Ep #22: 10 Ways to Start Feeling Good Right Now

Just because you think a thought, doesn’t make it true. Thoughts are part of the process of just figuring life out. And sometimes, we have negative thoughts about that. And sometimes, we have positive thoughts about that. But thoughts do not define us, okay. What we do with those thoughts, however, is where our power is.

Welcome to Mental Health Remix, a show for ambitious humans who are ready to feel, think, and be different. If you want to stop struggling with perfectionism, build better relationships, and connect with yourself and your potential, this is the place for you…

Here’s your host, educator, coach and licensed psychotherapist, Nicole Symcox…

Hey, hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 22. Today, we are going to be talking about different things that you can implement in your life to feel good. So, I’m actually going to go through about 10, so we’re going to make this episode strictly about the different things that you can do for yourself to help you feel good.

So, let’s get into it. Number one is take time for yourself. Self-care reboots your emotional systems and it keeps you functioning at your best. You have to make time and space to recharge yourself, okay? And there is a huge difference between recharging yourself and numbing out.

So, doing things that just numb you out will not have the same effect that true self-care does. Numbing does not recharge our batteries. It’s just the absence of a positive or negative emotion. And so, self-care or taking time for ourselves to refuel or reboot our emotional systems replenishes our internal resources and it makes us feel good again, or feel like we have capacity to show up in the world as our best selves.

And so, this can be done in short increments of time every day. You don’t have to always make it hours and hours. Sometimes, it’s as simple as taking 20 minutes a day for yourself or 10 minutes a day or five minutes a day. But really, making whatever amount of minutes you’ve chosen really focusing on filling yourself back up again with whatever you’ve chosen to focus on for those five, 10, 15, 20 minutes.

You need to refuel your heart and brain with good things so you can keep giving out good things. When we don’t do this, we get exhausted on several levels, but especially we get exhausted emotionally. And this is particularly true if you are a parent or a caregiver or you have a job where you’re in service to others.

You know, we have to make sure that we are fueling ourselves so that we can continue to show up in the best ways possible. And so again, this can be done in whatever amount of minutes you want to choose, five, 10, et cetera, what I already said. Or, you know, maybe you just don’t have the ability to do that every day, and so maybe there’s one day throughout the week where you can take an hour or two just to yourself. But whatever it is, find a rhythm and find a way to be able to make self-care, taking some time for yourself, a priority.

Number two, managing your mind. Many times, we go on autopilot and we just let our thoughts run our show, and it is incredibly important to pay attention to your thoughts and what emotions they are triggering. Just because you think a thought, doesn’t make us true. Thoughts are part of the process of just figuring life out.

And sometimes, we have negative thoughts about that. And sometimes, we have positive thoughts about that. But thoughts do not define us, okay. What we do with those thoughts, however, is where our power is. So, for example, if you get depressed over a job interview that didn’t go well, you might be tempted to think bad about yourself and you may think thoughts such as, “I’ll never get a job.”

Well, let’s be real here. That’s not necessarily true, but that’s where our brains tend to go. When we get discouraged, we tend to go into nevers and shoulds and always. And those aren’t good places to be in because they put absolutes on things that are not necessarily true.

What is true in this example is the interview didn’t go well. It didn’t go the way you had hoped. And you are allowed to have a feeling about that, but you don’t want to go so far down the track that you are so discouraged from doing any more interviews because you’ve decided that one interview didn’t go well, so that makes you a terrible interviewer and you don’t want to go forward and try again, okay.

We don’t want to do that. We want to just notice our thoughts, but we don’t always have to attach to them. Thoughts are just thoughts. They’re passing through as you process through all the many things that life is throwing at you. And it’ so, so important that we manage our minds, keeping track of where your thoughts are taking you because if we allow this to happen without any of us managing it or intervening, it’s going to go down negative tracks.

The brain has a negativity bias. You’re going to go negative unless you intercept those thoughts and reframe them and try to work with your mind in healthy ways.

Number three, give your emotions space. Believe it or not, emotions are not able to last that long. Have you ever noticed, when you are crying, you can only sustain crying for so long before you either feel better, or you’re just worn out and exhausted? And then maybe you cry again later. But emotions are not things to be afraid of. It’s what we do with those emotions that are important.

Otherwise, emotions just need space to process and to be. It’s just information and it’s a response to something that is happening inside of you. But burying emotions and not giving them the space they need to breathe actually makes them deeper and it can sometimes make them more unmanageable.

So, even in a small increment of time of giving yourself maybe 10 minutes a day to feel, think, journal, or artistically express how you feel can be really beneficial. Sometimes, it can be a way to detox the day. And so if you’ve been holding onto your emotions for a while, this could be hard at first because there’s going to be a lot to unpack, and so 10 minutes may not be enough necessarily or you might need some support and help in that process.

