It's Giving Growth

It's Giving Growth

By A Self Development Podcast By GigiEducationSelf-Improvement
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It's Giving Growth episodes

  • healing trauma sucks dude (Growing Pains: childhood trauma, shadow work, toxic relationship anxiety) - Ep. 27

    pov: you’re in your healing era and it sucks. Welcome to me Healing Journey Diaries Ep1

    Today we are talking about mental health -- the Hard Truths about Self Love Journey that loneliness is part of the journey, the power of solitude, growing pains, what no one told me and what i really found out about healing in Cognitive behavioral therapy.
    We're talking about healing your inner child, emotional trauma, past wounds, childhood trauma that so many of millennials and gen-z people face today. When we talk about the “self healing journey” -- it’s often seen as this beautiful path of finding yourself. When you search this online, you often see pictures of bubble baths, face masks, yoga poses, drinking wine. It's posed as this aesthetic glow up. But get ready to ruin your mascara .
    We'll go through the stages of awareness, or your spiritual awakening, acceptance, compassion and forgiveness and transformation. You'll want to hear this is in your healing girl era, glow up era, and it girl era.
    We'll cover anxiety, depression, people pleasing, insecurity, broken families, hurt, toxic parents, toxic family. I'll talk about attachment styles, mindfulness exercises, fight or flight, holding a grudge, resent, fake friends, stress and negativity and generational trauma, Rewriting limiting beliefs, shadow work, inner work, re-parenting yourself.
    It's all tough to discuss and you may need to get a massage or go to the best spa after this.
    some of the most common traumas are Abandonment, Loss of A Loved One (death).

    16 min
  • 9 science based habits that will change your life (Fitness, Gym Hacks, Morning Routine, Wellness) - Ep. 26

    When we talk about health, you often hear the same things over and over again. Eat vegetables, drink water, get sleep. But there are other tips I’ve learned on my health journey that are super underrated and don’t think they’re talked about enough. And I wanna share them with you today. These are fitness and health habits that will help you perform better at the gym, keep you from feeling exhausted all the time and motivate you to smash all your goals. This is everything from healthy morning routines to rethinking how you walk. We cover pronation, cold showers, sleep, muscle imbalance and more.

    13 min
  • 10 Easy Productivity Hacks For Lazy People (Time Management Habits for BUSY days that save time) - EP. 25

    Everyone is busy these days. Between work, exercising, side hustles, cooking, cleaning, it often feels like we never have enough hours in the day to do what we need to do. The math aint nothing when it comes to my time. But that’s why it’s so important to be as productive and efficient with your time as possible. We don’t necessarily need to work harder, we need to work smarter. Because that can equate to getting a lot more done with the same amount of time. So let’s talk about time management tips. No, I’m not talking about downloading Notion and changing everything about how you schedule your life. I’m talking about easy, simple things you can do today that take seconds sometimes! This video will get you to stop procrastinating and get motivated to achieve your goals.
    Reset for work like you do at the movies. When you go to the movies, the cinema, if you're fancy, what do you do? You mentally and physically prepare yourself to be in a certain environment. Before starting work, productive people set up and get ready to work as if it’s an event like going to the movies. They set up their desks with everything they might need. Like water, notepads, pens. They put their phone away and mentally get themselves in the mindset of -- I’m going to be here and be in a deep flow state of work for 2 hours.
    Eat Mindfully. I think this one is super underrated. Be aware and responsible about what you’re putting into your body. Because what you’re digesting is literally part of what’s running your body and making it work, what’s keeping your eyes open and your blood pumping. Food impacts brain power, brain function, memory, mood, productivity. And if you’re not providing your body with food that makes you feel energized and good, like you’re going to perform poorly.
    Follow the 80/20 rule. The 80/20 rule states for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes. Productive people understand how this works and time block their time to do what focuses on getting the best results.
    Avoid Decision Fatigue. On average we make 35,000 decisions a day. That includes whether or not like someone’s Instagram social media post, what to watch on Youtube (thanks for choosing me by the way), whether to go to the bathroom or hold your pee longer, what time to go to sleep and if we hold the door open for that person that is just that uncomfortable mid-distance away. Our brain is more or less constantly making micro-decisions and that leads to something called decision fatigue. So research has shown that as you make more decisions, your ability to make them becomes worse or impaired over the course of a day. The quality of our decision making skills deteriorate as the day goes on. So save yourself time and energy by reducing the number of microdecisions you make on a daily basis.
    Batch stuff. It takes so much more brain power, energy and time to switch back and forth between tasks than it does to just dedicate a chunk of time to get all similar tasks done together. When you sit down at your laptop to be productive, how many times do you stop to answer emails? Think about how much time you would save if you just dedicated a solid hour at the end of the day to answering all your emails. This way you don’t interrupt other tasks responding, plus it’s literally just more convenient, you already have the same email tab open and are typing so might as well just keep doing that till it’s done. This batching method works with so many other things -- like food. Meal Prep. Cooking dinner everyday means going to your kitchen everyday, pulling out ingredients and stirring up dinner. let’s say that it takes 1 hour to make 1 serving of pasta. If you meal prepped for the week, it wouldn’t take you 5 hours to make 5 servings. It’ll probably take you around an hour or maybe a little more. So you just gained back 4 hours in your week simply by batching all your cooking into one night. A perfect example of working smarter not harder.

