Happy New Year! 2021 is FINALLY over, and if you’re thinking it’s time for some changes to your business, you’ve come to the right place. Continuing the season’s theme of stress management, Mike and Leanna ring jump into January with ideas for starting a new business year off right both personally and professionally.
Don’t miss Bettermental’s very first acronym (courtesy of Mike!), RESET: Recalibrate, Evaluate your business, Stop doing stuff, Exercise your mind, body, and spirit, and Track your time moving forward.
And remember, “frustrations really show us where our values lie and can help lead to better systems and better solutions.” A big shoutout to business coach Lacy Anderson (Grit ‘N Grace Consulting) for inspiring this episode!
Show notes and resources: https://bettermental.fm/episodes/004
And we’d love to keep in touch. Connect with us on Twitter @leannalost and @mikeveny.
Happy New Year! 2021 is FINALLY over, and if you’re thinking it’s time for some changes to your business, you’ve come to the right place. Continuing the season’s theme of stress management, Mike and Leanna ring jump into January with ideas for starting a new business year off right both personally and professionally.
Don’t miss Bettermental’s very first acronym (courtesy of Mike!), RESET: Recalibrate, Evaluate your business, Stop doing stuff, Exercise your mind, body, and spirit, and Track your time moving forward.
And remember, “frustrations really show us where our values lie and can help lead to better systems and better solutions.” A big shoutout to business coach Lacy Anderson (Grit ‘N Grace Consulting) for inspiring this episode!
Show notes and resources: https://bettermental.fm/episodes/004
And we’d love to keep in touch. Connect with us on Twitter @leannalost and @mikeveny.
Both in unison: One…two..three…Stress-free re-set!!
[INTRO MUSIC]
(both laughing)
Leanna L: (still laughing) Oh, my God! Does not sound any better!
So Mike, (laughs) how has your 2021 been?
Mike V: (laughes) Why are you laughing at me, asking about 2021?
Leanna L: I'm sorry, I'm still getting over that "stress-free reset!"
Mike V: Yeah. It's pretty intense.
2021 was a great year for me. Great year. Best year ever for my company. For my mental health, it was an okay year, you know, it was an okay year. I had my ups and downs, but I got through it. And I'm pretty happy about that. How was yours?
Leanna L: Well, I think getting through it is pretty much the most we can boast in terms of mental health just at this particular moment. So kudos for you.
Um…it’s been, I think overall it's been good. So the thing, the thing I realized about 2021 is that it feels like the aftermath of 2020. For me, I think 2020 was like the...in a way, 2020 was easier. (laughs) You know, hear me out here. 2020 was easier for me because I knew what to expect. And it was bad.
But it was fairly uncomplicated in that everything just kind of sucked, and after halfway through the year, you were kind of like, "Yeah, the rest of this year is pretty much going down the drain at this point. This is a lost year. We're writing this off. It's fine." And it wasn't great in terms of mental health, but it felt like, you know, I sort of knew what was coming and I could kind of brace myself for that. This year has been more of a challenge, I would say, because things seemed to waffle so much. I was never sure what's going on.
Mike V: Waffle?
Leanna L: Waffle as in, you know, first there's a pandemic and then we're recovering, and then there's the Delta variant and the Alpha variant, all of this stuff. And then the vaccine; the vaccines are safe and then they're not, and they're safe again. We should wear masks and then we shouldn't.
And it was just like..no one can decide what's happening. And it's just been, workers are leaving and then everyone's hiring, and now the economy is back to what it was and now it's terrible. No one really knows what's happening anymore. And so that's been sort of a whiplash effect.
But in terms of business, I'm really proud of myself. Like you, I've had a really good year. I wouldn't say it's been stellar financially because I really relied more on COVID financial aid, but I've been working really hard on a lot of strategic stuff and already seeing the fruits of that.
I shifted into doing more mental health work, more topics in the future of work, which I can talk about another time. And I'm really starting to do more things that I love doing and kind of lean into that. And that's been really exciting. Scary, but exciting. So yeah, overall, not too bad. And I still have one huge leap of faith coming up.
Mike V: Leap of faith?
Leanna L: Leap of faith.
Mike V: What's your leap of faith?
