Let's take small steps towards tackling our physical health.  Simple things like moving more and getting outside make a difference.  And even though they are small steps, if done consistently over time you will see results.  

Transcript:

Hello, my name is Tiffany, and welcome to the podcast, Working on Amazing.

This is a podcast where we talk about the work that it takes to rebuild an amazing life.

And I say rebuild because we're specifically designed for women who feel like they're starting over in the middle of their life.

Maybe it was divorce, maybe it was loss.

All kinds of things can lead you to that point where it feels like you're just having to start over again.

All your plans for the future have been scrapped.

Life didn't go the way you planned.

Something major happened, and now it feels like you're starting over.

If that's you, first of all, I'm really sorry, but you are in the right place.

Welcome.

I am so glad you're here.

So if you'll remember, in the very first episode, I talked about the areas that I focused on as I rebuilt my life because I wanted to rebuild a life that was amazing.

If I was gonna have to rebuild anyway, I might as well take the time to rebuild something that I was proud of, that was good, and that wouldn't fall apart as easily as it did the last time.

So I focused on five areas.

I focused on my spiritual health, my mental health, my physical health, my financial health, and I focused on growth and goals, right?

So today's episode, we're gonna talk about physical health.

We've talked about physical health before, and we talked about just eliminating one thing from your diet.

Like, we're starting really simple and small, because I feel like if your life has blown up so much that you feel like you're starting over, you're going through enough emotional and mental turmoil that you don't need to make big sweeping changes at first.

You need to make small changes.

So for your health, I said just eliminate one negative thing from your diet.

Most people have one thing that they really don't want to let go of.

Like, don't make me give up soda, don't make me give up potato chips, whatever it is, sweets.

Eliminate that one thing.

Let's just start simple.

Let's not make sweeping diet changes one thing.

So today, we're going to talk about another simple thing, and that's just move more.

Well, really two things.

Move more and get outside.

And those things can go together a lot.

You can walk outside, right?

How do you know to move more?

What does moving more look like?

Well, let's start with how much you moved last month, like average step count.

So a lot of people have a digital watch that monitors their step count every day.

So if you have that, great.

Look at that.

See what your step count was.

If you don't have a watch like a Fitbit or an Apple watch, a lot of phones come equipped, like pre-downloaded, like a help app.

So I have an iPhone.

It comes with a help app, and it tells me my steps, even if I'm not wearing my watch.

The caveat is you have to carry your phone with you all the time for it to consistently track your steps.

And I often leave my phone on the couch or on the counter or somewhere else.

But it should give you an idea, right?

So let's just get an idea of what our movement was maybe over the last month or so.

How much am I really moving?

Let's figure it out, right?

And then the goal is to just increase that.

So a lot of jobs are fairly sedentary.

Almost all my jobs have always been like nine to five, Monday through Friday desk jobs I've sat at a desk.

Why giving matters.  What does the Bible say about giving?  What are different ways to give?  Giving helps your spiritual health, your mental health and your financial health.  It's a foundational building block of a truly amazing life.

Transcript:

Hello, my name is Tiffany, and welcome to the podcast Working on Amazing.

This is a podcast where we talk about the work that it takes to rebuild an amazing life.

And I say rebuild because we're specifically designed for women who feel like they're starting over in the middle of their life.

Maybe it was divorce, maybe it was a loss, maybe it was something else, but your plans for the future went up in smoke, and it really feels like you're starting over.

If that's you, you are in the right place.

Welcome.

I'm so glad that you are here.

So today's episode, we're going to talk about spiritual health.

If you remember in the beginning, I said there were five areas I focused on when I rebuilt my life and that was spiritual health, mental health, physical health, financial health, and growth and goals.

So today I want to talk about spiritual health, and I want to talk about giving, and what the Bible says about giving, and how that spiritual principle is super important.

And I know it sounds odd, and it sounds counterintuitive, and why are you making this one first?

There's so many more important things, like talk about forgiveness.

Giving is probably more important than you realize.

It's a biblical principle.

I feel like giving affects your mental health, your financial health, your spiritual health.

So it hits three of the five in just one thing.

It's a simple thing, and we write it off like, yeah, of course, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

But I want to talk about it.

