Whatever with Heather - Mindset, Parenting & Personal Growth

30. [Remember] It's Simple. Not Easy.

• Heather Evans • Season 1 • Episode 30

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Today, we examine how the seemingly mundane tasks, from filling the dishwasher to taking a leisurely stroll, can morph into daunting obstacles.

Listen in for 3 powerful strategies to use to make the SIMPLE tasks feel EASIER.

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Hey y'all, welcome back to another episode of Whatever with Heather. Today is kind of a big day in our family. Today is our son's last day of public school. We are pulling him out of school halfway through the day to come home to start being homeschooled again. He was homeschooled up until the middle of second grade, has been in public school for half of second grade, all of third grade and now the majority of fourth grade. We are homeschooling for a few reasons which I won't go into right now, but our middle schooler and high schooler will continue in public school. But for right now, our son coming home doing some homeschooling is something that he's excited about and we are excited about. In just a couple hours I will go pick him up and bring him home. The good news about us returning to homeschooling is that, especially for my YouTube community, I have a good number of homeschoolers on there and since we're returning to homeschooling, I will be able to share more about that and the things we do and the strategies we use around that. I expect that the podcast will kind of stay away from that topic. I might bring it in here and there, like maybe once or twice a year, but for the most part, the homeschooling stuff will be on YouTube. The podcast will continue to be whatever, with Heather, parenting, mindset and life's ups and downs. This is an episode I'm super excited about.

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This episode is centered around the phrase it's simple, not easy. Now, what do I mean by that? Without life, I've realized a lot of life and a lot of the things that move us forward are quite simple. But just because something is simple does not mean that it is easy. For example, loading the dishwasher is a simple task, but doing it daily or motivating yourself to do it daily is not easy. Going on a walk for 15 minutes a day is simple. This does not mean it's easy to do so. There are other variables in play. There are mindsets, there are mental blocks. We often judge ourselves that it shouldn't be so hard because we know it's simple. But the good thing is that we can flip this around. Some of these things feel hard. They feel challenging that we know they're simple. If we were to really pull back in view them objectively, loading the dishwasher is not hard, it is simple. Going on a walk for 15 minutes is not hard, it is simple. But the mental block is usually the hardest and so these things can feel hard or difficult or challenging to do your good life, the life you imagine for yourself. The vibe of your day is on the other side of the simple things you do consistently. Now, this does not mean that it is easy to do things consistently. In fact, consistency can be one of the most challenging things.

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We often mentally overcomplicate things and we create walls where there are really no real walls. We have created these walls in our head and they feel real, like you will come against things that you don't want to do, where it feels like you've come across an actual wall. But oftentimes these walls are just created in our head. And since we know that we can start to work with ourselves and start to navigate these mental walls better, because we know they are not actual walls Although we may feel like they're actual walls and they are actually stopping us, we know that they are not actual physical walls. Therefore, we need to kind of get creative in how we convince ourselves or remind ourselves that the things we want to do or need to do are usually actually quite simple. So how can we make the simple things feel easier? So if the simple things right now feel hard, like loading the dishwasher feels like a hard task. How can we get ourselves to stop viewing these simple things as so hard and challenging? Here are some ways to make some simple things easier. The first thing is habit stacking. This means adding a habit before or after a habit you currently have in place. I find that adding the habit after is usually easiest for me, because it's easiest for me to trigger the habit that already exists and then add on another one. So for me this has looked like a slow build over the years.

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Brushing my teeth habit Most of us probably brush our teeth every night. Flossing or water picking was not a habit, so that became a habit that I stacked after brushing my teeth and for a while it was just the discipline of doing that. Now it's very easy for me to brush my teeth and do the water pick every single night. Then I needed to add in a skincare routine of some kind, whatever that looks like for you. So it was brush teeth, water pick, skincare and as time has gone on these tasks that I used to feel such a wall against, like I could not brush my teeth and then water pick. That would take too much time and too much energy. Now there's this flow. There's this ease because the habits all link together.

