S3 E14 Trigger Busters for Better Sleep

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Good evening and welcome to the Comforting Voice Podcast. I'm your host Shasta Ray, and I'm joined in the studio tonight by Emmy the Minnie Macaw. She's over on the bird stand enjoying a snack, and the giant dog is outside of the studio door. He's breathing heavily like Darth Vader once again, but he feels like he's contributing by guarding the door. So there you go. How are you? How is your weekend? I am just blown away on a regular basis at how fast time flies. I just completed the Friday night episode, here it is Tuesday again, and before you know it, it's gonna be Friday. And speaking of which, I have some really great ideas for reading material for the Friday night bedtime stories. Maybe I'll mix it in a little bit after we're done with our current book. So, ideas are coming around, and tonight we've got a really, really good episode for you. I think it's something everyone's gonna be able to appreciate, and we're gonna have some really fun stuff and positive ways of looking at real-world chaotic stuff that triggers us. Oh my gosh, what do we do about that? No one's helping us. We gotta pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Lon and I are tag teaming it, he kind of has his presentation, I'm gonna follow up with some really fun stuff, kind of in the same direction, a little bit different, but uh it gives you some variety that way. So before we get too deep into this, let's all just take a minute and make sure we're comfortable. I think that's most important. So settle in, kick back, relax. Make sure you've got everything you need for a good night's sleep, and that your listening device is set at that perfect volume, you've got a bottle of water, whatever you need, in case you wake up in the middle of the night, that sort of thing. All the rest of you, you should be doing something similar. Make sure that you're comfortable right now. Make sure you're enjoying the moment away from the stress and chaos of the regular world. It doesn't matter if you're just here to hang out, maybe you're here to doze off. Give yourself a really good productive stretch. Just really reach into that stretch, arms, legs, all the way into the fingers and toes, and then wiggle the fingers and toes. Release that stretch. Oh my gosh, that does so much for you, more than you can imagine. Just that little tiny bit. After you do that, take a good deep productive breath of air. You're gonna inhale to about the count of four. Then you're gonna want to hold it to about the count of four and exhale to about the count of six. Adjust that to your needs, adjust that to your comfort levels, and do that two or three times. Very good for you. It follows up that stretch with another way of releasing stress and tension and toxicity that we collect all through the day, every day. It just hits us. Even if we're not around a lot of people, it still hits us. So it's a really good tool to have and use regularly. Even if you're not going to bed, you can do that whenever you need. And do you know what the beautiful thing about that is? That's universal. Everybody can do that. It doesn't matter where you live or who you are, that's something we all have in common. Now, speaking of universal and global and stuff like that, I think it's time for join the fun. So let's see who the next three countries are on our listener base and who's joining the fun this week. Ah, looks like first up is Bangladesh. Bangladesh is home to the world's largest river delta where multiple major rivers meet and create an incredibly rich and fertile landscape. Bangladesh has one of the largest mangrove forests on earth, helping protect coastlines and support unique wildlife. Bangladesh celebrates Language Day as a national holiday, honoring the importance of language and cultural identity. So if you're joining the fund from Bangladesh, you represent resilience, natural richness, and a deep respect for language and identity. Okay, before we hit our next one on the list, I think I should mention that the pickle chicken is now on the table and she's doing things like that. So you might hear some weird noises. So the next country that's been joining the fun is United Arab Emirates. The United Arab Emirates built one of the world's first indoor ski slopes in the desert, creating snow in one of the hottest regions on Earth. That's really cool. The country has one of the most diverse populations in the world with people from over two hundred nationalities living and working together. The United Arab Emirates has grown rapidly in just a few decades, transforming into a global hub for travel, business, and innovation. So if you're joining the fund from the United Arab Emirates, you represent bold vision, global connection, and the ability to turn the unexpected into reality. And last on our list for this week is Austria. Austria is home to one of the world's oldest zoos in the world, still operating today after being founded in the 1700s. Austria generates a large portion of its electricity from renewable sources, especially hydropower. And Austria has a longstanding coffee house culture where people traditionally take time to sit, relax, and enjoy conversation. So if you're joining the fun from Austria, you represent lasting tradition, thoughtful living, and a balance between history and sustainability. We'll explore three more countries from our listener base next Tuesday. And just really quick, we'll just rush through this. I knew that Emmy was going to be sitting down here guarding the cigar box as she is, and I already drew the tea tag and fortune cookie slip. So let's just read that really quick so you have your thought for the week. Your tea tag Let your heart speak to others' hearts. Wonderful advice. And your fortune cookie slip. You will receive some prestigious prize or award within the month. Oh that's wonderful news, I'm very happy for you. And your lucky numbers off of the back of the fortune cookie slip for anyone that likes to play the lottery or other number games. Six, eight, twenty-five, thirty-three, forty-five, and forty-seven. We will rapidly get this into the archive receptacle. And it looks like the pickle chicken is starting to give up the chase on the quest for the archive receptacle. But she is giving me an interesting dirty look right now. Alright, moving right along. Let's just take a minute. Forgot a minute with Lawn.