Transcripts
1. Introduction: My name is Stephanie and I am the artist's behind Steph Gordo Art. My class Today's to go over how mindful habits are not just for the Zen, and already mellow people. I am a very high-energy person and I really want to go over today and share with you some of the mindful habits in their routine that I've established for myself to help me find more self-confidence and find more belief in myself so I can have bigger dreams. In this class, I'm going to share with you some of the daily habits that I use every day or at least once a week to be able to put into your own routine so that you're able to have more faith in yourself and chase even bigger dreams. This class is for anyone and everyone, creatives, non-creatives, people that are looking to calm down the negative self-talk that's going on in their head. Or even if you're just looking for ways to savor a few extra minutes in your daily schedule. This is about setting yourself up for success versus running around letting chaos snowball from one moment to the next. But the key point that we're working towards is listening to your intuition and quieting the chaos that is your thoughts. I hope to see you in class.
2. What to Expect: In this class I'm going to go over these seven mindful habits as a starting point for you to create your own mindful habits routine. Some of these you may use every day. You may fall in love with them. You may only break out in case of emergencies or you may Never look at them ever again. Whatever the case it's all about works what's best for you and it's not going to hurt my feelings if you think that meditation is a load of junk. Sometimes it feels that way. In each class segment, I'm going to go over what the Mindful habit is, a few different ways that you can use it, and give you examples of things that you can share with us in the class project. Speaking of the class project, I would love to hear from you for at least two examples of the mindful habits that we go over. What you use, specifics of it, what you liked about it, what you didn't like, what you're mindful habits routine is going to look like, things that you're going to be trying to put into your own daily life, your schedule and time you put into this is completely up to you, but I would recommend devoting at least 10 to 15 minutes a day. Don't forget that small but frequent action can sometimes lead you to the biggest results. So grab a notebook, paper, pen, notes app on your phone, and let's get started.
3. Habits Working For You: I cannot stress this enough. This routine is for you and you can choose to show up, however feels best for you. So this reminds me of a story this time that I went to this minimalist clothing class, it was all about paring down your clothing to only wearing clothes that felt good that you enjoyed wearing, that you looked great in. And the woman that was talking to us, she had narrowed down, I believe it was to like 33 clothing items. And as we're going through it, she opens it up for questions at the end and everyone is talking about the 33 items. Like this, this wasn't a scientific formula this woman developed. It's just what worked for her. People were worried that they were going to be breaking out of this and was it even worth doing if they only had 35 items or 23 or 40. It's all about what works best for you. I'm not going to be coming into your home and making sure that you're meditating for 15 minutes a day and journaling if you only can squeeze in five minutes. So again, this is what works best for you. Take the pressure off and try things a few different ways if you want to meditate laying down, do it. I really enjoy meditating lying down. Try not to fall asleep, but sometimes you can get great sleep out of it. I'm not going to lie. Some days your activity is going to be a crazy 30-minute heart racing activity. And other days it's just going to be getting on the floor and stretching for five minutes. If you aren't a morning person, then maybe you don't do these things in the morning. Maybe you do them in the transition from your workday to the evening. Maybe you do them before bed to set yourself up for a great night asleep and for your morning ahead, make your modifications to fit you and what feels best in this moment. Just to reminder, there are a million different ways to accomplish something. So just because I say that I do it A, B, C, or D, you could find it, again, a million different ways that you could also accomplish the same thing. One other thing I would love to note here is you need to embrace the frustration. Your brain is making new neural pathways to help you learn this new habit that you're trying to create. And when you're frustrated, you are just a few steps away from learning that new thing and establishing that new healthy habit.