But what I am saying is allow yourself the time and space to be a feeling human. You are a feeling human. Every human has feelings and emotions, okay. it’s just whether or not we’re acknowledging them. And so give yourself some space to just allow emotions to be without judging them.

Once you start a practice of acknowledging your emotions and really giving it the space that it needs, sometimes these emotional responses decrease, and so we want to avoid creating emotional buildup because, when we do that, that’s when we get lost in emotions and that’s when emotions feel like they last a really long time. And it’s largely because we’ve been storing them in our nervous system, in our brains, in our memories for such a long time that there’s a little bit of a stuck feeling that can go with that.

And so, give yourself some space. You’re a human. You’re allowed to feel. You’re allowed to cry. You’re allowed to express yourself in safe ways, okay. So, sometimes, giving yourself a little bit of time to just journal or artistically express or go on a walk, do something with that emotional energy that makes you feel better.

Number four is make sure you have space to connect with others. Now, when it comes to connecting with others, there is healthy connection and there is unhealthy connection. When connection to others is unhealthy, we tend to feel unheard, stressed, and overwhelmed, right? And probably upset.

Unhealthy connection doesn’t feel good. So when we have a healthy connection to someone, we tend to feel more grounded, present, and available when they’re around, and largely because we don’t have to utilize a whole bunch of defense mechanisms to protect ourselves from their next move.

When it comes to dealing with unhealthy people, it can, a lot of times, feel like an emotional rollercoaster. And it’s exhausting and it’s straining. And we, a lot of times, need to do some repair after we’ve been with them. And so, we want to be very aware of how we are giving our time to.

And so, make a conscious effort to be with people that are healthy for you, that actually make you feel good, not stressed and bad about yourself. We have a choice with how much time we want to spend with whoever it is we want to spend with. And so I’m encouraging you to make healthy people a priority in your life.

And if you’re dealing with any kind of anxiety disorder or depression disorder or PTSD, sometimes, those disorders can make us feel like we want to isolate, like we don’t want to be around anyone. And so part of healing in that is that’s the disorder talking, and you don’t want the disorder to run your life.

So, even though depression may be saying, “I don’t want to be around everyone,” there is another part of you that really needs the validation and connection with other healthy human beings. And so sometimes, we have to push through that and invite ourselves into a new experience and be with people, even when our sadness or anxiety or depression is telling us a different story, because connection with others in healthy ways can be extremely helpful to how good we feel in life.

Number five, volunteering. I bet you didn’t think I would say that in a million years, but yes, doing good for others actually does good for you. There were studies done on this around depression, that people that were giving back actually started experiencing less depressive symptoms.

Now this isn’t a perfect science necessarily. But there were some studies done that when we give back and do good for other people in healthy ways, it actually comes back to us. And so when you do this, it’s expanding your capacity for feeling good. And I think, when we volunteer, it gives us a sense of purpose, like we are putting out something good in the world and we’re making an impact.

And so those are all really important things, especially when we’re wrestling with our identity or anxiety or depression or we’re trying to kind of find our way, volunteering and participating in community and giving back to the world in positive ways actually has a pretty significant impact on our mental health in positive ways.

And so I would encourage you, if there is an area that you’re interested in, that you kind of seek our opportunities to get involved, and maybe you can make new friends there and maybe do some good in the world. So that is also something. And I know that’s also hard because we’re all so overscheduled, we’re all so busy. To fit in another thing probably feels a little bit overwhelming.

So, whatever it is that you maybe decide that you want to be part of, just make sure it’s something you can commit to. Maybe t’s an hour a day at a food bank, or maybe you become a mentor to someone else. But kind of figure out that thing that lights you up and does some good in the world. It actually helps fuel feeling good about ourselves and about others.

Number six, eat in a way that nourishes your body. We all have different responses to foods. Some people can eat anything and others have food intolerances or allergies or difficulty digesting certain things. So they have to be really careful about what they eat.

Try to incorporate eating in a way that honors your body. Sugar is super tempting to all of us, especially when we’re stressed out. When we are stressed, we tend to reach for sugar, caffeine, or alcohol. Those tend to be the three things the majority of people reach for to “destress.” The problem with those three things is they don’t actually destress your body.

And so some people are incredibly sensitive to sugar. Like, once they start eating sugar, it can sometimes create like a ravenous effect. Like, once they have a little bit, they need a whole, whole lot. And then other people can handle it just fine. So what I’m saying is know your body. What foods can you eat that make you feel nourished, that make you feel good, that make you show up in the world in a way that feels balanced and healthy?

So, this isn’t about dieting. This is strictly about choosing foods that empower your body to feel healthy so you can feel good physically.

Number seven, gratitude. Gratitude promotes a healthy mindset and feeling good towards yourself and others. Your brain focuses on what you feed it. feed it gratitude, even if it’s for the small stuff like a sunrise or a walk in nature. Nothing is too small to have gratitude for.