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Once again, I find myself in the wind in the desert southwest. You can perhaps hear a whole bunch of birds. They are coming to life out here. Last we spoke, it was about that wind and triggers, and the analogy of wind being one of them, and to overpower that trigger, what we need to do is get out of the wind. Now we leave triggers and ego at the door and move forward on life's game board. Spoken another way, do the best you can with the light you have to see by. Action matters more than perfection. It reminds us that to procrastinate often stems from waiting for more resources, better conditions, or even greater confidence. Instead, we must learn to use the key to progress, which is to begin immediately, use whatever tools we have, whatever skills or opportunities are available at our hand. Another way to word it, do what you can with what you have where you are. This emphasizes resourcefulness over abundance. In other words, using what you have creatively can overcome limitations. Also, momentum through action. Small steps build confidence and lead to larger achievements. Focus on the present. That one's very important. If you ask any dog what time it is, every one of them will answer No. Your current situation is a starting point, not a barrier, no matter what point it is. Practical applications of this information. The principle can be applied in various areas of life. Career, for example, start projects with your current skills and network and make progress that matters along the way as you progress. Learning. Use free or accessible resources like libraries, online tutorials, even mentors. Health. Begin small daily habits such as walking or simple exercises without waiting for a gym or equipment. In relationships, we should learn to communicate openly and nurture connections with the time and energy that we have at the present moment. And now, finally, why this resonates to all of us today? In this fast-paced, hyper-connected world, it's very easy to feel unprepared or inadequate. Social media and comparisons amplify this feeling. Timeless wisdom lies in the thoughts of simplicity, inclusivity, and empowerment. In other words, anyone can act, no matter regardless of resources or circumstances. By starting where you are, you transform challenges into opportunities and gradually build momentum towards your goals. In essence, stop waiting, start acting, and make the most of your present situation, turning small efforts into meaningful progress. Thrive.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

Oh yeah, get yourself out of the wind. Good advice. Thanks, Lon. I'm gonna take just a little bit different spin on that tonight, and I'm gonna give you a bunch of ideas to help with things like uh kind of anti-anxiety kind of tools, anti-depression, uh trigger busters, that sort of thing. And you know, ironically, today I posted something on my uh Facebook feed and I can't remember the verbiage of it, but it was basically pointing out the reality that a lot of people that have a balanced financial life and they are blessed with a wonderful job that's meeting their needs, they don't seem to have the same levels of extreme anxiety, stress, burnout, and depression as some of us that are really, you know, fighting the fight every day to keep our heads above water. And what is there that's left over to, you know, pull yourself up by the bootstraps with? Where are the bootstraps? Oh my gosh, you're just being taxed for everything, every direction, and everything's crazy expensive, and we're all just living in this kind of fight or flight, you know, survival mode. So there's a few things you can do, and the these aren't cures for it. I'm not gonna say this is gonna solve all your problems, but one thing that I've noticed that's particularly true is first off, when we're pinching those pennies, we don't have a lot of money left over for the fun stuff, and we start losing sight of that. And all of our problems start becoming our, you know, main focus. That's gonna trigger us, it's gonna get us edgy, we snap at people, all kinds of stuff comes from this. So I'm gonna give you some tools and ideas to bust up the blues in that way and give your mind a little bit of balance and release in different ways for when we don't have you know enough money to take a four-week vacation or you know, afford therapy for several weeks on end. Sometimes we just need something for our mind to just stop and do something else besides churn away at our problems. But how do we do that when we're on a budget? So I'm gonna give you some ideas of things that you can do, different directions of stuff, and yeah, you know, some of this is gonna make a difference. Here again, it might not cure your problems, it may not solve your problems, but it's gonna give you balance and it's gonna give your mind something to focus on to counteract some of that stress and