Leanna L: Yeah. So at the end of the year [Note: 2020 after this episode was recorded] , my husband, Emerson, and I are “going nomad”. We're leaving our apartment, selling our car, getting rid of most of our stuff, and we'll be going to Europe for a year and just kind of see how we like it, see how we feel being completely location independent without any ties. And I don't know. Maybe we'll settle down in Canada, maybe we'll spend half the year in Barbados, maybe we'll come back. Who knows?
Mike V: Oh, I have a question for you.
Leanna L: Hmm?
Mike V: With this nomadic lifestyle, how do you get to record the Bettermental podcast?
Leanna L: You'll have to fly out to Europe to meet me, right?
Mike V: Okay, I'll just have to fly wherever you are. (both laugh)
Leanna L: I'll come over from Italy or wherever I am.
Mike V: You're listening to this, everyone.
Leanna L: Meet you in London.
Mike V: I'm happy to respect-
Leanna L: We'll make it work, we'll make it work.
Mike V: We'll make it work.
But no, I think that's great that you're going nomad. That's a nice leap. I think that's pretty awesome, and I'm happy for you.
Leanna L: Thank you. I'm still a little ... I'm excited about it, but it's still kind of stressful and terrifying. So we'll see how that works. But that kind of leads pretty well into what we want to talk about today, which is a stress-free reset for your business.
Mike V: A stress-free reset, yes!
First, I want to remind you if you're listening, what stress is. And this is my opinion, this is not necessarily a medical definition, but stress is your body's response to stimuli that happens around you or happens inside of you, you know, thoughts that come up. And your body responds to that. And that's stress. If you don't manage it through stress management, it gets to the point where you're tired all the time. It's called exhaustion. And if you don't deal with the exhaustion, you get to a point where you're just burned out and you can't function.
And we've done some episodes on this. Actually we have three episodes, one on stress, one on exhaustion, one on burnout, that I encourage you to check out. And it's important that you know what those definitions are because we throw these terms out all the time. So we're going to be talking about what to do with it.
Leanna L: Yep. Stress-free reset. So what would you say? What does that look like? What does that have to do with business, having a stress-free reset? How does that fit in?
So we're at the end of 2021, we're looking at a new year, don't know what's happening with this pandemic shit, don't know what's happening with travel or just life in general still. How does that work?
Mike V: We all get to these points where we're overwhelmed, where just too many things are happening at once, too much on our plate. We feel stuck. We've hit a plateau. And this stress-free reset is this golden opportunity to pause, to just pause and restart. Restart.
Not start your business over, but restart how you are managing your life day-to-day and how you are showing up in your work day-to-day so you can be less stressed.
And so that's what we do in this reset. And what we want to do is to help you transition out of crisis mode into growth mode. That's ultimately the goal here.
Leanna L: I like that! I like that.
Mike V: And the plan is just basically to adjust you and your business so your business serves you better. So that's the idea behind the stress-free reset.
Leanna L: And one thing I think it's important to point out too is this really is great for managing mental health. So obviously, you want to have…you want to be able to grow your business without additional stress, but if you're already dealing with mental health issues, if mental health issues have come up in the past two years, which they probably have, or if you have a chronic condition, this kind of process can really, really help you take a second look at how you are managing mental health in your day to day life and help you kind of make a plan, a better plan for that in the future.
Because people like us, like Mike and I, who struggle with mental health, we need processes and rituals to get through each day. I mean, we thrive on them. We rely on them, I think, to a certain extent, whether that's, you know, a morning cup of coffee or meditation or exercise…whatever that may be, it's just incredibly important to us.
And so this is an excellent time to kind of pause. I love what you said about that, Mike. It's just pausing and reflecting and taking a closer look at your business and how you're running it so that you can be more productive and hopefully, you know, manage your mental health better.
Mike V: Yeah. In one of our upcoming episodes, we're going to be talking about energy. And, you know, one of the things that we're going to be talking about in that episode is the importance of pausing.
That's a really big thing, especially in this busy, busy, go, go, go environment that we're all in, the culture we're all in. And so there are different steps to the stress-free reset.
Leanna L: What are they, Mike?
Mike V: Number one: Recalibrate yourself. Number two: Evaluate your business. Number three: Stop doing stuff. Number four: Exercise your mind, body and spirit. And number five: Track your time moving forward. So let's start with recalibrating yourself.