4. Listening to Intuition: So I really quickly want to talk about the difference between intuition and your ego, which would also be a lot of your thoughts that are going on in your head. Intuition is the quiet voice in your head that's going to give you all of the right information. And it's going to be very, very confident in what it's telling you. Your ego or your negative thoughts there going to be loud and screaming at you and making you doubt everything that you're doing. Making you have a plan B, a plan C, a plan E, F, and G. It has going to make you doubt yourself. And it's there because of self-preservation. Because at 1 point, we really, really needed to be skeptical of everything that was going on. So I'm not saying that you're going to get rid of all of those negative thoughts or you are going to quiet the ego. It's always going to be there. But when I'm talking about is being able to differentiate what's the ego and what's your intuition talking to you, your thoughts and ego are always going to be there. But all of this is really to teach you how to quiet them down. Bring you to a point of mental neutrality so that you're able to dream some bigger dreams. Listen to your intuition in that voice that knows far better than anyone else could have or know of what's best for you.
5. Brain Dump Habit: One of my favorite ways to start my day is what the brain dump. So this can look a 100 different ways, but typically it involves putting on some calming music, setting a timer, and free writing for however long that is, typically I'll do it from five to 15 minutes, longer if something's really weighing on my mind and I'll just free write anything that's bothering me, anything that's the weighing on my mind, things that I have planned. Sometimes it's kinda like a journal entry or even just a pep talk to myself. One tip I will give you is that I will set a timer on my phone and instead of having it be a really loud alarm, I will have it to stop playing. So that way it gently transitions me out of the calming stuff that I was listening to, to quiet so that I know that I can wrap up my thoughts without being jolted to the same alarms that go off when I'm trying to get up for the morning. Feel free to try this out with me and you can pause this class for five minutes or even longer. And I'm going to go through my own micro brain dump from this class, write about what's going on in my mind. And I'll share, but I wrote with you when we get back, alright, I'm going to go through and show you an example of a five-minute brain dump that I've used this morning to get my brain together before I started my day. As you can see, I am just writing out all of the things that I was thinking in regards to me filming this class, my excitement, my nerves, my doubts, my fears, and getting it all out onto paper that way then I can kind of see what's going on. And ultimately know that I was very capable of doing this because hey, you're sitting here watching it. For your class project. You can always share with us part of the brain dump that you wrote today, what you, what you really liked about it. And if this is something you want to keep doing in your daily or weekly routine.
6. Positivity List Habit: A positivity list is as simple as it sounds. You're just going to make a list of things that are going well in your life or things in your life that are grateful. I will say that a grief gratitude list and a positivity list have some great overlap. So I'm not really going to differentiate here for them. So I use the positivity list in a variety of ways. Maybe I'll use it to end out my brain dump. Maybe if I was being particularly negative and fearful in all of my thoughts that I was getting onto a piece of paper. And so then I'm just going to end it out with ten things that are going really, really great my life. They can be as big or small of things that are going in your life. And I would recommend mixing all of that together. A lot of times I'm grateful for the joyous cup of coffee that I have in the morning. Also while I'm grateful for the love that I have in my life and then I get a laugh every day with my partner or that I'm checking something huge off my bucket list, like creating my own Skillshare class. And there's other times where I use a positivity list to call in reinforcements if I know that I'm being particularly negative in a day and I'm just saying horrible things my brain is chaos and I will just make sure that I'm focusing on the positive. When I really disliked my corporate job, I wrote positivity, it lists a lot and sometimes I would factor them in only to my job. So even though I didn't want to be there and I want him to be doing other things. I would write about how much I enjoyed that paycheck that was coming in. How much I loved that I worked with my co-workers. How I was really looking forward to the lunch that we were going to have outside and all the things that were specific to my job and what was going on then. And sometimes I use positivity lists when the day is going great and I really want to relish in that great feeling. There's a good chance that if you're a really good friend of mine, that I've probably suggested a positivity list to you. And it's one of the things I loved to pull out of my toolkit because I know that I really need to improve my mental state. I'm going to show you how I complete a positivity list. Like I said before, sometimes I will use these to cap out at the end of a brain dump. If I'm feeling in a particularly negative space, I will bust out a list of ten positive things to focus on. Or if I'm having a good day and went to relish in that good feeling. You can complete this in one of two ways. Setting yourself a timer for 10 to 15 minutes and write out as many as possible, or writing a specific number of positive things. For the sake of this, I'm going to write 10 positive things for your class project, share some things that you're grateful for or that it's going really well in your life right now.
