This week I’m sharing some of the things I’ve intentionally quit in the last few weeks.

I’m not talking about big quits, but small, doable little quits that help you feel better, have a brighter outlook, and ultimately help you get things done.

Not only that, but I’m also sharing HOW to quit to make this easy and fun. I’ll see you inside! xo, Janeen

>> CLICK HERE to Watch on YouTube

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TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Janeen: Well, hey there, you guys, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I am Janeen Alley, and you are listening to Mamas Who Do today. And we are talking about quitting. I am sharing some of the things that I’m quitting, and I want to invite you to quit something in your life to help raise your energy and make space for all the good vibes.

[00:00:23] Now, whatever that looks like for you and I, I wanna just invite you to quit whatever it is that you want, but I’m specifically speaking about quitting something a little bit smaller to create a quick win for yourself. And like I said, something that’s easy. So if you’ve tried in the past, maybe quitting overeating or quitting over drinking or something like that, that’s not what we’re talking about specifically.

[00:00:47] Although if you are interested in quitting those things, I think that’s amazing, but that’s not necessarily what we’re talking about today. I’m going to be sharing smaller, easier, quits to make space [00:01:00] in your life for more positive energy and more good vibes.

[00:01:05] So this class was born because I was teaching a yoga class a few Saturdays back. I teach yoga every other Saturday here in my community, and I love to come to class to kind of get the mood for everyone who is there. I love to go around and chat with everybody and find out what their week was like because I don’t teach from notes, I just kind of make things up as we go and I have a general idea of what it is that we’re doing in class, and I create different poses or asanas in order to support the, the theme of the class, whether it’s a hip opening class or whether it’s an energizing flow or whatever it is that we’re doing.

[00:01:42] Well, on this particular Saturday, my students were kind of all over the place. They were telling me things like, we wanna hip class, or they were coming in and I could tell they were really low vibe and they were really low energy when they were coming into class. And then I had other students that were really high vibration and really excited to be there, and they had a lot to do over their weekend [00:02:00] and they wanted a really energizing class that day.

[00:02:03] So, What do you do as a teacher when that happens? Well, I decided during the meditation that I was going to do a class on quitting. Things that we could quit. So it wasn’t necessarily either an energizing class or not, but it was more of a themed class that I felt like everyone could relate to, to some degree or another.

[00:02:25] And it was kind of funny because two of the women who were in class, they were on the front row of class, they were kind of off to the side, but they had been talking about some of the things that I was giving examples about. I was telling them that they could quit complaining about the weather or they could quit feeling frustrated with a spouse or they could quit feeling grumpy. And apparently this was all part of the conversation that they were having before class started.

[00:02:49] I did not overhear them. I was not judging them, and even if I had overheard, I would’ve just kind of chucked to myself because All of that, of course, is super relatable as human beings, right? So the truth is [00:03:00] we all have so much energy and bandwidth during the day to deal with.

[00:03:06] So why not make a point to invite more positive energy and good vibes by quitting something that is dragging you down a little bit. So we’re gonna quit something intentionally today. And another reason why this popped into my mind before yoga started is because I had kind of put my foot down with myself the week prior, and I told myself I was gonna quit worrying about things.

[00:03:31] I didn’t even realize how big of a worrier I was until I had several days where I was just kind of amped up with some worry and some anxiety. So much so that there were moments of time I was kind of slipping into panic a little bit and I didn’t even realize how much of a worrier I was until I was having a conversation with somebody who does marketing for me and kind of about this realization, and she’s like, really? You’ve never noticed that about yourself? [00:04:00] And so I was definitely paying more attention. So even somebody who does thought work all the time, I do lots of thought downloads, lots of models to help coach myself, on a regular basis, I was noticing that this was part of my experience even five years into this work, so, so I don’t want you to judge yourself.

[00:04:21] I just want you thinking about some of the patterns that you have and some of the things that you would like to quit. And when I say some of the things like no more than two, we’re talking about one or two things that you’re intentionally going to quit. So I’ve given some examples. I’m gonna give a few more, and I want you just thinking about what resonates with you as far as what it is that feels kind of like a negative monkey on your back that you would like to let go of and release to allow more positive, happy vibes into your life.