Why are you looking at me and laughing?
Leanna L: I just love that you made this an acronym. If you haven't guessed, it spells RESET.
Mike V: Yes! (laughs) That's our first acronym, right?
Leanna L: I think so, yeah!
Mike V: That makes us-
Leanna L: That's our first acronym of the show, of the reboot of the show.
Mike V: Yeah. So does that make it legit now?
Leanna L: Yeah.
Mike V: Okay.
Leanna L: Yeah, we're fucking legit, for sure. Tell us about recalibrating, Mike!
Mike V: So recalibrating. It starts with what we were just talking about; pausing, having a nice pause. (both pause silently)
Leanna L: (laughs) Sorry!
Mike V: Yes, that was our awkward pause! But I mean, for you, just pausing yourself. This means stopping, turning off your mobile device, going to a place where you're not doing stuff, maybe sitting under a tree, maybe just sitting in a room by yourself and turning out the lights, and getting centered.
Here are three questions that I encourage you to ask yourself when you do that:
What am I feeling? Where is it located? And what do I need right now? I've brought these up before and I just want to go through the importance of each one.
"What am I feeling?", is a great way to start to get in touch with your emotions. Because let's go back to the whole stress, exhaustion, burnout. Sometimes we throw out these terms because we haven't taken the time to pause…and even become aware of what's really going on.
And, "Where is it located?" There's a book I recommend all of you check out called The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. It talks about how we store trauma and emotions in our body. So learning to locate where it physically is, where you're feeling something, even if it's a good feeling, in your body can help you become more self-aware.
And finally, my favorite question, the re-parenting question; "What do I need right now?" And that's a really loving question to ask yourself. You might need a glass of water, some tea, to listen more to this podcast (both laugh). Whatever it is ...
Leanna L: Shameless self plug.
Mike V: Shameless self plug.
But it's a really important question to do. And you can ask yourself these three questions during your workday, but pausing and asking them is really important to start this whole reset.
Another thing that you can do when you do that is to do a brain dump. And I want to tell you a secret if you're listening right now. I know that as you're listening, you've got other things on your mind. Mm-hmm! Yes, I can tell from the other side of the audio! No, I'm just joking. That's so creepy, sorry about that.
But no, you're human like us. And David Allen, in his book, Getting Things Done, talks about the fact that we all carry open loops on our mind. Leanna, you and I are recording this. We both have other things on our mind, too.
Leanna L: Oh, I'm planning something else now as we speak!
Mike V: I've got a few other things that I'm thinking about, too.
But the reality is this: when we don't get control over those open loops, we start to develop stress. So it's important to do an activity like a brain dump.
And what you do in a brain dump, also called a mind sweep, is you take a piece of paper and you write down everything that's on your mind. And it could be ideas, things you need to do, someone you need to confront, that X that you keep thinking about… Whatever it is, just writing it down.
I would love to tell you that it takes stress away, but...
Leanna L: I mean, sometimes it does!
Mike V: Sometimes it does.
Leanna L: I call it a worry list, because I usually write things down when I get frustrated or anxious about things, which is a lot. And I definitely feel better writing them down because, to me, you know, I'm very much a process and systems person. So to me having… it's easier for me to deal with something if it's tangible and it's concrete and it's written down, than if it's just swirling up here in my conscious or subconscious.
I don't know. I don't know if you feel the same way, but something about writing it down just makes it more human and workable somehow.
Mike V: Absolutely. Well, workable, manageable. That was what I was going to say. It makes it more manageable.
And just with that, I'm going to really just geek out for a moment and share something I've never shared. I journal and I use the Moleskine journal.
Leanna L: Oh, I love that.
Mike V: But I also use a Pilot G2 Medium gel pen. And I buy these things in bulk. I have a bunch in the closet over there. I love the way they feel on a piece of paper. And it's actually proven that there's something different about using a pen or pencil and a piece of paper versus typing or putting something into your phone.
So it's okay if you need to do a brain dump digitally, there's nothing wrong with that. But just taking time to actually put a pen to paper is a very therapeutic thing on many levels.
Leanna L: It's so great.