7. Meditation Habit: This maybe something that you already have part of your daily routine, but it's a 100 percent something that you've already heard of before. And it's meditation. Meditation is the act of focusing all of your mental energy onto one thing or to clear your mind of all thoughts. But it's going to take you out before you get your mind to be completely clear and not let thoughts wander in. I recommend starting small, start at one minute of mindfully breathing and then work yourself up until you get to five minutes. Typically, I do about five minutes of meditation a day. Sometimes I'll extend that a little bit longer if I find a great guided meditation that I want to listen to. Important things to remember when starting out: If you have an smartwatch or a Fitbit, it'll probably have a brief feature which will help you go through and take deep breaths. Just by the vibration that's on your watch. One easy way that you could do this is also just setting a timer on your phone and just counting your breath. One for the inhale, one for the exhale. And if your mind starts to wander gently, once you notice that it is wandering over there and thinking about your grocery list, bring it right back. I'll start back from counting at one and continue until that timer goes off. It is very likely that your mind is going to wander. I'm not someone who can just shut down her brain. And I know that even when I meditate, my mind is going to be wandering off what I'm making for dinner tonight. That thought of that thing that I said two years ago that still plaguing me or the fact that I have to record this video for you. As long as I noticed that my thoughts have wandered and come back and come back to focus on whenever my focal point is, I'm doing a great job. Sometimes your meditation is going to be completely garbage and you're gonna think, wow, I just wasted that two minutes of my time. That was completely awful and I don't even know why bother. And there's gonna be other times where you think that you could sit there for a half an hour and just completely zen out. Sometimes even just let my mind wander for the five minutes that I have it. And I just let it freely go and think about whatever it wants to think about. If you start this practice, it's going to look different every day in that is okay. Remember that this is all about you in your routine. So as long as you keep showing up, it's gonna do great things for you. Eventually, there are a million and one ways to meditate a guided meditation, visualization. Simply sitting in the quiet and trying to calm your own thoughts. There is a Headspace app, Calm app, and there's so many resources. So play around with it and find what works for you, for your class project share what kind of meditation you have tried or would like to try in the future and let us know how it works for you.
8. 'I am' Statements Habit: So one of the more popular things to do lately when you think about rewriting limiting beliefs, changing your thought patterns is I am statements. And I don't necessarily think that these are great on their own, but they are great to use in conjunction with other things that you can put into your mindfulness routine. And I am statement is going to be either a neutral or positive statement about yourself, about what you're going to accomplish that you can repeat to yourself a few times a day. A few examples of an I am statement is I am proud of who I am. I am a great writer, or even I am open to accepting myself as I am. The point of I am statements is to rewrite the negative thoughts that are going on in your brain. These should be specifically tailored to you, something that makes you feel good. And it is written in present tense. So I am doing something not I am going to do something. These statements should be tailored to you, should make you feel empowered and they will always be changing. The statements that I used for myself at the beginning of my self-love journey are not want to use now. So there are a few ways that you can come up with your list of I am statements. You can write down all the negative, crappy things that you feel about yourself. Give yourself a timer or five minutes and get it all out of you. And then go over with a red pen for another five minutes and rewrite those statements. Take something of I hate how my body looks in a bathing suit to I love how powerful my legs are and they helped me walk my dogs every day. You could take a phrase from, I'm lazy and things never work out for me to I'm working on my goals and the right opportunity will come to me at the right time. You can also always search I am statements on Google or Pinterest and see what great ideas come up to you. There are going to be so many of them available, but you can always pick the ones that feel best to you, the ones that jump off the screen and really resonate with inside of you. By simply putting I am statements into Google or Pinterest, you'll be greeted with numerous lists. The key here is to pick items that make you feel better or at least in a more neutral place. For this example, I don't really align with there is no one better to be than myself, but I do like I am enough. These statements can be as complex or as simple as it feels good for you. If my body is beautiful, feels like garbage to you when you don't believe it, it's better to have your statement be I feel safe in my body, or I am open to feeling better about my body and work on believing those statements before you move on to everything else. And you can always use our one of our previous habits and meditate. And when you're done at the end of your meditation write out I am and write out all the positive things that come to your mind. These could be as simple or as complex as you need. I tend to lean to the side of simplicity to where my statements will be. Phrases like, I am