I want to challenge you to engage in the giving process.

So first of all, why is it a spiritual principle to give?

Well, the Bible says that we need to tithe, bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, and a tithe is 10%.

So what the majority of people do, especially in modern times, you know, in the olden days, it was different, but you tithe 10% of what you bring home, what your paycheck is, right?

In the olden days, maybe you would tithe 10% of your grain or 10% of your flock of cows or whatever.

But 10% of your money that you make, you give that away, and that's your tithe.

You tithe to a church, you tithe to a organization like that.

That's important.

I strongly recommend and think you should do that.

And 100%, yes, please do that.

If you're not doing that, look into that.

I understand sometimes when you're going through a difficult season, your church may shift or change.

I was going to a church very regularly, and then my marriage got really dark, and I just didn't feel like going to church anymore.

It wasn't anything that those people did.

It's still a great church.

I still like those people, but I just couldn't go and show up at this place I'd shown up as a family with everybody else.

It was just, things just shifted in me and my heart.

So I understand if you're in a place where you can't tie to, but find a place.

It is a principle, and it matters.

It's like God set out these rules in these things, and we do them, we obey them, like our parents told us to come in when the streetlights came on, or whatever.

We do it, we obey it, we don't always fully understand it, but over time, it begins to make sense, and you see the benefits of it, right?

So, tithe, it matters.

The Bible says to do it.

And I know it can be counterintuitive when you're trying to save money.

You wanna win with finances.

You wanna have enough saved up.

One way to work on your mental health is to practice affirmations.  What are affirmations?  How do they work?  What should you say?  Listen to find out.

Transcript:

Hi, my name is Tiffany, and welcome to the podcast Working on Amazing.

In this podcast, we talk about the work that it takes to rebuild an amazing life.

And I say rebuild because we're specifically geared and designed for women who feel like they're starting over in the middle of their life.

Maybe it was because of a divorce or a loss.

For whatever reason, you find yourself in the middle of your life having to start over.

All your plans for the future kind of went up in smoke.

Everything kind of got shifted and changed in a way that you didn't plan.

And now you're kind of rebuilding your life.

If that's you, I truly am sorry.

But you are in the right place.

Welcome.

I am so glad you are here.

So if you'll remember in the first episode, I talked about the areas that I focused on and I wanted to rebuild my life, and I wanted to rebuild a better life than the one I had before.

So I focused on my spiritual health, my mental health, my physical health, my financial health and growth and goals.

So today's episode, we're going to talk about an area that falls under mental health.

And this one was one that was a little bit odd for me.

It took me a while to warm up to the idea.

But today we're going to talk about affirmations.

And every time I had heard about affirmations, it just sounded really hokey to me.

I don't know.

Maybe you don't have that opinion of it.

It sounded to me like they were trying to say, I could say, I am a millionaire every day, and one day I'd wake up a millionaire.

And I know that's not true, and that seems ridiculous.

And so I just wrote it all off as over the top, right?

But I happen to read an article on a really dark day about affirmations, and I thought, you know what?

This doesn't cost any money.

It's simple to do.

I'm going to give it a try.

And I did, and I'm so, so, so glad that I did.

So I will tell you, just as a disclaimer, there are far more knowledgeable people that talk about affirmations, that write about affirmations.

I would encourage you to Google it and read what other people have to say because they have much more knowledge than I do.

What I'm going to share today is layman's terms, personal experience, sort of the guidelines I use to write my affirmations, what I noticed in my life.

So that will just give you a starting point.

By all means, there are far more knowledgeable people.

But what I learned and what I read is it all has to do with the way our brain is wired.

It almost gets down to a science.

So our brain has pathways in it.

And when we tell it negative things, and we do it on a subconscious level, we're not even aware, but we replay these negative beliefs about ourselves over and over.

I'm not good enough.

I can't do that.

I won't make it.

We replay the things that maybe people have said to us over and over in our head.

And we do it on an unconscious level a lot of times.

And as we do this, it just, in our head, those pathways just, they become entrenched, right?

And so the idea of affirmation is to rewire the way your brain sees yourself, to make new pathways that are positive instead of negative.

So what we're telling ourselves, what our brain sees about ourselves, is positive and not negative.

We're actively participating and taking part.

