A great day starts with a good grounding and centering activities. So many people talk about a morning routine as the best way to get started … because it’s true.
In this #fireandearthpodcast episode we talk about some ways to ground and center yourself each morning so you start your day off on the right foot 🙂
Listen in at: http://www.jasonmefford.com/fireandearthpodcast/ or wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts.
The Fire and Earth Podcast gives you practical advice and keys to unlocking your potential in life and business, hosted by Dr. Kathy Gruver and Jason Mefford. Real, raw and unscripted.
#morningroutine #grounding #centering
Transcript
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Kathy Gruver: Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the fire and earth Podcast. I am your co host Kathy groomer
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Jason Mefford: And I am Jason Medford, hey, today we thought we would talk about being getting grounded and centered
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Jason Mefford: being grounded and centered
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Kathy Gruver: I’m going to be contrary what’s that mean Jason
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Jason Mefford: What’s that mean are we talking about electricity like grounding yourself electricity wise, actually, in a way, we kind of are
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Jason Mefford: Oh so grounding grounding and centering right because I know a lot of times we get pushed and pulled different places.
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Jason Mefford: And a lot of times, you know, again, when you get up in the morning, you know, if you’re one of those people that grabs your phone. The first thing sometimes, all of a sudden you
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Jason Mefford: Not that you would do that right end up getting pulled down and going different places right without even even realizing it. So I wanted to talk a little bit about being getting grounded and centered
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Jason Mefford: Because it’s a great way to start your day. In fact, I was just listening.
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Jason Mefford: I think Jim Rome and said, you know, never start your day without writing it down, kind of a thing, something, something along that that lines of
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Jason Mefford: You know, don’t start your day before you actually write down or kind of plan out what you want.
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Jason Mefford: And the other person kind of took that and said, You know, I say, don’t, don’t start your day until you’ve actually you know done it in your mind.
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Jason Mefford: And so, you know, the idea is you know if you want your day to go a certain way get grounded and centered at the beginning of the day on and clear.
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Jason Mefford: On what you want to happen. And because I know the days I’ve done a better job of that. It’s almost like some of the days just go like clockwork. Yep. I mean, it’s like. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Done.
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Jason Mefford: Everything is off my list, you know, and it’s like, how did I get 10 hours where the work done in four hours. I don’t know. But I did you know
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Kathy Gruver: I agree with you. I think that’s great. And I used to just sort of jump out of bed and
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Kathy Gruver: Not really have a clear path as to what I was doing. And so what I’ve started doing and I’m most people have grabbed my phone in the morning, first thing
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Kathy Gruver: And I’ll tell you why. Because I go through my emails.
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Kathy Gruver: On my phone to see if there’s anything that absolutely needs my attention right now I go through and delete everything. I don’t need
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Kathy Gruver: And it just sort of sets up my day of oh ok that speaking thing came in. Okay, I have to schedule that why need to get there for that. So it helps inform my day. I don’t let it run my day. That helps them for my day.
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Kathy Gruver: And that way I know if I have to jump right on the computer, or if I have time to do other things. So I literally lay in bed. I do some stretching. I do a body scan. I see how I’m feeling. What do I call he’s called the chiropractor.
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Kathy Gruver: Is it going to be an Advil day, you know. Do I have enough water, that sort of thing. And then I go through my head of. Okay, so I’m going to do the dishes.
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Kathy Gruver: Then I’m going to do some speaking proposals that I’m going to return those emails. Then I’m going to and not that that can’t be deviated on
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Kathy Gruver: Because I have several animals that seem to need my attention. Whenever they seem to need it, like the scrub. Jay, that’s still sits on my hand and take food for me. I will stop whatever I’m doing to go feed the bird because it’s got me well trained
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Kathy Gruver: If you don’t have that in your mind is that that pattern that you want to do, then you just become sort of scattered and I’ve noticed the days that I don’t
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Kathy Gruver: plan it out in my head. First is sort of wander around my house going I could do that and then nothing kind of gets done. There’s no direction to it and also taking that
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Kathy Gruver: Before you leave the house. I mean, a lot of people, you’re going to get on the freeway, you’re going to be driving, you’re going to be heading out into the world that is sometimes scary and unsafe.
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Kathy Gruver: So you want to kind of be the best you you can be as you walk out that door. So take that moment that breath that pause get grounded before you launch out of your house into your day. I just, it’s more productive and safer. Actually, if you’re present in that moment.
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Jason Mefford: Well, that’s why I’m there’s there’s different kinds of tools that you can use, right, like one at one of my friends. He has what he calls a daily output booster.