the anxiety, depression, boredom, triggers, stuff that makes us anxious and you know, reactive. Counteract all that with something a little bit more positive, and it doesn't even have to be crazy. So, one thing I like to engage in is hobbies. But people have gotten really away from hobbies these days, and then there's perceptions that they take a lot of supplies, a lot of money, a lot of time to get good at something, maybe it involves a lot of intense focus, you know, that's taking a class. Uh-uh. I got some ideas that you can engage in, and I'm gonna actually go out on a limb here and give the example of Lawn. He finds all kinds of supplies to make little miniatures, and one thing he does is make these little miniature Christmas trees and then plants them around his town for people to find. And he just does that to have fun. He gets some little paints out and he finds the supplies in nature and he puts it all together, and it is just amazing. People go nuts watching him do this online and stuff. So you can do all sorts of stuff to you know boost your own mood, to turn around some of those problematic things that go on on the interior of our heads. So I came up with some trigger busters for better sleep, and these are some simple ways to calm your mind, reset your mood, and kind of take your power back, you know, especially in a chaotic world when we're stressed and we got all these things going on. So keep in mind that we're living in a world that's basically designed to trigger us in various ways. We've got notifications on our phone and our computers going off constantly for all different kinds of things. We've got stress, we're bombarded with bad news, toxic news. We have expectations of fear from all of that that we fixate on. It just keeps going on and on, right? Over time, those little triggers stack up. And here again, this episode is not about curing anxiety, curing depression, fixing triggers permanently when maybe you need to explore some, you know, where they come from in the first place and get a grip on why they're even occurring. This episode is about taking back little tiny pieces of control. So think of this as like a pressure release valve or a mental palate cleanser kind of an effort. It helps interrupt spirals. So what we're actually fighting, and here again, this isn't going to be your extreme triggers, but it can play into triggers, it can amplify triggers, uh, boredom, overstimulation, uh, you haven't learned control, lack of control, mental fatigue. Oh, that's a big one, and we're all burned out these days. And when your brain has nothing grounding to hold on to, it defaults to stress loops. So our triggers get bigger, and our problems get bigger, and our anxiety gets bigger. You see where I'm going with this? So the goal is simple. Give your brain a few little easy wins, give yourself a few little tiny victories, a few little good things to grab a hold of, and it helps counterbalance some of that stress. It gives your hands something to do. It gives your attention somewhere safe to land instead of those toxic places to land constantly. So here's some easy, low stress hobbies that don't take a huge history of learning or skill sets or supply, you know, collecting, that sort of thing. My favorite one, and it's why I started my coloring book series, is coloring. How often do you catch yourself like maybe on hold on a phone call or you're bored at your computer or something, and you're you're writing on a notepad, and then you just start scribbling in the O's and the E's and you fill in you know little spaces and stuff. We all catch ourselves doing stuff like that at some point in time or another, and that's not masterful works of art. That's um a totally different reason for coloring, and so that's why I made my coloring books. They're bold and easy style, they're large print, and they're just an easy way to let go with your mind and fill in space so you can get into that next little space you're gonna color in, onto the next page, whatever. What I've noticed are the the fine detail coloring books or the ones with really tiny spots and repeating patterns, when it's too tiny of details, it gets very stressful. You get decision fatigue, you get perfection pressure, there's these tiny details that you start you know getting critical of, and maybe you don't want to focus on such tiny little spaces with a you know a fine point pen. I find that the bold and easy style, it gives you a different type of stress release. You've got these large shapes, clean lines, there's no overthinking. You can just finish something quickly, you get that instant, you know, gratification out of it, and you can just fill in space and move on. You get on with it, and it's not a masterpiece. It's not something that you feel like you have to do all this fine perfection on. And if you're out of lines, who cares? It's a simple picture, right? So there's this whole different mindset that helps your mind release and let go, and that's why I started my coloring books. And I have different themes, and I've got a few more I'm gonna be releasing here in a very short amount of time. If you're interested, comfortingvoice.com, there's a coloring book link, check it out. Good stuff. But uh, here again, what happens is you fill in a space, you move on, you repeat, your head can let go, and it's like meditation with movement. You're not trying to create art, you're not trying to be perfect or learn perfect shading. I found that even some of the um coloring book promotional artists out there that are on TikTok and YouTube and stuff like that, they start doing these coloring book classes, how you can color better. It starts getting very stressful. Color