Stop Catastrophizing
Welcome to the one day at a time podcast where we forget about yesterday. We don't worry about tomorrow. It's what are we going to do today? This all matters because you've only ever had or will ever have the fantastic twenty four hours a day you're about to embark on. Hopefully this episode is going to give you some daily dose of wisdom that you can take action on today to improve your life.
Speaker 1:And remember, all it takes is one day at a time. Good morning, bunch of catastrophizers. How are you doing? I'm not saying that in a what's the word? Condescending way.
Speaker 1:We all do it. We all catastrophize to me. We all have something like we get told something that's really not that big of a deal, but then we build her up in our head to be a much bigger deal than it is. And then before we know her, we're ten minutes into her rant and then it's fifteen minutes and then we're texting someone about her. And then before we know it an hour's gone and our heart rate's elevated and we're thinking that was all for something so minuscule it shouldn't have happened.
Speaker 1:So examples of catastrophizing thoughts is just like when it comes to macros right, it is if you break it down, it is the most simple thing. Hit your macros all good. If it's not all good and the macros are too high or too low, then once we collect enough data, we'll actually know the answer. But the thing is doing a week of macros and then doing a check-in, you know, unless you're you're engulfing 5,000 calories a day without knowing it, you're not gonna stray too far away. You know, you're gonna be on the right path and it need some adjusting so there's no need to panic and worry about if it's too high maybe it's a bit too low let's start collecting data, let the data guide us and the check ins we can make those changes.
Speaker 1:And the reason as well it's like really important actually not to catastrophize is like not only does it just waste our time but it actually stresses us out. Your brain doesn't know the difference between a stressor that's made up your mind, psychologically made up, than an actual physical stressor. So, you know, if you saw Ryan coming at you on the streets, you'd be scared when you comes out of comes out of nowhere, boom, scared. Fight or flight comes in, hopefully, fight, and then you knock him in the face and knock him out. Ideal situation if you did see Ryan in the streets.
Speaker 1:But you you'd have that kind of physic there's a physical thing there to get you stressed. Right? But you could think about seeing Ryan on the street and knocking him out, and you could have the same response where you like do get that stress. So it's important to actually understand that because the stress response turns on and you know it's not we don't actually want to use our stress stress response for really minuscule stuff. Like if you've read the book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, we should only give fucks to things that really matter.
Speaker 1:We shouldn't just give all fucks away to everything. And then just ruin our days with giving fucks for everything small. We should refrain from doing that. We should hold them tight and actually only give a fuck for stuff that actually matters, right. Because if you are intermittently getting stressed, so when we talk about chronic stress like, oh if you're chronically stressed you're stressed for like you know months on end or like a long term or whatever it is, But actually when you look down into the definition, it's not so much you're like literally stressed 20 fourseven, it's that you're stressed multiple times a day frequently.
Speaker 1:So it could be that you catastrophize every hour about something, it could be a work email, could be some, you could be driving to work, walking to work, lunchtime text, you know, you're seeing someone and they piss you off and you could be you could be someone that always gets aggravated by her and you turn her into a mountain and you do that with everything every day. And you turn your stress response on, guess who's going to be more likely to eat a lot of sugary and starchy foods? Yes, you. Yes. When we are chronically stressed, the glucocorticoids which they call little devils come out to play right.
Speaker 1:When we're just normally stressed, this is important, when we just get normal acute stress or something comes and attacks us wherever and we got to turn the stress response on to fight or flight or whatever happened, whatever we do, the digestive system stops. Right? Because we don't need to digest when we we gotta get away for safety. Whatever's in your bowel oils gets released. So when you've been nervous, then if you did athletics in school before you were lining up for a hundred meter race, Honestly, I needed to go target every time.
Speaker 1:I couldn't deal with it. The nerves were killing me. That's like a stress that you need to get rid of it because you're ready to go. The heart rate goes up. Blood pressure goes up.
Speaker 1:There's a good response to have when we need it. But if that keeps coming on and on and on, then and also our appetite goes down on acute stress. So like when we're ready to just run away, we don't need to be hungry, do we? We need to just get away. But the opposite happens really when it's long term unfortunately we do just start feeling hungrier, we start craving those sugary carb y foods, and it's not really good when it starts all building up and building up and there's loads of other things that happen when you've got chronic stress, which is not ideal.
Speaker 1:They can cause all sorts of health problems. And we know stress has been a killer for years, Stress is a killer. You know, we gotta really understand what's stressing us out and really differentiate, like, what's in our control and what isn't. This is stoicism one one zero one. Don't worry about anything that's outside of your control.
Speaker 1:Right? What is outside of your control? Pretty much everything. How other people act is outside your control. The traffic's outside your control, the weather.
