Kay:

Hey, hey Questers, and welcome back. It’s Wednesday, January 20th and this is episode 273. We have such a cool quote for you today from a mentor that we found within this last quarter of 2020 and he is just incredible, and his name is Dr. Daniel Amen.

Shi:

He tells us, “Practice saying no to the things that are not good for you, and over time, you will find it easier to do.”

Kay:

Now Shila and I have recently completed his book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, and we’ve got some exciting business opportunities with him, but we won’t bore you guys with that here.

Shi:

Yet.

Kay:

Yet. His work is incredible, and he really strives to change the conversation away from mental health and maybe put the focus on brain health, the organ that actually drives the whole mental state.

Shi:

The organ that literally houses every decision you make, every want that you have, all your desires and your feelings and your determinations and your action or inaction. It all happens up there in the organ. It’s only two or three percent of your body weight, and yet it takes up 30% of the calories and the energy that you consume. It is clearly the central house of everything and yet we so often only think about it in its mental programming terms and not about how our brain actually is functioning and working. So, the way that Dr. Daniel Amen talks about that in this book – we would highly recommend it. You’ll hear more from us later on it, but to bring this quote into focus here, saying no to the things that are not good for you is hard, especially if you’ve been saying yes to it for a long time. The good news is the brain doctor tells us over time that your brain wires differently, and it does get easier, but you’ve got to breakthrough, and you’ve got to make some new momentum.

Kay:

The thing I think I love most about this quote is that it presents an opportunity for new momentum if maybe you’re the type of person who has a hard time saying yes to something and sticking to it. So, maybe you have, in the past, said every day for a whole quarter of the year, “I’m going to eat a salad for lunch with lemon on top,” and that’s saying yes to something. It’s changing something for something else and that was too difficult, and you lost the willpower, and boom, it went out. Sometimes it’s easier to say no to stuff. I read an interesting psychology of eating article recently that actually talks about how there’s some real psychology behind this, that it’s easier for you to put rules in place that say, I will not drink soda than it is for me to say, I will go run three miles because I will not drink soda is not very negotiable if you create it as a rule in your mind.

Shi:

If you had partied or hung out with us in any year, 2018 or before, you knew that we liked to have a good time with alcohol. It was part of our social fabric. It was something that it’s just more fun. It’s cool, it’s a way to bond with people. We were definitely seeped in alcohol culture and it’s very prevalent all across the world really, but particularly here in the US. We decided in January of 2019 that we were going to take a month off of drinking. Many of you know, fast forward to now in January 2021, we’re still not drinking, which is neat to say that we’re now coming into our third year of alcohol sobriety. Saying no to one thing like alcohol in our lives has changed so much that it’s hard to even imagine finding fulfillment and joy from an activity like that where it used to be a real struggle for me to even go a week without drinking, or thinking about drinking, or budgeting my drinking, or calculating my drinking. So, that one no for us has been incredibly impactful and definitely demonstrative of this quote right here. It’s gotten so much easier over time.

Kay:

You know what’s interesting is I can think back to more experiences where I’ve said no to something in the long-term that I’m proud of and have stuck with than I can say I have implemented something new and stuck with it for longer. I’ve implemented something new and a fitness routine within the last two and a half years. It’s now totally ingrained in my system…

Shi:

A book can’t go more than like five days

Kay:

…and a book reading habit. But the book reading habit came as a result of ditching TV.

Shi:

Yeah.

Kay:

I had to say no to so many hours of TV every single day in order to create space and mental thinking for a book reading habit. So, this was really where I think we get to see this turnaround and he says “to practice saying no to those things that aren’t good for you.” So, TV is not good for you. Practicing no to that might be easier than adding something new and saying yes. He says that over time it gets easier but like Shila alluded to at the beginning, that’s not just theoretical or a mental habit. That’s actually your brain changing and creating new neural pathways so that you can open up to more of what you do want, as you begin to get less of the things that you don’t want in your life. So, just a reminder, what Dr. Daniel Amen says, “Practice saying no to the things that are not good for you, and over time, you will find it easier to do.”

Shi:

Well, we’ve always been a fan of #WorkoutWednesday quests, but today it’s a little bit of a different spin. It’s a #WellnessWednesday quest. We want you to say no to something unhealthy for you today. Come on, you’ve got this! Are you ready?

Kay & Shi:

Let’s quest!