Episode 619: 5 Hacks That Just Might Change Your Life (Mindset & Self-Care)

EBT619 – 5 Hacks That Just Might Change Your Life

Intro  00:01

Hey food bloggers. Thank you so much for joining me in this mindset and self-care focused episode here on Eat Blog Talk. One of the reasons I started a blog talk was to hold a space to talk about the importance of mindset and self-care. Being an entrepreneur can be a lot. If we are not taking care of ourselves, then getting actionable information about SEO Pinterest or whatever else is all moot. I will meet you back here every Wednesday to discuss various mindset and self-care topics. So you have the energy and space to tackle the rest.

Sponsor (Chelsea Plummer) 00:36

Hi. My name is Chelsea Plummer. I blog at maesmenu.com and I also run a boutique content creation agency, Maes Media. At Maes Media, we are a small team of experienced cooks and bakers who love to write, and we’d love to help you create new blog posts, whether you’re looking for help with writing new blogs or optimizing existing let’s partner together to grow your blog. We have an in-house SEO specialist, and pride ourselves in writing high quality content that your readers will enjoy reading as much as the search engines will enjoy ranking it. Everything is written 100% by humans and an in-house editor copy edits and finalizes all posts, making it a full service offering for you. Take blog post creation off your plate and let us handle it for you. Email me at [email protected] to schedule a free content maximizing strategy call today. That’s Chelsea, C, H, E, L, S, E, A at Maes Media, M, A, E, S media.co Thanks so much, and I look forward to talking with you soon.

Megan Porta  01:41

Hey, food bloggers, welcome to this self care and mindset focused episode of Eat Blog Talk. Today, we’re going to talk about five hacks that just might change your life. Before we get into the topic, I wanted to check in with you. It’s been nearly a year since I started recording and publishing these mindset and self care episodes. So what do you think, have they added value to your life and your business? Do you want me to continue doing them in 2025? I’m planning on doing that, but I want to check in with you, because it’s not all about me. They certainly have helped me as I’ve navigated this year, but I want to produce the things that you need and want, so let me know. Please reach out. I’d love to hear from you, whether it’s positive, negative, neutral, feedback, whatever you have for me, I’m all ears. Send me an email: [email protected] 

Megan Porta  02:40

Okay, the topic at hand today five hacks that just might change your life. Be open to some of these. Why do I think that they could change your life, and not just change your life, but for the better? Because they’ve changed my life for the better recently, I think only one of these points. In fact, I know only one of these points is something I’ve talked about in previous episodes. All the other points are brand spanking new ideas, so I hope you like them. Sometimes it’s just something really little, some tiny, little tweak or hack or change that is made to the way you navigate your life and your day that can truly change everything, it can change your life for the better. So let’s get right to it today. Let’s talk through these five hacks that just might end up changing your life.

Megan Porta  03:29

Number one, get blood work. This past summer, after my bout of burnout, I was a mess. I was depleted beyond words. There were days when I would lay on the couch like a slug because I didn’t have the energy to do anything beyond that. Honestly, my husband made all of our food, he cleaned, he did laundry. It was a rough stretch for me, thinking back over that time and how and when things started getting better for me, there are a few things that stand out. One of those things was getting an in depth blood work panel done. I did it through Life Force, but I imagine any doctor can do this for you, if you ask them, I had everything checked that they were willing to check. So vitamins, hormones, cholesterol, the whole spectrum, they checked things I didn’t even know were things. It was no surprise that a few of my levels were way off. So my doctor had recommendations for specific vitamins, hormones and supplements to take in order to balance out the areas I was either depleted in or had too much of I wish I had done this years ago. Within a few days of taking these supplements, I felt so much better. My energy levels were improved, my mood was improved, my sleep improved. So many things just felt more normalized in my mind and my body. That was the turning point for me when real positive change started to happen this past summer. Sometimes I think things can be off in our bodies, and we just have no way of knowing what they are until we get our blood really closely looked at. This is something so little that you can do that could go such a long way. So I say, why not go to your doctor if you have low energy or if you have recent mood swings or something is going on where you just feel off in your mind or body, and have them check you out. Why not? If everything’s great, awesome, if not, maybe there’s a vitamin or supplement you can take that can help you. 

