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Bring a little optimism into your life with The Bright Side, a new kind of daily podcast from Hello Sunshine, hosted by me, Danielle Robay.
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And me, Simone Boyce.
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Every weekday, we re bringing you conversations about culture, the latest trends, inspiration, and so much more.
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I am so excited about this podcast, The Bright Side.
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You guys are giving people a chance to shine a light on their lives, shine a light on a little advice that they want to share.
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Listen to The Bright Side on America s number one podcast network, iHeart.
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Open your free iHeart app and search The Bright Side.
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A new season of Bridgerton is here.
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And with it, a new season of Bridgerton, the official podcast.
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I m your host, Gabby Collins.
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And this season, we are bringing fans even deeper into the tun.
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Watch season three of the Shondaland series on Netflix.
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Then fall in love all over again by listening to Bridgerton, the official podcast.
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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Subscribe to catch a new episode every Thursday.
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like how to start planning for retirement, creating a healthy skincare routine, understanding when and how much to tip someone, and so much more.
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Let s learn about all of it and then some.
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Listen to Grown Up Stuff How to Adult on America s number one podcast network, iHeart.
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Open your free iHeart app and search Grown Up Stuff.
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That s the part where we go wrong.
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We try to divide our time equally.
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We try to divide our money equally.
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We try to divide our attention equally.
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It s impossible to equally divide your time between work and family.
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If you re working an 8-9 hour job and then you re spending 3 hours with family in the evening, it can feel like it s not equal.
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It can feel like you re always working.
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Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world.
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Thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow.
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Now whether you re cooking, whether you re walking your dog, whether you re at the gym, whether you re catching a sunrise or a sunset, or you re driving in your car,
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I m so grateful to be with you and I appreciate you so much for letting me into your world, for letting me into your life.
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I love the reaction when I bump into one of you on the streets or at an event or wherever we are and you give me a big hug and let me know that you listen to the podcast and this happened last week where
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Someone said to me, they said, Jay, I feel like I know you, but you don t know me.
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And I said, you do know me.
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You do know me.
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I share so openly and vulnerably and honestly on the podcast.
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You do know me.
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And I can t wait to meet you too.
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So thank you so much to everyone who s leaving reviews on the show, who s posting on Instagram and TikTok and Twitter.
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I m seeing more and more posts about the show all the time.
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And today we re talking about something really important.
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Something that I feel a lot of people are striving for, a lot of people are chasing, and a lot of people are pursuing.
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And the statistics show this as well.
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People are stressed.
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65% of employees who now work from home say they are working longer hours.
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And so the thing that we re all chasing is work-life balance.
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What I find really fascinating about this is that it s often our pursuit of an incomplete belief that creates more challenges in our life.
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Let me break that down.
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When we don t define or understand ideas, words, and concepts clearly, but then we still pursue them,
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we often end up somewhere we don t want to be.
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It s almost like going somewhere without being really clear on the coordinates.
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Or you go somewhere, but you don t get the zip code spot on.
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This happened to me probably about six months back now.
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I was going to meet one of my friends at his new office building, and my team had popped his address in my schedule, and so I went to that street.
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What I didn t realize is that they hadn t placed the exact number of the building.
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They had the building name and the street name, and it took me to the street, not that particular building.
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I ended up being still 30 minutes away because supposedly that street runs from LA all the way to Calabasas, right?
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From West Hollywood to Calabasas.
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And so what I find in life is often that we pursue words like success.
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We pursue words like wealth.
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We pursue words like security.
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We pursue words like stability.
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We pursue words like excitement.
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But we never took the time to define or understand what those words actually mean.
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And I believe that work-life balance is one of those terms.
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It s a term that we ve been saying for a long time.
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It s a term that we ve heard for a long time.
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It s a term that seems to make sense.
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But I think the way we think about it doesn t always stack up.
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So I want to read for a second some of the definitions of the word balance and how I think we interpret this word incorrectly, which leads us not finding balance.
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So balance is defined as an even distribution of weight, enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady, an even distribution.
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That s where the challenge comes in.
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We try to evenly distribute our time.
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We try to evenly distribute our money.
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We try to evenly distribute our energy and the truth is that you can t evenly distribute it because there aren t enough hours in the day.
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definition of balance is a condition in which different elements are equal.
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And that s the part where we go wrong.
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We try to divide our time equally.
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We try to divide our money equally.
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We try to divide our attention equally.
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And you can t do that.
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It s impossible to equally divide your time between work and family.
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If you re working an eight to nine hour job and then you re spending three hours with family in the evening, it can feel like it s not equal.
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It can feel like you re always working.
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And that s where those terms come about.
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You re always working.
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You re never at home.
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Are we always working?
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Are we never at home?
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That s not true, but because it s the majority, it feels like it.
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So because it s 75% of the day, it becomes 100%.
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Because we re trying to get to 50-50, we re trying to get to equality.
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Now here s where the definition of balance actually improves.
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It says, a condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions.
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That s the part I want to focus on, correct proportions.
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We can create proportionate distribution in our life.
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We can t or we will struggle to create equal distribution in our life.