    15 min
  • How to Live a Soft Life AND Be Self Disciplined (can you self care & achieve your goals?) - Ep. 24

    So It seems like there are two kinds of people. Those that are all about the #grind, hustle life and those that are all about the soft life, the let’s chill out and journal, meditate for a while, let’s self care.

    ]We are pumped with motivational videos like “no pain no gain.” and “no excuses, no sleep till its done” and “if you’re going through hell, keep going. Don’t be a quitter.”
    BUT then there's this wave of this newer idea of “nah. Ima chill. Take it easy. Love yourself. Relax.” It’s what’s being called living “a soft life.” It seems to be the other side of that -- I’m going to get my 8 hours of sleep, I’m going to do things that make me happy, the people who don’t want to struggle, they want to enjoy every day and prioritize self care. People also call it living in your feminine energy.
    SO Who do we listen to? Our mental health versus or self discipline.
    Today I’ll tell my story, share the pros and cons of living in both worlds and how I balance both.
    I have always struggled with this.. like I wanna be laser focused but also have my mental health and happiness, you know? I want to have an chill life, & focus on feeling good but getting things done, having big goals, creating your dream life, your dream body, requires discipline, motivation, years of dedication, doing things that aren’t fun a lot of times. They do not get handed to you.
    For all my life, until a couple years ago, I was 100% about the grind life. In college, I worked two jobs on top of an internship. And I was a student. I would take night time classes and work on my weekends. I stopped partying and going out with friends. I did all this so that I set my future self up. I didn’t want to graduate and not have a full time job lined up. And I wanted to save enough money to live on my own. I was exhausted everyday, but I knew that I wasn’t putting in those hours for nothing. I was sacrificing immediate gratification for long term success. And it worked. I did save enough money to have my own apartment after graduation And having that mindset for most of my life honestly got me really far. I owe, yeah, pretty much all my career, financial, education success to that.
    With my weight, for years I’ve been going up and down and eating whatever I felt like but and going to the gym most days, but taking it easy too. That average gym lifestyle got me, surprise surprise, on average results. Nothing spectacular happened with mediocre work put in.
    BUT I lost 20 pounds in 2 months last year, I made a video on that, its because I woke up one day and said that’s it, I’m not giving myself another option. I was VERY hard on myself. But it got me what I wanted. I’m talking about eating a very strict diet, counted every calorie, no cheat meals every week, nothing.
    BUT there is a flip side to it. when then pandemic happened and everyone was forced to slow down, everyone was stuck at home and had a lot of free time, I panicked. I realized that I didn’t know who I was outside of working. And the last issue with going HAM and being hard-core grind life was that it was pretty lonely. When you dedicate all your time and energy into your goals, whether it be starting a business, becoming a gym rat, getting a PhD, committing to Youtube channel, being a full time youtuber, extreme saving money, it takes so much out of you, that there’s really barely any energy left to give to others. It almost became toxic productivity. I was wearing my burnout like a badge of honor because I was getting so much done. I was peeking in my career, I had my dream body, I was hitting my savings goals, I was so proud of myself BUT without even realizing it, I was severely behind in other important facets of my life that I really didn’t consider important until recently.
    I started going to therapy to get to know myself. I started painting, going horseback riding, and watching more Netflix. I finally opened the door and small- stepped my way into the beginning of my soft life girl era.