Mike V: And you find, as many of us do, that once you start writing a few things, everything keeps on coming out. And it's almost as if the piece of paper writes itself and that's your brain getting dumped.
So that is how you recalibrate. So what's the next step here?
Leanna L: So the next step, E, is evaluate your business.
So obviously, you know, if you're a small business owner, you're no stranger to annual planning, right? So at the end of the year, you're looking at your income, your expenses. Did you meet your goals? What kind of clients and projects did you have?
All that stuff is extremely important, but I also want to just kind of touch on the intangible stuff, because in Recalibrate, we sort of looked at kind of the personal side of things, where you're at personally, mentally, all of that; so now I kind of want to apply that to your business as well, so you can get a sense of basically how your business is working for you and how it's serving you.
So here are a few questions you can ask. Number one would be, "What is working or not working for me?"
So again, it could be the types of projects you're doing, it could be the clients you're taking on, it could be how you are managing your schedule, it could be the tools that you're using. Anything that's kind of making your life a little bit harder or even a little bit easier, just kind of keep those in the back of your mind.
And I realize, you know, saying this, that it's incredibly difficult to just remember all of that for an entire year. So one thing I've started having to do is monthly reviews and planning and then quarterly reviews and planning, because I'm just never going to remember all this. And if I write it down as I'm thinking about it on different pieces of paper, they'll be gone! I will never find them again.
So I use, I’ve come up with a little template for myself for reviews for monthly and quarterly planning, and then I need to create one for annual planning as well. If you'd like me to send you those, feel free to get in touch. You can DM me on social media or email us, and I'll just send you a copy.
Mike V: What's our email address?
Leanna L: Oh yeah. It's teambettermental@gmail.com. So feel free to email us, and I'll just send you that if you think that would be helpful.
Um…so yeah! Just keep that in mind. "What is working or not working for me?"
Second question is, "What have I done well and not well?" Now, this is ... Okay. I can see [Mike: Oooooh!] Yeah, this is a controversial question! I urge you to take it easy, because it will help in multiple ways.
First of all, this is not about you beating yourself up about past decisions, right? You should be honest, but try not to be cruel, try not to be brutal to yourself. Because everyone has causes to celebrate in their business every year, everyone has reasons to maybe make some changes.
But what you're really looking for is an honest, open conversation with yourself about what has really...how things have gone, whether that's ...
Mike V: An inventory.
Leanna L: Yeah, an inventory! Thank you, Mike.
Whether that's habits that you started and stopped, projects that you feel like you could have done better on, clients that you didn't get along with, or maybe had a bad relationship or things ended badly with. Again, you can take that list from the last question, tools, schedule all that sorts of stuff, and just go through that and say, "Okay, what was on me? And could I have done better?"
And, um…yeah, anything to add there, Mike? Because it is a difficult question!
Mike V: First of all, I want to reiterate: this is not about beating yourself up. And here's what happens. Once you do this...It's actually very difficult. It might bring up a lot of emotions, it might be very triggering to do this, but once you do this, as someone reminded me the first time I had to do this, you'll get a realistic picture of what's going on in your life, and you'll realize, when you look at everything that you wrote down, you're not half as bad as thought you were. You're not half as good as you thought you were either.
And so that's why it's really important just to get realistic. A really important thing. But sorry to interrupt you there.
Leanna L: No, no, no, not at all. I was going to find an example to see if I could share that. Yeah! Okay, so here's a quick one from, I think this was my August review, July/August review for the month. What I did and didn't do well; I didn't pitch any more bylines, which you could go either way on that, but I had told myself I would and I wasn't that great about it. So I just wanted to be honest, like, "I didn't do any more. And I knew I should have, but I didn't.”
But, and here's the dig, I did get a good bit of marketing done and I saw some leads trickle in. So that was kind of an upside was, even though I didn't necessarily fulfill one side of one task, one goal, I did fulfill another.
So it's good to gauge where you're at almost emotionally in your business because you get a sense of, "Okay. I had this list of accomplishments that I wanted to complete, and I got these done, I didn't do these." And you can sort of delve into why. You know, maybe there was a mental health reason, maybe things just got super busy, maybe you just suddenly needed to start producing more income and you just didn't have time to do certain kinds of projects. Whatever the case may be, it's really, really helpful to just have all that information because it's data and it'll help you learn about yourself and learn about how to best run your business.
