Podsnack: How to Start Feeling Better Today

Welcome back. I’ve got a little pod snack for you, if you will.

Just something quick to take into your day on how you can feel better today. I talked to so many women, especially women in midlife who are just like, I just wanna feel better. And it can feel like it takes so much work. It’s these big, big steps that have to happen in order to feel better.

And I wanna give you 3 quick actions, because you know, you know how simple I like it. I wanna give you 3 quick actions today that you can take literally today that will help you feel better. Let’s get into it.

Enhancing Well-Being with Simple Actions

1 – Go To Therapy

Now I know it’s not as sexy or as cool to tell you to go to therapy as it is to tell you to lift heavier weights or eat more protein or track your macros or any of that other, I think, more tangible stuff.

And in my lived experience, I found that we need to do all of the pieces. So as you get into midlife, as you find your body changing and your life changing, there’s a lot of pieces to the puzzle of feeling better.

We tend to focus on the physical stuff because it just feels a little bit more tangible. But the inside stuff, the intangible stuff, the heart stuff, that’s where you’re really going to notice the difference in feeling better.

I don’t cut my own hair. I don’t examine my own eyes. I don’t clean my own teeth.

I go to professionals for that. I can’t fix my own brain. I can’t lighten my own trauma. I have to go to a professional for that.

So if you are going through it right now, especially if you are a midlifer, if you’re an empty nester, if you’re going through menopause, go to therapy. I think about all the little pins in my life.

You know, my friend John, who was on the podcast, talked about the body being a GPS system and these little pins that we’ve dropped throughout the course of our life that are our traumas, our challenges, our events that have shaped us till now.

And I think about these pins in my life that certainly warranted going to therapy, and we just didn’t talk about it then.

We just didn’t have access to it. It wasn’t a thing that we talked about or we did. But in 2024, it is. And if you’re going through it, you need to go to a professional.

Tip number 1, you need to go to therapy. You need to make that appointment and go.

2 – You Gotta Start Talking About Your Feelings

If you are feeling sideways, you gotta start talking about it.

The number one sentiment, the number one comment that I hear over and over from women is this, well, I thought it was just me. Now let’s put that in perspective.

There are 8,000,000,000 people on the planet, whether you’re a male or female listening to this, chances are, whatever you are going through in life, you’re probably not the only one.

I mean, you’re special, we’re all special, but you’re not a special unicorn on a planet of 8,000,000,000 people going through a challenging season in life.

And you’re not the first to have ever gone through it. And yet that’s what we think. We make our challenges and our problems so special and so unique, and we think no one’s busy or no one’s had it harder. That’s just simply not true, and you’re doing yourself a disservice if you think that.

Now listen, you don’t have to go on social media and broadcast how you feel to the world, but you do need community. You do need to have some conversations. Sometimes those conversations are hard, but that’s how we grow.

You do need to grab coffee with a friend and say, listen. Are you feeling sideways? Because I am. You need to go take a walk with a friend and say, how do you feel about your kids leaving home? Do you feel sad like I do?

We need to say our feelings. And listen, if you’re in the Gen-x generation. Your parents likely didn’t talk to you about anything.

We pushed out our feelings. That’s what we were taught, and so it can be a little challenging to just come out and say, hey, I’m feeling off today, but that’s where the growth happens.

So tip number 2, have a conversation with someone today. Share how you’re feeling. You will find out very quickly that you are not the only one going through it, and there is power in the community.

3 – Move Your Body

Listen. I do not care if you take a class, if you go walk your dogs, if you jump up and down in your kitchen for a little bit, turn on some music and dance around.

It doesn’t matter. I will tell you this. Everything is better on the other side of movement. And that doesn’t mean that the problems or the challenges go away or that you magically transition into this new stage of life without any angst or sadness or worry.

It just means you are better on the other side of movement. You have more clarity. You have more patience. You’re generally kinder.

You just feel better after you move your body. Our bodies are made to move. So tip number 3 for how you can feel better today is to move your body in some way.

Don’t think it has to be a certain way that you have to go take a class. You have to pay a lot of money, and you gotta lift a bunch of weights, and you gotta do it for 6 hours. You gotta go to the gym. No.

You need to move your body today, and I guarantee you will feel better on the other side of it.

So there you have it.

Friends, good therapy, go to therapy. There’s no stigma attached to it anymore. And if there is, and if people give you grief about it, they’re not the people that you want in your life anyway.

Go to therapy, talk to someone who’s professional and objective and third party, and just get your stuff out of your head, out of your heart, out so that you can look at it, deal with it, and heal from it.

That’s number 1. Number 2, talk to your people.

Find your people, talk to your people, tell them how you’re feeling. Tap into your community.

And number 3, movement, go move your body. If you notice these three actions today, all connect back to the 3 pillars that we need in life and most especially in midlife, your purpose, your community, your well-being.

When you tap into those pillars, when you take care of those pillars, you’re so much better able to navigate the transitions and the upheavals and the changes that come with this season of life.

And you’re so much better able to really recalibrate how you see this season of life into something truly amazing.

So go move your body, go talk to your friends and go to therapy today, and I’ll see you on the next crank it up podcast. That’s it for this episode.