    18 min
  • “I have no friends” - an epidemic | Lessons About Friendships, Loneliness, Anxiety, Social Media - Ep. 23

    Do you ever feel like you don't have real TRUE friends? Not very close to ANYONE? Like everyone has already formed their friend group and you got left out?

    So apparently we’re all loners. We all on the same struggle bus together -- we’re collectively in a friendship recession.
    So today I want to talk about something it seems millions of people relate to and that’s the lovely I HAVE NO FRIENDS trend.
    I’m going to talk about the epidemic gripping the world right now --- loneliness. I’ve lost friends, I have had no friends, I have bad friends and I’ve been the bad friend. I’ll leave you guys with lessons I’ve learned through all of that.
    How many close friends do you have? If you were homeless tomorrow, who would have your back and open their doors to you without you even asking? Who can you call after a bad day and not feel like you’re burdening them? For a lot of people, that’s no one. There is a loneliness epidemic in the world and people are finally speaking out about it. All over youtube are people of all ages talking about how they don’t have friends. In a world that is obsessively on social media to connect with people, we ironically feel isolated. In a culture that obsesses over finding love, we ironically apparently don’t have friends. And that is heartbreaking.
    There have been very few times in my life where I felt I had a close friend…forget about friendS, even just having one really close friend was super hard. Like I’ve always had “friends” , some acquaintances, co-workers I could get drinks with, people who I saw and hung out with, but there always felt like I was missing a big piece of something -- a true, real friend, someone I could really lean on, trust, and go deeper with and who I could call from jail type of friend or who I could just cry with if I was sad. And that’s tough. It’s a very lonely feeling.
    The first thing that I wish I knew was: know what kind of friend you are looking for. Define what a friend means to you. What are the values you are looking for? Because I realized if I didn’t concretely know what I wanted and what I was not accepting, if I didn’t make that clear for myself, anyone was being let in that door.
    don’t cling to people who don’t nourish you and don’t grow with you. I’ve truly learned to let people go. And not in a mean way. In a graceful, loving way. You don’t need to maintain a relationship with someone just because of the history you have or for the sake of maintaining it.
    The other thing I learned is yes, some people you just naturally outgrow and naturally let go, but others need a little push out the door. People who disrespect you or don’t know how to apologize. Like romantic relationships, good friends are worth the wait.
    The next lesson I learned is that -- Putting yourself out there will be uncomfortable As someone with social anxiety, trying to make friends is so daunting because I think it's okay if I go up to someone and I say the wrong thing, or they think it’s weird that I randomly approached them, that’s where confidence comes in. I’m just saying hi to someone and if they think that’s weird then whatever. I will never talk to them again. It’s not even about you half the time. If they are judging you for saying hi, they would have judged anyone. It’s more revealing about what kind of person they are.