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Jason Mefford: Which is is really, you know, you kind of write down the five things that are most important for you to accomplish. You know either. First thing in the morning or from the night before.
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Jason Mefford: you prioritize them, you kind of figure out about how long each one of them is going to take
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Jason Mefford: And then you know when when that happens like what you just mentioned, right, this, this always happens where all of a sudden
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Jason Mefford: Something interrupts us, we’re doing something we’ve switched ego states and we’re just kind of wandering around the house. Like what am I supposed to do next. Well, pick up your list.
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Jason Mefford: And look, oh that’s right I was working on this, and you can go right back to that particular thing.
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Jason Mefford: It ends up increasing your productivity, you know, by doing something like that so that same kind of exercise that you you know are doing in the morning. Oh, I’ve got to
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Jason Mefford: do the dishes and I’m going to send out some speaking proposals and I’m going to do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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Jason Mefford: Because you plan that out if you actually write it down. Anytime you start to get distracted during the day, you can go back to something like that and it’ll help pull you back into where you need to be
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Kathy Gruver: Yeah. And then if you find yourself with spare time. It’s like a client is quicker than I thought they would be or a phone calls quicker than I thought it would be. And you have
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Kathy Gruver: My god, now have 20 minutes you can have a choice of what you can do to you refer back to your list and go hey, there’s this thing that I could finish in 10
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Kathy Gruver: Or do I want to take that time for myself, do I want to go for a walk. Do I want to breathe. Do I want to meditate, do I want to lay down to I want, you know, it gives you options of things to do.
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Kathy Gruver: And as we’ve mentioned before, we do need to take time for ourselves. It’s not all about a to do list says the very type a triple Cameron.
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Kathy Gruver: Loves her to do list. But there are times that we have to just put the list aside and
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Kathy Gruver: Be present, which is that grounding and centering before we launch into the next thing, nothing I wouldn’t encourage all of us, and I’m working on this. This is one of my things is allowing that list to be flexible.
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Kathy Gruver: And being okay with something blocking off Tuesday and having to be done. Wednesday.
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Kathy Gruver: And we were talking off the air. I been doing tons of speaking proposals and they take anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes
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Kathy Gruver: Depending on how elaborate, the proposal is so I might sit down and think I can tear out five proposals and an hour.
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Kathy Gruver: Only to discover that one of them is so complicated. And so complex and I’ve got to pull in all this other stuff and I’m going to rewrite a bunch of things. Maybe I only get to done in that hour
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Kathy Gruver: Not a failure. It just, it just took longer than I thought it would, you know, so we have to be flexible with ourselves in that list of accomplishments also because things are going to pop up or something more important will have to take our attention, you know. So I think as
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Kathy Gruver: As we become more grounded. We’re more okay with that flexibility in that flow.
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Jason Mefford: Well, and I think, like you said, you know, if you if you’d plan to do five but you only did two, you know, again, this is an opportunity for us to kind of have that that compassion for ourselves of saying, you know, I can look at this and beat myself up for not getting the other three done
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Jason Mefford: Or I can be grateful and happy with myself that I got two of them done.
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Jason Mefford: And, you know, doing the ladder is going to help you. And can I keep you grounded and centered instead of, you know, causing you to go down one of these rabbit hole spirals to where all of a sudden you’re like, oh, I’m such a failure. Oh, I know you know kind of thing.
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Jason Mefford: You know, and another thing with this to you know with with these words grounding and centered
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Jason Mefford: That I’ve kind of, you know, looked at a little bit more, the last week or two, and some of the stuff that I’ve been doing is also thinking about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Are you familiar with that right
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Jason Mefford: Absolutely. So, you know, there’s some basic survival needs at the bottom of that pyramid. And if those are not being mad.
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Jason Mefford: Then you cannot move up the line. I think he called the highest level self actualization, if I remember right, and so, you know, again, we have to kind of be grounded and centered and feel safe in certain ways for us to be able to do some of this other stuff.
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Jason Mefford: And so again, you know, taking some time in the
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Jason Mefford: Morning. That’s why, you know, again, we talked about meditation and some of these other things that are, you know, probably should become a part of your morning routine.
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Jason Mefford: It helps you to get in that good mind space feel centered feel grounded in feel like you don’t have to worry about those basic needs.
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Jason Mefford: Because when you’re focusing on those basic needs, that’s where those feelings of lack come in. And so again, if you’re trying to take an abundant you know mindset.
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Jason Mefford: If you’re constantly worried about some of those basic needs, you’re going to be in LAC most of the day. Instead of feeling abundant. So if we can do a few things in the morning to kind of settle ground ourselves and say, You know what, I’m alive and any day above ground.