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Wednesday I initiate the first habit. The other ones fall into place, but I had to get over the initial walls that I felt around adding an extra habit. So instead of climbing the wall of one habit brush my teeth and then later another habit water pick I put those together so it felt like one wall. To start the brushing the teeth, it's time to get ready for bed. That's the initial wall and then I just have to keep moving forward. An object in motion stays in motion. We use that to our advantage. I've started a habit and I'm going to add things on Now. My latest habit is working on like moisturizing my body at night, because I'm getting older and I want my skin to look as great as it can for as long as it can. So it's brush teeth, water pick, skincare for my face, skincare for my body.

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These habits have stacked on top of each other. That is one way that you can make a simple thing feel easier is by adding it before after a habit you already have. Now, if you don't already have a habit where you need one, then it's the discipline, the consistency to start one of the habits. We do not do these all at once because that does not feel easy. It's literally a wall for every habit.

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So let's pretend I decide I'm going to brush my teeth, floss my teeth, do skincare, do like, do face skincare, do body skincare, and I want to start that all at once. I could do that, but I also will have to realize that I'll start brushing my teeth and I will hit a little minor wall to do the next thing and then I'll hit a minor wall to do the next task and then I'll hit a minor wall before I do the final task. If I slowly begin to stack habits instead it feels like this Brush teeth, minor wall, floss or water pick. Then I do the next day brush teeth, minor wall, floss or water pick. I do that for a couple weeks until I don't feel that wall or resistance consistently between the two habits. Yes, sometimes I still am like I don't want to, but for the most part there's ease there.

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Brush my teeth, water pick. Then I add in the next thing, which was face skincare. So then it's brush my teeth, water pick, slight wall face skincare and instead of having to feel like you're climbing multiple walls or mountains for everything you're adding in. You slowly are stacking these to where it doesn't feel like you're having to climb a wall or climb a mountain for everything you're trying to do, every habit you're trying to add. Okay, so one way to make the simple task easier is habit stacking. Another way, a creative way to make your simple task easier is don't break the chain, meaning you can get a chart online, you can print out a calendar and you write down when you have completed the habits on that so that you can visually see when you are breaking the chain.

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Now some people are perfectionists and don't want to break the chain at all. For me, I actually really liked writing on my calendar that I did my morning routine or my night routine, or I brush my teeth and I floss my teeth, whatever that looks like. It might just look like. On Monday I write B for brush teeth, F for floss teeth, s for skincare, right, whatever it looks like, it doesn't matter, just a little way to keep track. And then the next day I'm more likely to do the thing because I don't want to break the chain. But let's say, one day I completely skip skincare and I just don't. I skip flossing and skincare. Then the next day, I can see that I skipped it the day before and it becomes easier for me to be like okay, I'm going to do it again, instead of this going on forever. You have a visual way of seeing how long it's been since you did the thing you wanted to do, the habit or routine you wanted to do. But then also, for the perfectionist out there, it also helps you see that missing one day is not failing, that you have done a bunch and you've done most days, and most days is great, most days is good.

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So by getting a calendar and working on the quote unquote don't break the chain. Sometimes you might break the chain, but if you're seeing the patterns and you're seeing when you have done the things you said you do and then when you skipped it, then it's a lot easier the next day to be like okay, I skipped yesterday, got a little break and now I'm going to do what I said I'd do. You can do this for drinking water or moving your body or meditating, not just your nighttime routine. All of these things could be put on a don't break the chain calendar and I wouldn't even call it don't break the chain. It's just the easiest way to phrase that. It's the visual way of seeing what you have done and making sure you don't take a huge break between days of doing the habit or doing the thing. You could also use this for chores. You could also use this for anything that is a simple task, but you want it to feel easier A visual way of saying you did it.

