WHAT A PODCAST EPISODE CAN DO FOR YOU
Listen at your peril ;)
Hello, dear readers!
I hope you are well and, as we’re almost at the end of January, I hope you’ve have a good month? With the odd exception, the days are now getting brighter (I know we’ve had a couple of storms too) but the odd time the sun’s out, the days are somehow brighter. Do you find that or is it just me?
This issue I want to talk about how listening to a random podcast episode made changes to my life.
The episode in question was the first one published by Dr Rangan Chatterjee. I’m sure some of you will have already discovered him and his total wisdom. He’s a doctor with decades of experience which he’s poured into a plethora of podcast episodes. Well, I hadn’t and a social media post for this particular episode (the first one of 2024) crossed my radar. I had scheduled a long walk around a country park near my home (Shakerely Mere, if you’re interested) and thought I’d listen to the episode as I walked.
The episode was called “How To Make 2024 Your Best Year: 3 Questions To Ask Yourself.” Being a total sucker for anything that promises how to improve your life, I started to listen to this one as I started my walk.
I have to say at the beginning, I got a bit impatient. He spent around 10 minutes explaining how what he was going to outline on the episode had changed his outlook and behaviour (yes, he practices what he preaches). Impatient for the actual regime, I continued to listen and, after much unnecessary verbal wandering (he is a tad verbose at times) he outlined what he and thousands of his patients practised each day. And basically, these are the questions he suggest you ask yourself each day.
He splits the questions into 3 to ask yourself in the morning and 3 to ask yourself in the evening. And these questions are:
MORNING:
What is the one thing I need to get done today?
What one thing/person in my life that I have deep gratitude for?
What quality do I want to show the world today?
and the evening questions are:
EVENING:
What went well today?
What can I do differently tomorrow?
What did I do for someone else today?
Now, these questions seem quite simple. And they are, but having done these questions every day for almost a month, I’ve realised that, as a medical professional, Dr Chatterjee designed them to stimulate you to think differently. They have for me. And, as Dr C says on his podcast, they have made a difference to the lives of thousands of patients.
Okay, so what differences have I noticed? Well, when I first started writing and answering these questions, I was noting down tasks actual tasks that I needed to do. Often this would be work related. Then, after a couple of weeks, I noticed that the automatic things that came into my brain when answering were not actual tasks, but how I needed to behave towards myself. For example, initially it was stuff like “I need to complete and publish that article”. Now it’s “Remember to take a lunch break” or “Decide where to go this weekend”. Do you see the difference? From answering these questions fairly consistently (and I have missed the odd evening session), it’s gradually switching stuff in my brain to ensure I’m putting myself into the equation (which is something, as women, we rarely do, right?) and getting more of a life/work balance.
It’s only been around three weeks of doing that. Imagine what changes (for the better) there would be if you consistently did this over months and years? And, I honestly believe that the questions Dr C has said we must ask ourselves are very cleverly designed to stimulate our brains to think far more positively. I’m certainly going to continue to put aside 5 minutes (if that) to complete my morning and evening questioning session.
And where might you find this golden nugget of an episode? It’s available for free here
Whilst we’re talking about podcasts, did you know that 45 Not Out has a podcast? It was the first platform I started under the 45 Not Out banner and has a total of 21 episodes, covering all manner of issues that affect women in mid-life today. If you’d like to take a look, you can find the podcast here
So, that’s my pearl of wisdom for this newsletter issue. I hope it’s helped and you start to make time to introduce this regime into your life. If you do, I’d love to hear how you get on and if it makes any changes for you. As I said above, I intend to continue with the 3 questions regime.
For now though, I wish you a great rest of the week.
Till the next issue
Una x