to let your mind go, have fun with it, get on to the next space, get on to the next picture, the next page, and it's a whole different level of relaxation, it really is. And um, what it is is you're you're creating completion cycles that way, and that's another win. You're taking something through to the end in a very easy manner, and you're going, wow, I did it. And your mind processes it like that. If you're someone that feels like you've got a brown thumb, but you'd like maybe a hobby where you're growing something, African violets are a really easy way to get started, very inexpensive, and it's almost like a weed. They're very easy to grow, very easy to get into, lots of information online, and you can just get a leaf cutting from someone that's got a plant and grow yourself a whole plant from that one leaf very easily. Lots of fun, and there's hundreds of color varieties and styles of plants. It's a very low expense way to engage in gardening or have a living thing in your presence. And the other nice thing about African violets, they're not toxic to your pets should your pet decide to taste one. It's a very gentle responsibility. You feel really good about taking care of that little plant and then watching it grow. They're fun to have. There's some other zero skill hobbies out there that people can engage in, and you just don't even need that much startup. You can do puzzles, and those can start anywhere from one hundred pieces on up to ten thousand pieces. Sticker book therapy. There's a new trend of sticker books, and they're a lot of fun. They give you a little diagram, a little background image, and a couple of sheets of little tiny detail images, and you put them all into the background and you have a whole image out of it. No talent needed. They even give you the tweezers so you can peel them off the sheet and put them in place. Another thing that maybe you don't want to engage in a hobby, but you're in a funk, do some rearranging. Get into the habit of organizing for maybe ten minutes a day. You don't even have to put a big time commitment into it. Just pick a space in your house, get it done, move on with your day. And each day you make your house just a little bit better with very little time commitment and very little stress involved. You're gonna de-stress as you go and you see that improvement too. Simple journaling, writing, reading books, listening to music. If you still have an old turntable, you can go buy records at garage sales and thrift stores. Basically, if you think of something to do to just kind of occupy your head and your space, it should be something fun, it should be something that you don't mind doing, and it does not create stress, it doesn't feel like work to engage in. And there's just all kinds of stuff you can do. If you like making things, bookmarks are easy to make and very inexpensive, you can do it with scraps you have around the house. You can just doodle and keep a doodle journal. You can get a deck of cards and you can just play different types of solitaire in the moment. And it's an interesting distraction, it's not even a hobby. Another thing, some people hear the word hobby and they're just like, oh no, that's just not my thing. I am not gonna sit down and just do something for the sake of doing it that's just weird to me, they can't wrap their head around it, whatever reason they may have. Something else you can do is movement without intimidation. Get a little more movement in your day. A lot of us start feeling very intimidated about the word exercise, but sometimes what we really need is to move our body in different ways. So if you want to do stuff that doesn't seem exhausting, doesn't involve a gym, there's no pressure, you're not gonna have to worry about you're such a beginner that you're embarrassed, anything like that. Sometimes we just need to engage our muscles so that we don't, you know, get too stiff and too tightened up. We need a little bit of flexibility and movement to stay healthy. It doesn't have to be exhausting. One thing I've found is if you've got an Amazon Prime Video membership, or similar, even if you've got Netflix, some of those, they all have exercise videos pretty much these days. So find yourself chair yoga, find yourself some stretching routines, find yourself a very gentle beginner yoga routine, or something where it's a standing movement workout of sorts. It doesn't have to be hard or super heavy duty. Sometimes what we need is to move and move our body, stretch a little bit. This helps the mind, and it really does have a connection to our mood and how we process our moods in many ways. It also helps regulate our breathing, gets us more of that oxygen going on. Even when you're doing very gentle movements, it's very good for your breathing. If that's not your gig, think about this. Walk your dog, go out in the backyard and you know, just straighten up back there. Run a rake over a small little area, you know, and you feel feel good about your backyard. If you don't have a backyard, maybe you live in an apartment, see if there's a frisbee golf park near you. You can just take an old frisbee, go to a thrift store, get a frisbee, and get a buddy, go play frisbee golf at a frisbee golf course. Very easy, you can just toss the frisbee. Once you get to the net, you hit the next green, and it's a really nice day. This and may not be heavy duty on the exercise end, but it's always a fun time. Gets you out of the house, not horribly expensive. Miniature golf. Grab a buddy, grab your sweetheart, grab your kids, go play some miniature golf. But see if there's some different types of activities you can do with the kids, take your dog to a dog park. If