[00:04:53] So, like I said, you can quit worrying with me if you’d like to. Or you can quit rushing [00:05:00] around and being busy all day, you probably knew that that one was coming. You can quit telling yourself that you don’t have any time. One of the things that I say instead is, I’m just choosing not to make time for that right now.

[00:05:15] And you wanna be honest with yourself. You wanna stop telling yourself you don’t have time, but that you’re just choosing not to make that a priority right now. Tell yourself the truth. All right. Another thing that you could quit is you could quit watching the news. You could quit complaining about the weather.

[00:05:32] It is stormy and crazy right now in Denver. It is the middle of May, which is kind of typical. My, my daughter graduated last May, I think she graduated on May 22nd. It was my other daughter’s birthday, I believe, and it was snowing on that day. I’ve just learned to quit complaining about the weather around here because you never know what you’re gonna get.

[00:05:53] I’m just grateful for the water and how it waters my trees and my plants and my front yard. [00:06:00] That’s all good stuff. I have also recently quit complaining about my kids. Now, I love my kids and I think they’re amazing, and I think one of the reasons I kind of had gotten to this complaining trap with them or this complaining habit with them is because as my husband has been deployed, I have kind of felt this need to fill him in on all the things, all the things that are going on in a 24-hour period of time and part of that is just getting frustrated with kids sometimes. And I was realizing like, I don’t really like doing that. I don’t like complaining about my kids. I have amazing kids. And the things that they do are really, just kind of regular things. So I’ve just decided to stop complaining about ’em cuz they’re people just like me and I don’t want people talking about me like that. So, I quit complaining about them. I’ve also, from time to time, quit social media in my life.

[00:06:58] Although I haven’t, I’m not [00:07:00] in a quitting phase right now. I’m on social media currently, but I have gotten to points in my life where I’ve quit social media for periods of time, just because I feel like, all right, this is getting too big. This is becoming a bigger thing in my life than I would like it to be, and so I need to step back and kind of put that away for a little bit of time until I get back into a groove where I am only on there for maybe five or 10 minutes a day.

[00:07:27] I have also quit being grumpy. I quit being grumpy a while back, and it wasn’t necessarily something intentional that happened in my life. It was actually something that I stopped doing because I quit some other things. So it was kind of nice to know that there are some secondary effects that happened when we intentionally decide to quit something.

[00:07:47] One of the things that we say sometimes in the coaching world is the rising tide lifts all boats. What that means is if you’re focusing on one thing, It’s amazing how that work kind of has this ripple effect [00:08:00] into other things that you’re doing or things that you’re working on or things that you would like to change.

[00:08:05] Because really once you know the model, and once you understand how thoughts generate emotions which create actions and get new results in your life, if you understand that and you are naturally thinking more positive things. Because you’ve quit worrying about something, then that is definitely gonna have a ripple effect into other arenas of your life.

[00:08:28] When you’re doing little exercises like this, I want you to focus on how things are improving in your life. And what I mean by that is, so often what we do when we’re trying to take steps towards a goal is we’re constantly seeing how far we have to go until we reach the goal.

[00:08:45] And what I want you to start doing on a regular basis, instead, I want you to see how far you’ve come. So let me give you an example of this. Like I said, I wasn’t intentionally working on not being grumpy anymore in my [00:09:00] life. But I did notice the other day when I was driving to Costco at night with my son, I kind of wrangled him into keeping me company doing the grocery run that week.

[00:09:12] And of course, he loves to do the grocery run with me because, He gets to pick out his snacks or whatever, and so he loves that. He also loves having that one-on-one time with me, so that was really fun. But he was driving, this is my son who has a permit, and so he was driving and I was really grateful that I wasn’t driving and I was exhausted.

[00:09:29] At the end of that day. I was really, really tired, and yet we were still having fun in the car, like it wasn’t super upbeat and and fun, but we were singing along to whatever was on the radio and it was just so much more pleasant than it would have been maybe five years before when when I got tired, I got really grumps.

[00:09:50] It was kind of that knee jerk response but because I’ve done so much work, I’m being aware and being more intentional about the way that I was showing up, I could see that, [00:10:00] okay, this is definitely spilling over into that moment even though it wasn’t something I was consciously thinking about and I was just really grateful for that.