    17 min
  • I Quit Social Media. This is My Story. (mental health, validation, social media detox) - Ep. 22

    One year without social media as a Gen-z 24 year old. I quit social media a year ago and started living my life instead of watching others live theirs. In this video, I tell my story of the top 5 struggles I had with social media, the alarming statistics of social media and mental health, time, comparison, etc and why I left social media. I also go over the highlights of my life since quitting. In each section of the video, I’ll ask you questions to think about to maybe consider a social media detox, a dopamine detox.
    Are you watching this video while your room is messy?
    OR when’s the last time you saw an influencer on a million dollar vacation and thought ahh my life is perfect as it is? If you feel attacked, I'm in the same boat as you. No shade. I definitely dealt with procrastination, fomo, anxiety, and lower self esteem while I’ve used social media. Most people don’t realize how much social media actually affects them. But at the same time, it’s just a platform, where we choose what to follow and what relationship we have with it.
    SO Have you ever thought about why you downloaded instagram or facebook or snapchat to begin with? And why do you continue to open the app everyday? What was your reason? Have you really ever thought about why you have an instagram? If you do have a reason, does your social media feed prove that, reflect that intention? If you go on it right now, are you going to see things that make your mindset better, your relationships better or are you gonna see a bunch of million dollar vacations and edited models that make you feel poor or give you body image issues? Have you ever thought about taking a social media break?
    So many people have a story like this, stressed about likes, number of followers, what kind of reaction, and how much praise their posts will get. At the end of the day it’s basing our self worth on external factors. Social media has made this SO common that this group of people are actually referred to as “Generation Validation.” It’s not just wanting to be liked, which is quite normal, it’s needing to be liked and is a psychological concept studied called “contingent self worth.”
    A lot of people say that they want to just share their life and it’s not about getting validation from people, which is definitely possible, but if you want to know for sure, ask yourself this: if you post a picture publicly to the world, and you knew that all your friends and family saw it, but it got no likes, zero likes. Zero heart eye emojis in the comments, would you still feel just as happy and satisfied with posting it. If you really are not posting for other people, Would you still post it if it got no likes?
    Something else I struggled with was not just how I felt about myself, it about how I felt in comparison to other people.
    Social media felt like one big comparison game
    Whether it’s looking at the likes on your gym pic v your friends gym pic or watching people have fun at a party you weren’t invited to, or comparing the size of your engagement ring to someone else’s it comes down to comparison. And it’s a losing game because no matter how much you make or what you look like, you can go on a vacation and have so much fun but then you go on social media and you see someone who went on vacation who got proposed to or stayed at a fancier hotel and all of a sudden, what we did, who we are is not enough.


    17 min
  • Productivity Reset for the New Year (Social Media Detox, Organize, Motivation, Declutter, Clean, Plan) - Ep. 21

    And here are some of my tips and hacks!

    Today is the day for you to do a PRODUCTIVE reset.
    By the end of this video, we are going to get you feeling prepared, organized and motivated for the new year to smash your goals. You know that go getter feeling of being determined? When you just wake up and you’re ready to have a productive day? That’s how you’re going to feel stepping into the new year.
    I’m breaking this video down into 3 steps: cleansing your digital space, decluttering & designing your physical space and then planning & scheduling.
    Also, productivity and cleaning doesn’t come easily to everyone so stay till the end to get my little motivational speech about being disciplined. My lil pep talk will get you hype to get up and go. It’s gonna be good.
    Also guys, this video is part of a 4-part series I’m doing on resetting for the new year: so definitely check out my latest videos of resetting your mindset, your finances and your fitness goals. step one is doing a digital cleanse. When most people think about cleaning for the new year, they think cleaning your bedroom and bathroom but one could argue that decluttering your digital space is just as important. Because a lot of people are constantly on our phones, their computers and that takes up so much mental space so it’s really important to be conscious of that space and clean it up. Sweep up. You don’t want a crusty dusty digital space. So let’s start with what we all use the most -- our phones. The thing you’re either watching this on or have next to you.
    First, we are going to do a social media unfollowing spree. Let’s be real - how many people on facebook, instagram, snapchat are you following that you don’t actually care about? That don’t add true value to your life? You just mindlessly scroll past their posts out of habit, kind of? Every time you scroll past someone’s post, that subconsciously shapes your thoughts about yourself, money, status, how you see the world. And if you have hundreds of random people you are constantly seeing, that’s random energy you’re inviting in and letting shape you. Let this be the year of intention. Everyone in your life has a purpose, has value. Be picky about who you let into your mind. Even if you follow and subscribe to a small group of people, but every time you see that person, you feel joy, love, or inspiration or you feel like you’re learning something valuable, that’s what I aim for. Quality or quantity of people.
    Watch the video for the rest!
    We'll go over clearing your desktop, your toolbar, your email inbox, doing a deep clean of your home, creating a decision free closet (closet cleanout) and creating a vision board. I'll also go over James Clear's book Atomic Habits and the importance of designing your environment correctly when you're cleaning your space this new year.

