Okay, so you want to learn a little bit more about yourself so that you can be prepared for the next time that you have an off day. You can go into battle, aka life, feeling ready versus just waking up and feeling horrible or getting bad news or going through something and then not knowing what to do and feeling totally off. So, on one of your good days, you're going to write down your life triggers. I want you to think about these in categories: family, an individual, or certain things or behaviors, habits, things from your family, things that happen when you're with certain people that other people do, or just things that humans do. Then you're going to do environment. What types of environment trigger you? What about your environment maybe triggers you? When it's dirty, when it's cluttered, whatever. And this can just be like subtle trigger, like, oh, it helps, you know, I don't feel as motivated, or this can be like big trigger. And then you're going to do behavior. What types of behaviors trigger you that you do or that other people do? And then thoughts. What types of thoughts do you have that trigger you? The whole time you do this, you're going to remain non-judgmental and curious. We are not judging ourselves here. We're just trying to gather data about ourselves. And then you're going to start thinking about your boundaries. Now, I want you to think about your boundaries as things that you're implementing, not that you're making other people follow. Your boundaries are rules and guidelines that you live by that you don't even have to announce to others that are going to help eliminate and reduce your triggers. You might say, I can only spend 30 minutes with a certain person because I know after that, I start to feel overwhelmed and triggered. You do not tell said person that. You just follow that guideline in your heart, in your life. Because we cannot force other people to do things. So, so often I see so many people saying they're not following my boundaries. Yeah, because you can't force them. But what you can do is remove yourself from that situation, limit how you talk to them, when you talk to them, what you do with them. And yes, sometimes that's sad, but that's just the reality. So you're going to have to get really real with yourself, set up your own boundaries, learn your boundaries, and follow them yourself. And learn how to politely say no and leave a situation when you need to. It's going to help you so much. Boundaries here are going to help reduce your triggers. You're going to know what those are and you're going to start following them regularly. Remember, these are for self, not others. And then over here, you're going to start understanding and learning about your toolbox. What you're going to use and rely on when you do feel triggered. Because even though we're going to put boundaries in place for ourselves to help reduce these things, we're not going to avoid feeling overwhelmed, stressed, or triggered in life. So then what you're going to do is you're going to know what your toolbox is and what you're going to like, what you're going to rely on and what you're going to use when you need it. In the toolbox, you can have things that work for you: nature, therapy, movement, talking to a loved one, art, music, meditation, prayer. There's a million things you can put in here: going on a walk, breathwork, shouting, singing, crying, going and sitting in silence. Whatever realistically you like to do that makes you feel better. If you don't like to meditate, you don't have to meditate. Don't meditate. Don't force yourself to meditate. Think about holistic activities that are going to make you feel better after you do them and help make you feel more grounded and that are going to take you away from everything here and give you just a little bit of like a five-minute timeout, a five-minute pause, a gift that you can give to yourself. Obviously, some things like therapy is like maybe you set that up weekly and you're going to go weekly and that's a gift you're going to give yourself and that's one of your tools. Any like mindset guides, mindset tips, like cycles that you're going to train your brain to go down, like those are all tools, like positive self-talk, being non-judgmental, remaining open and curious. Those are tools that you're going to use. And then, I want you to just think of one doable life task that sounds achievable and doable to you. Because when this system goes off and you get a little bit triggered and you get thrown off, you're going to rely on one of your tools and then to reintegrate back into your day, back into your productivity, back into what you need to be doing, what is like the task that you're going to associate that with? It could be meal prepping, it could be doing some household chores, it could be doing one admin task on your computer, it could be running an errand, like something that is on your weekly to-do list that you know you need to get done. So instead of getting triggered, feeling off, and then just throwing everything out for the rest of the day, you're going to think of one thing that sounds doable, safe, and that you can commit to. So it might be honestly cleaning. If you're home, just think, okay, I'm just going to clean something up quick because I know it's going to help my future self. I need to go clean my son's room, I need to go clean the laundry, I need to go clean the dishes, like one small thing to bring you back and to help continue to regulate your nervous system while you're going back into real life. Once you do all of this, you're going to definitely know yourself more and you're going to be more prepared for the days that you do get triggered and that you do feel off. And the goal is to not to avoid that state entirely because that's impossible. The goal is to know what triggers you, what you can do to help eliminate those triggers, and then what you can do when you get triggered. Set yourself up for success, get to know yourself because knowledge is power.