enough, I am creative, I am abundant. And there are other times where they could be a very lengthy I am statement. But again, it is all what works best for you and what you're really looking for once you get your setup I AM statements together, I would say about five as a great number. Put them on some sticky notes and put them on places that you'll see them every day. So maybe that your planner, maybe that's somewhere in your car, maybe that's on your mirror so you can see it when you get ready in the morning and before you go to sleep, maybe it's just on your nightstand. You have this list of available to you or make it your phone background. You can also rewrite them every day in your journal. The important thing you need to remember so that these work for you is that they are readily available to you. So you can use them when you notice that your brain's kinda going into that negative headspace, you can revert back to these and look at these. It may take you a little bit before you can actually start noticing those negative thoughts. But once you do this was going to be a great help to you. And just make sure that you're always looking at these. For your class projects please share with us some of the I AM statements that you came up with.
9. Daily Affirmations Habit: So this is part of your routine that you can tailor to your religious or spiritual practices. But fear not this is not just for the spiritual. Daily affirmations, religious devotionals, or even tarot cards are a great thing to use here to give you a brief message or lesson for your day. Some devotionals are for specific days or they will build upon each other as you go through them. There are also others like a daily affirmation card where you can pull a card out of a deck and that'll be your message for the day. These are the ones that I love to use in conjunction to with my tarot readings that I do every morning for myself. So I just wanted to show you what exactly I was talking about when referring to devotional or my affirmation cards. In even a very general brief overview of tarot, I do have this intellectual devotional as I'm not a particularly religious person. Ideally, though this would be filled with scriptural or different religious with stories or phrases. As you can see, it's for each day. And it goes through and it will give you a story. Again, not exactly this, but I'm also trying not to speak on something that I don't have that much knowledge of. But what I do have great knowledge of would be, these are my two affirmation decks. I do enjoy pulling a card each day. So sometimes it could be what is my message for today or you just pick a card off the top and put it to the bottom each day. Shuffling it, cutting the deck, truly whatever works for you. But each of these cards has this very positive and affirmational statement. And a lot of times to enter the woo-woo here, it does kinda fit with what I need to hear for the day. A lot of the messages repeats and of course I'm going to read it in the way that works for me. Because they are typically more general statements. But like my super attractor power comes from how I feel, my faith in love and the joy I put out. Directing my focus on what is thriving creates more of what I want. So all these really positive statements. And I'll typically pull a card in the morning. When I used to work in an office setting, me and to my coworkers were pull a card a day, actually with this deck. And so, you know, we would pull a card, true abundances inside job. And then a lot of times I would take the card that I pulled and I would set it up up by my computer monitor or have it kinda sit out with me for the day and that way that I could kind of look back to it. And I always got this causative positive affirmation to refer to. So these are two great decks that I do love using. They are both by Gabby Bernstein. She has, I believe one for each of the books that she comes out with. And I just think that they're really wonderful and they make little fun gifts in there. Just this really sweet way to get a little bit more positivity into your day. And then I do typically pull these in conjunction with my tarot cards. I do not think that tarot is inherently evil. I don't think that I'm connecting to the spirits, nor do I think that I think that it predicts anything. It's not going to tell me how many children I'm going to have and what date I'm going to die or anything. I think that that's rather silly. But I do think that these all all come with great messages and I do read them. a lot of the ways that I read my affirmation cards, where I will pull, I will shuffle up the deck. And then if one falls out or I will read one, you can have the reversed or unreversed meaning. And then I do have a guidebook. All the decks typically come with a small guidebook, but I do have this book that was actually recommended to me on tiktok. So all the good info you can get there. But then it goes through each of them and it gives an upright meaning, a reverse meaning. And just kind of gives you some information. And it's just a general way that I can look at my cards. And typically there's going to be a lot of information over here and I just pull whatever I'm drawn to. So again, if I get the death card, I don't anticipate dying. It is more looking at death as the ending of something and the beginning of something else, which I do think there's a beautiful way to think about change. And when one thing ends, it does give you opportunity for something else. And these are just a really great way that I find to start my day and to kind of give me a message that takes a lot of the brainpower out of what I'm doing. And I can just kind of pull a card and focus on the message for the day. Hope this helps! For your class project. Feel free to share with us the message or daily affirmation that you receive for today.