In the same way, express gratitude and kindness to others. When we spread kindness, it catches on. You have to remember, just as you’re caught up in your own world, so are other people. And we really never know what someone else is going through. We might just see them as someone who’s in line at the grocery store and they’re just buying milk. But really, they might be dealing with something really hard in their lives.

And I think, when we take opportunities to be kind to people, and even when we’re not expecting anything back, we don’t always want to do things with expectations. Don’t do kind things for people and expect something back because it’s a huge letdown if they can’t meet you there.

All you’re doing is you are doing your part in letting another person know that love and kindness exists in the world and not everyone’s an asshole who lives in it. And so these are good things that we have power over, because again, when we’re kind to others, it does come back to us. And so in the same way, when we adopt a gratitude mindset, we’re purposefully looking for the good things in our lives.

Even if a million things are going wrong, as long as we are focusing on one or two or three, even if they’re super, super small, all of this feeds a feel-good mindset. And so that’s kind of what I mean by it. I don’t mean just be happy all the time and super excited and grateful and all of this stuff. This can be done in very small tangible ways and in a way that can spark kindness in the world around you.

Number eight, letting go of the idea that you can control everything. You can’t control everything, but you can control your reactions to things, okay. Do your best effort in life and be open to the fact that things may not turn out the way you want them to, and that’s okay. Learn to be flexible and deal with what’s in front of you, rather than trying to control every element of your life.

A lot of us try to put a plan in place and sometimes our plans work out beautifully and we love that. But more times than not, we have a plan and 50 things go wrong. So the more you can adopt a flexible mindset and being willing to kind of come up with other options or other solutions in the midst of implementing whatever plan this was is going to be a lot easier rather than getting super angry and frustrated that things are not going the way you want them to because you have an idea that you should be able to control everything.

Living in a controlling state of mind is incredibly stressful for you and it’s probably stressful for other people around you. You want to try to let some of the things go. Not everything needs monumental control. Sometimes it comes with implementing a strategic plan, putting forth our best effort, and then being really flexible and resilient when things don’t go our way and changing courses.

What I mean by changing courses, like maybe we need to change the plan. Maybe we need to change some options. But letting go of this idea that you have to be in control of everything, because you don’t. it’s going to exhaust you and stress you out. Pick your battles. What are the things you need to stay in control of and what are the things you can let go of?

Number nine is movement, alright. Exercise boosts your mental health because it releases endorphins. Endorphins are the feel-good hormones in your body. Your body was designed to move. That’s why you have muscles.

This modern-day lifestyle that we all have, which most of us are behind a computer screen or we’re sitting all day due to technology, it doesn’t help our bodies feel good. We were designed to move. So, make conscious effort to include some form of movement in your life.

So again, as we talked about earlier, emotions live in the body. The more you can move your physical energy around, the better. It depends on your personal abilities and what feels good to you, but I want you to think about what makes your body feel good in movement? Is it simply stretching for 20 minutes a day? Is it taking a walk outside? Is it running on the treadmill?

What is that thing that makes you feel healthy in your body and good in your mind when you are done with it? And so, this isn’t about, like, hardcore exercise. This is about embracing your body’s ability to move and celebrating that and doing an activity that really embraces that and allows you to feel good when you do it.

So, change your mindset around this. This is not about exercise. This is about making your body feel good and engaging in an activity that promotes that for you.

Number 10, find a routine at bedtime that really helps to wind you down and calm your mind. So lavender oil can be really helpful for this. Magnesium, I think, is sometimes known to be helpful, but you have to check with your doctor about what you can take and what you can’t take.

But, you know, do you want to drink chamomile tea before bed? Is journaling or is reading a book or is it like having a conversation? But find a way to get into a healthy bedtime routine so that you can fall asleep and stay asleep and get as much sleep as possible. There is nothing that makes us feel worse than when we don’t get enough sleep or we have disrupted sleep, meaning we wake up all night long.

So, make sure you’re taking the time. You know, do some trial and error and figure out for yourself what can I do that is going to promote me falling asleep quickly and staying asleep?

Alright, my friends. This was a little bit of a different episode for us. So, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you found these 10 things really helpful to feeling good. And if you loved today’s episode, you can sign up on my website and we will let you know every single week when we release a new episode and what it’s going to be on. And you can do that on my website at nicolesymcox.com, there is a sign up link right in the show notes and to the side of it.

And lastly, if strong emotions came up for you while listening to this podcast, make sure you seek out mental health support in your local state of residence. There is not shame or blame in getting mental health support from a licensed professional in your local state of residence. It’s probably the best thing you can do for yourselves.

Alright, my friends, I’m rooting for you. Make it a great week.

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Mental Health Remix. If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more, go to nicolesymcox.com.

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