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Jason Mefford: Is a good day. Right, so
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Jason Mefford: First off, I’m alive. I’m grateful for that. I’m, you know, if you go through and start doing a few of those things. It’s like, Hmm, I got a pretty good life.
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Jason Mefford: The rest of your day is going to be much easier wake up and go, oh, this is hurting. Oh, this sucks. Oh, you know, kind of thing your day is just going to go a totally different way.
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Kathy Gruver: Yeah absolutely will set you up for success. And one of the things that I also did the other day is I put systems in place.
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Kathy Gruver: I cleared off my desk. I got a little Stacie thing because I’m a pile maker and rather than trying to have piles out I have now piles up
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Kathy Gruver: And it’s very clearly marked and I know what they are. And I got a new calendar that I’m writing down stuff and who’s funny, I was actually I was listening to you, but I was looking for a text exchange. I had yesterday.
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Kathy Gruver: I had said something to my boyfriend about man. I didn’t get nearly as much done as I thought I would. Because done a little bit of that.
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Kathy Gruver: And he said something and I wanted to read it. Exactly. Because it was so brilliant something to the effect of, in thinking about your to do list.
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Kathy Gruver: Don’t forget to give yourself credit for your I did, you’re done. Last, you’re done. Listen, you’ve done last. And I was like, yeah.
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Kathy Gruver: You know, it’s like, because I was talking about having to get so much stuff done. He’s like, but you already got so much done.
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Kathy Gruver: So rather than beating yourself, like you said, beating yourself up for Google News, don’t, don’t give yourself credit for those things you did do.
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Kathy Gruver: Now if you screwed off all day. It’s a whole nother thing we do have to take time to screw off. I spent five minutes watching. Whose Line Is It Anyway yesterday accomplishments novel, which I laughed my ass off for five minutes and then which
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Kathy Gruver: Okay, I’m back. And I went and did that. Next thing every once awhile you know
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Jason Mefford: Well, and see that’s. But see, that’s, that’s actually a kind of thing that we can do to help us in this grounding and centering as well.
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Jason Mefford: Right. Is there was you had a need for, you know, kind of changing your emotional state spending five minutes to watch and just laugh, your ass off.
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Jason Mefford: Is going to make you much more productive for the rest of the day. Now you got to kind of set a timer do something like that because you don’t want to get sucked down the rabbit hole in two hours later.
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Jason Mefford: You know, but but it helps you to kind of shift and re center yourself and get into that emotional state that you needed to be in to go throughout the rest of your day.
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Kathy Gruver: Absolutely. And it is it’s an ego state shift and I started to feel so heavy from doing all of this very cerebral
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Kathy Gruver: Neither speaking proposal and let me cut and paste. When I say let me craft a new thing that I just wanted to laugh for a little bit. So I went on YouTube and whose line is ANYWAYS, ONE OF MY funniest one of my most favorite
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Kathy Gruver: Shows the exercise of what I could sit you what you can say about your blank, but not your girlfriend. So, is what can say about your motorcycle, what you can say about your dog, what you can say about your business, but not your girlfriend I
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Kathy Gruver: Know for
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Kathy Gruver: Five minutes and just, you know, resetting myself letting work go for just a moment. So, but I can hear the scrub the outside going
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Kathy Gruver: Common
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Kathy Gruver: But it was just this great way to reset and and ground and center and to get change that focus for just a little bit to get me in a different headspace so that I could then kind of shut off all the stress and go back to
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Kathy Gruver: Go back to work when I need to do. Yeah.
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Jason Mefford: Well that’s it’s part of taking those breaks, you know, during the day that we can talk about because you know after 20 to 40 minutes. Most of us, you know, our productivity goes down.
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Jason Mefford: And so taking those little breaks in between as long as you keep them as little breaks is actually significantly increases your productivity.
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Jason Mefford: And I, and I think to, you know, that’s probably one of the reasons why you know on some of those days when it’s well planned out
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Jason Mefford: When you’re, you know, kind of accomplishing what you need to do. You’re feeling confident
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Jason Mefford: You know, in yourself, taking those little breaks doing those other little things, you’re still able to get everything done usually in less time than you thought. Now, some of the things obviously take us longer, you know, because I talked about that productivity booster.
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Jason Mefford: You know, usually whatever I write
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Jason Mefford: Down. It really takes me like twice the timer, right, because we tend to underestimate how long it’s going to take us to do stuff.
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Jason Mefford: But there’s other things like I remember earlier this week, you know, I wrote down like three or four little admin kind of things that I needed to do and I was very focused and it was like, boom, boom, boom. Five minutes like three things were done.