10. Movement Habit: Movement and getting exercise is one of the top things on every mindfulness, self-care, self-love, routine that you can have. Moving your body is a great way to bust through a funk or take a break from something that was stressing you out. This can take place is something that you do daily or even be something that you bust out when things are going really really frustrating and you need to just take a step back and clear head. It is very rare that something is life threatening and that has to be dealt with immediately. A lot of times you can take a deep breath, step away from whatever is frustrating you. Go for a walk, go for a run, stretch, and then come back to it when your minds a little bit clearer, some great movement exercises are walking, running, dancing around to a song, or maybe a few, doing yoga, pilates, lifting weights. The options are endless. I would like to say, don't only think of this as I'm going to be burning x number of calories. But think of it as I'm taking a few seconds to myself to clear my head, to zone out, and to just release some of the frustration that I'm feeling inside of my body. Some days I'm in the mood for a long walk or lifting weights and other days, I just want to sit on the floor and stretch it out. Not every day has to be the same. But again, it's remembering that consistency here is important in just getting yourself away from it and give yourself a few minutes to clear your head. So for this class project, please share with us what your favorite exercise movement is.
11. Beat the Clock Hack: This final habit isn't actually a habit at all, but it's one of my favorite productivity hacks that I love to use to be able to get through things that I really don't enjoy doing. Since I'm currently working from home, it's very important to me to make sure that my home is clean. And one of the ways that I really enjoy going through this and tidying up my home is with my music productivity hack. And what I'll do is I will ask Siri or Alexa to play a song for me and then I will try to get the cleaning done with before that song ends. So sometimes that's just doing the evening dishes or tidying up my living room. And sometimes I'll even extended out where I'll play a few songs and have a timer set for 10 to 15 minutes, and I'll try to get as much cleaning within that time as possible. I found that without as many distractions of wanting to look at my phone, seeing what alerts come through or allowing myself to then look, look through all the takeout menus and figure out what I want for dinner that night. I can just go through get get everything done that I need to go that way, then I can continue upon my day. And this doesn't always have to relate to doing chores within the house. Sometimes I do it even just to do things that I'm really not looking forward to. I personally hate planning out my social media posts, but I'll try to set a timer about 15 minutes every day where I can just work on them a little bit at a time. And if I get three done, great. If I only get one, it's just as awesome. Once that timer is done is when I stop and I don't think about it anymore until I know that I need to do it the next day. This way of breaking things up small steps at a time really helps me get things, get more things done because I'm not dreading having to spend a huge amount of time working on something, but instead breaking them down into smaller sections. So let me know if you've tried this what your go-to song is and what you accomplished in this time.
12. Final Thoughts: Holy shoot, you're still here. Thank you so much for joining my class and I hope you learned a few great things. So you can put into your own mindful habits routine. Don't forget to share a part of your mindful habits routine in the class project. You can share with us everything that you're taking from this and you're going to keep using for the next few weeks. Or you can let us know what you've tried or what you're really excited to be trying. Again, thank you so much for being a part of this class with me. It's been a real dream come true to be able to do this and to be able to share this information with you. If you enjoyed this class, please feel free to rate, review, and share this class with others. I would love to hear your thoughts on my class, my teaching style. Or if there's any holes within the material that I can go over in the future again. Thank you again and I'll see you in the next class.
Stephanie Zunick, Artist & Mindfulness Teacher