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As an adult, you don't really get rewarded for loading the dishwasher or doing these daily tasks, so find a way to reward yourself, to make it feel fun, to make you feel like you got quote unquote credit for the things that you did. There's nothing wrong with needing a little pat on the back, even if you just give that to yourself to help motivate you forward. Imagine your kids did a ton of chores one day or did a ton of things and nobody acknowledged that they would be a lot less likely to do it the next day. We are the same. We like gold stars, we like people acknowledging our work. So sometimes do that for yourself Maybe all the time you do that for yourself and create a chart where you can see all that you have done versus all the things you didn't do. It's really easy to look around your house and see all the things you didn't do that day. It's a lot harder to make sure you've given yourself credit, given yourself praise and acknowledgement of the things that you did do, so this can be a fun way to do that as well.

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All right, the third way to make simple things easier is more of a mindset, and this is a mindset I started taking in probably two or three years ago and I had found myself in a place where everything felt really hard, and this can pop up, like even in the past few years. This pops up and this is what I remind myself of, especially when simple things are feeling really, really hard. Remind yourself when you do a chore or activity or to-do list item where it feels like you're running up against a wall. Ask yourself, is this hard or is this just work? And if it's just work, it'll be easier to get yourself to do it.

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Sometimes we've equated work with being hard. For example, my pantry could use some organizing. Right now. That task can feel hard, but is actually the action of taking things out of the pantry, getting rid of the things that are expired, reorganizing it, putting it all back in. Is that actually hard? No, it's not hard. To lift the cans out. It's not hard to throw away stuff. It's not hard to put things back. It is literally just work. It's going to take time and it's going to take work, but it's not hard. I'm not moving moving boxes. I'm not dealing with health issues. I'm not dealing with hard things that are happening to my kids at school. There are things in life that are hard right, that are difficult to deal with, but oftentimes our chores are to-do lists. Even moving our bodies are actually not that hard, they're just work.

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And just because something is work doesn't mean it's hard Now. It doesn't mean I like it, it doesn't mean I maybe enjoy the task that I need to do or want to do. But if I can remind myself, oh, this isn't hard, it's just work, then I have reframed. Whatever I'm needing to do is oh, it's just work. That's why I'm feeling resistance. I just don't want to do work, I just don't want to do anything. But it's not that it's hard that I don't want to do it, it's just because it's work. And then it's easier to just do it because you've now reframed it as okay, I can do some work, fine, but it's not hard.

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And if we acknowledge they're just work and they're not hard, then we remove the wall right. The wall is that it is hard, it is difficult, it's challenging. But if we take that wall away and we're just like, oh, it's just work, then that wall disappears. The task or action just becomes a path of a thing you have to do. You just got to walk the path, you just got to do the work.

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If the task is challenging or hard in our minds, it feels difficult. That is a wall that creates a wall in our mind. But work is just a thing to do, not a wall to climb. Now there is such thing as hard work, yes, challenging work, yes, but some of the things that we have set up in our brains as being really challenging are not and they're simple and, like I said, simple doesn't mean it's easy to do. But the simple things become easier as we reframe them or we find creative ways to remove the wall and remove the thing that makes them feel challenging.

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Three ways to make simple things easier Number one is habit stacking.

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Number two, don't break the chain or find a creative way to give yourself credit and acknowledgement.

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And number three decide whether this is hard or if it's just work.

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Remember your good life. The life that feels good is on the other side of the simple things you do consistently the way you move your body, the way you notice your breath, the way you put down your phone. All of these things are simple and they add up to a life that feels really good. The things you value, as you add them to your life, as you add the simple things you value to your life, your life will feel better, your day to day will feel better. And if you can move past the roadblock of these simple things that you actually want to do and you can reframe them as just being work or actually being simple and not that hard, and move past the mental barriers that you create or I create or we create, then you move into a life that feels really good, that feels really intentional and feels really aligned with who you are and who you are becoming. Thank y'all for being here for another episode of Whatever with Heather, and I will see y'all next week here on the podcast or on YouTube. Bye.