I think most of the time, our brain just functions.

So much is done on a subconscious level.

It tells us negative things

Setting goals is so important.  Especially when we are going through a difficult season.  Focusing on positive things that we have control over is so empowering and helps take our attention away from the negative things in our life that more often than not we can't control.

Transcript:

Hello, my name is Tiffany, and welcome to the podcast, Working on Amazing.

This is a podcast where we talk about the work that it takes to rebuild an amazing life.

And I say rebuild because we're specifically designed and targeted towards women who feel like they're rebuilding their life.

Maybe you went through a divorce, you're going through a big breakup, a loss even.

And it feels like all your plans for the future have gone up in smoke.

And everything in your daily life is kind of topsy-turvy.

It wasn't where it was before.

Everything has changed, and the rug has been pulled out from underneath your feet.

If that's you, you're in the right place.

Welcome.

I am so glad that you are here.

So today's episode, we're going to talk about goals.

If you'll remember, in the beginning, in the intro, I talked about rebuilding my life, and I focused on five key areas.

And that was spiritual health, mental health, physical health, financial health.

And then I focused on growth and goals.

So today, that's what we're going to talk about, goals.

I understand if you're pulling back a little bit, you've already heard about goals.

I know.

You talk about goals at work and the types of goals and smart goals.

And in school, you probably talked about goals back then.

My whole life, I've heard about the importance of setting goals.

I know this isn't new to you.

I'm not here to share brand new information with you.

I'm here to encourage you in a dark season that this is what you need to do, that this is important.

When you set a goal, you're doing a forward motion.

You're going forward, you're looking ahead.

And that is positive, because we've got to get through it.

We've got to get through the dark night of the soul, through the rough season, through the dark time.

And we've got to move forward to do that, and a goal keeps us moving forward.

The other thing goals do is, especially when we're in this dark season, instead of focusing on all the negativity around us and all the things we're not able to change and we don't have control over, we're focusing on a goal that is positive and not negative, and it's something we do have control over.

So it helps our mental health.

It helps give us confidence and encourage us because we're taking positive action where we can in our life.

So that's a reason why goals are important, specifically when you're going through a hard time and a lot of changes are going on and maybe things that you didn't want to happen have happened.

This is why goals are important in this season.

So what kind of goals to set?

Well, I'm going to give you some goal topics, and then you get to pick your exact goal.

You choose how you want to rebuild your life.

But as we're rebuilding our life, we had some focus areas.

So having a goal for each of those focus areas makes sense.

And then I've got a couple extra that aren't focus areas, but we can add goals for, okay?

So our first focus area was spiritual health.

So what kind of goals are spiritual health goals?

That's kind of odd.

Maybe.

I don't know.

So I would suggest some ideas for spiritual health.

Maybe you say, I want to read my Bible every day.

Or maybe you say, I want to start a devotional.

I want to start reading of devotion every day.

There's an app

If you want to tackle losing weight but are living in a season of changed and are overwhelmed by everything else, this is a simple place to start.  Just work on one thing

Transcript:

Hi, my name is Tiffany, and welcome to the podcast Working on Amazing.

This podcast is specifically designed for women who feel like they're starting over in the middle of their life.

Most commonly, that looks like a divorce, but it could be a breakup, a loss.

Many things can lead you to feel like, all of a sudden, you're having to start over.

All your plans for the future have changed.

The way you thought your life was going got upended, and now it feels like you're starting over.

Even though you're really not starting over, it definitely feels that way.

If that's you, I want to say you are not alone.

Welcome.

I'm so glad you're here.

Now, if you remember in the beginning, I talked about there are five key areas that I focused on when I was rebuilding my life.

I focused on my spiritual health, my mental health, my physical health, my financial health, and growth and goals.

So today's episode, we're going to talk about physical health.

And we're going to start really basic.

We're not going to go crazy.

We're not going to go too far.

We're just going to start really simple.

Because I think when you make little changes and keep those small changes consistent over time, you see big results.

And I think that in health and finance and all these things, it's okay to start small.

I think that's the way to make sustainable and lasting change.

So physical health is that way.

And I'm going to share with you a little bit about my personal journey and what I did.

So when I went through my divorce, I ate all my feelings.