    14 min
  • 3 Step Fitness Reset for New Years (Workout Motivation, Lose Weight, Meal Prep, Gym, Exercise) - Ep. 20

    Consider this a “getting my life together” video: fitness edition. January New Years is a clean slate, a fresh feeling that inspires us to reset and kickstart our goals. And over 90% of all new year's resolutions in January are about fitness. We always commit to starting the year off on a bang. For the first few days, we’re eating healthy and going to the gym everyday. It’s exciting. But most people’s goals fail or are abandoned by February… So let's talk about it. Let’s be real - How many times did you have the #newyearnewme energy and it was in fact, not the year of new you? This new year will be different and in this video, I’m going to break down how you are going to get your fitness goals to STICK.
    Everybody has different fitness goals. And they usually break down into these categories: Nutrition, Weight, Strength, Flexibility, Endurance, Speed.
    his video is part of a SERIES I’m doing on Resetting for the New Year. My previous videos were on How to Reset your Mindset and how to Reset your Finances. And Next week’s video is on how to do a productive reset.
    If your goals didn’t work last year, there’s a reason. If you try doing the same thing that failed in the same way, you’re probably going to get the same results. The beauty of the end of a year is being able to look back on what didn’t work and using that as a TOOL, a GUIDE to see what needs tweaking. A lot of people look at the past and just feel bad about themselves. Like wow, look at how many times I tried to lose weight and failed. I suck. You’re not going to magically change overnight. Your mistakes are your LESSONS. You NEED to look at what went wrong this year, study it, understand what you’re going to do differently and make a plan for it so you don’t go down the same route again.
    A lot of people made the goal of eating healthier. that goal doesn’t stick because people have an image of what “healthy” looks like. Like eating grilled chicken and broccoli and a salad with no dressing… so just lettuce for dinner. One of the many things I learned from the book Atomic Habits is that you need to make your goals attractive and fun.
    Don’t stick to a diet you find super boring like kale for breakfast lunch and dinner. It doesn’t have to be that hard. You can incorporate more fun foods into your diet and that will actually HELP you achieve your goals because you’re more likely to stick to it longer.
    if you felt lonely at the gym, or scared to workout alone or unmotivated, maybe getting a friend to go to the gym with you could solve those issues and double as an accountability partner. Another thing -- if you ended up quitting because it felt too hard, make it easier. Don’t make your goal 5am workouts because some girl on instagram posted about their 5am morning routine. Sleep if you need to sleep. the most common reason why they quit is motivation. Going to the gym is hard. When you have to get on that treadmill at 6am or when you have to get that last chest press set in. You need a deep reason why you want this. Is it so you can train to run a marathon or is it eating healthier so you can feel more energized and happier every day. Even if your fitness goals are just so you can look better. Why? Think about how you would feel -- more confident, more comfortable in your skin?

    14 min
  • How to Financially Reset for New Years (Money Hacks, Budgeting, Saving, Investing, Credit Card) - Ep. 19

    Let’s be real we all probably could be saving more, investing more, budgeting better. And a lot of people may have savings goals or budgets for the year and then stuff happens during the year. You go on vacations, that affects finances, inflation this year was wild, that affected everyone. But that’s what RESETS are for.