Anyway, I wanted to spend a little extra time on that, because it is a rough question
But moving on to the next one; "What am I missing that's causing frustration in my daily life?" And I love this one. I kind of took this one off of our business coach, because Mike and I share a business coach, Lacy. And one thing I love about this question is that I've found, and I'm sure you have too, Mike, that frustrations really show us where our values lie and can help lead to better systems and better solutions.
So as an example, I have struggled a lot in the past couple years because I feel like I've been behind on business planning. And that is when I express these frustrations both to Mike and to my business coach. And then I started thinking, "Okay, so then what can I do? What can I do if I'm the reason these frustrations are happening? What can I do about that?"
And so that's actually when I started this quarterly and monthly planning. And because I also deal with a lot of stress and exhaustion, I hadn't taken time off in a while, I ended up adding a little bit of a retreat to my quarterly planning as well. So that is kind of a two-for-one. Something I'm still working on, but it's really, really helped with that.
So think about what you're frustrated about and where that may be coming from. Is it something that you haven't done? Is it something that someone else has or hasn't done that's caused those frustrations? Get a sense of where that's coming from. You don't need to come up with a solution just yet. We're still at brain dumping stage here. Just get a sense of where it is and what it is, and that'll kind of help you.
If you jump into a solution, it may not end up being the right way to address it because you kind of need all the information on hand before you move forward.
So that is a fantastic question.
The last one, sort of a two-parter, is, "What are my personal and work goals, and have my actions and schedule got me closer to those goals?"
So again, hard to review over a full year, really, really suggest that you make it maybe a new year's resolution to start reviewing your business a little bit more frequently. But for now, just think about some of those major goals that you had over the past year, whether that's being more active, working out more, less stress in your life, seeing friends more, higher income goals, cutting out carbs.
Whatever your goals were, take a look over the past year, over 2021, and just try and remember how those went for you, and any actions and how you've sort of built your actions and how you built your work and personal schedule around those goals to see how successful they were. So that's a lot of material in one question and one little piece there, but those four questions are really, really going to set you up well for evaluating your business.
Mike V: Stop is the next step. Stop doing stuff. Not everything, but stuff.
Several weeks ago, I'm going to be very honest and transparent here...Leanna, you and I, we're not just recording, we're not just hitting record. There's actually so many things that go on behind the scenes. This is probably the easiest part of the whole thing, is actually sitting down and recording. Lots of planning, we have weekly meetings because we really care about this work and we care about all of you.
And I had asked Leanna if I could reschedule a meeting and she kindly let me know that this was the second time, third time in a row that I had done that, and the second time in a week. And what was really embarrassing about that was, I didn't remember the first time.
Leanna L: (laughs) I remember that.
Mike V: And I realized, "Something's wrong here." I didn't get defensive or anything. I felt bad. And I reached out to a friend of mine, who knows me well and she always just tells me like it is. And she kindly let me know that I was lacking in boundaries.
And it was a very honest moment for me, because I teach about boundaries, I talk about them a lot, and I personally thought I was doing well with them, but I realized I wasn't because I was overwhelmed. And it was this opportunity for me to stop doing stuff, saying no to certain things.
And I want to be even more honest. The reason I wasn't saying no is because in my career I have been really excelling lately. And when you excel in your career, in anything actually, there's more opportunities that come through the door, more people want to talk to you. And guess what? That felt so good for my ego. Hmm. My ego ...
Leanna L: (laughs) Pat yourself on the back.
Mike V: Yeah. My ego just felt so good. And I realized that that was really causing a problem.
So it's important now in this stage of the reset to figure out what you need to stop doing. What do you need to say no to as far as time and energy? Once again, we're going to have an energy episode coming up that's got a lot of information in it. So be sure to listen to that.
One of the things that I like to do is create rules, rules around people. I have had to say no to certain people.
Now there's a wonderful book you might want to check out called The Power of a Positive No. It's written by a hostage negotiator. I forgot his name. And the cool thing about the book, it brings out a very important thing, that we often don't say no to people because we think it will damage the relationship, but we end up saying yes and resenting the fact that we said yes.