I had a lot of feelings, and I ate every single one of them.

And the result of that was I gained weight.

Now, the bulk of my life, I would not consider myself skinny or small, but I was definitely average in my weight.

I was never struggled with my weight.

It just wasn't an issue one way or another.

I didn't think about it.

But when I went through my divorce, I definitely started to struggle with my weight.

I definitely put on pounds, and it contributed to the depression and my mental health struggles of just being unhappy, because not only was all these other changes going on in my life, not only was I dealing with figuring out how to be a single mom and all the responsibility that came with doing that alone, and losing a 20-year marriage, I felt very unattractive.

So just all of it just didn't feel good, right?

And I knew I needed to tackle it.

I knew I needed to lose some of this weight that I had put on.

But I needed to get in the right headspace in order to do that.

I don't know if that makes sense to you.

If you're going through a really tough season and it feels like everything's changing and everything requires your energy and you are struggling emotionally and you don't have much energy to give, maybe you understand that you've got to be in a certain headspace in order to tackle a problem like that.

So I did not tackle it immediately.

I got on my feet a little bit as far as moving into a new place with my children, starting to figure out a rhythm with my finances.

But one of the ways I started is what I'm going to talk about today.

And I ended up losing 40 pounds, so yay, good job.

But if you're there, if you've just been kind of down, if you've eaten more than you realized, you just turn around and you're like, whoa, I put on some pounds and I would like to lose those.

But you're still struggling just in your own head, kind of down abou

Talking about the dangers of taking an offense and how important it is to let it go.

Transcript:

Hi, my name is Tiffany, and welcome to the podcast Working on Amazing.

This is a podcast specifically designed for women who feel like they're starting over.

Maybe you went through a bad breakup, a divorce, maybe you lost your spouse.

For whatever reason, in the middle of life, it felt like the rug was pulled out from underneath you, and you feel like you're starting over.

And that's not a good feeling.

But the good news is you're in the right place, you're not alone, and I'm so glad that you're here.

Welcome.

So today's episode, we're going to talk about one of those five key areas that I mentioned in the beginning, in the first episode.

I said there were five areas I focused on when I went to rebuild my life.

I focused on my spiritual health, my mental health, my physical health, my financial health, and then I focused on growth and goals, okay?

So today's episode is going to be our first episode about spiritual health.

And this one's going to sound a little bit different.

For the first episode on spiritual health, we're going to talk about taking offense.

And that sounds kind of odd, so just bear with me.

I know that it's not something that people talk about all the time, but I think it's really important for us to talk about it in this setting and in this place.

When you are going through a truly dark night of the soul, when you're rebuilding your life and it just feels like everything has gone wrong, and like I said, the rug's been pulled out from underneath your feet, it's really easy to take offense at little things because this big thing has happened.

Everything is kind of, we're in a negative mind frame because so much negative has happened, like a big negative thing.

It's easy to see little negative things everywhere.

They just jump out at us.

They're like glue.

They stick to us.

All these things, all these offenses, they cut me off in traffic.

That lady at the counter when I went to buy something was rude.

They shorted me on whatever at the drive-through.

All these things come up and they're just irritating, right?

And so today, when we talk about offense, I want to encourage you to start letting those little things go.

And it's counter to your nature.

Your nature is going to say, no, I am justified.

I was right.

I was right.

They were wrong.

And we have this innate need for justice inside of us, right?

And it just rises up like, no, that was wrong.

And I get that.

And so it takes work.

It takes being aware of it and acknowledging it and saying, you know what?

I might be right, but I'm big enough to let it go.

And that takes time and it's hard, but it's so important.

So one of the first clues that I got about this and why, when I started becoming aware, was I read a book by a man named John Brevere, and it was called The Bait of Satan.

And I had never really heard about people taking offense.

Like, I think I heard that term before, but nobody really talks about that in Christian faith and in circles of whatever.

I grew up in a church-based home.

It just wasn't something that people talk about a lot.

So when I read this book, I found it very, very interesting.

And he talks about taking offense as literally the bait of Satan.

Satan baits us by making us feel justified and why we're right and they're wrong.

That happened and that's wrong.

And when we take that, we're kind of hooked into this root of bitterness.