you're not an outdoorsy type person, you're not really someone that's gonna go for a walk, give your mind a mental escape with a really good book. There's all different kinds of things you can do besides, you know, sit and let things amplify, and it's gonna actually enhance your life quite a bit. The key takeaway from any kind of physical use of your body, movement, exercise of any kind, make sure it doesn't feel like punishment, make sure it's something you feel good about and you look forward to doing every day. It just needs to fit you and it needs to produce good results for you. And then another thing that none of us really want to admit to, but it's true, is you're gonna feel better the better that you eat. So when we put a lot of processed stuff in our system, a lot of sugars, a lot of stuff with absolutely no nutrition in it, we start having more weird cravings, we start wanting more garbage, and we feel worse, generally speaking. But if you can start making shifts, small little steps, make little changes, and see if you can get something natural and healthy in your diet, you'll start feeling changes for the better. Tiny little pivots, nothing extreme, you don't have to go onto some diet or anything. Here again, you don't want to torture yourself and make it something that you enjoy consuming. You don't want to say, oh well, everyone says kale is really healthy, I hate it, but I'll I'll do that. You don't want to loathe whatever change you're trying to make for the better. So find some healthy fruit that you like, uh maybe a salad, something in that direction. You can have veggies with a veggie dip, and that's gonna help with your hydration as well as give you something to munch on. There was a gadget I had a while back, and I gave it to a friend. I never used it that much, but you could take frozen fruit and it would kind of process it in the moment. It was like this grinder kind of a thing, and it made ice cream out of your fruit, out of frozen fruit, and that was kind of fun to play with. Tasted wonderful. It really was good, and it had recipes and stuff like that. I think it cost me 20 bucks or something. So you can find some little gadgets to find ways to make healthy snacks that seem less healthy, they taste good, but they're healthy. And the goal with some of this, with the food, is to stabilize your energy, reduce your crashes, and just avoid adding more stress through food rules, you know. You don't want any changes to be a stressful thing. You want it to be a pleasant thing that makes your life more enjoyable. And I'll add one thing to that. It's a secret, but it's true. If you learn how to do a little cooking yourself, and most people most people do, and it can be very enjoyable. It doesn't have to be a chore, it doesn't have to be complicated, it doesn't have to be extravagant, you're gonna find that you're gonna be able to produce better tasting food that's a lot healthier than even good restaurants in your area more often than not. So there's a lot of value in that. Why does all of this stuff help? How does it help sleep? What's it gonna do for you? Well, here again, when you find little tiny enjoyable things to engage in that you can do a completion mode on, or you get some sort of gratification on, a little bit of exercise that works for your head, makes you happy, even preparing your own food. You're gonna have these small wins, you get gentle stimulation, you reduce chaos, and you have control over stuff that you know the outcome of. These are all very, very, very valuable tools. Very valuable for us. And what does all that equate to? Your mind is not gonna be just hunting for problems at nighttime when you lay down and things get quiet. You're gonna have more positive things that you can focus on as you doze off. You're gonna have some really awesome stuff to focus on as you doze off, and you may not even have those, you know, racing thoughts as much. You're gonna find yourself less reactive, less restless, and less mentally itchy. Pick these activities and hobbies that don't knock you out. You want stuff that's gonna make your mind quieter when it's time to sleep, and that you're gonna feel good about. You know, one of those things that you go, I took time to do that for myself today. Boy, I needed it. That's the key. And the overall final thought on all of this, you probably don't need a huge life overhaul. You need interruptions to the negative loops. Pick a couple different things that you enjoy doing. Hey, I mentioned like the frisbee golf. You can just get a frisbee, toss it around at a park, you know. You don't even have to have that kind of structure to it. Find something to do that's just getting you out of your immediate atmosphere. Gives you something else to look at, something else to do, and something to feel good about. Just start with that. You're not trying to fix everything, you're just trying to find a better place to let your mind go. And then just remember also, your inner peace is not gonna come from doing more. It's gonna come from choosing better inputs. And that's what we're looking for. Better inputs. Can't say it enough. It may not solve all your problems, but it's gonna give you a really good balance and a positive distraction. It might give you some confidence, it might make you feel a little more worthwhile if things are getting you down. There's just so much good to be had from all kinds of things that you can do and not have to feel burdened quite as much, you know? It'll help you sleep easier at night. I think that's all we got for you this week. I'll see you Friday night for our regular bedtime story extravaganza. Until then, sleep tight, good night, and bye bye.