[00:10:08] So I want you thinking along those lines when you are doing this, how are you improving and how far have you come in the last week or month or several months over time so that you can start building off of those wins and seeing how you’re gaining momentum in your life. I think it’s a really powerful way to keep going on the thing that you’re working on.

[00:10:30] Okay, so let’s talk about how to quit. I’ve talked about some of the things that you can quit. Let’s talk about how to quit. So the first thing that I would say is you wanna pick one thing, one, maybe two, maybe two things. But for starters, I want you to just pick one. Start really small if you’re new to quitting.

[00:10:50] All right, so that you can start to see some momentum and you can move on to the next thing after you’ve told yourself, we’re not worrying about that anymore, or we’re not gonna do overwhelm [00:11:00] anymore, or busy anymore. Okay, so pick one. What is the, what is that thing that you’re going to work on? The second thing is I want you to have fun.

[00:11:08] Okay? This is actually so much easier to do if you can make something fun. You know what’s really hard? Being grouchy. It’s true. Or feeling bummed after watching the news. Those are things that are really hard to do. So I want you to think about how you can make quitting this one thing fun and actually quitting

[00:11:28] worrying about something is fun just because once you release the worry, you can kind of take a big breath because really there is no upside to worrying. There is no upside to feeling overwhelmed, right? They’re just isn’t. So once you let that go, your mood starts to elevate just because you’ve set that worry down really. Okay. Think about why you have thought this thing in the past was worth your time. Now, this is important because there’s a reason why we do the things that we [00:12:00] do, right?

[00:12:00] At some point in my life, I believed that worrying was gonna serve a purpose for me in my life. I thought it was something that was productive for my brain to do, and so I created a habit about worrying.

[00:12:14] So I want you to just recognize that for a moment. You don’t need to go back into the dark recesses of your past and think about why you’ve chosen that thing. Just realize that it has served a purpose for you and now you can just let it go. And I think that’s important because it kind of releases the judging yourself conversation or beating yourself up conversation that we have from time to time. And so just notice like, okay, I was doing that because it served a purpose, but it doesn’t anymore. And so I can just set that down and that’s fine. Okay. The last thing that I want you thinking about is how are you going to fill the void?

[00:12:48] So once you quit complaining about the weather, or once you quit worrying or feeling overwhelmed, what are you going to do instead? Or if you’ve [00:13:00] quit complaining about kids, what are you going to talk about instead? What are you going to do now that you’re not doing that thing? So if you’re not intentional about what you fill your time with, it’s super easy for us to default back into the behavior you’re trying to move away from.

[00:13:17] And it can be super easy. This does not have to be this big old thing. And so for me, I had to intentionally tell myself, okay, if I am not going to worry about something, I’m going to fill that time, number one, breathing, and then number two, focusing on what it is that I’m grateful for. So that was what I intentionally said, okay, if I’m not worrying about this, then I’m intentionally thinking about positive things: how far I’ve come, things I’m thankful for. I’m just gonna continue to breathe and I’m just gonna be grateful for things instead. Because the truth is there isn’t an upside to worrying. There really isn’t an upside to complaining about something unless you’re actively looking for a solution.

[00:13:58] But I think most of the time [00:14:00] people aren’t doing that. I think they’re just complaining to like vent or complaining to talk about something and it just doesn’t feel very good. So I want you thinking about, okay, if you’re not doing that, what are you gonna fill your time with instead of doing that? Okay.

[00:14:14] Crazy thing is in the middle of this episode of me recording this. There was an alert that went off on my phone that we are having a tornado watch. So there you have it. So it’s crazy town right now in Denver. I’m not exactly sure what’s happening right now. I hope you guys aren’t flying in anytime soon.

[00:14:32] But I hope you guys stay safe. And if you like this episode, I would love it if you subscribed to whether you’re watching on YouTube or whether you’re listening on your favorite podcast app, subscribe to the show so that you don’t miss an episode. And I would of course love it if you pass this episode along to a friend.

[00:14:49] So remember, no matter your circumstance, let your beautiful light shine and I will see you guys next week. Take care. Bye-bye.