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And sometimes as we strive for equal and even distribution, we end up feeling really upset and disappointed.
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We end up feeling really, really like we re struggling.
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Now, I want to talk to you about five states that we need on any given day or any given week.
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Throughout the day, throughout the week, throughout the month, throughout the year, we will need a different state at different times.
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And there s two things to note here.
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The first thing is you won t always have access to that state at that time, but you want to create space for that state.
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This will make a lot more sense as I start walking through it.
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So if you think about any activity you need to do, any task you need to do, anything you would like to do in a day, you need one of these five states in order to do it.
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Sometimes you need focus.
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Maybe it s a work task.
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Maybe it s a big project.
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Maybe it s a new product you re working on, a new service you re creating.
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You need a high level of focus.
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That s one state.
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But you don t need focus to do everything in your life.
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You don t need to be focused on everything.
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Focus can be draining.
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If someone said to you, you need to be focused throughout the day, that could be highly exhausting.
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And maybe you re experiencing that.
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The second one is sometimes you just need high
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You could be beaten or jailed or killed for breaking the rules.
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And yet, Afghans did it anyway.
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This is the story of how a group of people brought music back to Afghanistan by creating their own version of American Idol.
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The danger they endured.
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They said my head should be cut off.
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The joy they brought to the nation.
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You re free completely.
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No one is there to destroy you.
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I m John Legend.
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Listen to Afghan Star on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Now, insight tasks, tasks that require you to provide insight.
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And this could be being present with your partner, listening to them.
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It s more presence.
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Analytic is focus.
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Insight is presence.
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For the lark, it s late afternoon, early evening.
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Late afternoon or early evening is the best time for a lark to do insightful, presence-based things.
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For the third bird, insight tasks, same, it s late afternoon and early evening.
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But now for the owl, it s the morning.
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An owl does insight tasks best in the morning.
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I m hoping you re listening to this and going, oh, now I realize why I don t have energy for that at that time.
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Now I realize why I m not in the right state for that at that time.
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Maybe you re trying to do things at times when it s harder to do them.
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The way I describe that, and that s where we struggle with balance, is what I love about nature is that
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Things are not always balanced, but the seasons always flow.
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So things come and go in seasons.
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Now maybe you re like, I want to grow apples all year round.
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I want to grow X fruit all year round.
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That puts things out of balance.
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And sometimes we do that.
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We go, I want to do this for the rest of the year.
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I want to do this every single day.
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And that puts us out of balance because we re trying to grow something that you can t grow at that time.
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Right?
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There s certain things you can t grow in the winter.
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That doesn t mean you don t have another version of it.
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It doesn t mean you don t plant new seeds or it doesn t mean you don t take care of the land.
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You can do lots of things.
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You just don t expect something to grow.
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And I think that s the challenge.
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We re expecting perfect balance all year round when we re going through a season that doesn t allow for balance.
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What s needed more is a priorities approach.
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A farmer or someone working in agriculture has a different priority in different seasons.
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They re still working on the same patch of land.
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You re still working on yourself.
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You re still giving love to your family.
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You just can t have a view that it s going to look the same every day.
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We have to start thinking of our life in seasons.
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We have to approach our life in seasons.
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Okay, now, when you need energy, making an impression, your state of energy, larks are best in the morning at making an impression.
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Third birds, morning is the best time to make an impression.
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And we then have owls, morning as well.
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That s when the owls will make their best impression, when you need that energetic expression of yourself.
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And finally, when you need to make a decision, which is more about planning as a state, larks early morning, third bird early to mid morning, and owl late afternoon and evening.
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So what I m trying to share here is that there are different times of the day when we re better at doing different things, and we have to realize that we can t just force ourselves
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to do everything all of the time.
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And balance can often feel like that where we just feel exhausted because we re trying to do everything all at the same time.
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Now, there are habits that create more balance in our life and habits that create more imbalance in our life.
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For example, a habit that truly has unhealthy impact on us and our balance is a lack of sleep or sleep deprivation
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It s really interesting because a lot of people will sacrifice sleep to watch a show.
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Or to feel like they decompressing in order to feel balance right it s like i ve worked all day i now need to balance myself by doing something mindless like watching my favorite show and here s what happens when we don t get enough sleep.
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There s a lack of alertness.
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Even missing as little as 1.5 hours can have an impact on how you feel.
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Impaired memory.
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Lack of sleep can affect your ability to think, remember, and process information.
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Relationship stress, it can make you feel moody and you can become more likely to have conflicts with others.
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So one of the reasons why I raised the idea of rest is rest is one of the great ways of causing balance, creating balance.
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And we do want to rest, but then we push further on days when a little bit more rest.
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So we say, oh yeah, I ll lie in on Saturday.
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But the one hour you missed every night from Monday to Friday was more impactful on your health than the extra one hour or two hours you got in bed on a Saturday morning, right?
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Notice how that happens to so many people, where we miss out or we struggle because we don t grab that sleep.
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So I want to share with you, how do we get these states?
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How do we improve these states in our lives?
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So what gives us focus?
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Meditation helps us develop focus.