Megan Porta  05:40

Number two inbox assistance. In the past week, it has felt like a 50 pound weight has been lifted off of the top of my head. I’m not kidding, my email inbox for Eat Blog Talk has felt heavy for the past few years, and that is putting it very lightly, despite many attempts to not be stressed out by my inbox, I’ve remained constantly stressed by it. I feel like I’d tried everything. I created filters. I unsubscribed from so many lists constantly. I deleted endlessly. I combed through things constantly. I’ve just never been able to get to the point on my own where I felt in control of my inbox. I found myself thinking about it all the time, even on weekends, even in the evenings, I would have that thought like, oh, in the morning or on Monday, I’m gonna have to face this inbox, and it’s going to sink me. I would say 98% of my time in the past few years, I’ve just felt like I was about to be suffocated by my inbox. It was always on my mind. I was listening to a great book recently. It’s called Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell. It’s really good, highly recommended, and he mentioned outsourcing email management as a way to just get control of your life. At first, when he started talking about this, I thought there’s no way people send me personal emails to this account all the time. These are emails I know I have to respond to, and nobody else.can do this. For this reason, I just didn’t think it was feasible to pass off inbox management to anyone else. The more he talked about it, though, and he did talk about it a lot, it’s something that really, truly changed his life, the more convinced I became that it could actually take a load off for me. So I talked to my assistant, Cara, who has been working with me for almost a year now. She is also a long time trusted friend who I’ve known for a really long time, since probably, oh gosh, 1996 or so. So we’ve known each other forever. I worked with Cara at my first job out of college. So we go way back. 

Megan Porta  07:59

Cara thought that together, we could wrangle my email and once and for all, get it to a place where I didn’t feel like it was trying to murder me on a daily basis. For the past few weeks, we have been creating and using filters and creating this system that is just working. I now realize that daily, before I got Cara’s help, my inbox was creating mental clutter all day long. Now, not at all, no inbox clutter ever. When I said that a heavy weight had been lifted from my body, it really feels like that. So if you are constantly stressed out by your inbox. Hire it out. Just give it a try. A few things are important before doing this, though, number one, you either have to hire someone with a high level of trust, like I have with Cara, or have the person assisting you sign a simple NDA non disclosure agreement. Emails can be really private. They can be sensitive and confidential, and you want to make sure all of that information is secured, because if it doesn’t feel secure, that can add to that mental clutter I was talking about. Number two, go in knowing that this is going to be a process. Things are not going to be magically transformed overnight. Number three, be open to new ways of managing your emails. Cara brought a few ideas to the table that honestly had never occurred to me before, but we’re doing them, and they’re working great. This change in my business feels like the most profound life change, because it has opened up mental space for things that actually matter. I’m not worried constantly about my inbox anymore, and by the way, I do still personally reply to every email that requires a personal reply from me. This is very important to me, and it always will be. I just wanted to let you know that if you send me an email directly to Megan, you will get a reply from me and nobody else. Now we just have a way to organize these emails so they’re easier to get to. So if I get an email from you now, it’s more likely that I’ll respond in a timely fashion, because everything else is all organized and in its own place.

Megan Porta  10:13

Number three note card with goals, I have mentioned the mastermind event I attended a few weeks ago in a few previous mindset episodes. I also mentioned in I think last week’s episode that we got to hear an inspiring talk at that event from Mark Victor Hansen. He’s the author of all of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, and his wife, Cheryl Dwyer Hansen, they are both successful authors and entrepreneurs are so awesome. Sometimes, when I go to events like the one I went to, it’s the tiny little side notes I hear when I listen to people talk that I end up implementing and that end up being life changing. Mark mentioned in his talk, the simple thing he does on a daily basis in order to achieve his goals. So he has published somewhere around 200 books, or something like that. So somebody asked him how he’d been able to author so many books. He pulled out this index card from his pocket and waved it around, and this index card had his goals written on it every time he eats a meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus at bedtime, he pulls out his index card and reads through every single one of his goals. What does this do? It helps him keep his goals top of mind, which produces inspiration throughout the day and therefore action. He is a dude who achieves the goals he sets out to achieve. So I figured, why not give this a try myself? When I got back home from the conference, I did exactly what he said, and I wrote out all my goals, my main goals, anyway, on an index card. I read through them four times a day, just like he suggested. And guess what? Some of these goals are very rapidly happening, I think, faster than they normally would have. One point mark made about the strategy is that the most important time of the day to do this. So if there’s one time every day you don’t skip it’s just before you go to bed at night, doing this will impress your goals upon your subconscious so it can work its magic while you sleep. You guys, there’s something to this. Give it a try. I’ve only been doing this for a couple weeks, and I’m already crossing things off my list. Life changing. 