Speaker 1:There's like so many things outside of your control, and only folks what you can control. And what you can control is your attitude towards things. You can control your mind in a way in that sense. You can control your attitude towards the day. And that's kind of where if you can keep your focus on what you can control you start feeling better for your days and you start shielding yourself from these chronic stressors.
Speaker 1:Right, hopefully that's sinking in because I know it's like it is stressful and you can get these it's a new lifestyle or you're trying to do some new habits but it's only gonna go against you if you start making it a habit that everything is hard. Oh this is hard, is out, oh this terrible, Enjoy it. Like, the I get to work out. Do I do I get to work out today? Wow, I get to work out.
Speaker 1:Some people can't even, you know, some people are unfortunately in wheelchairs and, you know, so ill they can't even move. Unfortunately, there's a lot of going on, but I'm fortunate enough today that I get to work out, that I get to walk in nature in a first world country, that I get to be free and and safe in general. You know, you look at Palestine now, you know, all that stuff's going on there. We're so fortunate that we get to do these things. So instead of always making things a chore and tough and miserable, so hard and, oh, do I dragging your feet about it.
Speaker 1:Let's switch up the attitude, the switcher up. Right? Less we get to do it today, we get to be we get to try and live healthy today. We get to try and be active, we get to try and work in our mindset. We get to try and meet loads of amazing new people in the communities we're in online and in the Facebook groups, Mighty Networks, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:We get to engage with people on the same path as us and that is a beautiful thing. So yeah, that is it for today guys. I do hope that is ingrained. And yeah, the weekend is here. For you know, for the people on Lazaro plants the first weekend in.
Speaker 1:For everybody else who's been with us it's another weekend to you know it's another weekend to try and live the life we want to live right. Weekends are tough, COVID is still around but lockdowns are easing. I get it. We want to go out, we want to enjoy, right? You don't have to be a % on the ball all the time anyway and there's certainly no weekends.
Speaker 1:Can you just have that 51% of decisions going your way? Do you have to have that seventh glass of wine? Do you have to have that extra dessert? Do you have to have that or maybe you can cut them out and still have the exact same amount of time? Like it is not mutually exclusive, people think that for you to enjoy fully that must mean you must eat everything and drink everything in sight.
Speaker 1:I don't think we need to redefine that, that is not what living fully needs to mean. Living fully needs to live in accordance to how we want to live, our goals a way. And I know I said before goals isn't the end goal, it's really the person we want to become. And really are we living and being the person we want to become on as many days as possible. And that's really where we want to get to.
Speaker 1:Not so much letting other people dictate how we should behave all the time. Look, my friend came up to London earlier today. He picked one of the other boys up who's working as a fireman in Southwest. Like, oh, you know, we'll pop up to Fulham to see you. He said, yeah, yeah, come up.
Speaker 1:And, you know, I said, we'll go we'll go to this, like, Spanish, like tapas. It's terrible, by the way. Tapas place, the only thing I know who can sit down outside and it was kind of like, oh, umbrellas or whatever. And we sat down and he was like, I'm gonna have a pint. He's like, I'm gonna have a pint.
Speaker 1:And I was like, I'm on track this week. I'm feeling good. I was like, I have a Coke Zero. But you know what? You know, the amount of time the amount of the chamber of mind is like, get a pint.
Speaker 1:Go on. Get a pint. You're with the boys. Get a pint. Get a pint.
Speaker 1:It's like, what is this pint gonna give me in this lunchtime meal with with two boys I'm catching up with that a Coke Zero wouldn't. I was like, nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just 200 odd calories extra that I would rather save for them delicious strawberries I then engulfed later on. Right?
Speaker 1:So we, you know, it didn't make a difference to me. And then, you know, he didn't he wasn't like, oh, made another pint. I was like quite surprised. I was like, maybe we're growing up. Maybe we're grown up.
Speaker 1:But yeah, that was just an example earlier. It just always pulls you in, and sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but let's try and win as many as we can and we shall win the day. And, yeah, that is it. I am back on Monday with more hopefully micro wisdom for you to listen to on your walks, but, enjoy your weekends guys, do enjoy. But today you got you got today first actually, let's rewind a bit and let's not think about weekend yet, you got Friday to live.
Speaker 1:Live your Friday, enjoy it, have a good time and I'll speak to you next week. And that's it. Thank you for listening to the one day at a time podcast with your host, Golf Leer. Hopefully, you understood something I said. I hope that some wisdom wisdom kind of distilled through into your mind, and I want you to now action it today.
Speaker 1:I don't want you to think about tomorrow. I don't want you to think about yesterday. I don't want you to think about leaving a review on this podcast. I don't want you to think about going to another website. What I want you to do is as soon as this podcast ends, you will take action and make the most of today.
Speaker 1:Ground yourself today. Follow the one day at a time philosophy, and your life will change.