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Jason Mefford: And it’s like, oh,
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Jason Mefford: I thought that was going to probably take me an hour, right, it didn’t, because I was again focused. I was productive. I was in the right ego state.
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Jason Mefford: At that point, and it was just like, boom boom boom right done. Now I’ve got found time for 50 minutes
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Jason Mefford: What am I going to do with that. Well, I could go on to the next one. I can take a break. I can do, you know, whatever. But the more that we kind of plan are centered and grounded in what we’re trying to do, the more productivity, we can have and the quicker we get to where we want to go.
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Kathy Gruver: Yeah, I agree with that. And also, again before we’re doing something that is
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Kathy Gruver: Requiring a lot of deep thought or physical activity or something dangerous. I mean, it sounds kind of ridiculous but getting on the freeway and driving, especially if you’re in LA.
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Kathy Gruver: You really need to be present for that because you need to be just as defensive and drivers. Your offensive, so I’m
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Kathy Gruver: Making sure you’re present. And in that moment, you’re going to the task is not only going to get done quicker.
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Kathy Gruver: It’s going to be easier it’s going to flow better if you’ve already set yourself up for okay I’m present. Now, all that other stuff isn’t going to be
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Kathy Gruver: Monkey Brain is going to be driving you crazy if you’re present in this moment where you grounded you center, you’re like, Okay, I’m gonna do this thing. Now it’s like starting to think of work as a meditation start
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Kathy Gruver: That calmness before you start those tasks and you’re going to be better, a better communicator that our leader.
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Kathy Gruver: More efficient, more effective. It changes everything. And it’s a pretty simple thing to do. Some people like to hug a tree. Some people actually put their hands on the ground. Some people meditate.
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Kathy Gruver: I tend to just take a breath and just, you know, like pause for a second. Take that pause remind myself to be here. Now, that sort of thing. So it’s
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Jason Mefford: Well, and that’s the easiest thing to I mean we’ve we’ve talked about breath before
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Jason Mefford: It’s something we have to
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Jason Mefford: Do anyway and just stopping and taking two to five, deep breaths helps to again bring you back to where you are and then you get going.
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Jason Mefford: And if you start getting the monkey mind chatter the hybrid beta wave stuff going on in your brain just stop breathe again for you know 10 seconds 30 seconds. Go back to it, it’ll slow you back down to where you need to be exactly
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Yay.
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Kathy Gruver: I hope everyone takes advantage of that. It’s such an easy. It’s an easy tool to use to get you more productive and more present
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Kathy Gruver: And again, it’s one of those things where it’s free. It doesn’t cost you know any. You don’t need a prescription and there’s no side effects. You just do that thing.
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Kathy Gruver: And if you can incorporate that into your day throughout. Then you’re gonna see definitely the results of that and you can unlock your limitless potential
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Jason Mefford: Exactly. That’s what we’re here to talk about, isn’t it.
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Jason Mefford: Oh, look at that.
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Kathy Gruver: Any last. Any last thoughts. I mean, it’s just, it’s such a simple thing, but we forget to do it. So that’s we’re here to remind you to do the simple things.
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Jason Mefford: Yeah we did, we just, we just have to have to remember. And so again, you know, like the next time you know later today, tomorrow at some point you’re going to feel a little frenzied and crazy
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Jason Mefford: Well, realize that that’s a time just take some time. At that point, try to re center yourself in and get out of that get back into the right ego state that you need to be back into
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Jason Mefford: And the more you start recognizing when you’re in those situations and you bring yourself back
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Jason Mefford: The easier it’s going to be to bring yourself back every time you need to and and the more you’re in that back.
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Jason Mefford: You know space where you’re grounded and centered. The more we operate from that space, the more we’re training ourselves to be that
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Jason Mefford: And we’re going to be there more of the time to write. So those those frenzied crazy moments are going to become less and less. The more you practice and actually kind of exercise. Exercise your mind in doing some of these things exactly
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Kathy Gruver: Yeah. And we talked about exercising our body and how we can know do applying for two minutes into the 30 seconds it we we build those muscles. We build those muscles of our brain, our consciousness, our psychology as well. I think we kind of forget that. Yep, we do.
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Jason Mefford: Her. So with that, I think we’re done for the day go out
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Jason Mefford: Ground yourself center yourself, remember to do that.
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Jason Mefford: And you will notice a big difference in your day. Yeah.
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Jason Mefford: So with that, I am Jason method I can be reached at Jason method calm.
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Kathy Gruver: And I’m Kathy group or I can be reached at Kathy Gruber com so thanks for watching go out ground center be present in this moment before you jet out on those tasks that to do list that you’ve got to do today and tune in for another episode of The 500 podcast to
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See ya.