Like, when we take offense, it's the seed that's the root that

Winning with money means following simple concepts.  It takes time,  It takes discipline.  However the results are beyond worth it.  Let's start with basic money principles 

Transcript:

Hello, my name is Tiffany, and welcome to the podcast Working on Amazing.

This podcast is specifically designed for women who feel like they're starting over midlife.

Maybe you went through a divorce, maybe it was a big breakup, maybe you even lost your spouse.

I don't know the exact story, but if you feel like the rug got pulled out from under your feet, and you're starting over, but it's the middle of your life, you're in the right place.

Welcome.

I'm really glad you're here.

Today's episode, we're going to talk about finances.

Finances can be such a struggle for a lot of people, right?

And winning with finances and doing well with finances is going to make your life so much better, I promise, promise, promise.

Money affects you every day of your life.

I've already said it, every day.

There's not a day you're not making money, spending money.

Money affects you somehow day in and day out.

And it's too big of a deal for us to not take a closer look at how we can manage our money better, okay?

So today, we're going to be really basic.

We're going to start super simple, and we're going to talk about some really basics on how to win with money, okay?

I'm going to tell you the most simplistic thing about how to win with money.

You want to spend less than you make.

More comes in, less goes out.

That's really simple, right?

We kind of know that.

We know that that's, I think, the goal.

But how do you do that, right?

How do you do it?

And sometimes we see other people and we're like, oh my gosh, they're doing so good.

They make a million dollars.

Okay, but if you make a million dollars and you're spending 1.2 million dollars, you are not winning with money, are you?

No.

And then there could be somebody else, and maybe they're driving a beat up old car.

They make $50,000 a year, but they only spend $45,000 a year.

Who is winning with money?

It's not what people look like.

Winning with money, sometimes, I think in our head, we think, if you're winning with money, you're carrying a designer handbag, you're doing this, you're doing that, you dress a certain way, you have a certain car.

No.

Winning with money is spending less than what comes in.

And it doesn't matter what those amounts are.

Even if they're big amounts, sometimes, I think the bigger the amount, the easier it is to overspend.

Learning to live within your means is the way you win with money.

I mean, it's just that simple.

So let's talk about really tactile things.

How do we do this?

So I'm going to give you three simple steps.

Simplicity does not equal difficulty.

Just because they're simple doesn't mean it's easy to do.

Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to do.

So step one, if you want to spend less than what you make, step one, you got to know what you make, right?

So this is the easiest of the three steps.

Write down what you make in a month, okay?

So let's do it month by month.

That makes it a little bit easier, smaller.

What do you bring in each month?

And you might need to average it.

Most people, if you're, if you're salary, this is really easy for you.

Do you have other additional income?

Maybe you have child support coming in or some other income in addition to what you make at work.

Some people, it's not as easy for.

Some people work on commission or t

The importance of practicing daily gratitude.  Training your mind to see the good things is especially necessary when going through a dark season and negative things are shouting for your attention

Transcript:

Hello, my name is Tiffany, and welcome to the podcast, Working on Amazing.

As I said before, this podcast is specifically designed for women who are going through a divorce, going through a breakup, have lost their main person in their life, and you feel like you're starting over midlife.

If that's you, you're in the right place.

You are not alone, and you're so welcome here.

Now, like I said before, each of our episodes will fall under one of five main categories, right?

So we had spiritual health, mental health, physical health, financial health, and growth and goals.

So today's episode, we're going to focus on the mental health aspect, and we're going to be talking about gratitude.

Gratitude is one of my favorite topics.

I really, it has made such a huge impact in my life, and I'm really excited to share it with you.

And while I know that it is so deceptively simple, we hear about gratitude because we have this national holiday called Thanksgiving, which is great, right?

We have a holiday where we are thankful as a nation.

We set aside, however, somehow, maybe that numbs us to how precious gratitude is.

Maybe because I'm not sure.

And I think when you live life day in and day out, it's easy to become numb.

You have to choose gratitude.

But let's really talk about the daily practice of gratitude.

Not once a year, not I'm just thankful, but really focusing on making it a priority and folding it into our daily lives and our daily routine.

It makes such an impact and such a difference.

It made a massive difference in my life.

And it's slow.

It's not like a light switch.