So this book teaches you how to learn to say no in a way that actually builds a relationship. It's a very powerful book. It's really helped me big time. But certain people saying no means just not responding to them when they reach out, just not talking to them, keeping my distance and not initiating conversation.
The other thing that comes up is rules around everyday tasks, especially email. Email, email, email. And even text messages. We get a lot of that stuff. And if you don't have rules around it, you'll get to the point where it's overwhelmed.
Pretty much every day, I have a thing that I strive for called Inbox Zero, where my assistant and I zero out my inbox. Nothing in there. Greatest feeling in the world, but we had to learn to have rules around it; certain things I don't respond to, and she does. We have templates for other things.
Another thing is social media and notifications. I love talking about this because it's so on everyone's minds. I hear people tell me all the time, "Social media stresses me out." And I'm going to add to that the news.
I want to be honest with you; no one is telling you to pick up your phone and look at social media. That's a choice. And when you are in between activities and you start intentionally scrolling, that's a choice. And if you don't like what you're seeing on social media, most sites have an unfollow or unfriend button.
Leanna L: Can I just cut in there to say that some of you small business owners and freelancers are social media managers?
Mike V: Whoops.
Leanna L: So you may not be able to just cut off social media, but Mike's point about rules and boundaries is super, super important, because the second that you don't have to be on social media and you don't have to be constantly scrolling the news, doom scrolling, as they call it, and just scrolling on your phone maybe as a coping mechanism or just to kill time in between projects, you don't have to, you can say no to that. You can set those boundaries around your work and personal social media usage.
So yeah, I just wanted to throw that in there.
Mike V: No. Thank you for that reminder.
Leanna L: That's something that in the groups that I'm a part of, entrepreneurs and freelancers, that's been a rough thing for people during COVID, is being unable to stay away from that. And I've dealt with that myself too. So give yourself a little bit of grace if it's work related social media or news-related stuff, but remember, off-hours, you don't have to.
Mike V: Right. And with that is notifications. On most mobile devices, there are these things called notifications. On computers too, for email. And people just put them on. And sometimes I know people, the phone is just beep, beep, you know, doing notifications all the time.
When you have notifications happening like that, it's distracting you from other things. Might might even be with people. So I make it a point to have no notifications on my phone unless I need to for a particular thing. This allows me to focus. I actually even shut the ringer off on my phone. So if you're calling me, it's got to go to voicemail first so I know who it is and what it's about. I just don't pick up the phone. I call people, but that's an important thing.
So that is really important, to stop doing stuff. What's the next step for you in this?
Leanna L: So the next step here is Exercise your mind, body and spirit.
Now, COVID has been obviously very stressful, but I think really one positive, if you can call it that, is that it taught people how they act under pressure, under duress, in emergency mode, and what they kind of need to make it through the day when they're under pressure.
So as an example, I have PTSD, and one way my PTSD manifests is it makes it really difficult for me to go outside and to interact with people daily, you know, on a daily basis, and to just be super active. And ironically, I love being active. I love traveling and I love going out places, but sometimes my PTSD, especially when I'm really stressed out or anxious, it just kind of really makes me want to stay indoors. And of course, again, I also deal with anxiety and depression. So that all kind of like, I want to just be in a cocoon all the time.
So I really struggled to exercise during COVID. Definitely got my COVID 20 extra pounds or so from that. My 2020 20, I guess they call it.
Mike V: Oh, I’ve never heard that!
Leanna L: But it's still been a valuable lesson for me.
So take a look at the last year or two, you know, maybe 2021 was a little different for you, and maybe do another brain dump there. Write down what it was that really made a difference to your health and your workday, or just think about what stood out to you. And this will kind of help you get a sense of how you can plan forward for yourself and your business. Because what you're trying to do is you're trying to put yourself in the best position to work and reward yourself in a healthy way and manage your mental health in a healthy way.
So like I said, mind, body, spirit. So let's take each of those separately.
So, Mind. You're definitely not just thinking about mental health. That's incredibly important, but you're also thinking about creative pursuits. You're thinking about hobbies, you know, how can you engage your brain outside of work? So if you got into baking, if you got into painting, if your kids were home, if you really, really miss socializing with friends, think about how you can really prioritize that moving forward.