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And when we talk about meditation, I want to give you a really simple practice.
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I want you to light a little candle in your room, or you could have a diffuser, pour in a beautiful essential oil.
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And what I want you to do, whether you have the diffuser or the candle, I want you to first breathe in the scent.
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Just sit in the presence of the candle or the diffuser without anything else around you, and I want you to breathe in the scent and notice how it changes how you feel.
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The next thing I want you to do is look at the flame.
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And in the diffuser, look at what s coming out.
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Take a moment to observe this deeply.
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Every flicker, every movement, every time the diffuser lets off steam.
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Just taking a moment to observe the colors, the frequency, the shapes.
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And the third thing I want you to do to improve your focus is go outdoors and just observe nature.
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Put a 60 second timer on your phone.
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Watch the leaves.
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Watch a squirrel.
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Watch the sun.
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Just be really focused on what is happening.
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Those simple habits will improve your focus drastically.
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because you are narrowing in on one activity every day.
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If you were to do one of those things every day, your focus will start to improve.
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There s a beautiful quote by Bruce Lee where he said that, I m not scared of someone who s practiced 10,000 kicks, one each time.
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I m scared of the person that s practiced one kick 10,000 times.
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Right?
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It s not the variety of things we do that impacts our life, it s the specificity and the quality of things that we do that improves our life.
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How deeply have you done something is more important than how many things have you done.
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Right?
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It s not about the variety, it s not about the number, it s about the depth.
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How do we get energy?
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We all know that energy comes through exercise.
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There s a great study that the researchers at the University of Georgia found that sedentary, otherwise healthy adults who engaged in as little as 20 minutes of low to moderate aerobic exercise three days a week for six consecutive weeks reported an increase in energy levels and feeling less fatigued.
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Pete McCall, the exercise psychologist at the American Council of Exercise, said if a sedentary individual begins an exercise program, it will enhance the blood flow carrying oxygen and nutrients to muscle tissue, improving their ability to produce more energy.
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When they did this study on two groups, they found that both exercise groups experienced a 20% increase in energy levels by the end of the study compared to the non-exercising group, with the lower intensity group reporting a 65% drop in feelings of fatigue, while the more intense exercises reported a 49% drop in fatigue.
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The idea that we can move for simply 20 to 30 minutes a day can make a huge difference to our energy at the end of the day.
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Now, how do we get presence with the people we love?
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Well, when we don t sleep, we feel irritated.
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When we don t work out, we don t have the energy.
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When we don t have focus, we re not able to be present sometimes.
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How do we really be present with the people we love?
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We re present
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by knowing that we give the amount of time that what can be present.
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Often what ends up happening is we want the ego of saying, I m free all of Saturday, I m with you, how fun is it gonna be?
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But we re stressed by that over-commitment.
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Often we overcommit, we overpromise because we want to feel and seem and be viewed as someone who cares.
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We want to show our partners and our families that we re present and that we care.
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But then what ends up happening is we re on our phones for the rest of that day.
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We re stressing out, we re anxious, we re nervous, we re not really there and people can sense it.
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It s so much better to be honest and maybe even be perceived as not caring and saying, hey, I m going to be half the day on Saturday I m there, but I ve got to work the other half the day.
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That honesty is more powerful because for those four hours, you will be the best person you can possibly be because you know you have that to truly be present.
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Too many of us are over-promising and under-delivering.
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Now what gives you the ability to plan?
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It s ideas.
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Fueling yourself with ideas, books, thought processes, systems.
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And what gives you rest?
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Spending time in nature.
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Listening to nature sounds if you can t get out to nature.
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Putting on a beautiful, calm meditation.
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Allowing yourself to be in true stillness and true silence, even if you find it uncomfortable in the beginning.
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I wanna thank you for supporting and listening to On Purpose.
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I hope this episode really, really helped today.
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I hope it s gonna help you think about balance differently.
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I really don t want you to think of balance as like this equal distribution, even breakdown, and then feel bad and sad that you can t live up to it.
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None of us can.
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But what we can do is proportionately divide our time, often one to two hours.
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of personal habits a day can actually improve how we are throughout the day.
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There s one to two hours can impact the other 22 hours.
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Thanks so much for listening to On Purpose.
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I ll see you again next week for more exciting episodes with guests and our Friday workshops.
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Thank you so much.
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See you soon.
3
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This is the story of how a group of people brought music back to Afghanistan by creating their own version of American Idol.
3
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The joy they brought to the nation.
3
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You re free completely.
3
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No one is there to destroy you.
3
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The danger they endured.
3
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They said my head should be cut off.
3
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I m John Legend.
3
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Listen to Afghan Star on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
3
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Guess what, Will?
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What s that, Mango?
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I ve been trying to write a promo for our podcast, Part-Time Genius, but even though we ve done over 250 episodes, we don t really talk about murders or cults.
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I mean, we did just cover the Illuminati of cheese, so I feel like that makes us pretty edgy.
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We also solve mysteries like how Chinese is your Chinese food and how do dollar stores make money?
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And then, of course, can you game a dog show?
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So what you re saying is everyone should be listening.
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Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.