Okay. What’s your part?
PPE is absolutely learn to meditate properly and apply yourself every day. And you’ll see, Not gonna let me get away, are you? You’re not gonna let me get away with it. I mean, if I hadn’t seen it thousands and thousands and thousands of times of women that I’ve taught to meditate that go, I can’t meditate, and I’m like, I feel you just wait.
And then you learn properly and then you know how to do it and you have support. It is life changing. Mums out there that are listening that are with me on this meditation, false start, please DM me and let me know that I’m not alone and we can do it together. And Jackie, I do feel like you are the woman that is gonna get us through this
I’m so determined to become a meditator, but I just keep falling on my. Look such amazing tips today. I really love this 14 day mind c cleanse. Your book is fantastic and it’s just so easy to follow and snackable. So thank you so, so much. And everyone make sure you follow Jackie at the broad place on Instagram.
Is that right? Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. I’ll put that in the show notes as well. Thank you so much. Thank you Nelia.
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