One thing that I have been trying to do more of is spending more time with my friends, and not just to socialize, but having activities, shared activities with them as well. Because I'm an introvert, so I'm very much a one-on-one type person, and being able to meet with single friends for coffee one-on-one, go out with them and their dog on walks and just make that part of my daily routine, has made a huge difference to my mental health.
Spiritual. Oh, sorry, the next one is Body! So general exercise, I mean, how physically active were you able to be this year, and even 2020 as well? Exercise can be a huge benefit to mental health. So how did that make a difference to you and how can you move that forward?
One thing that I've been trying to get better about is yoga, because it makes a huge difference to me, I love it. And I also did a bit of swimming this year too, which was also awesome, though I liked it a little less than yoga. It was definitely more challenging for me. But again, it got me out of the house. It got me spending time with friends and other people. And so it kind of filled multiple boxes, ticked multiple boxes in a way.
And spiritual as well. Don't want to neglect that because that could look like a lot of different things. It could look like meditation, it could look like yoga as well, actually. If you're religious, it could look like devotions or prayer and even going to church.
So many churches stopped doing services, at least in person, for the longest time. And many are still kind of trying to get back to that. So if you haven't found a way to connect with your religious community or your religion for some time, maybe it's time to start thinking about doing that again.
Mike V: And if you're an atheist listening to this, sometimes it's a turnoff to hear about spirituality. And one thing I'd just remind you, if you are an atheist, is finding activities to do that allow you to find purpose and meaning in life and see the bigger picture. It might be even volunteering or something like that. So keep in mind that spiritual really can apply to anyone, even if you are an atheist.
Leanna L: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And again, you know, going back to the mind portion and the creative hobbies, maybe that's spiritual for you. Maybe painting or photography is spiritual for you. Just anything where you could connect with something bigger outside of yourself and experience that sense of calm and relaxation. I love taking long walks because not only is that great exercise, but it really, really gives me that sense of calm.
So all of these can make a huge difference to how you run your business. Why? Because healthy business owners mean healthy businesses. I feel like we're going to say this a lot on this show. And scheduling time for these non-work pursuits, they're going to keep your mind and body healthy.
Mike V: Yeah.
And the final T in the stress-free reset, or the fifth step, the T, is Track your time. For years, I had this sign on my office wall that said, "Measurement eliminates argument." And our coach reminds me that in life you can manage what you can measure.
And measuring your time is so important because it tells you the truth. There's this feature on my iPhone that shows you automatically, each day, how much time you've been on the phone and where you spent the time. And I said to myself recently, "As part of a system for my leadership, I'm actually going to start looking at that every day because it's going to tell me the ugly truth about some things." And I'm just going to be honest with you right now; yesterday it was 10 hours on the mobile device. And I said to myself, "That's not good right there. That is not good."
So, it's really important to measure your time. There are time tracking apps that are out there. One is Toggl. Another one that I use is called ATracker.
And the important thing is this: once you start doing...I guarantee you, if you do this just for two days, track your time, you're going to learn so much about yourself really quickly. In fact, you're going to see what adjustments you need to make really quickly. It's very honest, itt's very brutal. And that's a theme here as part of this reset, is just really getting honest with yourself.
So in summary, I just want to...re, re-re
Leanna L: Resummarize!
Mike V: ...Resummarize the stress-free reset for my cute little acronym, RESET! R stands for recalibrate yourself; E, evaluate your business; S, stop doing stuff; E, exercise your mind, body, and spirit; T, track your time moving forward.
And I really encourage you to do this. It's a new year. It's a brand new year, fresh start, and it's a great opportunity just to put yourself in a better space and put your business in a better space so that you can bring more to the world and get more out of life.
Leanna L: Yeah. And remember, it's a reset and it's starting with a clean slate, but it's also taking all this valuable information from the past and learning from that and carrying it forward so you can develop a better, healthier business and have a healthier life.
Mike V: Yeah. So are you looking forward to a good year, Leanna?
Leanna L: I am. I think 2022 is going to be even better.
Mike V: Awesome. Well, I'll see you next year.
Leanna L: See you next year!
Mike V: Bye.
Leanna L: Bye, guys!
Mike V: Bye, everyone!