    Do you want to buy a house in a couple years? Or be debt free? Do you have a summer vacation you want to save for? That saving starts now. Do you want to move to a better apartment? The budgeting for that starts now. And in this video, I’m going to break down a solid financial checklist to make sure you are getting that bag and are on top of it.
    Also, this video is part of a series I’m doing on resetting ALL aspects of your life on your self development journey. Check out this video I just did on MENTALLY resetting, hitting refresh on your mindset and your mental wellness. And I will have upcoming videos on resetting your fitness, physical health goals for the new year and another video on how to do a productive reset to hit the ground running in january. So subscribe to level up on all those fronts and let’s get started.
    Number one, reset your budget. A LOT happens in a year. Maybe you moved, had a baby, got a promotion, joined a new gym and your budget needs to be adjusted. Even if you joined a gym that is $10 more a month. If you moved into a new apartment that is $20 more a month. We are putting that on paper and re-adjusting. You need to look at all the new subscriptions you got, all the new memberships and readjust your monthly and yearly spending budget accordingly… if you haven’t done that already.
    Look at subscriptions, the apps you bought that you swore you were going to use. How many times did you actually watch Showtime? Or Peacock? Look at that membership to that pilates class that you never go to. So figure out what you actually need and what you want to cancel. If you didn’t even use it 2 times this year, it needs to go.
    What are you overspending on? Actually facing it is the only way to fix it. If you overspent at bars and clubs, you need to make a plan of how you’re going to cut back this upcoming year. Maybe having more nights in or drinking before you get to the bars so you don’t have as many drinks there. Come up with solutions.
    Also when you review your spending, you need to see where your biggest unexpected financial hits were. I’m not talking about things you budget for. I’m talking about big hits like if you had car problems and you had to spend thousands at a mechanic. Maybe your pet is getting older and you had to spend a lot of money at the vet. If you have health issues, whether its a sickness or an injury, and you have medical bills racked up. Things like that that you don’t really plan for. Those are things that can really ruin any budget or saving you have. So see what that was for you and than adjust your emergency funds for next year to cover that. Maybe its unexpected that you had to take your car to the mechanic 4 times but now you KNOW that maybe your car is older, or has a lot of issues, so now you can expect. Don’t get played twice. Put aside money for your car.

    16 min
  • How to Mentally Reset for the New Year (Social Media Detox, Mental Health, Word of the Year) - Ep. 18

    Get a Jumpstart on Mentally Cleansing your Mind & Resetting for the New Year. How do you feel when the year starts to wind down? Busy? Excited? Overwhelmed? A lot happens in a year. We go through ups and downs. We meet new people and maybe let go of other relationships. Maybe you got laid off, fired. Maybe you switched jobs. Maybe you moved. A lot happens, especially at the end of the year with the chaos of holidays, where there is a lot of energy whirling around. And as the Earth turns another year around the sun and the entire globe internationally, as a human race, we celebrate a brand new fresh year, it’s the best feeling to ring in the new year with a sense of peace, calm, feeling prepared like we stepping into it instead of all feeling messy, unprepared, unorganized and not aligned and focused. Scattered energy is the worst. And yes, even though January 1st really just is another day, it’s also a great time to get it together. You want to start off on the right foot.

    And I’ve gotten to a stage in my life where I want all aspects of my life to be intentional. That means you know the purpose of everything and everyone in that space and those are things or people that bring value into my life in some way. So with social media, let this be the season of unfollowing and unsubscribing. Not in a mean way. Not in cutting them off. But in a way that removes people from your life that just don’t belong there anymore. Maybe you had a relationship with them during one season of your life and they’re just not in this season, this chapter of your life. And a lot of times, seeing their content, consuming their energy isn’t needed anymore and is really just taking up space.
    I really look at social media as a part of your “mental diet.” And it’s important what you feed it. And you don’t want to junk it up with empty calories of things and people that are not adding to your life, that are not healthy and nutritional.
    And then you can even take it a step further and take a break all together. Because when we self reflect, we want to make sure we’re taking some space from all that so we can look inward clearly. Without other energies warping that experience.

    15 min

About It's Giving Growth

From the publisher's feed

Hi buds 🌱 Here to plant the seeds for your self growth journey.