Oh, I practice gratitude.

Now my life is suddenly better.

It just slowly changes the trajectory of your thoughts.

It slowly curves that back in a much better direction.

So I'll tell you a little bit about my personal journey with gratitude.

I probably was just moving along through life.

Yes, I'm thankful, but it wasn't necessarily a focus.

And then I heard somebody talk about it probably 18 years ago.

It's about 18 years ago.

And this man talked about gratitude.

And it really just resonated with me.

I thought, I need to practice that.

I need to really absorb and take in and do what this man is talking about.

Because at that time in my life, I was a very young mother.

I had a three-year-old and a three-month-old.

And we had just moved.

And it wasn't a good move, if that makes sense.

Sometimes you move because it's, yay, we found a better job and a better house.

And sometimes you move because you have to and it's sad.

And this was a because we had to kind of thing.

And in my marriage had all these stress fractures in it.

And I felt like I was doing everything to hold it together and hold on and make it work.

And like I said, you've got the hormones of being a young mother to like three months old.

I mean, that was a small baby.

So I had moved cities.

I had moved away from my family and my friends to a brand new place.

So I was not in a great space mentally.

I wasn't super happy and excited with my life.

It felt like kind of a dark season.

And so when I heard gratitude, I knew when this guy spoke about it, it was just like, I knew that that's what I needed to focus on now because it was so dark.

And because it did feel like everything was ichy, I had to focus on the positive.

An introduction the the podcast Working on Amazing.  Where we talk about the work of rebuilding an amazing life.  Specifically the work of rebuilding a life in the middle of heartache, after coming out of a long term relationship.  

Transcript:

Hi, my name is Tiffany, and welcome to the podcast, Working on Amazing.

This is our very first episode, so let's go over some basics.

Let's talk about things like, who is this podcast geared toward, and what type of topics we'll be covering in future episodes.

So right off the bat, this podcast is geared towards women, women most likely who are going through a divorce.

You maybe have gone through a major breakup, maybe you never got married, but you were long-term partners.

And even possibly could be there for people who have lost a spouse.

But most typically, this is really for women who are going through a divorce, women who plan their life and their future with another person, and that person isn't there.

So if that is you, I understand that it feels kind of overwhelming.

All your plans for the future just kind of go up in smoke suddenly, and you've got to start rebuilding.

You got to rebuild your life in the middle of your life.

And that does not feel good.

It actually kind of made me angry.

But if that is you, I do want to say you are not alone.

And what I found, even though when I was going through it, it did feel lonely, and I'm sure you probably feel lonely.

You're not alone.

So many women have gone through it.

I've talked to countless women who have gone through this process.

And the good news is they've come out on the other side better for it.

And my thought is, why should we all go through this process alone, blindly?

Why don't we start kind of sharing what worked and our tips and our tricks and how we got through this?

Because it is a tough season, right?

It definitely felt like a dark night of the soul for me.

Figuring out and refinding your footing in this new normal life, it takes some time, right?

So let's talk to each other.

Let's not just go through it alone.

Let's share what works and what doesn't work.

All kinds of different things.

So I'll tell you a little bit about me.

I got married when I was 21, and I got divorced when I was 41.

Now, I definitely never planned on getting divorced.

Like, that was like, no.

So to actually have to face that really rocked my world.

I mean, it really did.

I struggled because I swore that that's what I would never do, and then here I was.

And I had spent 20 years, half my life, all of my adult life with another individual who is now no longer there.

I had two children and I thought I am totally responsible for them.

Because of our arrangement, I had 100% full-time custody.

I had no one else to tag team with and say, okay, you're on duty tonight.

You know, I just need a break.

The responsibility felt overwhelming.

It was, I struggled emotionally, like I said, because I thought I would never get divorced.

And I had to face what I said I would never do, right?

And just the practical side of it, I did.

I threw a pity party.

I'm not even going to lie.

I wish that I would have handled it with more grace and more dignity, but I did not.

I was upset, and I think I would have wallowed in self-pity and just brokenheartedness.

But I had those two kids, right?

Two kids who were looking up to me, and I thought the only way to teach them resilience is to be resilient.

I have to show them.

I have to lead by example, and that sucked.

But it made me get up and dust myself o