Megan Porta  12:31

Number four, journal before bed. I have been in full evaluation mode recently, just trying to give a lot of attention to why certain things have transpired as they have in this past year. I really want to understand why my burnout happened fully, why it was so intense, and what I can do to make sure it does not happen again. Something that has come from thinking through these things is a realization that I hold on to too many things, mentally, emotionally, I just hold on to crap. I thought I was good at letting things go. I really did, but I wasn’t. I am not focusing on not stewing about things, and being able to release thoughts that don’t serve me is currently a priority for me. So I was thinking the other day about how to kind of fast track this whole situation. I tend to wake up at about 3am thinking about things. So many things work, people, what happened that day, what didn’t happen that day, what’s happening tomorrow, what that person said, what I said, what was left unsaid. I mean, it goes on and on. It’s kind of insane. Does any of this serve me at 3am absolutely not. So I wondered, What if I start journaling before bed, and not just random journaling, but what if I focus on two things as I do this right before sleep? Number one, design the next day, I’ve started writing out what I want my next day to look like. I include calls, work, self care, downtime, quality time with people, my energy level, my mood, who and what I’ll be prioritizing, etc. I’ve even started labeling each day with a word. So words that have come up have been inspired creative et cetera. And it really is incredible how often those words come true the following day. And number two, after I design my day, I address any hiccups that come to mind, anything that gets kind of stuck as clutter in my mind about the next day. If I know I have a call that I’m nervous about. For example, I will just write about it real quick. Is there anything I can do now to alleviate the nerves? Yeah, I can get a good night of sleep. Is there anything I can do in the morning about the nerves? Sure, I can meditate first thing, and then I can spend 20 minutes going over my notes with a plan in place. Details about the following day become much less daunting, and there’s less of a chance they will keep me up at night. This is a very new practice for me, but I already feel lighter, and I’ve been sleeping better. I have not been waking up in the middle of the night nearly as much as before. 

Megan Porta  15:18

And number five is meditate. I’ve talked about this point before in other episodes, so I may sound a little bit like a broken record mentioning it again, but it is so important and can be such a life changer. For much more detailed information about meditation and how to get started with it, go back and listen to episode number 580. Meditating requires some diligence. It requires some patience. But when you commit to it and give it your best try and continue doing it, despite feeling like you’re not doing it right, or like you’re failing it is, honestly just so life changing. In episode 580 I talk about how I committed to meditating regularly at the beginning of 2024 which is kind of serendipitous, considering how the year unfolded. Almost immediately, my sleep improved, and, I mean, drastically improved, I was able to pull myself into the present moment much more easily than before I started meditating. There are many, many, many positive benefits of regular meditation that will change your life for the better, I promise. And the great thing about meditation, it’s so simple, all it takes is a few minutes a day in a quiet room. Do your best to not overthink meditation or to over complicate it. It really is the simplest, most powerful way to improve your life this week, you will see changes that fast. 

Megan Porta  16:44

That is all I have for you in this episode. So to recap, we talked about five things that have made a huge difference in my life, little, tiny things that I would have not thought would be so life changing, but have been. And I really hope these things are life changing for you as well. One, blood work, get a panel done and just see what’s missing or what you have too much of in your body. Two, inbox assistance, outsource your email management. If this is an issue for you, create a goal note card and carry it around with you. Check it four times a day to achieve your goals. Journal before bed, design your next day and address any worries before bed so you sleep better and stay more focused and meditation just consistently meditating so you can bring calm into your life and clarity and better sleep and all those other good benefits. I hope you found this episode helpful. These are such small but powerful tweaks and new habits that I truly hope enhance your life. Let me know if you try any of them, or if you have life changing hacks of your own, and please share your feedback on these mindset episodes. I’d love to hear from you until next time friends. Take care of yourself this week, and I will see you next time. 

Outro 18:00

Thank you so much for listening to this mindset and self-care episode here on Eat Blog Talk. If you are a food blogger providing a service for other food bloggers, and you want to spread the word about the value that you offer. I would love to offer you a free way to do just this. Send me a 60 second audio clip to be featured in a mindset and self-care episode here on Eat Blog Talk in 2024. Go to eatblogtalk.com/audioclip to learn more.